Digital Project I: Magazine Cover

This is the first Photoshop project I have ever done.  It took a while to get a hold of all of the tools that Photoshop had to offer.  I ran into some trouble when my flash drive crashed and I lost this project completely.  However, I realized that it was much easier to recreate something that I already had experience in doing!  So it was a great learning process at the same time.

In this piece, I focused on the theme of Connotation and Denotation.  I focused on driving the point of these young girls being made up to look older than they really are.  In these beauty pageants, the parents of these young girls are forcing them to dress up and parade around like young women.  Some even resort to putting false body parts into the costumes to make them appear older than they are.  My question is, why can't these girls be judged by their beauty without having all of these prosthetic things to enhance these young and naive children?  Why should these toddlers be dressed up and paraded around as if they were older and more mature?  

Digital Project III: Self-Portrait

Garden gnomes are said to watch over ones garden and property.  I have grown very fond of gnomes over the years and have even acquired a few that I keep around me.  Since I have lived in the same dorm room for all four years of college, there is a sense of home there.  I decided to put myself on my windowsill with my collection of gnomes.  From there I can keep watch over the room that I call home. 

Before these 3 digital projects, I was not very educated in Photoshop.  Through this series of projects I have learned a lot and was able to also learn a lot through my own explorations of this program.  In this project in particular I started off with a completely different topic.  However, it did not allow me to really utilize all that Photoshop had to offer and I wanted more of a challenge.  By integrating some of my features, I was able to create a composite image with many different parts of images. 

Cloud Clusters

Connection

Identity

Sharing

Togetherness

Middle School Curriculum--James Bean

Adolescents understand more than we give them credit for.  In the article called "A Middle School Curriculum: From Rhetoric To Reality, Bean outlines different problems that middle school curriculums often have and how these problems can be sorted through and adjusted.

There are certain aspects of of skills that are proposed by the curriculum that many educators feel that are over the heads of adolescents.  However, the author states that they are fully equipped with the skills, however they do not always understand how to use them.  It is through this curriculum that they can use trial and error to find a way to utilize these skills.  In the curriculum now, they do not demonstrate the understanding of these skills because the curriculum does not allow for it.

"If we encourage early adolescents to be active democratic citizens, then we must engage them in looking behind the 'facts'" (Page 65).  This allows them to question things around them.  They are forced to look deeper into the information they are being fed by the current curriculum and question it.

This multi-dimensional curriculum incorporates personal and social concerns, skills necessary to explore these themes, and concepts of democracy, human dignity, and cultural diversity.  In these intersecting themes, spring different possible units that can help aid adolescents develop the necessary skills to grow.
Each of these themes work together to teach.  Now the curriculum is either geared toward elementary students, or adults.  By focusing on the general education aspect that taps into the common and shared concerns of early adolescents, the more students will better understand the world around them and the issues that people in the world face.

Sweeny's Internet Connection

In Sweeny's article "Lines of Sight in the 'Network Society':  Simulation, Art Education, and a Digital Visual Culture", he touches upon many different aspects of technology and how it affects its users.

In one part of the article he touches upon how different internet-based technologies have become a leading form of "research, a method for community building, [and] a forum for interaction"through the "simulation matrix".  This brings me back to last semester when a professor had us create a SecondLife account.  Discussions were held through this life simulated program where students could converse with different artists and professors worldwide.  Through this form of technology, we are allowed to be a part of the technology, as opposed to simply operating it.  Through the use of this program we were able to explore what the world wide web truly has to offer us as aspiring art educators.

Now I ask you to imagine your life without the internet.  Difficult right?  I feel that through the internet I am constantly being bombarded with information, whether visual or textual.  I think that through this constant flow of information, we are able to have more and resources available to us to use.  

The idea of SecondLife also attaches itself to the Cyborg Vision in that through a computer screen, we are able to create an identity that can interact with other virtual beings across the world.  A Cyborg is defined in Sweeny's article as a cybernetic organism.  SecondLife is a little different than Stelarc, who attached electrodes to connect his body physically to the internet.  It has no physical attachment whatsoever, yet allows a person to virtually connect to others making different connections and discovering different resources by meeting different people in a virtual life.  

The internet allows for an endless supply of information for teachers.  It creates a system where ideas can be shared, critiqued, and borrowed in order to present such information to students.  Through the internet, teachers are able to travel around the world and with the click of a mouse, tap into different resources that will benefit their students.  

Digital Collage: Response Part I

In Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", it was interesting for me as an artist to think about how much artists rely on technology.  The question of whether something is art if it's original idea inspired the artist to create something different.  I think as artists it is important that we take ideas from one another to learn different process, and learn about ourselves.  Being able to take something and create something completely new from its original state, is a great challenge for artists.  Each person sees things differently, and one artwork may inspire one artist one way, while another a different way.

The article that stood out to me the most of the first three readings is the article by Terry Barrett, "Interpreting Visual Culture".  I think that Barrett rose many interesting questions about different connotations and denotations of images.  The different meanings of an image can vary drastically from viewer to viewer.  There are many hidden meanings that are concocted from images, while such meanings were not the intention of the artist.  Sometimes as viewers we read too far into an image, which can be positive yet negative at the same time.

Surrealist Games

The idea of play is an important aspect for students to begin thinking in different ways.  It allows a no consequence way for them to express themselves and harness their true creativity.  Established artists such as Salvador Dali utilized play in many of his artworks.

"Automatism is the primary method of surrealism.  Solitary and collective automatic techniques, and the exploitation of chance are central to many surrealist games.  Surrealists soon came to realize the limitations of 'pure automatism.'" Spiral Workshop 2008.  

In beginning a lesson with play, in the form of a game, creative minds will be sparked into action and through the outcomes of such games, springs fourth many different and creative ideas that can be used in image making.  I find that chance is a great way for students to be able to create something.  Torn paper collages allow for chance to play a role in the image making process.  This is an example of Hans Arp's torn paper collage.  Different sizes of torn paper are dropped onto a sheet of paper where they are fixed with glue.

Different ways of using this technique allow for the artist to re-arrange and re-interpret the image and maneuver around the pieces to form an image.

Lesson plans can be derived from Surrealism Games utilizing chance.  The Torn Paper Collage allows students to use imagination for ideas of a project.  Drawing things other than reality can be hard for many students, however with this game, students are able to see that not all artworks are realistic and can be rendered and drawn from the imagination.

This is a drawing that taps into the imagination of the artist.  Although there are realistic qualities, the figure depicted is a creation of the imagination.