14.2 Final Project: Dance + Community + Sound

For my final project I wanted to look at how movement and sound are naturally generated in a community setting. However, as I thought more about this idea I became aware of the inherent pressures associated with acting in certain social settings. What is the appropriate way to speak to others within a given context? What expectations need to be met? I thought specifically of celebrations and how they are a particular phenomenon that provides a set duration of time in which individuals who know the host, but maybe not each other, are positioned within the same space in order to interact with each other. Attendance at a celebration, while often pleasant, can give rise to a range of feelings within individuals from excitement to anxiety to exhilaration to exhaustion.

Additionally, I wanted to take a stark look at the unnatural nature of the celebration and how it puts on display one of our most human characteristics: how we interact with others when we must. In order to address various levels of comfort and discomfort, similar to that at a social gathering, class members were given invitations that were privately delivered. Each invitation contained a specific sound-creating action and a period of time in which the action should be repeated. Participants were not forced to partake, however they were invited to.

A selection of the invitations given.

Once given their invitations, as the host I reminded participants of their role and invited them to begin. Acting somewhat as a subconscious metronome, I said hello every second. Once a minute of the activity had passed, I thanked the participants for coming and wished them a good evening.

The activity was largely successful, however I wish there was a way to have communicated to participants to stand or move about in order to enhance the "milling about" that comes at a social gathering. I did not want to expressly tell them to do so, but I attempted to change the location by giving the invites in the attached gallery of the Myers Media Art Studio, however I did not anticipate that participants would sit following receipt of their invitation. If I were to do this again, I would give each person a movement task in addition to their sound.

14.3 Selfie

At the beginning of the semester, I established learning objectives that I have slightly adjusted over the course of this class:

- To have a more concrete understanding of new medias beyond video and sound art.
- To feel more comfortable incorporating a new media into my own practice.
- To become a more educated and conscious consumer of new technologies through research and self-reflection

In looking back at this semester and how I have addressed my goals, I certainly feel an increased comfort with production of art in new medias. Of course, as predicted, video and sound art are my personal preference and I have really enjoyed exploring these, specifically sound art, in depth. I am really excited about my final project in sound and feel that it addresses certain goals that I had for myself. I wanted to not just have a surface level understanding of new medias, but learn how to think around them in order to lead to more meaningful outcomes. By this, I should say that I was challenged by the "trendy" aspect of new medias, that they needed to be used carefully in order to not just be a fun gimmick in the art classroom. While I still have concerns about this, I feel increasingly comfortable with my ability to isolate potential meaningful learning for children in a variety of new medias. 

This was certainly a challenging course for me as I will be the first to admit that I am highly skeptical of my perceived "hype" for new medias in the art classroom. I have looked critically at readings on the subject, but have also truly engaged myself to be open to introducing these mediums to children. Honestly, I really enjoyed and felt fully engaged in making in many of the media we covered and how unfair would it be if I didn't introduce something I enjoyed to children? I certainly feel an imperative to do so in my own classroom going forward. This may sound like a small change, though this is really a significant shift in my way of thinking about teaching art. I feel that many new medias can be put in service of basic, traditional mediums and vis versa, creating a beautiful dialogue in the classroom and more interdisciplinary modes of making. For example, I created a sound art lesson that focuses on listening closely to sounds in order to influence drawing. Also, working with physical circuitry within a collage incorporates a more traditional medium with a new one. LilyPads may serve to extend the possibilities of fiber arts. These are three of many opportunities to extend learning in traditional materials through the inclusion of new medias in the art classroom. Again, while I may still feel certain reservations about the entire switch of the art studio into a purely digital maker space, I am interested in infusing my art curriculum with new medias in order for children to experience the delight I did throughout this semester.

14.4 Lesson Plans for Sound Art

12.1 Readings 4 & 5 Takeaways

Blikstein's writing has made me think about the purpose of education in terms of gaining fluency or gaining skills. I'm curious about what the need is currently for education to provide. Should schools be preparing the average citizen to operate in modern society or should there be more specificity to the knowledge gained during K-12 schooling? I'm not entirely sure which view Blikstein fully supports and wonder how teachers might choose to extend learning in various areas beyond just fluency. I am concerned that fluency might become conflated with superficial knowledge in an area. I am interested in exploring what educators could do in order to encourage deeper learning in a particular technological subject matter, especially within the time constraints of the school day and year. I am curious as to how to integrate new medias into the art classroom in a way that honors the relevant experiences of each child instead of necessitating a more formulaic and didactic approach to teaching. I wonder where these media should be taught -- should it be a more interdisciplinary format and should they enter the art studio or should they remain in science? But then, shouldn't more traditional arts be represented in science in return? I wish to examine which teacher the burden rests on to facilitate learning in programming, circuitry, etc. This brings me to the idea of STEAM which is heavily advocated for in American schools. What is the intended outcome and on who does this work rest? Is it the classroom teacher or specialists who are supposed to advocate for STEAM? What has STEAM come to mean at this point and is the outcome what was initially intended? Is it just art in service of science, technology, engineering, and math in order to validate its existence in schools today? I feel this is deeply problematic.