This is Part I (3 credit units) of the course Creative Media Studio. The Creative Media Studio course is aimed at ensuring basic competence with a range of traditional and new media tools for artistic creation. Part I of the course begins with workshops to generate experiences of creativity, followed by trainings in visual thinking and spatial logic, drawing, sound production and aural awareness, which amount to the arts of seeing and hearing in the age of technological convergence. Students are expected to operate, with proficiency, tools of various media, and then gradually generate their own artistic vocabulary. In the process, students are also encouraged to create works with humanitarian sensibilities and concerns, especially via keen observation of the world around them.
The Creative Media Studio course is comprised of a series of technique-focused studios, as well as semi-regular town hall meetings. The ultimate purpose of regular exercises within each "toolbox studio" module is to allow the students to befriend a broad range of tools to use and think with them playfully with competence.

STUDIO MODULES

1. Creativity in Action: Cross-media Sensibilities
   
   This module aims at exposing students to a range of issues pertaining to the integration of artistic tools and cross-media thinking, and to extend and expand their creative vision beyond medium-specificity. Using writing as the initial activity, this module focuses on generating individualized experiences of creativity for each student. S/he will learn to generate and develop creative ideas, and to express their thoughts and ideas in innovative and engaging ways.
2. Drawing and Visual Thinking
   
   This is a series of half-day intensive drawing sessions in which students explore both the representational and abstract languages of drawing. The goal of this module is to help students develop an acute sense of visual perception, and to expose students to the various stages involved in the crystallization of inspirations - from keen observation of the world, to personalization and formalization of ideas, to abstraction and/or representation with a given medium. From life drawing, students gradually move on to experimental drawings and other visual creation. In the process of making, basic theories in visuality and perception will be introduced.
3. Hearing and Sounding
   
   The aim of this module is twofold: (1) to build a facility within each student to create sounds in the studio setting; and (2) to help students develop an acute sense of hearing, and to explore listening as an active yet nuanced process. Students will create a variety of sound works using a digital audio workstation, through which they will learn various techniques for audio recording, sound editing, sound transformation and design. Students may also be exposed to ear-opening and aural training exercises, which are aimed at expanding the boundaries / heightening the sensitivity of participants' aural perception.

TOWNHALL MEETINGS
The goal of these meetings is to reinforce the importance of a process-oriented approach to art making. These meetings may take the form of faculty panels on a specific topic, guest artist presentations, or other formats as the instructors see fit.

Minimum passing requirement: Students must have achieved a passing grade in at least 2 out of the following 3 Studio Modules -

1. Creativity in Action


2. Drawing and Visual Thinking


3. Hearing and Sound.