Critical and Reflective Inquiry: Theme- Analog Art

“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” 

— Andy Warhol 

“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown

known is the important thing.” 

— Georgia O’Keeffe

“Freedom is...the right to write the wrong words.”

― Patti Smith

Analog (adjective): Not relating to, or pre-dating, digital technology such as computers and the Internet; relating to real life. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

This course will be an exploration of human-powered creativity and play. Our focus will be on analog (non-digital) mediums and processes, and will include explorations of writing, visual art, music, and science. Throughout the quarter we’ll engage with a range of creative and critical works by artists, writers, musicians, and pioneering thinkers working in analog forms. We’ll approach our own intellectual inquiry, creativity, and wonder from the core of our humanness: through hands-on, in-person writing, artmaking, and play in the physical world. 

Our projects will include a research essay, a creative project, a writing plan, and group and individual presentations. Expect to work primarily with physical materials; no artistic experience is required. Our work will also be a chance for you to build your understanding of genre and form; develop research methods; learn and use rhetorical awareness and strategies; practice methods of crediting your sources of information and inspiration ethically and accurately.  

Learning goals:

• Experience how to collectively and individually question, discuss, and critically think about complex issues and diverse perspectives.
• Reclaim and strengthen your reliance on the power of your own writing, creativity, ideas, and intellectual growth
• Co-create and foster a collaborative, supportive, and authentic learning community
• Learn to recognize and trace the development of your own ideas and experiences
• Learn to reflect on your creative, intellectual, and learning processes
• Strengthen your abilities to think and read critically and creatively; to write in several genres; to articulate your ideas across a range of mediums
• Develop confidence, clarity, and dynamics for presenting and/or performance