Temporary Expert: Design + Science in the Anthropocene

Catalog description

What does it mean to become a “temporary expert?” How does one develop one’s own creative research-based practice? The Temporary Expert identifies problems, challenges and questions as a basis for research and imaginative art/design opportunities. In this course, students will adopt a wide variety of tools and strategies in order to lay the foundations of a research-based art practice that considers materials, media, context, and audience, as well as one’s personal strengths and desires. Students will develop art/design projects that interface with a multiplicity of other disciplines, and engage in idea exchange with experts in the field. A research-based art practice brings together an eccentric mixture of skills, including traditional forms of research (library and interview techniques, informal ethnographies) and experimental hands-on research (experimentation, systems thinking, prototyping, daily practice and user-testing). Through hands-on practice, case studies, and readings on systems thinking, communication, and the idea of “a public,” we will explore method, documentation and presentation of your research, as well as the merits of both success and failure. Weekly work consists of readings, interviews, writing, daily artistic practice and systems thinking exercises