Courses & Curriculum

Art Palace is a series of weekly talks/events presented by working artists with noteworthy careers in the greater New York area. Students will be introduced to a disparate variety of multi- and inter-disciplinary practitioners, allowing students to listen to, learn from and - in many cases - collaborate with visiting artists. Art Palace is required of all incoming students in their first semester, however each evening’s event is open to all Collaborative Arts majors who would like to participate.

This is a 7-week lecture class, introducing new multi-disciplinary practitioners to the central ideas of their chosen careers. Topics will include: Mimesis, Representation, Genre, The Art Object, Subjectivity, Taste, Humor, Sensibility...to name a few. Where does the impulse for art come from? Can art change society or does it reflect society? Why do we do art and how do we know whether it's any good? Key definitions of terms career artists must know will be introduced in WORDS AND IDEAS, helping students form (and fully understand) their own creative strategies in undertaking future art projects. While the class is not, strictly speaking, an art history seminar, major historical movements will be touched on to illustrate the ideas under discussion every week.

In this studio-intensive course students engage in an investigation of subject matter, sources, and strategies for generating work. Experimentation is encouraged and there are frequent class critiques. This course encourages students to build an index of visual ideas through the development of a habitual and generative drawing practice. Students will experiment with both image and mark making and will look to historical and contemporary approaches as touchstones for their practices. Course will include group critiques, one- on-one meetings, visiting artists, lectures, and field trips.

Filmmaking, photography, and the basics of visual imagery are explored through a hands-on studio art experience, which provides an overview of the development of visual storytelling throughout history. From the first creation of early hand drawn cave paintings to modern film production, the essential elements of visual representation, visual imagery, visual grammar, and visual narrative are explored. Lectures introduce and explain a variety of methods used to capture a visual image and how imagery, both with and without words, is used to convey meaning. In class painting, etching, drawing, film, and photo assignments are given for students to create their own visual imagery, using these several different artistic formats. Technical training on cameras and editing software accompanies these practical assignments. Students also complete photo and short film projects throughout the course, as they explore the essential nature of visual storytelling, pre-visualization, and practical production. The course examines how the basic tools of traditional narrative storytelling are also used in purely visual storytelling - to create a secondary world and to maintain a suspension of disbelief in order to inform, entertain, and affect the audience. 

This hands-on practicum teaches students the basic parameters of story structure and dramatic writing for live performance. We will examine various conventions of dramatic storytelling for the stage, such as dialogue, character, delivering exposition, etc. Class lectures will discuss the components of a drama, and class exercises will help students generate material for a 2-person "realistic" live scene, lasting approximately 5-10 minutes of stage time. Students will also learn how to give and receive critiques. This live scene can be either “stand-alone” or part of a larger multi-disciplinary art project for later work in a student’s career at Collaborative Arts.

This hands-on practicum teaches students the basic parameters of story structure and dramatic writing for a short film. We will examine various conventions of screenplay storytelling such as format, structure, plot, character development, visualization and film language. Class lectures will discuss basic components of the screenplay, with reading and writing assignments helping to generate a scene lasting approximately 5-10 minutes of screen time. Students will also learn how to give and receive critiques. This short film can be either “stand-alone” or part of a larger multi-disciplinary art project for later work in a student’s career at Collaborative Arts.

In this section of the Performance Practices set, students will address explorations of space and time, presence, working with objects, composition and various improvisational structures. During the semester students and performance faculty will work with ideas from artists who have significantly informed the development of 20th century and early 21st century performance practices. For the first half the semester, students focus solely on body and movement, while in the second half of the semester students engage in co-taught sessions that blend text and movement to discover and deepen the connection between the body, the voice, text and imagination.

In this section of the Performance Practices set, students will explore dramatic action, emotional point of view, theatrical use of dramatic as well as non-dramatic text and various improvisational structures designed to support the ability to read and respond spontaneously and simply to the behavior of others. During the semester students and performance faculty will work with ideas from seminal artists who have significantly informed the development of 20th century and early 21st century performance practices. For the first half the semester, students focus solely on voice and text, while in the second half of the semester students engage in co-taught sessions that blend text and movement to discover and deepen the connection between the body, the voice, text and imagination.

This course is designed to introduce students to the fundamentals of music production and sound engineering in support of the Collaborative Arts interdisciplinary core curriculum. Using Abelton Live, students will be introduced to songwriting, song form and analysis, chord structure, sound design, rhythm, audio/MIDI editing, and mixing techniques. Throughout the semester students will collaborate on projects and in-class assignments by composing and performing music for a variety of mediums and applications.

Our collective intuition and imagination are more powerful than computer programs, yet paired with software, digital media, and online networks, our wildest dreams can become real. By understanding the fundamentals of digital tools, our DIY sensibilities, artistic practices, and social experiments can be transformative, even revolutionary. With algorithms surveilling and dictating our culture, it is crucial to learn and harness digital technologies for independent expression. In this hands-on introductory course, we will learn to utilize tools for creating musical and visual experiments, playful interactions and games, and emerging media discourse. Students will work independently and collaboratively to create and produce music and sound collages, computer graphics and animation, internet art, videos and performances. Collaborators from different fields of study will be encouraged to incorporate their individual interests and expertise.

Art Palace is a series of weekly talks/events presented by working artists with noteworthy careers in the greater New York area. Students will be introduced to a disparate variety of multi- and inter-disciplinary practitioners, allowing students to listen to, learn from and - in many cases - collaborate with visiting artists. Art Palace is required of all incoming students in their first semester, however each evening’s event is open to all Collaborative Arts majors who would like to participate.

Conducted every semester, Jam House is a 2-day intensive offered for credit to all Collaborative Arts Majors. Students assemble to brainstorm unique experiential and collaborative works culminating in final presentations, projects and performances. Designed to function as a platform for experimentation and play, the workshop allows students to test ideas in an open, supportive yet critical environment with an emphasis on interdisciplinary art and a focused attention to the creative process. Every workshop begins with a visiting guest artist presenting their work, followed by Q&A and discussions. Students then form groups and create a collaborative work in any medium (or many) inspired or loosely informed by the ideas or themes presented by the artist.

A collaborative process in Body Library is not a premeditated passage, but an invitation for a responsive sequence of experiments that are issued by intention and vision. Consisting of the entire third-year cohort, the objective of the course is the development, research, production, and presentation of a new collaborative interdisciplinary live performance. The cohort is broken into groups and each student is responsible for bringing their interests, skill set, ambition, and aspirations to contribute to the creation of a unique process that is tailored to each group's chosen subject matter, themes, and formats.

Body Library is an occasion for experimentation and a call to step outside of our comfort zone. In this rigorous process, we welcome risks and challenges into our collaborations to explore the opportunities and possibilities they present, and to learn how to meet them with creativity and innovation. While working on methodology and building the group's focus and visions based on the individuals in the group and the collective’s goals, we will also encourage flexibility and curiosity in the process to allow for discovery, chance, and surprise. The nuance of a project’s meanings are often hidden deeper in its process; Body Library wants you to transform the joy and playfulness of art making and community into a sincere art practice and to create a work you did not know you had in you.

Body Library is an interdisciplinary lab and will make use of the entire facilities of the departments. We will integrate sculpting, drawing, sound, video, light, movement, technology, and text into the assignment for the class to become part of the process and the final performance to be presented to the Collaborative Art community at the end of the semester. The Individual group projects will be developed in parallel with several sharing of their work in progress with the rest of the class. Through the transparency and vulnerability of this sharing, we will be able to provide feedback and learn from observations across the collaboration teams. 

The course will include a series of visiting guests from different fields; a dancer, a dramaturg, a light designer, and a sculptor to provide their skills and perspectives on their approaches to interdisciplinary collaborative performance art practices.  

CA Capstone is an opportunity for graduating students to produce original interdisciplinary works of art that allow them to reflect and expand on their practice, skills, knowledge and insights they have gathered during their time at Collaborative Arts. While the works can take any form, we encourage collaborative projects and expect a collaborative process. Students as a group will be responsible for curating a final group show that brings all their work together into a cohesive narrative and engaging community experience. Throughout the semester students will compose and give feedback to each other’s individual artist statements and project “maps”, produce a curatorial statement, press-release, and invitation for the show. Works in the show should reflect the artist's playfulness, experimentation, curiosity, openness, originality and mastery of the tools employed. Agility in reason, intellectual rigor, attention to detail, contextualization, references and documentation - as well as final presentation - will all be important aspects of how the work will be assessed and evaluated. The class will be a combination of in-class workshops, review of weekly assignments, critique of work in progress, guest lectures, 1-on-1 sessions, and art outings.