Video and the Body will investigate how contemporary technologies facilitate innovative ways of using the body as a vehicle for making art. While the body has always been central to performance, it has come to play a large role in non-performative work as well, beginning with Pollock?s action paintings in the early 1950?s. In 1965 the introduction of the first portable, affordable video camera, the Portapak, gave artists an even more direct way to use their bodies as an object or a subject in their work. Artists such as Vitto Acconci, John Baldessari, Joan Jonas, and Bruce Nauman used the camera as an extension of the body, as a way to capture performances, or as a means to examine the role of gesture and movement in their otherwise material-based practices. Today, programmatic technologies that allow us to play, alter, and interact with videos afford artists a whole new set of possibilities for thinking about and incorporating the body in their work.
In this studio course students will reflect on the use of the body in contemporary art while developing the tools necessary to expand their own use of the body in their current studio practices. Through a series of workshops and assignments, students will develop a working knowledge of how to shoot and edit digital video as well as a basic familiarity with the programming language Max/MSP/Jitter (including an introduction to using the Kinect for interactive work). They will be encouraged to present their work in a variety of ways: on the screen, as part of an installation, or as an interactive or performance piece. The course will culminate in a final project of the students choice.