Course Details

Course Information Package

Course Unit Title	DESIGN STUDIES
Course Unit Code	MID506
Course Unit Details	MA Interdisciplinary Design (Required Courses) -
Number of ECTS credits allocated	8
Learning Outcomes of the course unit	By the end of the course, the students should be able to: Demonstrate a high level of knowledge and understanding of Art & Design History as a cross- and inter-disciplinary area of study from the nineteenth century to the present day within a the context of global culture. Demonstrate in-depth knowledge and understanding of specific examples of the history of art and design. Develop a sophisticated visual, material, and critical awareness, and an ability to place images, artifacts, and environments in their cultural, historical, and political contexts, and to be able to demonstrate these skills. Critically engage with concepts across a spectrum of fine, applied, and decorative arts, and visual and material cultures. Demonstrate an understanding of how and why fine, applied, and decorative arts, and visual and material cultures are produced, mediated, and consumed. Differentiate between and employ a variety of historical and contemporary cross- and inter-disciplinary theories and methods, and have applied them to the critical analysis of the history of art and design. Demonstrate an extensive first-hand knowledge of local and greater European resources. Complete a substantial independent research project in the form of a research paper. Research and present self-initiated work of a high level in response to the curriculum. Demonstrate self-confidence and skill in presenting the ideas of authorities in the area of Art & Design History, as well as their own, and at synthesizing them in written form and in oral presentations in front of a group. Assemble data from a variety of relevant primary and secondary sources of Art & Design History, and in discerning and making connections between them, thereby establishing historical, cultural, theoretical, and/or methodological links between them. Demonstrate the ability to become independent, autonomous, creative learners. Employ ICT technologies and in presenting their work and ideas alongside those of others.
Mode of Delivery	Face-to-face
Prerequisites	MID505	Co-requisites	NONE
Recommended optional program components	NONE
Course Contents	• Defining Global Visual Culture, Visual Presentations The survey and the development of American and European art and Design from the end of World War II to the present. Traditional history of art and Design, through period, region, and style.  The process of visual making: the connection between content and context, the way new technologies and materials effect new techniques, and how artists and designers themselves change in changing societies. • Colonialism and Visual Culture With the Cold War, heightened consumerism, and the explosion of mass media as a contextual backdrop, the art and design of the fifties in America addressed a number of diverse issues. The New York School and its relationship to post-war ideology; the rise of an antithetical aesthetic in art and design; and the new radicalism as found in the Beat scene, happenings, and underground films. • Globalization and Hybridism Exploration of art and design as well as related cultural phenomena of the 1960s. The core material encompasses happenings and assemblage, Pop Art, Color Field, Minimalism, new technologies and "dematerializing" tendencies of the later part of the decade. • Consumers / Producers in a Global Network Assessing currents and concepts in contemporary art and design visual making. Elements in all media that have come to define postmodernism. Special emphasis on the 1980s, and the European contribution to contemporary art and design. • Rethinking the Nation, again: The Nation as Brand The establishment of London as the world Art and Design Centre and the complete picture of British Visual Arts in the last decade as an examination of what it is and what it can say. An investigation for the contribution to the contemporary cultural debate, refining, expanding and developing the new issues that new art always raises, concluding to the cynical speculation of longevity. • The Local and the Global Cosmopolitanism, or, What’s Next? The Banality of Images. Imagining Solidarity: Cosmopolitanism, Constitutional Patriotism, and the Public Sphere. Visual Wars; Net-activism and the emergence of global civic cultures. Visual Rights; Globalization and Ethnicity.
Recommended and/or required reading:
Textbooks	Shamita Sharmacharja, A manual for the 21st century Art Institution, Koenign Books, 2009. Mark Gottdiener, Key Concepts in Urban Studies, Sage Publications, 2005.
References	Sue Golding(ed), Contemporary Culture and Aesthetics, Jan van Eyck Akademie, 2000. Bhaba Homi, The Location of Culture, Routledge, 1994. Richard Appignanes, Introducing-Postmodernism, Totem Books, 1997.
Planned learning activities and teaching methods	Teaching and learning draws on a range of approaches. The emphasis is on the creation of different learning environments, a balanced combination of lectures, seminars, tutorials, study visits, student presentations, group presentations, workshops, and written assessments. These diverse strategies recognize and take account of the different ways students learn, and, as they progress through the programme, give students the opportunity to take more responsibility for their own learning. Teaching and learning on the Design Studies course is designed to enable the student to: ·  Develop a range of subject related knowledge and understanding ·  Promote their ability to be independent and creative learners ·  Develop key/transferable skills
Assessment methods and criteria	In-class participation, discussion 25% Short Answer Essay Midterm 20% Presentations 25% Final Paper 30%
Language of instruction	English
Work placement(s)	NO