The Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts offers a core curriculum of photography, painting, book design/graphic design and media art. It has its own gallery, the Institute for Book Design, its own publishing house, and excellently equipped workshops and laboratories. Academy students attend a two-year foundation course and then specialize in one particular field of art for a further three years before graduating.
Since 1990, the four departments have been on almost equal footing, teaching basic specialist proficiencies as a foundation for interdisciplinary work in art and design. The training of technical skills in the chosen craft is combined with theoretical education in art and media studies. This provides the conditions and potential for students to develop their own personal artistic profiles and an attitude of independent reflection. Particular attention is paid to technical execution within the scope of the degree course; here the work of art or design is exhibited in a public presentation. The best graduates have the opportunity to continue with two years of postgraduate studies for their master's degree.
The audiovisual laboratory features advanced DTP, photography, video and audio studios and lendable equipment that can be used by all students. Ableton Live plays a substantial part here in teaching students sound production in relation to artistic and professional usage. So far Live is directly integrated into two courses:
An audio production course that focuses on sound production skills and theoretical knowledge for video and sound art. Students create a sound work closely integrated with the course content. While learning about soundscape perception, field recording, microphone technique, sound design, music in video and experimental film they team up in small groups and produce an acoustic piece integrating field recording excerpts, sound design, musical elements and language. Ableton Live has proven very successful as our core production software, even for totally inexperienced participants. In only six sessions, all students manage to produce a complete listening piece almost effortlessly.
A dedicated Ableton Live course that addresses beginners as well as advanced Live users. The course teaches Live from the ground up in ten sessions, including basic functionality and interface features, in-depth mixing and production functions, audio and instrument usage, and detailed performance and controller concepts. In addition to musical production, the main aim is to deliver concepts and knowledge in sound art production, solo and group performance, and installation usage.
Ableton Live is also an integral part of the newly built experimental studio space of the HGB. The audiovisual projection space features eight HD beamers, 270-degree video canvas and 360-degree audio on 48 individual speaker channels. In combination with Garage Cube's Modul8 and Cycling '74's Max/MSP/Jitter, Ableton Live closely integrates pre-produced and interactive sound and video with plug-and-play comfort to more advanced custom-programmed solutions.