Landscape: The Wilderness

Open to Art School only. This course may be open
to students at other year levels, and in other
Schools, by Permission of Instructor.
Practice Courses within the Photography and Media
program focus on making work and developing the
shape of students' practices. While each course
under this category may offer a particular theme
or subject matter, its primary organization and
outcomes will center around making. This category
will include, but not be limited to, modes of
production fundamental to photographic and
media-based practice, including film-based and
digital photography, video and moving image
production, sound production, performance and
book-making, and will sometimes include a focus
on the primary genres and categories of
production common to media and photography.

The subject of the cultivation of the wilderness
will be explored over a two-part investigation of
the Landscape with the class The Garden. The
notions of the untouched and the natural have
changed over centuries of European and Western
negotiated relationships to nature. Since at
least the sixteenth century, people European
origin have regarded nature as separate from
human civilization. In cultures with developed
urban technologies, nature is the place where
dreams of mastery and fantasies of the authentic
origins of life flourish. For others the natural
world is not a refuge but a place that is a
continuation of industrialized civilization.
Contemporary art approaches the questions of how
we use land to draw on traditions of the past,
while being informed by our dependence on nature.