Posts
7.03.2009
6.27.2009
Homework
This stunning 3D animation from China features students with water-filled heads enslaved by hideous monsters that live off the stress of the students.
Water Brain Complete Edition（16：9） from Johann.Poo on Vimeo.
Will this video echo in your head the next time you give an assignment?
Link Via 88 Bar.
6.25.2009
Art Ed Research
If you're doing any research in arts education, Issuelab has a great resource. Their new Art Education Close Up page is searchable database of papers available online.
6.21.2009
6.18.2009
6.17.2009
Dispatches from the Revolution 06/18/2009
6.16.2009
Dispatches from the Revolution 06/17/2009
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
6.15.2009
Brickspiration
If you ever doubted the artistic possibilities of the Lego Brick, then you must never have seen the Brick Films (that's animations made in Lego) of Kris Fontez's classes. That should be inspiration enough for you to break out the cameras and your old lego collection (or at least dig them out over the summer in advance of next year). However, if you just can't get enough from the brick film genre, check out these clever lego-adaptions of scenes from famous movies.
I particularly like this one:
6.13.2009
Art Ed Blogs For Your Summer Reading
If you hadn't guessed, our annual 'summer slow down' has started a few weeks early this year. If you can imagine all the normal fuss with the end of school year, compounded with the hassle of trying to get around the newly rebuilt great firewall of china- it was just too much. I have a brief reprieve though; in the states I'm able to experience the internet in its 'pristine' uncensored form. I used this opportunity to add a bunch of new blogs to our Art Education Blogroll - an increasingly annoying task in China with both blogger and Ning blocked.
Here are our recently added blogs:
Art 24/7: A new blog by one the teachers who worked on the Rotoball project. Her students did a rotoscoped claymation. Double the animation goodness!
Media Arts Education: Detailing the intersection of art, media, and technology at the High School and University levels.
Lori Stevens Artist: Art, Education, Books, and misc. potpourri.
Bella Fiore: Flowers, photos, Italy, politics... and some art education as well!
Wonderbrooks: A blog about the mind of an elementary art teacher.
6.08.2009
Advocates for Art Education II
Here's another excellent advocacy piece on for Art Education, this time from actor Stephen Weber, who writes:Officially marginalized in our schools and practically vestigial in the anatomy of our systems of education and business, art---its creation and enjoyment---is in need of rediscovery and reapplication within those systems. Without art as a functioning, practical and living concept, the ideas upon which our society has of late built itself are brittle and disposable and have the briefest of shelf-lives.
Art is the connective tissue between our brains, bodies and souls, giving character to blandness, hope to hollowness. Without art the overseers of the failed approach toward sustaining a national economy or a healthy, thriving workforce are themselves slaves to souless corporate conceptualizing which in theory is meant to supply humanity with the means to attain happiness but which in reality prevents that from ever happening.
Recently: Michelle Obama and Quincy Jones.
6.01.2009
Dispatches from the Revolution 06/02/2009
Structure of the Sun -Paper Craft
Here's a little crafty gift for that special science teacher in your life.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
5.27.2009
Dispatches from the Revolution 05/28/2009
11 Steps of a Successful Logo Design Process
Interesting look at the process, from a designer's point of view.
Interesting debate on social media from the New York Times opinion blog. When is it ok to tweet? Is facebook a critical networking tool, or a constant distraction?
You can save as as an MP3, WMV, AVI, MOV, WAV - all free.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
5.25.2009
Dispatches from the Revolution 05/26/2009
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
5.20.2009
Advocates for Art Education
The Pennsylvania state legislature has voted to cut all funding to the arts. This includes the elimination of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts - a key organization dedicated to supporting both arts and arts education in the state. You can help by visiting the Citizens for the Arts in Pennsylvania website and signing their petition to have funding reinstated in a new bill that is going up before the legislature shortly.
Michelle Obama:...paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation... My husband and I believe strongly that arts education is essential for building innovative thinkers who will be our nation's leaders for tomorrow"
Quincy Jones:I am of the mindset that you have to know where you come from to get to where you're going. The time has come to make a concerted effort from both the public and private sectors to put in place a system whereby our children and future generations will be aware of our county's rich cultural legacy and contributions to the world. The arts, particularly our music, are the soul of our country. They are an expression of our spiritual ideals and a timeline of the emotional state of our nation... scars and all. It is a disservice to every American not to recognize them in their proper light.
He makes some excellent points, and I have only the greatest respect for Jones both as an incredibly talented musician and patron for the arts, but "Paticularly our music"? It seems to me that a country's "rich cultural legacy" can only be understood through a rich and diverse exposure to all of the ways that people express themselves. He ends on an important note:In the global landscape that we live in today where ideas are exchanged with the stroke of a send key, what better way to influence nations than by exposing them to the basic belief in freedom of expression that is inherent in our nation and witnessed through our culture.
Click that send key for the Citizens for the Arts in PA's petition.
5.19.2009
Portrait Party!
Our foundations art classes just completed a portrait party with Melissa Woodland's class from Bethlehem, PA. For those of you not familiar with portrait parties, they are the brainchild of artist and art teacher Rama Hughes. The premise is simple; you and a partner draw each other and post the results online. If you're geographically challenged, you send each other pictures and draw from them. We're all excited to get our portraits- although the mail in China is terribly unreliable... as is the internet. Once again, I have to go through a proxy to get to my own blog.
*sigh*
On a happier note, here are the portraits our classes did, enjoy!
5.16.2009
A Tale of Two Revolutions
The truth is that when I started this blog, I called it "The Carrot Revolution" for two reasons. The first was because I'm practically tone-deaf, and so I'd never get to use that title as my band name. The second is because to me, teaching critical thinking through progressive education is a form of social activism; and progressive art education both challenges students to see things in new ways and act on it. That's essentially what the Cezanne quote about those insurgent vegetables means to me.
That being said, at first the blog was just a way for me to share links with other art teachers who might be interested, and force me to keep tabs on all the cool sites I thought I could use in lessons, but I'd inevitably fail to bookmark. What I discovered, quite by accident, is that the act of blogging pulled me into a second revolution- one which is based around this new form of communication. In this way, I can clearly identify four stages of my interaction with the web:
1: Using the web as a resource for getting information.
2. Using the web to post information for others.
3. Authentic Communication.
4. Collaboration.
Perhaps I'm oversimplifying things a bit, but now I see a fifth stage - Social Action.
As demonstrated by this article from Boing Boing, social media is taking on a dramatic new role. In response to a YouTube Video posted by a laywer who predicts his own murder at the hands of the Guatemalan government, citizens have been using Facebook and Twitter to organize, distribute information, and rally for the impeachment of the sitting president Álvaro Colom. In the latest development, a Guatemalan Blogger was arrested for an 'incendiary tweet'. Obviously, the government is more threatened by the principle than anything that could be stated in 140 characters or less.
Obviously we don't need to teach the students how to use social networks -- in fact, we can go to them for help with that one. However, the new approaches to organization and social mobilization through these social media suggest a greater need for the kinds of critical thinking that progressive art education provides.
Dispatches from the Revolution 05/17/2009
Students Can Create Art Collections
Great list of the best ways for student to create online art collections from Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
5.14.2009
Nail, Meet Head.
Cory Doctorow makes an excellent case against copyright law in its current form. In this brilliant article for The Guardian, When Love is Harder to Show Than Hate, he deftly identifies the irony of copyright law- it encourages people to tear down the work of others, rather to celebrate it. In other words, using the work of others for critique or satire is more likely to be a 'safe' use of copyrighted material than any kind of celebration of the same material. Granted that not all critique is bad, and not all satire is done without love - but his point is well taken.
The upshot of this is that you're on much more solid ground if you want to quote or otherwise reference a work for the purposes of rubbishing it than if you are doing so to celebrate it. This is one of the most perverse elements of copyright law: the reality that loving something doesn't confer any right to make it a part of your creative life.
5.12.2009
MC Escher is Alive and Well and Living in Shanghai
I don't know what it is, but there really is just nothing quite as beautiful as spending a Sunday afternoon at an old slaughterhouse.
That is, I suppose, if said slaughterhouse is an art-deco masterpiece that was built in the 30's, and converted into a gallery/cafe/retail space. I'm speaking of 1933, which could be one of Shanghai's most beautiful buildings and well-kept secrets. It won't, I'm sure, be a secret for long, as this majestic building is slowly transformed into a 'creative space'.
I uploaded our pictures to Flickr- although I'll be taking my students there as a stop on our field trip tomorrow, so hopefully I'll have a few more up soon. The Shanghaiist also has some great photos and a little information about the space. The 1933 official website has a neat 360º panorama view, but its not of the central space, which to me is the most bizarrely beautiful in the most Escher like way- as much as possible, that is, without becoming non-functional.
Hopefully though, you can get a sense of the space in these video clips:
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