(Core Course: Prof. Dr. Rosa Barba, Dr. Eduardo Jorge de Oliveira, Monica Narula)
The elective course Artistic Methodologies explores and deepens interconnected concepts and materials from a variety of artistic practices. In a series of presentations, artists and researchers introduce multiple approaches to art-based work. The course encompasses multidisciplinary research fields, ranging from urban anthropology and writing methods to film, sculpture, performance, sound, and mixed media procedures.
(Core Course: Catherine Facerias, Nina Emge)
The course investigates the development processes of public art commissions in the city of Zürich in relation to public art commission systems in other cities abroad. Through case studies, the course explores historical, political, and artistic contexts. It analyses the conditions of the making of the artworks and how the artworks affect our urban and social environment.
(Prof. Dr. Rosa Barba, Prof. Dr. Puneet Anantha Murthy, D-Phys with Dr. Marius Simon and Jonathan Pouthier)
The seminar explores light from the perspectives of Physics and Art,
opening up new dimensions for collaboration across disciplines by tackling questions such as: What is the origin
and nature of light? How does it travel through space and time? How can it be made productive in an artistic
sense and what, in turn, can artistic methodologies contribute to experimenting and thinking about light? In
this course, we will set a performative frame for experimentation and exploration. Coupled with experiments in
the Department of Physics, students will be introduced to concepts such as the origin of light and color, and
the interpretation of the optical world that surrounds us to understand what actually gives rise to the effects
we see everyday—from butterfly wings and autumn colors to the appearance of buildings and cities. In addition,
we will perform practical experiments with basic optical components like lenses, mirrors, and prisms, in order
to understand how they can be used to capture images. Inputs by guest lecturers (eg on light in photography,
anthropology or urban landscapes) are planned. Students will be asked to
present related topics.
Puneet Murthy Ph.D., is a physicist working on light and how it interacts with matter at small length scales. After his graduate studies at University of Mysore, in India, Puneet moved to Heidelberg University in Germany to pursue doctoral research in atomic physics. In 2018, Puneet moved to ETH Zurich on a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship to explore how atomically thin materials interact with light. His investigations led to the discovery of a new kind of light emitter that is only a few nanometers in size. Since 2023, Puneet heads the Nanoscale quantum optics group as Assistant Professor for Photonics at ETH Zurich. Throughout his research, Puneet has been fascinated by the concept of emergence: how interactions between parts of a system lead to a complex collective. In his research at ETH, Puneet wants to look at this concept with light as the subject. The fundamental question is: can light show emergence?
(Nicolas Rolle)
The seminar serves as an introduction to analog experimentation in the creative process of artistic work. By analyzing the motifs and ways of thinking of photographers, the aim is to develop a basic approach to the medium of photography and to expand practical work in the darkroom through theoretical questions about the medium. Theoretical and practical introductions, alternating weekly, form the core of the targeted examination of the photographic apparatus. Students are encouraged to gather their own experiences in analog experiments and to explore the urban space and their surroundings with the camera. With an artistic work developed over the semester, the expanded concept of photography will be sharpened and brought to an individual expression.
(Corinne Diserens)
We look at how in curating art, one concern is to deal with how to be hospitable to the vitality of artistic life and conducive to fostering a widened intelligibility of the artistic stakes that the presence of art inherits. An exhibition is a medium, a conceptual map, the constellation of artistic processes, artworks, archives and intensities by accumulation or elimination.
Previous Courses Offered
Free Drawing (Heiner Franzen)
The Model as Cultural Technique (Martin Hartung)
Moving Images After Linearity (Monica Narula and Sam Ghantous)