Liberal Arts II : Sensitivity (2235.YR.015525.1)

Datos generales

Tipo:	OPT	Curso:	3	Periodo:	S semestre
Créditos ECTS:	3 ECTS

Profesorado:

Grupo	Profesor	Departamento	Idioma
Year 3	Sira Abenoza González	Ciencias Sociales	ENG

This is a 3-ECTS course, which means that students are expected to dedicate approximately 75 hours of workload. (25 hours per ECTS). This workload encompasses various activities, including lectures, synchronous or asynchronous autonomous student work, study time, or any other time dedicated to the subject.

In this third year of BITBASI, the Liberal Arts courses will focus on developing your sensitivity and creativity.

During the first semester, you will have to choose two elective courses among the four that are available. Each one of them focuses on an artistic discipline. The goal is four you to become familiar with that discipline, to better understand that language and be able to use it in your projects (photos, music, movies and paintings).

Here's the list of the four courses:

- PHOTOGRAPHY:
In the current world, social leaders play a crucial role in promoting change and creating a positive impact in their communities. As social issues become more complex and communication platforms expand, it becomes increasingly important for social leaders to have effective visual communication skills.
Photography, as a powerful medium of expression, can play a fundamental role in storytelling and raising awareness about social issues. Developing a photography course specifically designed for new social leaders can provide them with the necessary tools to visually capture and communicate the realities and challenges of their communities.
By learning the techniques and fundamental principles of photography, social leaders will be able to effectively document events, protests, and community activities. They can use their images to raise awareness, inspire others, and promote social change.
Moreover, photography can be an empowering tool for communities, allowing them to tell their own stories and showcase their diversity and resilience. By empowering social leaders with photography skills, they are given the opportunity to train other members of their community, thus fostering broader and more sustainable change.
This photography course for new social leaders is necessary to equip them with the skills to utilize photography as a powerful tool for communication and social change. By developing their ability to visually capture and share the realities of their communities, social leaders can strengthen their impact and generate awareness about the social issues we face.

Working on "learning by doing? method we will develope a personal photoessay (15 - 25 photographs) to express and share with the class a topic of our choice. For this porpouse we will work weekly in the development of this personal photoessays by doing plenary work in class where all the works will be shown and disscussed for all the participants. Our final goal is to learn how photography and creation can shape our society and ourselfs.


- MUSIC:
Music is a universal human skill: every culture possesses some sort of musical practice. Currently, a large part of such an inmense sonic reality is accessible on the internet. Moreover, Western music has been written down for more than a thousand years and has been recovered and extensively recorded for several decades. As a result, music that is available to explore and enjoy is almost as infinite and inmeasurable as the universe itself.

Curiosly enough, most do not explore the extensive variants of musical genres, but rather choose to limit their musical taste to the few mainstream artists and styles that the market makes inmediately consumable. There are at least two reasons for this. First of all, it is uncommon to have a basic musical education that would help guide the exploration with confidence. Secondly, and probably the most important reason, taste in music is related to identity and narratives about the self. To say "I like this music? also means to assess "this is who I am?. Thus, daring to expand one's music culture has as much to do with having appropriate ressources as with the capability of leaving aside prejudices and inherited, unconscious values. To evolve one's musical taste is to challenge the limits of one's personality. That is to say: it means to grow.

At the same time, to reflect on the music phenomenon and to learn about music from other cultures undoubtely are great approaches to understand the human condition, both from the biological and social perspectives. As music interacts with the brain, we can learn a lot about us by understanding how this interaction woks: what does music physically arise and what our neurological response to it is. On the other hand, music always (and everywhere) lies in the middle of the processes that allow societies to build collective identity. Through music, communitites explain to themselves and celebrate who they are. In conclusion, to learn about music is to learn about culture.


- PAINTING:
This course is designed to give students an insight into the characteristics of a painting. i.e., the things that are said to make a painting a painting, the key attributes that separate painting from other art forms and that over the centuries have given Painting its capital "P?.

Focussing primarily on Western canonical painting, (but with some sorties into other worlds,) the first five sessions each take a topic and will proceed chronologically through it, looking at this theme from more than one angle.

These five themes are:

Perspective
Colour and Material
Line
Composition
Storytelling

In the sixth session the students will each have to make a presentation about a painting.

This course is told from the perspective of a practising artist, specialised in painting: Where do I find references when I approach the well of inspiration that is the history of painting. Having said that this isn't an overly-specialised overview and will equip students with a vocabulary so that they are able to discuss painting and history of painting, but also to be able to evaluate a painting with some insight as to what the artists intention were.

I am keen that the students think about how the paintings we will look at might have been viewed when they were made, not just how they fit into a historical reading of the development of painting. To do so they will need to think like artists.


- CINEMA:
In the words of Italian philosopher Umberto Eco :

"A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection ? not an invitation for hypnosis.?

The first aim of this course is to introduce students into the aesthetics of film. We will survey the fundamental aspects of film as an art form. Compared to the art of painting or classical music, film apreciators have a tremendous advantage, we all hold a vast movie-going experience. Thus intuitively, we all understand when we are watching a good or bad plot. However, beyond the mere plot, there are important matters such as ligthing, composition, framing, music or sound. And above all this, it is crutial to know how film editors work and how they shape our response to a movie.

Once we have the conception of film form and film techinque, the second aim of the course is to introduce students in film appreciation or film criticism. How may we analyze a film critically? We will explore the various kinds of meaning in films, the purpose of film directors. When a film entertains, educates or explores critical social issues. The objective is to enrich students film viewing experience, ? which might also enrich their lives.

PHOTOGRAPHY
At the end of the course, students should:
- Understand and be aware of the power of images in our everyday live.
- Be able to understand photography as a language to communicate ideas and express feelings and emotions.
- Have a better understanding of the importance of arts and creation for human and social development.



MUSIC
The main objectives of this course are:

1) To encourage to cultivate an appreciation of music while providing tools to keep an open, sensitive, and intelligent attitude towards music from different periods and places.
2) To introduce different western-music styles as well as music traditions from other cultures.
3) To provide resources for an active listening.
4) To reflect on the concept "music event? using contributions from music anthropology and music history, especially on features that help us understand ourselves and improve as individuals and as a society

At the end of the course, students should:

1) Have a better understanding of what music and music history are.
2) Understand the social and cultural dimensions of music.
3) Have acquired some basic tools to think about and listen to music.
4) Be familiar with features of music from different times and places.
5) Be able to explore and expand their musical taste beyond social trends and self-imposed limitations and prejudices.


PAINTING

The main objectives of this course are that students:
1) The students should be able to talk about painting using ?the language of painting.' i.e., they will have some of the specialized vocabulary necessary to talk about a painting in art historical terms.
2) The students should be able to recognise different canonical paintings and be able to fit them into a loose chronology of painting history.
3) The students should be able to ?pick apart' a painting and be able to talk about its formal qualities independent of the gestalt affect it may have.
4) The students should be able to understand why a painting looks the way it does. What were the contextual factors that lead to it looking the way it does vs. the intentions of the artist.
5) The students should be able to think like artists

CINEMA
Throughout the sessions participants will be encouraged to answer to the following questions:
How is a film created: To understand film as art demands, we must first understand how humans create the artifact.
How does film art change through history: How the formal aspects of films exist inside a determinable historical context. We will survey the most noteworthy periods and movements in film history.
How to analyze a film critically: Having some knowledge of film form and film technique, we will go on to analyze specific films as artworks.

Grupo	Profesor	Departamento
Year 3	Sira Abenoza González	Ciencias Sociales