DART 498/A (Fall/Winter, 2023/2024): SPECIAL TOPICS IN DESIGN

Dart 498/ 3 Special Topics in Design: Visual Communication and Space 

Faculty / Service: Faculty of Fine Arts 

Unit: Department of Computation Arts 

Semester/ Year: Fall 2023 

Day/ Time: Monday 8:30-12:30 Room: EV 7.745 SGW

Instructor’s Name: Lenka Nováková, Ph.D. 

Instructor’s Contact Information: Lenkanovak30@gmail.com / Lenka.novakova@concordia.ca 

Office, Location/Hours: TBA Prerequisite(s)/Corequisite(s): N/A _____________________________________________________________________________

 

Dart 498/ 3 Special Topics in Design: Visual Communication and Space 

 

With the expansion of creative, immersive and emerging technologies along with the increased attention to audience experience and participation over the last several decades, the exhibition design has enjoyed a significant boom and become one of the most interdisciplinary, innovative and even cutting-edge design disciplines today. Exhibition design as a devised and often multilayered process of telling a story (stories) in actual physical (and/or virtual) space often arises as a team effort of artists, curators, cultural workers, writers, editors, installation teams and assistants amongst others who help along to make the exhibition happen and encompasses but is not limited to architectural and 3-D design, lighting, projection technology, digital audio-visual technologies and most recently also immersive technologies extended reality (XR), virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed realities (MR) making significant crossovers to performance design strategies and expanding to other interdisciplinary approaches.   

 

In this course, we will explore exhibition design in all possible directions, dimensions and forms (the sky is the limit) through your own creative practice and research. Hence, from the beginning we will be concerned equally with nurturing the development of your own creative process, research and production as well as devising the best strategies of showcasing, documenting and promoting your work. Throughout this course, you will become familiar with diverse approaches and numerous steps of exhibition design (including but not limited to the latest and cutting-edge technologies, theoretical and practical planning of exhibition space, staging and dramaturgy of the exhibition narrative) as well as works of contemporary artists, curators and other practitioners active in the cultural production today. The process and the final outcome of this course will be documented and tied into a professional website and relevant on-line catalogue designed by participating students along with the actual public display and dissemination of your work by the Computation Art Department. 

 

Objectives: Students in the course will be able to:

  1. Develop and advance their own creative practice and research 
  2. Introduce and become familiar with contemporary Exhibition Design strategies, research and methods 
  3. Explore an exhibition narrative and concept (how will you tell a story and what tools / technologies you will need to do so?) 
  4. Devise audience experience design strategies to creat a compelling audience experience from immersion to interaction and participation (How will your audiences experience your work, feel or act?) 
  5. Document and promote the process and outcome of your creative research (including curatorial writing and web-design)