VISUAL THINKING THROUGH MEDIA

VISUAL THINKING THROUGH MEDIA -  ED 5304, 

Week 1

Unknown Object, Unconventional Material Ode

Essential Questions: 

How can the properties of a material fuel artmaking? 

What can materials teach us? 

What qualifies as an “art material?”

Elegant Problem: I can create an artwork celebrating the qualities/properties/characteristics of my partner's object using the "non-traditional" materials that I gathered in order to engage in close looking/examining of an object, as well as to analyze and utilize the properties of a material to make meaning. 

Learning Outcomes: 

I can build new relationships with familiar and unfamiliar materials; I can build new relationships with familiar and unfamiliar people. 

I can actively engage in inquiry, exploration, experimentation and research through play. 

Rationale: Learners are embarking upon their final year of the MAT program and would have begun to establish an identity as a cohort to some extent the prior spring, but their experience was disrupted by the shared (though differently experienced) trauma of the closing/modified operation of schools in spring of 2020. As a result, learners are forming their cohort community virtually. As a result, they are not only separated from one another, but in some cases are separated from the studio environment. They would benefit from opportunities to establish a sense of connection to one another.

Additionally, under normal circumstances the facilitator of this course would consistently provide learners with a variety of materials (both traditional and non-traditional) for research and experimentation to inform their materials management decision-making in their future classrooms. . 

Under the circumstances inherent to virtual learning, MAT learners (and PK-12 teachers and learners) have had to embrace innovation and flexibility around materials access. 

To celebrate the sorts of materials that MAT learners (and future PK-12 learners) could potentially capitalize upon in their home and classroom settings, this engagement encourages looking at one’s surroundings with detachment from objects/materials’ designated purposes and instead framing objects/materials as having a range of artmaking potential based on their physical properties and propensities. 

Learning Tasks: 

Asynchronous Preparatory work:  

• Supermarket Sweep - Studio Edition: Go to a supermarket, convenience store, drugstore/pharmacy, or dollar store (if you feel safe/comfortable doing so), and walk up and down the aisles with the mindset that everything you see is an art material. If you do not feel comfortable going into a store at this time, please walk around your yard or neighborhood, or around a park or nearby place beyond the walls of your home with the same mentality. Use your prior knowledge but also step outside your prior knowledge. Ask yourself a lot of "what if" questions. Become aware of your inner self-talk. Gather a few things that most excite you. If you are at a store, spend no more than $20.00. When exiting the store and returning home, look at the parking lot or the street or the sidewalk with the same foraging eye-- pick up any discarded items that have art-making potential that excites you. When you get home, make a pile of the items that you foraged from your home, and the items that you bought/collected from outside your home. Make a T-chart in your field journal. List every item that you bought, how much it cost, and the potential art-making use for that item that is most exciting to you

• Collaborative Resource Archive generation: By next class, please input your item(s), their cost, and their potential uses to the shared Google Sheet. If you already see an item listed please add potential uses to that column!

Synchronous Artmaking Experience:

• Idea Generation: Choose ONE material or object that you have gathered in your foraging expeditions. What properties does it have? Please have the courage to look at it like you have NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE.  In your field journal, describe its properties like you're talking to a friend on the phone who can't see the object in front of you. This will be referred to as your “mystery object.”

• Collaborative Idea Exchange: Please share what you just wrote about your mystery object

• Plot Twist: Create an artwork CELEBRATING the qualities/properties/characteristics of your partner's mystery object using the other "non-traditional" materials that you gathered. 

• Food for thought: 

How do you "celebrate" the properties/characteristics of an object?

Questions you may be wanting to ask ME

Q: I am an artist and have a fully stocked studio-- do I ONLY have access to the materials that I bought/gathered today or can I use traditional art supplies?

A: The premise of the competitive cooking show "Chopped," (and the inspiration for today's challenge) is that all contestants receive several challenging ingredients. They are asked to create a dish that celebrates the challenge ingredients and they are allowed minimal access to additional ingredients from the pantry. The winning contestants create dishes that really transform the challenging ingredients and sparingly use additional ingredients to give structure to the dish only where needed. I want you to try to do the same thing in your making. 

• Studio Time: Use the materials that you have gathered to create a response to your partner’s description of their object. Use their descriptive words as impetus for a new artwork. 

• Share out: Post your “Ode” artwork underneath your partner’s description. Now observe the work on the screen before us-- what do you notice? What did you discover? What was your thought process? What did your materials teach you? Who did something innovative that you’d like to celebrate  or hear more aboutt? 

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Week 1- Asynchronous

Week 1 - Synchronous