(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.
(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.
(Heiner Franzen)
The seminar focuses on drawing exercises that build on one another, with which the students can test a wide variety of forms of drawing and develop them further according to their inclinations. We examine drawing equally as a free and project-related process, highlight the advantages of manual drawing in the run-up to digital processes, and look at forms of drawing in a wide variety of genres. Highlighted is a playful acquisition of skills, not dissimilar to what happens when learning to write or speak one's mother tongue. In the way that language and thought processes overlap, so do those of drawing and imagination. Every shape we produce feeds back into our perception and changes our view of our surroundings. The aim of the lessons is to recombine physical processes, such as sight, tactility, memory, movement and more, as elements of drawing with the help of experiments and exercises, thus creating a wide variety of approaches to drawing.
(Ringvorlesung organised by Eduardo Jorge de Oliveira and Catherine Facerias)
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.
(Nina Emge and Catherine Facerias)
The course will investigate the development processes and realization of artworks installed in Zurich's public space. We will explore examples in order to analyze the historical and artistic context in which we move daily. We will meet people in charge of these art commissions: artists, architects, and members of the City Council.
(Monica Narula and Sam Ghantous)
How do film, video art, the internet, and games change the way we experience time and space? In this course, we explore how artists disrupt linear storytelling, experiment with digital media, and rethink architecture as more than just physical structures—but as environments that shape how we feel, interact, and create.
(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.
(Martin Hartung)
The elective course investigates the model as an active agent through which knowledge is produced, visualized, and negotiated. It challenges the traditional understanding of the model as representational object, instead foregrounding its roles in speculation, abstraction, critique, and world-making. While the architectural model remains a central object of study, the course expands its scope to include artistic, scientific, and conceptual models across disciplines. Special attention is given to models created by artists that subvert normative conventions of scale, authorship, and function. Through case studies, readings and site visits, the course explores how models function as both aesthetic objects and epistemic agents within art, architecture, and cultural discourse.