Posts
5.27.2009
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
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
5.20.2009
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
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
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.
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
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
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.
5.11.2009
Kim and I just found a store in Shanghai that sells the Moleskine Pocket Storyboard Notebook, a neat little variation on the classic sketchbook that is perfect for aspiring filmmakers and graphic storytellers. I saw one of these recently and it was love at first sight. However, I resigned myself to not getting one until we were back in the states for the summer.
Ah, I do love a beautiful sketchbook as well.
The Dear Librarian herself, Ann Krembs has a great post about Prezi on her blog today, and I don't just mention it because she gave me a shout out for my own Prezi on creating a film festival. I have mentioned Prezi here before, in the context of creating that presentation, but in my reply to Ann's post, I realized I didn't quite say all that I had wanted to say about it.
Dear Librarian,
Thanks for the shout out, and nice job on your Prezi as well. I’m really fascinated by the possibilities of this new presentation software, because its a brilliant hybrid of traditional presentations (i.e. Powerpoint) and mind mapping software (i.e. inspiration). This new combination allows you to organize your ideas in a much more intuitive way- and present them in a more intuitive way.
How you organize your presentation also provides information for your viewers about how the ideas are linked. Is one slide next to the one that comes after it, is it on top, or below…. or is it embedded in the one that comes before it? If its embedded, is it the same kind of frame or different, if its smaller- how much smaller?
These deceptively simple choices provide a huge amount of context for how the information your presenting relates to each other.
I’m also very intrigued by what Scott McCloud has to say about Prezi, as it ties into his concept of an Infinite Canvas.
There are a number of rich explorations on that Infinite Canvas page that explore how meaning is formed, not just from the juxtaposition of the images themselves, but the placement of images within that juxtaposition.
5.10.2009
World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.
It reminds me of an idea I was talking over with some of my colleagues from the Shanghai Student Film Festival about teaching a video class entirely in Second Life. The students would spend the first part of the course learning about 3D design. They could build and design props, sets, costumes, and characters. Perhaps develop a second life movie studio and set. In 'first life' they could learn the basics of film-making; the cinematography, lighting, editing, and sound. Then in the second half of their course they could combine those skills towards the creation of more complex machinima videos.
Speaking of which, check out this amazing community project from Urangan High School in Australia. They've raised over 50K for a two year project exploring 3D animation and video. You can follow their production blog to see what they've done and where they are going.
Finally, I haven't tried it out for myself yet (I haven't touched Blender in a few years now unfortunately) but it looks like Juan Pablo Bouza has developed a free character rigging system to help make quick human figures for your productions.
5.09.2009
Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.
In the past I have been quietly adding blogs to The Art Education 2.0 Blog Roll as they're posted at Art Ed 2.0, but there are really just too many good ones out there to go unnoticed. If you haven't checked them out, take a few moments to peruse the astounding variety of approaches and issues covered by all of the art teaching bloggers out there. In the future, I'll be sure to highlight new art education blogs here as well. Today I just added the following blogs:
5.07.2009
Character Design | Artist Interviews
Blog dedicated to interviews with Character design artists from animation, movies, games, illustration, and comics.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
5.05.2009
As we begin to wind up the school year (can you believe it?) I finally have a chance to transfer some of my conference notes to the blog. I'll be doing this in parts over the next few days, but for a great comprehensive reflection, be sure to check out Kim Cofino's post.
The first of these roles is The Anthropologist- the anthropologist tries to see the world in a new way. Their role can be best described by this quote:5.04.2009
This was another project we worked on with the art honor society (NAHS) at TAS over the course of a week. Students came in after school and painted like crazy. We based it on the theme of "Evolution". About 15 hrs into 10 min. Enjoy.
Arts in Motion is our recent excitement at Taipei American School. It was a collaboration between music, art, and dance as well as with art students from one of the top local Taiwanese high schools. Our students from the Art Honor Society organized it (with help, of course) and put together an amazing display of artistic talent. The fashion show was quite a challenge (we had a full length runway)... the best part is that it was all run by students: 22 models, 6 designers, 6 live camera operators, and one amazing student DJ. We also mounted two art exhibits, one by our AP students and the other by the Taiwanese school.
This was a great way to promote the arts in one venue, create dialogue, and visually make a case for having the arts in school! If anyone is interested in running an "Arts in Motion" in your school, feel free to contact me. I'm happy to provide info about how to run it and modify it to your space. reyesc@tas.edu.tw .JPG)
Patrick, one of my advanced photography students, just found this really neat use of the Flickr Photostream, by flickr user Norby.
5.03.2009
The Revolution gets a shout out in Craig Roland's Art Tech column in this month's School Arts Magazine. You can read his article, Building Your Personal Learning Network, Part 2 here (its a .pdf). Thanks, Craig!
And in other news... one of the rising stars of the Shanghai Student Film Festival, Philippa A. of Dulwich College is profiled in this month's Shanghai Family. I love this line from her interview:“Film is music, art, writing. It has elements of everything I love. With film I didn’t have to choose just one.”Congrats, Philippa!
