UDIST300 Waste and Excess

Under the veneer of economic rationality lie the baroque and excessive patterns of production and consumption which define our society. The course looks at this cultural condition as reflected in a variety of material practices and engages students in multi-disciplinary projects which will help define their relationship to these issues. Are exuberance and environmental sustainability mutually exclusive? Where are the taboos around waste, garbage and material remains? How are we affected by the proliferation of digital signals, imagery and other forms of excess? Readings and projects engage five sub-topics; Scarcity vs. Abundance, Evolutions of the ready made (sampling, material remains, recycling), Gifting and Potlatch, Waste and Garbage, and Environmentalism. Projects for analysis include; Mark Dion's Thames Dig, Taniguchi's Hiroshima Incinerator plant, Notacornfield, SF Dump residency, Fresh Kills landfill, Meta-CC, Enron documentary, and Burning Man.

Interdisciplinary Studios extend a student's cross-school experience from Core Studio up into his or her upper division years. 3 units of Interdisciplinary Studio are required of all majors and must be completed in the junior or senior year.