Course Description

Technological Landscapes is an experimental, interdisciplinary research group focusing on the intersection of place, landscape and technology. Participants in Technological Landscapes are passionate but critical observers of today’s physical and virtual environment in relation to ubiquitous, integrated, and emerging technologies.

Throughout the semester, the group investigates new modes of creative inquiry relating to place-based practice including fieldwork and site visits, direct experience, interdisciplinary collaboration, and public art. Technological Landscapes fosters an open dialogue between creative research, critical studio practice and direct observation/real-world experience by forming research partnerships with individuals and institutions typically outside the world of art. Participants in Technological Landscapes have worked directly with the University of Rhode Island’s Inner Space Center, NASA’s Airborne Sensor Facility, Stanford’s Linear Accelerator and the Naval Historical Collection at the Naval War College. Participants are expected to drive and determine the focus and interests of the group through conversations and consensus. In turn this feeds each participant’s artistic sensibility and will form the conceptual foundations necessary for building a strong critical art work. Participants will explore research methodologies and various forms of research as material, social, and symbolic creative practice.

The projects, individual or collaborative, should be thought of on a scale of landscape, physical or virtual. One is encouraged to exploit the imaginative, speculate possible near futures and position them where the poetic crosses between science fiction and the built reality.