Rationale:

Photographic and Digital Media plays a significant role in the curriculum by providing specialised learning opportunities to enable students to understand and explore the nature of photographic and digital media as an important field of artistic practice, conceptual knowledge and technological procedures.

The broad areas of photography and digital media as print, interactive and moving forms are extremely relevant and of fundamental interest to students. Much of their knowledge of the world and their notions of cultural and self-identity come from the photographic and digital images that permeate the visual arts and design, television, film, video, internet, mass media and multimedia.

This Stage 5 course builds on the Stage 4 Visual Arts mandatory course. It allows opportunities for students to investigate photographic and digital media in greater depth and breadth than through the Visual Arts elective course.

New technologies have changed the possibilities of production of artworks and the role of the artist. The Photographic and Digital Media Years 7–10 Syllabus can be explored as practice that uses photographic and digital technologies as tools for the creation of artworks. It provides opportunities to investigate practice that uses photographic and digital technologies as their own medium – that is, being produced, stored and presented in digital form, making use of interactive and participatory features.

The Photographic and Digital Media Years 7–10 Syllabus assigns value to the development of students’ intellectual, artistic and practical autonomy, critical judgement and reflective actions in making and interpreting photographic and digital media works. In this syllabus students can explore reality, illusion and simulation through photographic and digital media, and the investigation of emergent technologies.

Artistic practice that incorporates photographic and digital media plays an essential part in the contemporary artworld. The evolution of digital technologies, in particular, has altered the nature of photographic practice and has created new practice with many variables. This syllabus provides opportunities for students to investigate the ways in which these fields of artistic practice have evolved and been utilised over the 20th century and into the 21st century. Practice within the school context is intended to approximate practice used in the contemporary world by artists, photographers, videographers, filmmakers, animators and critics who provide real-world models for learning and make available career options to students.

The syllabus identifies the theoretically grounded conceptual framework as a way of understanding and exploring relations between and among the agencies of the artworld. It provides opportunities to investigate the technological, artistic and theoretical development and making of photographic and digital works, the role of the artist as photographer and digital artist, the world and the use of photographic and digital forms in society and the intended audiences for these forms. When considered in the light of the structural, subjective, cultural and postmodern frames, these relations generate content for making and interpreting photographic and digital media works.

The structural, subjective, cultural and postmodern frames operate as a basis for understanding artistic practice in photographic and digital media. Each frame represents a different belief and value system and provides the grounds for addressing questions related to meaning and significance. The frames provide different and alternative ways of exploring and examining the world as content for photographic and digital media.

Through effective teaching and learning, students’ knowledge of photographic and digital media can become increasingly deep and comprehensive, multifaceted, more confident and insightful. The syllabus encourages students to become enthusiastic, informed and active participants and consumers in contemporary culture. It empowers students to engage in contemporary forms of communication and encourages the creative and confident use of Information and Communication Technologies.

Aim:

The aim of the Photographic and Digital Media Years 7–10 Syllabus is to enable students to:

• develop and enjoy practical and conceptual autonomy in their abilities to represent ideas and interests in photographic and digital media works

• understand and value the different beliefs that affect interpretation, meaning and significance in photographic and digital media.

Objectives:

Knowledge, Understanding and Skills

Students will develop knowledge, understanding and skills:

• to make photographic and digital works informed by their understanding of practice, the conceptual framework and the frames

• to critically and historically interpret photographic and digital works informed by their understanding of practice, the conceptual framework and the frames.

Values and Attitudes

Students will value and appreciate:

• their engagement in the practice of the photographic and digital media and understand how photographic and digital media, as a field of practice and understanding, is subject to different interpretations.

Content:

In this course students must be provided with opportunities to engage with practice (making and critical and historical interpretations), the conceptual framework and the four frames in making and interpreting photographic and digital works.

In making photographic and digital works, students:

• investigate practice, the conceptual framework and the frames and a range of ideas and interests in at least one of the areas of still, interactive and moving forms and undertake a broad investigation of one or more of these forms, for example, video and web design; or a more specialised focus of one form, for example, wet photography

• investigate computer-based technologies

• use a journal to document explorations of ideas and interests, experiments with materials, techniques and technologies, and to record relevant technical information

• build a portfolio, developed over time, using a range of photographic and digital equipment and techniques, and various investigations of the world.

In critical and historical interpretations, students:

• use the conceptual framework and the frames to understand the field of photographic and digital media

• investigate relevant events, photographers, artists, designers, agencies and critical accounts of photographic and digital media practice.

Additional content

In this elective course, additional content refers to further experiences with still, interactive and/or moving forms and investigations using the conceptual framework and the frames to make and interpret photographic and digital works. Teachers will routinely make decisions about the complexity of investigations into relationships between practice, the conceptual framework and the frames to assist students in broadening, deepening and extending learning within this course.