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This core course is taken in the first term of the MA program. It develops thinking across the media arts in a comparative perspective that synthesizes the historical and theoretical approaches of art history, cinema studies, performance studies, and computer-based media studies. It establishes bases for understanding the relationships among the visual arts, visual culture, performing arts, and art forms that incorporate reproducible and digital media; these include cinema, video, photography, and computer-based media. In addition to this, the course investigates some of the useful emergent methods for making comparisons among media, across history, and across cultures. While other courses in the MA in Contemporary Arts focus on the distinctive nature of specific media arts, this course considers what properties cross different forms of media arts. Students with credit for FPA 821 may not take this course for further credit.

The research colloquium, a core course taken in the final term of the MA program, focuses on professional development in careers in the arts or PhDs. Through intensive peer review, students revise their extended essays (CA 829) for publication. They identify their audiences, choose appropriate journals, and other venues for publication, and prepare to submit their work, and plan their responses to journal decisions. We discuss permission, contracts, and other intellectual-property issues. Students practice job and grant applications, prepare CVs and cover letters, and work on their public profiles. Students also explore extending their research into curating and public programming. We devote time to public presentation skills for a variety of venues including the final symposium, in which they present their research to the public. Students with credit for FPA 822 may not take this course for further credit.

Empire follows Art, and not vice versa as Englishmen suppose. - William Blake, annotations to Sir Joshua Reynold's Discourses (ca. 1798-1809) For WJ.T. Mitchell, pictures have lives and loves. Instead of seeing images as inert objects that convey meaning, he urges us to see them as animated beings with desires, needs, appetites, demands, and drives of their own. In the past three decades, literature on visual culture has burgeoned in art history, cultural studies, critical theory, philosophy and anthropology, and recently it has taken on a "performative turn." For art history, which is traditionally concerned with the interpretation of art objects, the artists who make them and the interests of patrons, the interdisciplinary field of visual culture has opened up new ways of thinking about images of all kinds. In a culture in which the production and dissemination of images has grown exponentially, it has never been more necessary to pay attention to how images work and what they do. While histories of images tend to locate intentionality in the maker or the patron, this seminar seeks to bring forward the intentions of the image, how, for example, its formal material characteristics, modes and contexts of circulation and use, reproducibility and referentiality, solicit responses: how images seem to take on, in Mitchell's words, "lives of their own." For your paper, you can choose as your main object of study a work of art, a landmark exhibition, or a famous image drawn from popular culture. This image or event will be the subject of student presentations at the end of the term. The topic must be a visual phenomenon about which there is a substantial discourse in print, preferably in both scholarly and popular sources. The final paper will be based on your presentation and should address some of the critical issues and readings discussed in class. Students with credit for FPA 823 may not take this course for further credit.

This course is an elective in the MA program. In it we examine what are understood as the arts of the moving image: these include film, video, and other time based audiovisual media. We will begin by grounding our objects of study, i.e. specific works and practices, in cinema studies and survey emerging approaches in cinema studies, relating these developments to the longer history of the discipline. Investigating cinema intermedially, we will keep in mind the art forms that informed it historically, including theater, public spectacles, photography, painting, music, sound recording. Then the course will examine how the practice, aesthetics, and reception change when cinema moves to television, both move to digital formats, and all these platforms move to handheld and social media. We will investigate medium specificity in the moving-image arts in light of what is termed "media convergence." We will consider what new forms emerge when moving images shift from the institution of cinema to other contexts such as museums and online sites. The course includes two or three weeks topics of interest that arise in the field, such as new national cinemas, new approaches to documentary, cognitive theory and neuroscience, etc. Students with credit for FPA 824 may not take this course for further credit.

This course will focus on the history and practice of digital art, with an emphasis upon the artistic outcomes of the new methodologies and practices within this field. Digital technology has fundamentally changed the process and products of contemporary creativity in art-making. Although a great deal of contemporary art involves some aspect of digital technology, this course will examine those artists and art-works in which digital technologies play an intrinsic part in the creative process, as well as the realization. A range of processes - from interactive systems through to algorithmic approaches (stochastic, deterministic, chaotic) - will be examined, with particular reference to artistic goals, approaches, and results. Students with credit for FPA 825 may not take this course for further credit.

This course is an elective in the MA program. It traces the interdisciplinary origins of performance studies and brings its concepts and methods to bear on dance, music and sound arts, theatre and performance arts, and media performance while introducing cross-disciplinary ideas from emergent areas such as neuroscience, cognitive science, and gaming, for example. Course assignments will involve case studies as forerunners for further research. Students with credit for FPA 826 may not take this course for further credit.

This course is an elective in the MA program. Students are placed with an arts organization in order to carry out a specific project of finite length. The student's labor time in the practicum should total approximately 120 hours, to be carried out over the course of a term. Projects are initiated by the student in consultation with the supervisor at the organization and the MA program supervisor. Projects can involve research, writing, organizing events, curating exhibitions and programs, public relations, media production, archiving, and related activities. The student submits a proposal that indicates the project's purpose, schedule, plans for documenting and reporting, and planned outcome. Final outcomes will vary depending on the placement. The MA program coordinator and the supervisor at the organization approve the project. Students file a Work Study Program Agreement with the Worksafe BC office at ¶¡ÏãÔ°AV. In some cases, the project must be approved by the Ethics Review Board. ¶¡ÏãÔ°AV's code of conduct and academic dishonesty policies apply to students while on practicum. The MA program coordinator assigns a grade in consultation with the supervisor at the organization. Students with credit for FPA 827 may not take this course for further credit.

These two essays are the final project of the MA. The extended essays build on knowledge students have gained in coursework. Students research in-depth two related topics in comparative media arts and develop and polish an original argument, with the goal of producing at least one essay suitable for publication. The length of each essay should be that of a typical academic journal article in the media arts, about 5000-7000 words. Students may also write catalogue essays or similar nonacademic publications, supplemented by a research essay. Students research each extended essays with the supervision of two faculty members. They prepare them for publication in the Research Colloquium, CA 822. Grading: The essays are evaluated by two supervisors. They jointly assign a grade of In Progress/Complete. Prerequisite: CA (or FPA) 821 and two of the following: CA (or FPA) 823, 824, 825, or 826. Students with credit for FPA 829 may not take this course for further credit.

Independent research and reading on topics selected in consultation with the supervising instructor. Graded on a satisfactory/unsatisfactory basis. Students with credit for FPA 888 may not take this course for further credit.

Critical study of contemporary issues in the fine and performing arts, with emphasis on concerns common to diverse artistic disciplines and the interaction between art and society. Students with credit for FPA 811 may not take this course for further credit.

Continuation of CA (or FPA) 811. Prerequisite: CA (or FPA) 811. Students with credit for FPA 812 may not take this course for further credit.

Study of particular artistic techniques or issues. The topic varies from term to term. Students with credit for FPA 877 may not take this course for further credit.

Students with credit for FPA 889 may not take this course for further credit.

Specialized one-time graduate course offerings on topics related to the current research of school faculty of visiting professors.

Specialized graduate course offering on a topic related to the current research of school faculty or visiting professor.

Explores specific critical issues, approaches, or movements in literary and cultural theory. The course will vary according to theoretical and historical focus.

Introduces the history of print culture along with a variety of theoretical approaches. Students enrolled in the Print Culture program are required to take this course.

Explores critical issues, approaches, or movements in manuscript, print, and media culture. The course will vary according to geographical and historical focus and theoretical approach.

Examines the development of feminist cultural criticism, with particular reference to the principles of literary, cinematic, media, and/or art forms.

Focuses on one of five following thematic modules: classical and medieval thought and culture, modernity and its discontents, religion and culture, cross-cultural translation, humanities and citizenship.

An in-depth study of a theme or aspect in the Humanities; topics will vary from offering to offering in order to meet the needs of the graduate cohort.

Theory, history and current research in the field of new media. Its methods are the interweaving of design, social/cultural, learning and aesthetic theories. Historical views of the field are provided through an analysis of the histories of technology, moments of media emergence, social and cultural movements, design and aesthetics. Outcomes are exploration, analysis and development of applied methods in order to better understand, design, create and assess new media and future "newer media" developments.

The theory and practice of metacreation, i.e. the design of generative and pro-active computer software endowed with creative behaviour is presented. Tools and techniques from artificial intelligence, artificial life and machine learning are introduced and exemplified through their application in previous artistic works. The interweaving of related theoretical and practical issues situates metacreation within a larger perspective on art, science and technology.

Analyses, designs and prototypes more effective and more appropriate products and systems to support interactivity. This course will examine these issues through an iterative modeling process.

In depth study of ethnographic methodology as practiced, theorized and debated by social and cultural anthropologists. Course will include anthropological analyses of multi- and interdisciplinary approaches to, and adaptations of, ethnographic methodology and methods. Elective course for MA and PhD students in Sociology and Anthropology. Students from other departments and faculties may enrol with permission of instructor. Course will be offered in response to student demand, dependent on availability of departmental resources.