January 15-17 “Practice-led Research”

Outcomes

• Enact a critical outlook as visual readers, recognizing how meaning is cultivated and perpetuated through representation.
• Identify personal inspirations and interests as a way to see their own artistic agency as self-reflective practitioners.

Lecture

How has digital photography changed our access to ‘truth’ in representations?

Assign Trickery Project

Lab

This lab is an opportunity to start talking about how images work before they make their own.  The first lecture will ask them to bring in a piece of ‘media’ that they find interesting.  For the most part these will be media products with particular purposes, hopefully by the end of the class you can compare this to the purposes of ‘art’.

“Show n’ Tell”

This lab is dedicated to discussing agency in images, and to show and talk about works that have made an impression on them via media.  It is an opportunity for students to pursue a discussion on the purpose of images, how representation creates meaning and whose agenda or ideology is being serviced.  Have them work in groups or each student present a work to the whole class and describe the work they brought in.  From here you can have a class or facilitate group discussions with the following prompt questions.

• Are the pieces of media brought in mostly positive or negative?
• Are there pertinent themes?
• Are they mostly serious or are some funny? 
• What were the intentions behind why the media was made and circulated?  (Advertising to sell you something, PR for someone’s image, competition-winning a game, information/news, etc)
• How does the agency/intention change the way we can access the purpose of what the media is saying?
• Did any examples bring out anything new that may have been unintentional?
• Are there any depictions that defy conventions?
• Does certain media examples remind you of something or have specific references?
• On the whole, did the sample media brought in give an adequate and full understanding of our world?  If not, what was it skewed to depicting?  (For example, are women mostly depicted to be looked at and men in powerful positions, in gaming is it mostly men that are the protagonist/player, is much media violent?… etc) Are they inclusive?
• Do the sample media allow for complication and complexity or do they reduce meaning to stereotyped or already accepted conventions? 
• Are any pieces of media testing or pushing conventional representational systems?  Are any ‘revolutionary’?
• What might be missing, overlooked, purposely ignored or deleted, taken for granted, or broken down to normalized/general/common conventions? 
• How does the media brought in create a ‘representation’ of a topic?  
• How does this then lead to ‘meaning’?
• This is a Visual Art class, are any of the media brought in artistic works?  
• What do you think the difference is between media and art?
• What does this class want? (art or media – just look at the course code, it is a Visual Art class!)

Feel free to add your own questions, especially in conversation with what the students bring in!

Homework Reminders

• 1/2 Module 2 with accompanying quizzes are due January 28, remind them to keep on track!
• Trickery Project will be assigned, tell them to come to the next class with some ideas next week.
• You might want to have students sign up for individual meetings for next week if you like.