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EXPERIMENTAL AND ALTERNATIVE MEDIA ART (formerly FILM 129)
135
The course explores the international development of artist-made, experimental and avant-garde film, electronic or new media practices. It looks at the ways artists have invented new formal languages in order to express their unique ideas and vision, and also how they have created alternative modes of production, distribution, and exhibition for their work. The course examines major movements in experimental and alternative media that exist outside of the constraints of industrial and mass-media forms, as it at once critiques and expands dominant forms of media. Course goals include broadening student awareness & understanding of the history of experimental & alternative film & media practices that exist outside of the dominant film industry, including fine art practices that have emerged from the visual & sonic arts rather than the dominant literary & dramatic forms; and studying underground & marginal communities that have been under or unrepresented by the dominant film & media industries, as well as the kinds of creative sub-culture communities that this approach to art making has produced. While emphasis on the particular medium and technology may vary from year to year depending on the instructor, conceptually, the course will always focus on film and media art as a form of personal and creative expression with a philosophical position that emphasizes process and invention over product and professional mastery.