The first year of studies is dedicated to acquiring foundational theoretical knowledge, basic artistic tools, and initial experimentation across the various disciplines taught in the department, including sculpture, video, sound, photography, performance, painting, drawing, and digital art. Alongside the annual program, students participate in special workshops, field trips, exhibition visits, and practical training for working with the department’s technological equipment. First-year students are invited to attend the interdisciplinary colloquium (attendance is optional and does not require registration during this year).
First-year students are required to complete 8 mandatory courses and 3 elective courses, for a total of 11 courses. Advancement to the second year requires successful completion of at least 10 courses with a passing grade.
This workshop combines shared reading and discussion of key texts in art and visual culture with long- and short-term artistic projects. The course includes guided screenings, listening sessions, collective exercises, and critical discussions. Students develop projects that emerge from dialogue between text, material, and image, emphasizing interdisciplinary thinking and process-based creation. Texts we will read and discuss include Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”, Baudrillard’s “Simulacra and Simulation”, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” by Walter Benjamin, “Archive Fever” by Jacques Derrida, “The Uncanny” by Siegmund Freud, and more.
Art from life, life from art. The fusion of the two is applied poetics. Poetics resides in life itself, and its application in art is the step that emerges from encounter—the encounter between the “I” and the “whole.” The “whole” is constantly changing; it is the now. And although the now may at times seem self-evident, it is the most difficult to grasp. Why is the now so hard to grasp? Because the now is a living action—breathing, unfolding, and continuously transforming. A living action is not merely a medium, but a quality and an intention: our intention for the action to live in the world.
In this course, we will explore inner concepts and external sites. Each time, we will isolate a single concept and carry out one action that emerges from the meeting of the inner and the outer. We will examine the site as a place of learning and as a source of motivation. As artists, our encounter with the outside world is essential and vital—just as much as we need intimate, safe spaces in which to experiment.
What are the fundamental concepts on which the language of art is based? How can we use them in order to speak this language? In which spaces does it operate? How do we distinguish a work of art from everything else in the world? And ultimately—how does a brilliant idea become, through our little fingers, an engaging and relevant artistic outcome?
Little Fingers is an introductory course to the language of art, placing emphasis on the two central axes of the art field: the conceptual axis and the practical axis. Throughout the course, these two axes will meet and intertwine, forming a theoretical and practical research laboratory. We will begin by working in a round-table format, collectively unpacking and expanding a theoretical toolbox. After jointly constructing a shared glossary of definitions and concepts, we will use it as a basis for developing individual projects. Throughout the course, students will submit exercises and develop their personal aesthetics and artistic voice. Toward the end of the course, we will work on a final project for the year.
An introduction to photography and digital image-making. The course covers exposure, light, color, and composition, alongside basic digital workflow and image processing using Lightroom Classic. Students will engage in practical exercises that combine photographic assignments with image processing, while also focusing on the classification and organization of the digital archive, alongside an exploration of diverse and creative photographic styles. Throughout the semester, several exercises will be submitted in order to practice and consolidate the tools being taught. The final assignment will be hands-on and will focus on comprehensive image editing in Lightroom, with an emphasis on full technical control and creative use of the software.
The course will enable students to learn the various tools of the software, gain full control over them, and develop proper professional workflows. Students will be introduced to the digital lab, covering the different stages of scanning and digital file processing through to print preparation. Through short, hands-on exercises in photography and image processing drawn from various fields of art and photography, the course will address several thematic topics and introduce artists and photographers who use the software as a central tool in their practice, whether as a form of personal or political expression. Students will become familiar with the software’s potential and will create works that employ it in a thoughtful and well-justified manner as a conceptual tool within their artistic practice. By the end of the course, students will formulate and submit a final assignment that summarizes the skills and principles acquired.
The course provides tools for viewing and navigating the field of visual art through an examination of key shifts in art history, including concepts, representational mechanisms, and modes of practice, from antiquity through the classical and Renaissance periods to contemporary art. Through historical and theoretical discussion of artists, artworks, and major movements, students explore the cultural contexts that shape visual practice today.
This course functions as an open workshop for hands-on sculptural practice. Its aim is to expose students to a wide range of techniques and materials, and to encourage the development of a personal relationship with material. During the first semester, students will engage in diverse practical work, including basic techniques for working with wood and plaster, iron welding, silver soldering, and additional materials. Each class will begin with a brief viewing of relevant artworks and creative processes, followed by practical studio work with an emphasis on developing individual artistic practice. The semester will begin with short exercises and conclude with a semester-end project. In the second semester, the course will address topics such as working in series, the use of readymade and non-traditional materials, with an emphasis on the relationships between material, form, and space. The course will also explore fundamental sculptural concepts such as addition and subtraction, installation, and site-specific work, examining how a sculpture responds to and influences its environment.
An introduction to traditional industrial fabrication tools that shaped the 20th century (CNC milling, laser cutting), alongside emerging 21st-century technologies such as 3D printing, modeling, photogrammetry, AI interfaces, and basic electronics. The course emphasizes practical, hands-on learning through creative exercises and does not require prior knowledge.
An introduction to the technical, artistic, and conceptual foundations of video creation, including filming, editing, sound, and basic post-production workflows.
The aim of this course is to establish visual literacy—the ability to read, understand, and articulate—within the realm of analog photography. This realm is characterized by photographic creation through and upon light-sensitive materials, which are exposed to projected light and then undergo a chemical development process that realizes the image potential formed by light on their surface, making it visible and tangible.
The term analogy originates from Greek and refers to similarity in proportional relationships. In language in general, and in Hebrew specifically, analogy is defined as an inference—a relation of resemblance between two things. Accordingly, analog photography is photography based on relationships of resemblance created by light between two light-sensitive elements: the first is the negative formed inside the camera, which resembles the reality outside the camera through the mediation of light and optics; the second is the positive paper print of that same negative, produced in the analog darkroom again through light and optics, resembling the negative yet inverted in relation to it.
The course will provide practical methods and photographic techniques within the analog darkroom, alongside the conceptual clarification, articulation, and creation of cohesive personal projects centered on a defined place, action, or motivation. A midterm submission and a final submission will together review each student’s process, intentions, and outcomes.
Photography is a tool for personal and artistic expression, but also a means of conveying messages and ideas. In this course, we will study it as a “visual language,” learning how to create photographic images and developing skills for reading and using photographic language. We will cultivate awareness of the photographer’s gaze and of the ways in which reality is either captured (the photographer as a hunter of fleeting moments) or created (the photographer as a world-builder).
We will build a visual and conceptual toolbox and practice our ability to observe the world and select meaningful moments from it. We will learn to “tell a visual story” (storytelling), to create a narrative through a single photograph, as well as to construct a more complex story through a group of images—building a series and creating a common thread between photographs. We will explore the creation of atmosphere, the communication of ideas, and the development of a narrative.
Students in the course will acquire tools for constructing the photographic frame, including: the use of the frame and compositional organization; the importance of light in photography; the use of tension between sharpness and blur; viewpoint, distance, and perspective; color; questions of time and space in photography; stillness versus movement; materiality; and the styling of the frame.
This course is designed to sharpen auditory sensitivity in contexts of sound, environment, body, material, and creation. We will discuss various modes of listening and hearing: at the most immediate level (the architecture of the ear), as well as the distant, abstract, and symbolic (the harmony of the Sefirot). We will practice different listening approaches, imagine ways to expand the boundaries of hearing and listening, and experiment with field-recording practices and sound works. Throughout the course, there will be several assignments, as well as ongoing reading and listening materials.
This course enables students to acquire skills in traditional tools of design and graphic expression, such as drawing. The course will cover still-life drawing, nude model drawing, and portrait drawing. Students will learn a variety of drawing techniques (academic and expressive drawing, collage, quick and extended poses, perspectives, and more). In addition, the instructors will introduce students to artists and works that have engaged with drawing in the past and in contemporary practice.