2. Contextual Studies
HND in Interior Design
About 2. Contextual Studies
Contextual Studies provides an historical, cultural and theoretical framework to allow us to make sense of art and design, as well as to consider how they may help us to understand the wider world.
This unit is designed to introduce students to key cultural developments, practices and movements related to the history of art, design, visual and popular culture since 1900. Emphasis will be placed upon developing a broad knowledge of art and design
contexts, considering the technological, economic, social and aesthetic causes which have, and continue to, inform our understanding of art and design within the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Topics included in this unit are: semiotics, values and tastes, subcultures, advertising, modernism, postmodernism, hypermodernism, gender politics within art and design, materiality and immateriality.
Students will be introduced to the theoretical methods with which to research and analyse works of art and design, helping them to understand the importance of being able to contextualise their own practice, as well as enhancing their understanding of the wider art and design landscape. On successful completion of this unit students will have developed their contextual knowledge and their conceptual tool kit by undertaking a contextual investigation of their own, linked to their subject specialism.
Program Learning outcome:
By the end of this unit students will be able to:
- Discuss the social, historical and cultural context of key art and design movements, theories and practices.
- Analyse a specific work of art or design related to own area of specialism.
- Use primary and secondary research methods to investigate an area of practice, with consideration of research ethics
- Present research findings, through written work, visually and orally.
TextBook Name:
CORNELL, L. and HALTER, E. (2015) Mass Effect: Art and the Internet in the Twenty First Century. Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology