Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts

SYLLABUS
COLLABORATION AMONG THE ARTS: TRANSMISSION ARTS
IART: MITCHELL CENTER FOR THE ARTS
SPRING 2011

Location: Fine Arts 318
Time: Wednesday 9:00- 12:00
IART contact:bree@uh.edu
http://www.mitchellcenterforarts.org

Course Description

Spring 2011 will mark the seventh year of Collaboration Among the Arts, offered by the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts in conjunction with the School of Art, Creative Writing Program, Moores School of Music, and School of Theatre & Dance.

Collaboration Among the Arts focuses on the process of creating art collaboratively, by challenging and exploring disciplinary boundaries. The course brings together students and faculty from the visual, performing, and literary arts for creative experimentation and project development.

This team-taught class is led by four faculty members selected from Art, Creative Writing, Music and Theatre. Over the semester, a series of assignments will create the content for a weekly public radio show, airing on Fridays on the School of Art streaming station: Radio Gigamerz. The course culminates in a final critique of the last assignment of the semester.

Radio Station

http://gigamerz.net

Blog

http://www.iartradio.blogspot.com

Syllabus

1/19/11
Introduction & questionnaire
"Cards" exercise
Concrete sound collage exercise
Intro to streaming radio and listening samples

1/26/11
Technical Demo
Mantra listening
People Machine exercise

2/2/11
Last Day Drop Add
Audacity software demo
Check out: MicroTrack Digital Audio Recorder
Assignment: Abstract sounds

2/9/11
Listening to Abstract sounds & preparing radio program
First critique: Abstract sounds
Due: Abstract sounds
Assignment: Text based

2/16/11
Introduce and select radio play
Due: Text based

2/23/11
Rehearsal/ Production radio play

3/2/11
Assignment: Live recording radio play

3/9/11
Guest speaker: Community Radio in Houston: Kirston Otis, KTRU DJ & Co-host KTRU Local Show
Assignment: Community Voices

3/16/11
Spring Break

3/23/11
Listening to Community Voices
Due: Community Voices
Due: Proposal for final Live Event

3/30/11
Assignment: Writing for radio

4/6/11
Listening to Writing for Radio
Due: Listening to Writing for Radio

4/13/11
Working on Live Event

4/20/11
Final reflection on class and collaboration
4/27/11
Final Critique: Guest Critic: David Dove, founder of Nameless Sound
Due: Live Event
Due: Recorder return

Attendance and Grading Policy

60% Completion of Assignments
20% Attendance & Participation
10% 2 critiques and group listening
10% Semester reflection

Class Participation
Because this is a course in which active participation by all members of the class is essential, any student who misses more than one class meeting will have his or her final grade lowered by 1/3 of a grade for each absence.

You are encouraged to collaborate with your classmates on assignments.
You are expected to attend both critiques, and complete all assignments.
You are also expected to challenge yourself by working in disciplines/mediums outside of your area of expertise/ major.
You will assume financial responsibility for loss or damage of the MicroTrack Digital Audio Recorder.

Faculty

Justin Doran comes to The Mitchell Center for the Arts most recently from the Alley Theater Resident Acting Company. Justin has over 100 professional credits regionally and locally as an actor, director, and producer. Justin’s work consistently tops the best plays of the year list as compiled by The Houston Chronicle in addition to being selected as Best Actor by the Houston Press. In addition to his teaching load at Rice University, Justin continues his professional creative works as a performer and director. His passion for new works most recently led him to Becoming Kinky: The World According to Kinky Friedman at Stages Theatre and to the critically acclaimed direction of the project, The Great Storm at The Obsidian Art Space. Justin can next be seen on stage performing in the new play This at Main Street Theater. His work as a director can currently be seen locally at with ThunderClap Production’s new musical Wilde! He earned a B.F.A. in Acting from Southern Methodist University, and an M.F.A. in Theatre/Film/Television from the University of California-Los Angeles and is a member of the Actors Equity Association and the Screen Actors Guild.

Casey Fleming was born and raised in Houston, Texas, but has lived in 13 cities and 6 countries. She holds a BA in Latin American Studies from Smith College, an MA in Spanish from American University, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Houston. Her stories or essays appear in Fourth Genre, the anthology "A Book for Daniel Stern," and Gulf Coast. In 2006 she was runner-up for Fourth Genre’s Editor’s Prize in Nonfiction/Memoir, and in 2003 she was a finalist for the Willis Barnstone Translating Poetry Award. This year her story, "The Box", was a finalist for the Tobias Wolff Award in Short Fiction. She is the co-founder and organizer of the Poison Pen Reading Series in Houston, Texas.

Abinadi Meza is a sound artist working in many formats including installation, environments, fixed media and live performance. His projects are designed in relation to a given space where he "harvests" sound for building intense structures and forms. Meza graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2004 and SCI_Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture) in 2009. In 2011, he will be a researcher in residence at Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA). His work has been presented at Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; La Casa Encendida, Madrid; Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporânea, Lisbon; Uppsala Museum of Art, Sweden; and Utzon Architectural Centre, Aalborg, Denmark.

Chapman Welch received his D.M.A. in music composition and electronic music from the University of North Texas where he worked at the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia (CEMI) from 2001 through 2006. He has taught at Rice University, the University of Houston, and the University of North Texas. Currently, he serves as the electro-acoustic specialist for the Rice Electro-Acoustic Music Labs (REMLABS). Welch’s music has been presented at numerous festivals in the United States and abroad including the LaTex festival, June in Buffalo, SPARK, Hawaii International Conference for the Humanities, the Florida Electro-Acoustic Music Festival, ICMC, and SEAMUS conferences.

Free software

Audio Editing:

Audacity

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/

Multi-Track Recording:

Ardour (OSX, Linux only)…not entirely free…pay what you will

http://ardour.org/download

Audio Processing/Manipulation:

SPEAR

http://www.klingbeil.com/spear/downloads/

SOUNDHACK (lot's of other stuff on this page too!)

http://www.soundhack.com/freeware.php