Burnt Spinach: Visual Humor

UG - Undergraduate

This workshop is geared toward students interested in learning more about and trying their hand at visual humor, through drawing exercises and kinetic sculpture. Students are encouraged to produce iteratively, reducing preciousness and emancipating their creative spirit. While humor is intangible and ethereal, we will train ourselves to look for it in the spontaneous as we trick ourselves into generating ideas through unorthodox practices.

The course takes its title from Jean Dubuffet's quote, "If you serve someone spinach that is cooked the way it should be, no one notices or remembers that they have eaten spinach. Whereas if you burn it, it shocks their taste-buds and they become immediately aware that it is burned spinach and they gain new insights into the characteristics of spinach".

As a cursory overview of course activity, below is a class-by-class break down:
1. Class lecture and discussion followed by novel drawing exercises (non-dominant hand, not looking at paper, exquisite corpse).
2. Students scan their favorite drawing from these exercises, add audio and experiment with minimal animation.
3. Preliminary screening followed by class brainstorm for kinetic sculpture ideas.
4. Students work with motors and cardboard to create said kinetic sculptures.
5. Class screening and exhibition.