- Course Title: Plastic Fantastic !?
- Course Number: CADT-UH 1045J
- Course Category: Art, Design, and Technology (Core Competency Course)
- Course Credit: 4.0 points
- Course Weeks: 3 Weeks
- Contact Hours/Week: Every day 9:00 AM – 12:30 PM
- Zoom meetings: https://nyu.zoom.us/j/94894413033
Place in the NYUAD Curriculum
The course Plastic Fantastic !? is a Core Competency Course in the field of Art, Design, and Technology. This course teaches students to think critically and work creatively toward innovations in arts practice, design and engineering, creative writing, data visualisation, programming, and performance. Guest lecturers as well as interdisciplinary co-teaching plays an important role in this course. The course is cross-listed with the Multi-/disciplinary Minor Design (counts as Design Elective).
Learning Outcomes
Students in the course will learn to develop analytical and critical thinking skills and be trained in problem analysis and concept development. As the project contains practical components, students will also be trained in the use of several low-cost plastic recycling techniques and machines like plastic shredder, injection or extruder.
At the end of this course, students will…
- Have articulated ways in which plastic creation and consumption relates to major ethical issues of our time,
- Have discussed ways of rising awareness on the global impact of plastic waste on ecosystems,
- Have a basic understanding on waste management and plastic recycling,
- Value plastic as a precious and not as a one-time-use/throw-away material.
These outcomes will be assessed through class participation, in-class exercises, project presentation and documentation as described below.
Teaching and Learning Methodologies
This course is a mix of theory and practice. Students will be involved in a lot of reading, discussion and writing, as well as the completion of a practical project. This course adopts a seminar format that requires students to participate actively in class discussions. Considerable class time will be spent on presentations and discussions of related art and design projects, and lectures/case-studies on different technological aspects. Guest speakers and hands-on workshop sessions are embedded into the daily themes of the course. Students are expected to read and research about a substantial number of projects, participate in classroom discussions, and develop a concept for a project. Each student is required to conceptualise a final project of a topic of their choosing that goes deeper into issues beyond what was discussed in class. The aim of the project is to develop an innovative product/object that displays the conceptual and technical intellectuality of the student. Daily presentations and ethical discussions of cases provide the groundwork for students to prepare an Artistic Statement.
The course makes use of the online site https://wp.nyu.edu/abudhabi-plasticfantastic that will serve as a repository for required readings, assignments, and additional course materials. Class discussions will be supplemented by multimedia material such as Google slides and video clips.
Graded Activities
The A student goes above and beyond the expectations and requirements described in this syllabus. This will be measured in a number of ways including the level of participation during the class sessions as well as outside. The A student completes assignments on time, initiates conversations, helps others in need, and asks questions when they run into problems or don’t understand a concept.
I. |
Class Participation (individual) |
10 % |
| Students are expected to come to each class fully prepared, having read through the texts and have watched the films assigned for the class – and thought about them carefully. Participation will be assessed on the basis of both the regularity and the quality of contributions. Students will be asked to initiate class discussions without prior warning and may be asked to perform this function more than once. Evaluation will consider:
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II. |
Journal (individual) |
10% |
| Students are required to maintain an online journal by posting on the course’s website. Evaluation will consider completeness, consistency, and quality of the content, which includes references, reflections, findings, and experiment’s documentation (failures, success and progress). Sometimes you will be asked to post, but feel free to post anything you find interesting and can contribute to the class discussion or research about plastics. Rubric:
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III. |
Case-study presentation |
20 % |
| (individual)
Every student will present a case-study presentation during class. Themes are given out on the first day of class. The presentation should not be more then max. 15 slides (keynote, powerpoint or google slides). The presentation has to be submitted as PDF format through NYU Classes and must follow the following naming standard: presentation-title_YourFirstName_YourLastName.pdf
Those who present in the first sessions will have little time to prepare and this will be taken into account in the assessment. |
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IV. |
Trash Sculpture |
20 % |
| (group work, 3 students per group)
Rubric:
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V. |
Realisation of Final Prototype |
20 % |
| (group work, 3 students per group)
Students are required to realise a prototype of a plastic product/object. The material to be used for the final prototype will be recycled plastic. There will not be any budget for the realisation of the prototype.
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VI. |
Artistic Statement |
10 % |
| (group work)
The Artistic Statement will reflect the student’s project theme. The project theme has to be submitted in advance for critique and approval by the instructor in a one-on-one session. The text should feature the concept behind the project (approximately ±600 words in three paragraphs: Introduction, Technical Paragraph, and Research Timeline Paragraph. The concept should be clear and understandable. The text should contain additional drawings, information graphics and photographs to explain and underline the project’s idea. Integrate your personal view based on the many discussion in this course and on the reading.
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VII. |
Final presentation, Documentation |
10 % |
| (group work and individual)
Every student will have to present the final product at the end of Summer J-Term in class and display it in a class exhibition. Include the mood-board, the conceptual visualization of your idea and the Artistic Statement in a final journal post. Include photos/videos of experiments and useful information about how you conduct them and what technique you used, your failures and success. Begin your conclusions by restating the goals of your project. Make sure you also include any references you used for the conceptualization and creation of your project.
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Letter Grades
Letter grades for the entire course will be assigned as follows:
| Letter Grade | Percent |
| A | 95%-99% |
| A- | 90%-94% |
| B+ | 87%-89% |
| B | 83%-86% |
| B- | 80%-82% |
| C+ | 77%-79% |
| C | 73%-76% |
| C- | 70%-72% |
| D+ | 67%-69% |
| D | 63%-66% |
The following grades may be awarded: A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D+, D, F.
- Excellent: A
- Satisfactory: B
- Unsatisfactory: C-
- Unacceptable: F