I WANT TO BELIEVE: SCIENCE FICTION, THE FICTION OF SCIENCE, AND THE UNKNOWN ORGANISM IN ART

Course Description

At one point we have all wondered: Are we alone? While scientists and philosophers have long grappled with this question and its implications, artists have imagined its possibilities. Throughout this interdisciplinary course we will make representational and nonrepresentational drawings and paintings inspired by the roles of science fiction within the visual arts. We will examine, through a wide range of lenses, the abstraction and politicization of biology, the search for life on other planets, and the narratives generated by the idea of first contact; if and when we find out we are not alone, how will that story be told?