What does it mean to make moving images in an age of media proliferation and saturation? How do we critically engage traditions of media practice and push beyond established forms? Images pervade commodity culture; how can we repurpose them to communicate our own meanings and values? How can we make media that responds to the world and supports struggles for change? What responsibilities do we as media artists and producers have to our audiences and the subjects of our work? In this program, students will engage with these and other questions while gaining knowledge of media history, theory and production.

This is an intensive full-time, year-long program linking media theory with practice. Starting with media’s capacity to observe and record the world and its potential to create meaning, we will investigate media modes and communication strategies including animation, documentary and experimental film/video. Our emphasis will be on the materiality and artistic properties of sound and moving image media, as well as the strategies artists and media producers have employed to challenge commercial forms. We will experiment with alternative approaches to production, including autobiography and audiovisual essays. Students will have the opportunity to build conceptual and technical skills, as well as develop fluency in media analysis and criticism through readings, critical writing, seminars and research. In critique sessions, another form of collaboration, students will help each other evaluate and improve their work.

In fall, students will build essential skills in field observation and research, exploring ways of seeing, listening and observing in a variety of formats, including 16mm film, video, animation, audio, drawing and writing. We will critically analyze how media images shape our understanding of reality. In hands-on workshops and assignments we will analyze images as commodities and investigate how images create and contest meaning in art, politics and consumer culture. Our exploration of the social implications of the image will include representations of the body, self and other, identity and community, as well as ways to intervene in social, political and environmental crises.

In winter, we will expand our study and practice of media to include community collaboration. Student groups will collaborate to produce multimedia works that extend and support the work of community groups, using animation and digital video produced in the CCAM, Evergreen's high-definition studio. We will learn about traditional and experimental approaches to community involvement, further explore forms of live-action and animated nonfiction media, and investigate strategies for critiquing the mass media, including video activism and new genre public art.

In spring, as a culmination of the conceptual, collaboration and production skills developed in fall and winter, each student will propose and produce a nonfiction independent project.  The forms of projects possible include video or film, animation, installation, web-based projects and internships. Technical workshops, screenings, research presentations, community service projects and critique discussions will support each student's emerging work.