Video in the Expanded Field

Term:  Winter 2023

Course Director          

Marc Couroux
322 J Goldfarb Centre for Fine Arts
couroux [at] yorku [dot] ca
Course consultation hours: by appointment

Time and Location

Tuesday 2:30 PM – 6:30 PM, ON CAMPUS, CFA 330

Video in the Expanded Field is a studio course dedicated to an exploration of video through its interdisciplinary intersections with sculptural, installation, performative, musical, and other practices. The history of video will be explored, from the pioneers of the 1960s and 1970s to internet-based and real-time environments, from documentary to reality-based practices, from single channel to video installation practices, from early activist video to explorations of presentday panoptic conceptions, from early filmic practices to materialist / structuralist conceptions, to a study of the framing mechanisms of television from its beginnings to the present, through both analog and digital manifestations.

The student will produce video projects applying digital technologies within the context of their own discipline and practice, or as freestanding works. Potential projects may include video processing experiments, installation / spatialized works (monitors, televisions or projections), surveillance / CCTV critiques, collage / appropriation-based work, crtitiques of popular usages, durational performance pieces, webcam-enabled internet-networked video, and will involve the use of professional editing / mixing systems (Adobe Premiere / After Effects) and professional digital acquisition media (HD cameras).

The course consists in weekly lectures focused on the presentation of artwork and ideas germane to the course, paired with lab time geared towards working out technical and conceptual aspects of the student’s projects. In-process work will be periodically discussed in an environment of open exchange, in which alternate / future creative, conceptual or technical ramifications will be elaborated upon.