February 13-March3  “Mid-Term Critiques”

Outcomes

• Enact a critical outlook as visual readers, recognizing how meaning is cultivated and perpetuated through representation.
• Produce ethical, informed, multi-dimensional, work that is situated in contemporary concerns.
• Activate the process of making, as a way of knowing.

Lectures

The next two lectures introduce the idea of ‘appropriation’ to the students.  I will activate responses for a debate map that you can use during the March 5-10 classes if a class trip is not possible.

Debate Map

• Ending on a work by Sherrie Levine, I will ask students to write down on index paper one detailed reason why the work can be considered theft, and one reason why the work can be considered art.
• Continuing the debate of the piece, I will distribute a series of responses on index cards to groups in the lab.
• Students will assemble a “debate map” with the different answers ordered in various ways that evolves the narrative and divide between “Art” and “Theft” (and everything in-between or even both sides!) towards the creation of a skeleton of reasoning.  If they wish to add in more labels, such as “both” or “neither” or anything else, they can.
• On blank index cards, have them fill in areas or add points that would complete the map that seem to be missing, if they haven’t already done so.
• By the end, we will go over some of the answers which ultimately give evidence of our values and how they reside in art-making. You may want to ask them to place themselves on an area on the map, or to pick up a card that most represents how they feel about the work.
• In particular, in our contemporary day is skill the main indicator of an a work of art work or artist?  Does an artist sometimes have to take a wrong step (stealing) in the right direction (questioning authorship and expertise/authority) in order to bring out larger issues?  How does a retelling or appropriation use the initial agency of the work in its new meaning?  (This question is vital as for the most part the appropriation projects become music video’s or trailers and lack any uncovering of how the initial footage projected particular ideologies, and how appropriation can expose these and break them down, rather than perpetuate them).  You may also want to question if the theft makes them angry, could that affect not be considered art?  If they show that they prefer the answer “there was no point” question if there really wasn’t any idea or if they just didn’t like the idea, or if they are somewhat focused on originality you can question if the gesture of re-authoring the work was not original? etc…

For further information on a debate map, please see Derek Bruff’s Agile Learning Blog

Assign:  Final (Appropriation) Project due March 26 – 31

Labs

You will have 10 critiques each day over the next two classes. Please record critique participation as the students are graded for their contributions.  Remind them that it is not the quantity of things they say, but the quality or thoughtfulness to their fellow peers.  Missing a critique day will result in a zero for that day, no exceptions.  (Academic advising is recommended for those with extenuating circumstances)

There are many ways to run critiques.  It is up to you how you wish to do them but there will be a 4 step approach practiced in the peer review training lecture, and posted to Canvas lecture notes (& handout) that will set them up for the process that they can refer to.

Some guidance:

• Have them open up their projects as soon as they get into class.
• Take the time to describe your critique methods at the beginning so they know what they are going to be doing.
• You can either have the class move around as a group, (can be crowded but also a community oriented feel) to the computers with the work on them, or you can display them on the projector using the side panel to display their computer.  Remember, not all computers work with the projector connection, make sure students are on computers that do work.
• You can critique as an entire class (approx 10 minutes each) and talk about each project
  or
• You can set them up in smaller groups to critique other people’s work for about 5 minutes each. Then gather the class together as a group and have 7-minute critiques each, with the people assigned to the work at the beginning starting the critique for the works they looked at.  The method avoids the 3 minutes of silence that may happen when you just blindly go from work to work!
  or
• I had a past TA who would put pieces of paper next to every computer, and each student had to view each work and write something down about it. This surely helps you record participation marks, but does not really help to engage in a conversation or help guide them in strategies to look at art.  But you can think of this as a way to strategize any problematic classes, or as a supplement to a group critique before or afterwards.
• You can have the artist talk about the work at the start, (which can tend to make the group ‘gullible’ to their voiced intention) or you can have ‘silent artist’ critiques where the artist just listens (and perhaps takes notes) to the reception, leaving a minute or two at the end for artists to describe things that the class may have missed.
• Try and keep critical and fair, but also remember that they are vulnerable and sensitive as this might be the first work they’ve ever had work critiqued!  Remember how hard that was?  Also use this is a learning experience, sometimes what can be learned from one work could be an example for everyone.
• Remind students that we grade their work regardless of what their peer’s say in the class critique, as they are learning how to see work, we are professionals and know how to see the nuances of what they wanted to do, where they did it, where they got distracted, etc…

Homework Reminders

• Module 4 due March 4, 11:59pm
  

February 27 – March 2  “Trickery Draft Workshop”

Outcomes

• Activate the process of making, as a way of knowing.
• Technically execute a work of digital art, and apply formal decisions that communicate ideas visually.
• Produce ethical, informed, multi-dimensional, work that is situated in contemporary concerns.

Lecture

Activity:  Critiquing work
I will have sample projects for the students to critique, and will be holding a lecture-wide critique on the work, in order to help them see how a work is ‘read’ and what they will be going through in critiques, and how to go through the actions of critique.  During the lecture, we should ‘travel’ around the room to help the students with their critique.

Lab

— break —

Peer Conversations on Drafts of Trickery (45 minutes)

Divide students into groups (probably aligned to the number of monitors in the room, no more than 5 in a group or else it gets too big). Have students show drafts of their work and take turns giving and getting feedback on one another’s work.  Some possible questions for them to consider, or at the end of the class you can have them nominate work from the group that they wish to share with the entire class that might respond to these suggested questions:

• Is this work to be taken seriously or as a joke?  What does this mean to the subject matter and how an audience receives it?
• Did any work bring out anything that may have been unintentional?  How did the artist respond to it?  Might the artist make changes because of this -or not?
• Are there any works that defy expectation?  Something you have never seen before that is a unique and original approach?
• Does it remind you of something or have specific references?  How do these references inform the work?
• Does the work give a full and complex understanding of  the subject? Is the idea sophisticated?  Do the works negotiate the complication or do they reduce it to shallow conventions? 
• Are there any images that do well to test conventions of representational systems? 
• What thoughts or ideas might be missing, overlooked, purposely ignored or deleted, taken for granted, or broken down to normalized/general/common conventions? 
• Which work complicated the idea of ‘truth’ and used the behaviours of looking and trusting as a part of the act of manipulation?
• Did any of the works use the medium specificity of the computer and photoshop to bring attention to the medium as being the message?
  (For example, I once had a student ‘clean’ their room using photoshop, so it looked like a neat and tidy room, but there were small evidences that the cleanliness was all a manipulation, so they used their performance of making the image and the tool of photoshop as part of the subject matter of their cluttered being)

Feel free to add your own questions, especially in conversation with what the students bring in!  Have students discuss the following prompts as a large group or in smaller groups, record participation as a part of their lab grade.  If a student does not bring in their draft then there will be deductions, however not as severely as if they did not come at all.

**Please note, this is the first time students are expected to write about their peers work before this class, you can also have them review their online peer critique feedback in class and work through what they should do with that feedback with you or their peers.

Further Resources

Some media literacy sites that might help:

• Seeing is Believing
• Body Image – Photo Manipulation
• Retouching Reality
• The Camera Always Lies
• Direct Effect

If the students are up for a challenge, higher learning levels would have them discuss how the works function in the world. Have them dissect how the images are working to relay meaning and a bigger picture of what this meaning suggests to ideologies that occur in representation.  To do this, the following activity is useful. You can give students “scales” or “bridges”  of binaries to rate the effect of the images and discuss why they might read that way.  I’ve provided some scale ideas here, but please feel free to add more of your own in class or as a post/comment below.  Everyone will have binaries to share as we all think of things in very different ways, and our students might also inspire new scales in their generalizations or conventions.  Do take some time to talk about the benefits/challenges of each side, or how they may limit space for an audience, why this is good or bad for each particular case on each particular end.

Trite or Cliché ————- Authentic/Particular
Scared ————————————– Brave
Subjective —————————- Objective
Representational ————–—– Abstract
Didactic ———————-—— Ambiguous
Personal ————————-—- Universal
Cynical ———————————–Idealistic
Break Down (Deconstruct) — Build Up (Construct)
Apolitical ——————————- Political
Culture ———————–———— Nature
Violent ———————————– Passive
Autobiographical ——————-Detached
Poetry ————————————-Thought
Topical/Timely ———————– Timeless
Retinal ————————-——— Cerebral
Conventional ————— Creative/Unique
Generous ———– Mean or Ungenerous
Ugly ——————————— Pleasurable
Transcend —————————-Actualize
Action —————————— Knowledge
Abstract ———————Representational
Spiritual ———————————Scientific

• Discuss if there were images that led to different ways of reading the images function in the world and why, and might want to talk about the place of the viewer in reading images, and what they bring, perhaps something about their background, gender, age, culture, etc… might have different references that see the images in a different way.  For ones that always led to the same interpretation, why did you think it worked out that way and what did that mean for the reception and codes of the image?  Where does that leave the viewer? (passive vs. active)
• Lead on to ideas of how images create meaning through messages that lead to powerful ideas, we absorb the ideas and internalize them as images speak to a very innate part of us. Perhaps this is manipulative, to direct our desires to purchase produces or to believe certain things? Images can create codes that we then believe to be true, how does the creation of representations influence certain ideas as the norm, and others as not the norm?  As well, if it keeps coming up you might want to dissect what beauty means and to who, to what effect, is it surface or depth, and why beauty might actually be manipulative. Have your students practice being critical viewers.

Homework Reminders

• All projects are due next week, in-class critiques start on February 13 and go until February 25 (10 critiques a class for 2 weeks)
• Reading week is in between the critiques.  Their projects should be done so they can have a little fun and relaxation, but remind them about the next set of technical tutorials (Module 4) due on March 4.

January 23-27 “Medium Specificity”

Outcomes

• Identify the characteristics of medium towards the interpretation of an image, in order to make informed material choices for their own work.
• Enact a critical outlook as visual readers, recognizing how meaning is cultivated and perpetuated through representation.

Lecture 

This lecture will focus on properties/medium specificity and innate characteristics of photography, and delve into its implication on how medium can influence how we read an image.  An overview of art history featuring photography to show the evolution of how one understands document, indexical, objectivity and ‘truth’.

Lab

Please use this lab to exercise concept models for photographic series projects.  For example, have them write out a formula and then pass it on to another person, does the other person have enough direction to execute the project themselves?

You may also wish to look at select works that use a formula, have the students debate the effects of developing and carrying out the formula.

TECHNICAL GUIDANCE:  You may wish to show them how a project would look in Photoshop – different layers all in one document.

Reminders

• Module 2 is due January 28, end of day
• Critiques for the formula will take place during the February 6 labs
• If you wish to set up individual meetings for next week’s lab time, you might want to have them sign up for specific times this week.

January 16-21 “Practice-led Research”

Outcomes

• Activate the process of making, as a way of knowing.
• Identify personal inspirations and interests as a way to see their own artistic agency as self-reflective practitioners.
• Practice poiesis in an artwork that demonstrates sensitivity of intuition transferred to intellect.

Lecture

How the studio can expand knowledge will be introduced.  What does it mean to engage in practice-led research?  How do we do it?  How have others discovered through practice.

Assign Artist Poster due January 23, 27 & 28

Lab

“Artistic Research” Group Work & Meetings

This lab is dedicated to making groups of particular topics and for students to pursue a discussion.

• Have students display their topic lists, then arrange students into groups of like-minded or crossover disciplinary interests, be careful not to have more than 4-5 students per group (3-4 per group would be best).
• Have them talk about their topic/themes with each other and particular threads within the themes they are most interested in.
• Visit each group and after a bit of listening and discussion, recommend a few artists for students to research that will become the group connection via an artist.
• Please ensure recommended artists have been making work within the last 40-50 years and that their practices are somewhat contemporary.
• A list of disciplines and suggested artists is here, please feel free to add more!
• Students will have the week to research and pick an artist as a group (the entire group must pick one artist), and inform you of their choice by next week lab time (this can be during next week’s lab or in an email).
• Artists must be approved by the TA or Christine, they can ensure this by using one of your suggestions but if they find another artist they are more interested in then they need to get approval before pursuing.
• They will each make a poster on the same artist, but each poster will feature a different work.
• When you are not there they can also help each other evolve their topics and find details within them.  A suggested “question” game to further expand their questions is below.

“The Question Game” (optional)
Students can do this with the questions they brought in as a jumping off point.  Two or more participants pick a topic and generate as many questions as they can about it.  One person starts with an open-ended question, then the other person responds with another open-ended question, and the other responds with a related open-ended question.  This goes back and forth as long as they can continue without making a statement, or repeating a previous question.  For example, the game might begin by exploring questions related to an object I the room, such as a light bulb:

• Why is it important to have light?
• Where does light come from?
• What is the difference between light types?
• Can blind people see light?
• What is the opposite of light?
• Is darkness lack of light, or is it an entity of its own?

When the ‘players’ run out of question, it is then time to reflect.  What is the most interesting question that came up, and have them explain how they would learn more about it.  The most important thing about this exercise is not to stop the conversation with an answer.  As Mikhail Bakhtin once said “If an answer does not give rise to a new question from itself, then it falls out of the dialogue”. This exercise is to have students start to construct new ideas from their pre-conceived notions of how they ‘know’ topics, and go beyond information known.

Homework Reminders

• Module 2 with accompanying quizzes are due January 22, remind them to keep on track!
• Final selection of artist for posters needs to be finalized this week!
• Poster presentations will happen in lab on January 23-28

March 5-10 “Appropriation”

Lecture

On March 3, Penelope Umbrico will be giving a lecture starting at 5:30pm in the Life Building at UBC, this will replace the lecture

Lab

For this class some might take students out on a class trip to a gallery, or we the “Sherrie Levine” activity.  You can also go ahead to Week 9 plans, and use the class time to discuss ideas for the appropriation draft.

Gallery Trips booked this week are:

Monday March 9 (CAP)

• • 2:45-3:15pm – Audain Gallery, 149 West Hastings – Ale
  • 4:45-5:15pm – Audain Gallery, 149 West Hastings – Ale

and

Tuesday March 10

• • L14 – 11:45-12:15pm – Audain Gallery, 149 West Hastings
  • L16 – 1:45-2:15pm – Audain Gallery, 149 West Hastings

SHERRIE LEVINE ACTIVITY
Walker Evans’ work of Allie Mae Burroughs, an Alabama farmer tenants’ wife from 1936, depicts an ambiguous face of how one can depict poverty in the American south during the depression.  Levine, hijacks the discussion from how we can subject people to images and ideas, acting as representations, to ideas of authorship and what it means to make an image, representation, thus idea. Appropriation changes the way we dissect the image because we must bring in previous meaning to understand new meaning.  I ask students to give a reason why the image could be seen as ‘theft’ as well as come up with a way it could be seen as ‘art’.

Top Hat Screen Shot:

I will select approximately 50 of the most interesting and diverse student answers from the TopHat activity from the previous lecture, and print them out on index cards.  The cards are available in the lab classroom, where you can facilitate a debate of the various answers.

Appropriation Workshop Outcomes:

• Enact a critical outlook as visual readers, recognizing how meaning is cultivated and perpetuated through representation.
• Produce ethical, informed, multi-dimensional, work that is situated in contemporary concerns.
• Identify the characteristics of medium towards the interpretation of an image, in order to make informed material choices for their own work.

Debate Map Lesson Plan

(50 minutes)

• Please have students continue from the first appropriation in-lecture activity, continuing the debate of Sherrie Levine’s work.  You will be provided with a series of responses on index cards that comprise interesting answers from TopHat by students in the class, (these will be passed on from teacher to teacher as there is only one set!) there will be some empty index cards for students who wish to add more responses to the debate of Sherrie Levine’s Art vs. Theft.  Leave the students’ additions in the pack for the next class, and let us see where this goes.
• Have students arrange a “debate map” with the different answers either on the white board (with magnets) or flat on tables lined at the side of the room.  Have them order the various answers in a way that makes the divide between “Art” and “Theft” (and everything in-between or even both sides!) towards the creation of a skeleton of reasoning.  If they wish to add in more labels, such as “both” or “neither” or anything else that may come up

• On blank index cards, have them fill in areas or add points that would complete the map that seem to be missing, if they haven’t already done so.
• By the end, go over some of the answers which ultimately give evidence of our values and how they reside in art-making. You may want to ask them to place themselves on an area on the map, or to pick up a card that most represents how they feel about the work.
• In particular, in our contemporary day is skill the main indicator of a work of art work or artist?  Does an artist sometimes have to take a wrong step (stealing) in the right direction (questioning authorship and expertise/authority) in order to bring out larger issues?  How does a retelling or appropriation use the initial agency of the work in its new meaning?  (This question is vital as for the most part the appropriation projects become music video’s or trailers and lack any uncovering of how the initial footage projected particular ideologies, and how appropriation can expose these and break them down, rather than perpetuate them).  You may also want to question if the theft makes them angry, could that affect not be considered art?  If they show that they prefer the answer “there was no point” question if there really wasn’t any idea or if they just didn’t like the idea, or if they are somewhat focused on originality you can question if the gesture of re-authoring the work was not original? Etc
• For further information on a debate maps, visit Derek Bruff’s Agile Learning Blog

Sample of an ordered debate map of the various readings of Sherrie Levine’s work.

Homework Reminders

• The rest of the online Modules are due March 11, end of day.
• Appendix Video “Chronology” is a recommendation, there are no quiz questions as it is optional