Welcome to ARTE 330/AA (Winter 2025): INTRODUCTION TO COMMUNITY ART EDUCATION

Course Description

The course investigates the various issues and concerns related to community art education. Students develop skills in assessing community needs. After observation and studio research, students develop and propose an art education curriculum for a specific community setting or population. This course includes a practicum component.

Course Objectives

●      Cultivate our identities, values, sensibilities and methods as artist-educators within a community of practice.

●       Investigate “what makes a community” alongside inclusion, engagement, participation and collaboration questions.

●       Explore different approaches to engaging communities through art education in local and international contexts.

●      Gain first-hand experience in art teaching through peer-to-peer learning and community-based internships.

●      Understand how to develop and implement lesson plans that are meaningful to the communities concerned while integrating our unique artistic voices.

●     Engage in open and critical dialogue regarding social, ethical and political concerns while reflecting on our biases/limitations.

ARTE 352/A (Winter 2025): LIGHT-BASED MEDIA

ARTE 398/AA (Winter 2025): SPECIAL TOPICS IN ARTE: The Material, Media, and Technological Cultures of Teaching, Learning, and Creative Practice.

This course explores public pedagogy, teaching and learning philosophies, and art making as expressed and facilitated by material and digital media technologies. Students will research and discuss case studies, and engage in simple media production to better understand the material and technological conditions associated to the histories, ideologies and pedagogical frameworks of art education. The second part of the semester will focus on technological strategies for enacting collective knowledge, for promoting diversity and inclusion in learning and co-creation in art making.

ARTE 660/A (Winter 2025): SELECTED TOPICS IN ARTE

ARTE 320/A (Fall 2025): MULTI-DISC. APPR. ART/TEACH.

ARTE 354/2 Time-based Media

Fall 2025

TV Interruption Piece, David Hall 1971

Instructor: Aaron Pollard (he/him, they/them)

Independent interdisciplinary artist and cultural worker

Thursdays 5:45pm - 9:45pm

EV2.645 undergraduate studio (with punctual access to the EV5.709 computer lab)

Department of Art Education

Concordia University

Contact Information

Email contact: aaron.pollard@concordia.ca

Office Hours: By appointment only. Please send me an email to fix a time for us to meet.

Territorial acknowledgement:

I would like to begin by acknowledging that Concordia University is located on unceded Indigenous lands. The Kanien’kehá:ka Nation is recognized as the custodians of the lands and waters on which we gather today. Tiohtià:ke/Montréal is historically known as a gathering place for many First Nations. Today, it is home to a diverse population of Indigenous and other peoples. I respect the continued connections with the past, present and future in my ongoing relationships with Indigenous and other peoples within the Montreal community.

For more information (pronunciation, history, rationale and FAQs), visit https://www.concordia.ca/indigenous/resources/territorial-acknowledgement.html

Calendar Course Description

Students develop proficiency in a variety of time‐based media, including video and multi‐media

installations that are suitable for school or community art education programs. Students

investigate related approaches to teaching and curriculum.

NOTE: Students are expected to have basic computing skills or to have completed INTE 290 before registering for this course. Students who have received credit for ARTE 430 may not take this course for credit.

What is time-based media?

Time-based media is a term that encompasses artworks that offer an experience over a passage of time or over a specific duration. The term media refers to a way of doing something. Within contemporary cultural discourse, the word media often refers to the mechanical (print, photography, phonograph) or electronic reproduction of text, imagery or sounds (video or audio).

Within visual arts, “mixed media” is a term often used to describe installation practices that combine multiple traditional disciplines, such as painting, sculpture and drawing. Mixed media combining static objects will not be a focus of this course. However we will be studying practices that mix media where there is a time-based element to some or all of the components.

Multimedia refers to a wide set of electronic and digital practices, often but not always disseminated online. We will look at an array of works and practices that fall into the multimedia category.

What is time-based media for the purposes of this course?

For ARTE 354 this semester, we will focus on various forms of digital electronic media and, on occasion, study examples of legacy, analog and mechanical forms such as cinema and analog audiovisual formats and tools. Our readings and discussions will cover a wide array of forms, including Audio, Video, Animation, Virtual Reality, Circuit-Bending, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. Practical exercises and skill-sharing will be focussed on acquiring some basic toolsets that are easily adaptable to a variety of art education contexts. Due to the breadth of practices that comprise time-based media, this course is not intended to provide in-depth technical instruction. However the course will offer up best practices for video and audio recording, along with some instruction covering file management, the editing of sound and image, and some pointers concerning projection and live manipulation of audiovisual materials. Certain processes, such as virtual reality authoring or robotics, would simply be too time-consuming to teach within the scope of a survey course such as ARTE 354/2, though there will be some time to examine examples of these practices.

Detailed Course Description

This course is designed to develop your observational skills and to broaden your technical, artistic and pedagogical palettes across a variety of creative processes involving technology, space and time. Throughout this course, you will encounter various approaches to time-based media with an eye to their relevance and limitations within a diversity of educational settings. ARTE 354/2 encompasses experiential and sensorial artforms with a specific focus on mechanical and electronic reproduction, generation and/or amplification of sounds and images in a wide variety of forms and contexts. Through presentations, hands-on workshops, assignments, readings and discussions I will introduce you to an array of current and historical practices that deploy time-based media along with some ideological and cultural frameworks to contextualize them. I encourage you to share your perspectives on works that you encounter in and out of the classroom as you connect the dots between things that we discuss together and the immense cultural offerings found outside the university setting. Time-based media is as ubiquitous as it is labour intensive. We are all soaking in it every day and much of the media we consume is developed, owned and distributed by vast networks with access to resources that dwarf the capacities of individual artists and educators. While we will cover a diversity of ideas and approaches, this course is by no means exhaustive. I will hone in on certain practices that I find relevant to teaching art, that are accessible to students who may be relatively new to working with certain technologies, and that foster confidence in initiating and engaging with creative processes involving (mostly digital) technologies. As an artist, my aim is to offer up a perspective on works and ideas that resonate with me, that are foundational to my own practice and that seem pertinent to you, the group of students who will share this classroom with me over the next 3 months. Together as a group we will explore a wide array of approaches and ideas designed to foster curiosity and to crack open new avenues for learning. As individuals I encourage you to look for a particular process or form that resonates with your own artistic and teaching ambitions when you engage with both midterm and time-based media creation assignments.

Course Learning Objectives for Students

• To gain perspective on various historical and contemporary artistic disciplines and practices that deploy time-based media.

• To identify time-based media practices and techniques that resonate with you as a student, as an artist and as a teacher and to learn how to articulate why they are of interest to you.

• To identify the strengths and limitations of particular time-based media tools and processes within an educational environment and to adopt strategies that address this for your teaching.

• To acquire observational skills and analytical capacities that allow you to identify the impact of various forms of time-based media on the cultural sector and on society at large.

• To develop working methods and technical skills that allow you to learn, practice and teach time-based media.

• To adopt and adapt a set of best practices for file management along with the care and maintenance of equipment and tools (mindfulness is key here).

• To gain insight into questions of authorship and copyright that are specific to the mechanical and electronic reproduction of sounds and images.

• To recognize and foster joy for yourself and others in the process of making and teaching time-based media.

Student responsibilities

Attendance and promptness to all classes (Thursdays, 5:45pm - 9:45pm)

Regular engagement; includes

• In-class responses and discussions

• Solo and group in-class activities

• Weekly sketchbook entries

On-time completion of all:

• Readings/viewings/responses (see course schedule and Moodle)

• Weekly e-sketchbook entries

• In-class activities

• Assignments (see course schedule for due dates)

Class Structure

The course is 4 hours. Most classes will be divided into 2 blocks: 

• The first 2 hours (in EV 2.645) are earmarked for in-class responses to readings, presentations, reviewing time-based media examples and discussions.

• The 2nd 2-hour block is dedicated to practical exercises and studio time where we will also have access to the computer lab (EV5.709).

• There are some classes that stray from this structure, notably classes 7, 9, 11 and 12. For class 7 (Oct 23) after reading break, we will maintain the 2-part structure however the first half of class will be dedicated to the presentations of your proposals for your time-based media creations. The second half will consist of a discussion of the weekly reading, along with an introduction to some performance practices. For class 9 (Nov 6) I am offering you a 4-hour block of studio time where we can work together in EV2.645 and in EV5.709 to help you advance with your respective final time-based media creations. Despite its loose structure this is a very important class. I encourage you to prepare for it carefully. Classes 11 and 12 are set aside for presentations and critiques of your final time-based media creations. Half of you will present your works during class 11 (Nov 20), the other half will present during class 12 (Nov 27). Each of you will be paired with another student. Those who present on Nov 20 will be responsible for leading the critique with one of your peers on Nov 27 and vice versa.

• Class 10 (Nov 13) will maintain the 2-part structure though I have arranged for us to visit the Artist-run Centre, OBORO where we will attend a presentation by Nelly Mironchuck. For the second half of class, I will welcome you to my studio in the Mile End to offer you a look into the workings of a shared artist studio and to present you with a small sampling of things that I have been working on.

Be prepared to spend additional time outside of class time to complete assignments, readings, and to participate on the Moodle course site.

Academic Integrity

Consult Concordia ‘Academic Integrity’ for detailed definition of and penalties for plagiarism—these apply to you: http://www.concordia.ca/students/academic-integrity.html

Plagiarism

https://www.concordia.ca/conduct/academic-integrity/plagiarism.html

• Avoid plagiarism in written submissions by providing citations for all your sources for quotations and ideas (ie: direct quotes and paraphrasing). 

• You must also cite sources for images as a caption (include original date of the work, title, etc. and the source of the photo).

• Guides and samples for formatting citations are here:

Chicago: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html

MLA: http://library.concordia.ca/help/howto/mla.php

The most common offence under the Academic Code of Conduct is plagiarism, which the Code

defines as “the presentation of the work of another person as one’s own or without proper

acknowledgement.” (Article 19 a). This could be material copied word for word from books,

journals, Internet sites, professor’s course notes, etc. It could be material that is paraphrased but closely resembles the original source. It could be the work of a fellow student, a note, a comment or an answer to a question that the person next to you has written down. It might be a paper purchased through one of the many available sources or an answer to a question that you input into ChatGTP or another AI service.

Rule of thumb: Do not copy, paraphrase or translate anything from anywhere without indicating where you obtained it. (Source: The Academic Integrity Website)

Questions of plagiarism within the scope of ARTE 354/2

On a more personal note, I would simply point out that there is no shame in copying within certain contexts. There is a long tradition of copying within visual arts and, indeed, many other cultural practices. In fairness to yourselves and your classmates, it is important that you cite your sources and acknowledge when you have been copying, rather than pretending otherwise. In the case of writing for this class, I challenge you to try to write on your own terms, to try to assimilate and articulate ideas, rather than relying too often on citations or paraphrasing. Naturally, you may turn to spellchecks and other tools to help out in the editing process. I encourage you to do so. As your instructor, I am obliged to follow up and to alert the university administration if I encounter plagiarism or cheating. I would rather not be placed in the position of having to police anybody on this. At the end of the day, if you cheat, you are really just cheating your classmates. Moreover you are depriving yourself of the opportunity to learn something that may be important to your development as an artist and a teacher.

Attendance and Professional Conduct

Code of Rights and Responsibilities

All individuals participating in courses are expected to be professional and constructive throughout the course, including in their communications. Concordia students are subject to the Code of Rights and Responsibilities which applies both when students are physically and virtually engaged in any University activity, including classes, seminars, meetings, etc. Students engaged in University activities must respect this Code when engaging with any members of the Concordia community, including faculty, staff, and students, whether such interactions are verbal or in writing, face to face or online/virtual. Failing to comply with the Code may result in charges and sanctions, as outlined in the Code.

Content belonging to instructors shared in online courses, including,but not limited to, online lectures, course notes, and video recordings of classes remain the intellectual property of the faculty member. It may not be distributed, published or broadcast, in whole or in part, without the express permission of the faculty member. Students are also forbidden to use their own means of recording any elements of an online class or lecture without express permission of the instructor. Any unauthorized sharing of course content may constitute a breach of the Academic Code of Conduct and/or the Code of Rights and Responsibilities. As specified in the Policy on Intellectual Property, the University does not claim any ownership of or interest in any

student IP. All university members retain copyright over their work.

Langues officielles

Vous avez le droit de soumettre vos travaux écrits en français ou en anglais. Je serais ravi d'interagir avec vous en français et de vous aider à traduire les concepts dans la mesure du possible.

Code of conduct for ARTE 354/B

I expect you to be punctual and to attend classes. Please contact me if you are not able to attend class. I expect professional and constructive conduct from you. Participation is key. This includes active listening, respect and consideration for the points of view of others as well as a willingness to contribute your own observations to a given discussion, so that together we may all contribute to an inclusive, collaborative and mutually supportive learning environment.

Extraordinary Circumstances

In the event of extraordinary circumstances and pursuant to the Academic Regulations, the University may modify the delivery, content, structure, forum, location and/or evaluation scheme. In the event of such extraordinary circumstances, students will be informed of the changes.

Calendar (subject to minor changes throughout the semester)

Course Materials

Readings

There are no textbooks for this course nor is there a coursepack. I will place readings on reserve through the libraries where possible and I will upload them to the Moodle where necessary. Though I have a list of readings in mind for this course, I will be adapting it as the semester progresses. I will post each one within a reasonable time-frame.

Facilities

Along with access to the undergraduate studio, EV2.645. This class has access to the computer lab, EV5.709, from 6:45 to 9:45 on Thursdays.

Equipment, supplies and Software

I encourage you to bring your favorite tools with you to class, such as a phone for recording audio and video, laptops or other devices. If you do not have your own recording devices, or if you do not wish to use your own devices within class, you may borrow equipment from CDA. There are days when you will require additional equipment such as headphones. Check the calendar to find out what you will need for each class. I also encourage you to bring a dedicated notebook and pens. I have requested access to the Adobe Creative Cloud suite for the duration of this course. As part of the creative exercises and technical skills development in this course, I will offer you some pointers and best practices for recording audio and video using compact devices such as phones, cameras or audio recorders, along with introductions to certain facets of Adobe Creative Cloud. You may explore other software or tools for the purposes of your final time-based media creation with the understanding that it would require some self-directed learning.

Generative Artificial Intelligence

In this class, writing assignments and submitting outputs that contain incorrect information related to class concepts, inappropriate responses to assignment prompts, or details that you are unable to explain or discuss in detail is considered a misuse of GenAI.

If you decide to use GenAI for any assignments you must acknowledge how GenAI inputs were created by documenting your workflow as well as prompts used.

Department of Art Education Grading Criteria

“A+” (outstanding) is for demonstrating exceptional overall achievement in the required areas of understanding and /or skill. The work reflects student initiative and learning that far surpasses the basic assignment requirements.

“A” level grades (excellent) are for demonstrating excellent overall achievement in the required areas of understanding and /or skill, and also reflects student initiative and learning that goes well beyond basic assignment requirements.

“B” level grades (very good) are for work that fulfills all the components of the assignment and demonstrates very good competencies in all the required areas of understanding and skill, and/or some initiative and learning beyond the basic requirements.

“C” level grades (satisfactory) are for work that completes all the assignment requirements, and demonstrates satisfactory competencies in all required areas of understanding and/or skill.

“D” level grades (weak/minimum for pass) are for work that does not satisfactorily meet the basic assignment requirements and/or demonstrates a significant lack of competency in a required area of understanding and/or skill.

An “F” grade (failing) is for work that does not complete the basic assignment requirements, or demonstrates a serious lack of competency in a required area of understanding and/or skill.

ARTE 660/A (Fall 2025): RITUAL AS PEDAGOGY