Orientations at erg

Visual and Graphic Communication

Videography

Typography

Sculpture

Photography

Painting

Installation - Performance

Illustration - Comics

Graphic design- Experimental and critical practices

Drawing

Bachelor 1, 2 & 3

Professor: Raphaël Van Lerberghe

Starting off with technical exercises defined by “subjects” such as constrained drawing, word drawing or “the word inside the drawing”, students develop the blueprints of an artistic proposal and define the contours of a personal project. The aim is to experiment with drawing techniques and to discover the challenges they represent in contemporary art, among other things. On the whole, the course aims at giving the means to develop an artistic practice in drawing or in other media that may possibly be connected to references and issues pertaining to drawing. The content of the course is organised around six subjects and a number of technical exercises that students use to develop a combination of practical and theoretical tools. These tools allow them to start developing an artistic approach and to define the contours of a personal project. As students work with exhibitions as well as editorial and circumstantial topics, the content of the course is not entirely pre-established. Students respond to subjects in a personal way; therefore, technical precisions are differentiated. Presentation problems (display, installation, special relationship) are addressed for every proposal.

• Visual and graphic communication / Media Design

Becoming aware of the political dimension of any act of communication by developing a personal practice in visual design and formal information treatment. The first year aims at stimulating invention and experimentation by approaching fundamental notions of meaning construction, image plasticity, design, prioritisation and information ranking. The second year lays emphasis on learning methods of collecting information (documentation, interview, research and selection), content production, the creation of visual systems and the aspects of professional commissions. The third year marks the completion of a cycle by raising questions related to the designer’s responsibility as well as the status of communication in our society. This last year opens up to the research of a personal project in an economic, political and technological context.

Bachelor 1

Professor(s): collective

Learning Modules :

MODULES : - Signe, Image, Icône, Glyphes, Emojis, Pictos, No-Logo

- Parler à la machine, terminal

- Signe, Dessin, Dessin graphique

- Formats, Matrice, Grille, Gabarit, Lectures écran, Responsive Design

Bachelor 2 & 3

Professor(s): Manu Blondiau, Alexia De Visscher, Lionel Maes

During the third year, the media design course evolves into a space of collection creation and research. Students develop working method and reflections on the creation of graphic signs. They learn to develop their knowledge of contemporary graphic design practices in order to further broaden their critical mind. The essential aim is to link a working method, a particular outlook on the world as a designer, the research of a singular graphic grammar and the production of meaningful signs in a particular communicational context.

• Digital arts / Coding

Bachelor 1

Professors: Yves Bernard, Marc Wathieu

Practices in the current field of digital arts are manifold. Immersive installation, Internet art, 3D printers: practices, questions and technologies are diverse in terms of approach production, circulation strategy and audience. Many artists use digital art in a critical perspective because of the profound mutations caused by information technologies in our social relationships and in our everyday habits. They question these mutations from their own medium (painting, sculpture, writing, etc.), or direct the attention onto the specificity of digital technologies. One of the first goals of the course is to identify this large spectrum of artistic practices using digital tools. Another aim is to teach software structures through mainstream or alternative intentions and statements. Finally, students will be immersed in the practice of computer programming.

Bachelor 2

Professor: Marc Wathieu

In the second Bachelor year, the course confronts students to the artistic (history, current events), technological (materials, tools, technological watch) and conceptual (processes, methods) challenges of digital arts. A skills base built around three axes:  an introduction to programming with open source software PROCESSING.  an introduction to the concept of interactivity with open source software ARDUINO.  an introduction to online publishing (HTML, CSS, FTP). The learning process is based on building general skills. They will be increasingly explored throughout the course, according to the personal project of the students:  tools: software, hypermedia, code, bookshops, protocols.  processes: algorithms, generative and/or interactive strategies, non-linearity.  material: objects, data, parameters, flows.  interactivity: interfaces, action-feedback, devices, peripheral devices.  spaces: networks, servers, on-site installations, immersive installations.  knowledge sharing: open source, collaborative platforms, communities.  references: art history, digital arts and new media, current events. In fields such as: coding art, generative processes, geo-localisation, interactive video, network narrative, interactive installations, artistic web projects, interactive visual performances.

Bachelor 3

Professor: Yves Bernard, Marc Wathieu

The workshop supports students in the form of tutorial classes in order to subsequently follow up on their personal projects. Each step of the process is tracked and leads to the creation of digital documents published on line. The principle is to re-contextualize the students’ suggestions within digital and contemporary current practices by providing them references to the most significant, revealing and relevant works in relation to their projects. The aim for the students is to develop their ability to express an intention, to create a project, to prototype it and to present according to a documented process.

• Animated film

Bachelor 1 & 2

Professors: Nicolas Marcon, Alexander Schellow

What is – or better: what productively can be framed as animation? Here the concept of animation is as well a driving force as it is itself very much in question. Conceptually and methodologically we aim to reformulate a commonly rather technical understanding of animation (understood exclusively as a sub-genre of film, realised by a canonic, even though expanding body of defined techniques which can be „taught“ to the students) towards an expanded animation. ‚Expanded‘ means that animation is understood primarily as a field of transmedial artistic practices which can encompass means from drawing to writing to performance or video work, as well as cooking or urbanistic research. Therefore our students such as our collaborators in and outside the school have various backgrounds and work within various fields. In the process of sharing works within the department, ‚animation‘ serves as a counterpoint and field of operations/references in relation to which an approach can be (re)framed. The term does not fulfill a pre-existing definition, but formulates every time anew what animation can be. This has a huge impact on the teaching/learning methodologies: it is not that the techniques make up a body of knowledge that is passed on to the students. But the work consists – practically from the beginning in BAC01 on, and more and more intensified towards BAC03 and MA – in identifying together the concepts, concerns and related demands of what is slowly shaping as each student’s project. Those are explored in close discussion with the teachers, but also in feedback-constellations with other students, that transgress the borders between Bachelor-, Master- and Phd-students, and namely between student- and teacher-position, towards an open form of collaboration. Such primarily multi-individual path is accompanied by collective propositions: regular workshops and interventions by external visiting artists allow for perspectives and practical experiences within different “worlds” of developed animation or animation-related practices. Other, not obligatory formats further productively blur the borders of a pedagogical framework, of what is considered to happen in school: open screenings and regular collective work-dinners (“colloquia”) hosted in different private apartments, or occasionally works ‚on site’ as factual displacements – such as for example a past workshop in Tirana in collaboration with an Albanian urbanist university-faculty. So what is animation? We address this question not only as a work-internal and/or technical concern, but eminently as a shifting concept, that has to be shaped through and within the very frame of a shared working space – In the collective decision and realization of its aesthetical, pedagogical and political distinctions. [A selection of some traces of student works realized in the department can be discovered here: https://vimeo.com/channels/experimentalanimationerg ]

Presentations, analyses and collective discussions around examples taken from animated film and other subjects related to animation (performance, architecture, visual arts, etc.) that show a singular approach of "image by image” cinema. Beyond practical features (the breaking down of movement, layout, drawings, animation, rhythm, division, the relationship with soundtrack, etc.), this course aims at exploiting its potential in order to accompany a singular content and to experiment with various animation techniques.

Bachelor 3

Professor(s): Alexander Schellow

Presentations, analyses and collective discussions around examples from animated film and other subjects related to animation (such as performance, architecture and visual arts) that show a singular approach of "image by image” cinema. The workshop aims at learning the practical processes of animation by using diverse approaches and techniques. The objective is to encourage students to discover the numerous animation techniques and the meaning that they convey.

• Comics

During the three Bachelor years in comics and illustration at erg, students gradually resolve a series of issues around storytelling and narrative structuring. Starting from their appetence for image and writing, their personal interests and aims, students are encouraged to blend their reflections, practical skills and intuitions to create a personal and unique production. Through a regular practice, they will question the ethical and aesthetical challenges of their tool(s) and their impact on their statement by using an extensive knowledge of what makes graphic literature today.

Bachelor 1

Professors: Geneviève Casterman, Christian Staquet

The course looks at the challenges of common text-image relationships in the field of comics and illustration. It is divided in two workshop sessions: the first looks at the documentary aspect of narrative (relationship with “real world”) while the second is focused on fiction. The objective is to acquire a practice of drawing, image, writing and information collection according to the project.

Bachelor 2 & 3

Professors: Olivier Grenson, Joanna Lorho

Through practical exercises in order to serve a personal, authorial project, highlighting the language of the narrative image and the relationship between text and image. All year through, the course will rely on a history of illustration and comic books through films, books, albums and multimedia narratives, etc. This cultural environment, as well as brief or longer-term exercises, supports students in their personal research, which becomes particularly more intense during the course of the third Bachelor year.