C-Week 9 & 10

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March 12-14 “Final Project 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.

Lecture

March 12  GIF’s Assign GIF project
March 19  Beatriz Santiago Munoz Talk (Still TBD)

Lab

You will have 10 critiques each day over the next two classes/weeks.  Students should have been informed of their critique date weeks ago.

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’ projects.  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 lecture (as training for peer review) and is posted in Canvas for them to review.

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 in groups, (can be crowded but also a community oriented feel) to the computers with the work on them, or you can display them on one monitor or projector and gather as a class, or you can do a combination of both.
  • 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 of their critique) 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 a critical but fair tone, also remember that they are vulnerable and sensitive as this might be the first work they’ve ever had work critiqued!  Remember how difficult those moments were?  Remember this is amoung their first experiences of critiquing, so do be aware of how vulnerable students are at this point, the thick skin is not yet developed!  This is a learning experience, sometimes what can be learned from one work could be an example for everyone, so pick your battles in which larger lessons you feel would be good to bring up for the entire class to learn from.
  • 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. A positive peer critique, or negative one, does not reflect a potential grade what-so-ever!  However, a quiet critique is not a good sign for everyone’s critique grade, and overall sense of respect and community the course wants to promote.

Feel free to review the critique prompt and rubric here.

Reminders

  • Module 6:  GIF Animations is due March 25, end of day
  • Gallery trips next week to Western Front!
  • GIF due & Critique April 2-4 labs
  • Online Engaged Learning Reflection due April 9, end of day

C-Week 8

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March 5-7 “Appropriation Review”

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.

Lecture

Appropriation Critique – As with the midterm, I will use this class to conduct a training critique for the students preparing them for Appropriation critiques online and in class next week.

Lab

Artist Workshop (45 minutes)

Please come up with ways to discuss appropriated moving artworks with your class.  You can have them dissect work from lecture or links below, or other ways you can uncover this idea towards helping them think about appropriation in a more critical way.  What ideologies and meanings do certain footage/artifacts carry?  How have artists revealed these ideologies and made us question it?  Please feel free to add art work suggestions in the post reply box!

Example Video Works:

Take a break

Peer Review (45 minutes)

As in Week 4, have the students look at one another’s works and give feedback.

Homework Reminders

  • Compair Critiques due March 8, end of day – no extensions!
  • Final Projects are due next week and the week after for critiques.

C-Week 7

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February 26-28 “Appropriation Consults”

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.
  • Practice poesis in an artwork that demonstrates sensitivity of intuition transferred to intellect.
  • Identify the characteristics of medium towards the interpretation of an image, in order to make informed material choices for their own work.

Lecture

Appropriation Continued

Lab

As with the mid-term, you may hold personal meeting times this week to discuss project ideas, etc….  You can also extend this into group discussion work/feedback. Individual Meetings, you may want to have students sign up next week’s individual meetings so that they come only for their scheduled time, and avoids people waiting around restlessly. You can schedule this about 6-7 minutes apart depending on how large your class is.  Remind them hey can also use the computers during class time next week to complete their projects.  The following advice is courtesy of former Teaching Assistant, Stephen Wichuk.

Tactics for Appropriation Project
For the Appropriation project, you must do two things.  You must choose and collect interesting and fertile source material but you must also develop a formal and conceptual strategy for using this media. Initial project ideas may blossom either from existing media or from a conceptual strategy.  More likely, it will involve a back and forth process.

Starting with Interesting Footage:

  • You may be drawn to specific clip or set of clips because they seem conceptually or formally very interesting even though you don’t immediately know what to do with them. In this case, it will be fruitful to bring the clips into FCPX and then play around with them.  Spend time with the clips – study them at different speeds, watch them without the sounds. Take note of as many formal elements as you can. What elements repeat, which differ? What is the smallest modification you can make to the footage that will change its meaning the most?
  • If you get stuck, talk to your teacher(s) we can try to figure out what drew you to the initial media. There is probably a great idea hidden in there, but perhaps you need to find different, but related source material.

Starting with a Conceptual or Formal Framework:

Conversely, you may start with a precise formal or conceptual framework for collecting clips. This means you have a clear, conceptual search parameter but have not yet seen any or all of the footage that satisfies the criteria.

  • Search and Re-search
    Research means creating conceptual filters that will help you observe, compare and judge media. However, it can also be a playful process wherein you allow yourself to drift from your original intent and embrace the accidental and unexpected. In either case, you have to search, refine your search, and search again!  Think about how your own research parameters are affected by the ready-made search engines (Google, YouTube). Remember – no archive is neutral.  Every archive tells us something about the history and desires of its archivists.The excess or rarity of certain footage can raise or lower the stakes of your project. Why are there so many clips? Why so few? What does this tell us about the subject? Have other people appropriated the footage already? If so, how has this been done, and how is your own attempt an original gesture?  If you are uninspired by the results of your conceptual framework (too few results, results are too formally different, too obvious) try shifting it slightly.
    For example, I’m generally interested in food storage practices (Tupperware, Ziploc etc.). A first conceptual framework might look for “clips of people demonstrating their homemade vacuum sealing devices“. This gives me a wealth of interesting DIY inventions I could not have imagined, but the styles of the videos are so formally different that no clear strategy for combining them is apparent.
    Therefore, I might decide to shift my conceptual framework to ‘clips of people vacuum sealing objects’ – which simples the collection formally. Now all clips are shorter and show the action of something being vacuum packed. On the other hand I have broadened the field in terms of original intentions. I may now find examples in advertisements, DIY instructional videos, but have also discovered the bizarre YouTube phenomena of people vacuum packing people with trash bags.

Tasks of the Collector: Trimming, Refining, Discarding
Not everything you find should make its way into your project. Collect many clips, but allow yourself to discard all but the most useful, the formally appropriate and highest quality.  With every clip you decide to use, think about what is the most essential moment and trim away the rest.

Modifications & Organizing Strategies
These are *some* general strategies – they are all potentially good or bad, depending on how appropriately and critically you apply them to your subject.

  • Time Reversal:
    Possible Uses: Turn back history, trick the viewer or create a sense of the uncanny.
    Example: Imagine (Liselot van der Heijden)
    Dangers: Can be cheesy and dramatic.
  • Slow Motion:
    Possible Uses: Expose the mechanics of the image and otherwise unnoticeable elements of movement, create a space for contemplation of the subject.
    Example: 24hr Psycho (1993) Douglas Gordon
    Dangers: Can be cheesy and dramatic.
  • Fast Motion & Fast Cuts:
    Possible Uses: Expose changes/movements that occur over long durations, represent excess of imagery, create a sense of the uncanny.
    Example: Various works by Ryan Trecartin
    Example: I’m not the Girl who Misses Much (1986) Pippilotti Rist
    Dangers: Can be goofy and end up sounding like the Chipmonks.
  • Extraction or Removal of Formal Element(s):
    Possible Uses: Disrupt the image entirely; subvert the narrative, focus attention on an element that normally would not be noticed.
    Example: Colors (2006) Cory Arcangel
    Dangers:     Potentially a lot of work.
  • Cropping, Trimming & Erasure of Parts of Image:
    Possible Uses: Disrupt the image entirely; subvert the narrative, shift attention on element that normally would not be noticed, such as the background.
    Example: Caryatid (2004) Paul Pfeiffer
    Dangers:     Potentially a lot of work.
  • Repetition of Single Clip
    Possible Uses:  Expose the mechanics of the image; create an affective, hypnotic or contemplative viewing experience that could loop. Image parameters may change with each repetition.
    Example: Ontics Antics Starring Laurel and Hardy: Bye, Molly (2005) Ken Jacobs
    Example (with successive modifications):     Variations on a Cellophane Wrapper (1970) David Rimmer
    Dangers:     Can be excruciating or boring, depending on what’s being repeated and for how long.
  • Spatial Juxtaposition:
    Possible Uses: Cause a resonance or dissonance in real time between two or more clips. Clips that were not intended to interact with each other start to have a ‘conversation’
    Example: Through a Looking Glass (1999) Douglas Gordon
    Dangers:     With a single channel work (i.e. one monitor or one projector), more clips mean smaller individual videos – make sure the clips are still legible enough to function.
  • Temporal Juxtaposition (Montage):
    Possible Uses: Create a conversation between two or more sets of clips. Produce a third meaning in the cut between one clip and another. Compare or contrast two moving image conventions to show how they are related or how they differ. Create false sync or false movements between unrelated clips to produce new a narrative.
    Example: TV Dinner (2003) Liz Nofziger
    Dangers:     Beware of the meaningless mash-up video!
  • Presentation of Formal Inventory (repetition of similar elements):
    Possible Uses: Collect and organize clips based on repeating formal elements. Create audio or visual rhythms.
    Example: John 3:16 (Paul Pfeiffer)
    Example:     This Transition will Never End (2012) Jeremy Shaw
    Dangers:     Uninteresting or ill-defined formal frameworks will lead to uninteresting inventories!
  • Presentation of Conceptual Inventory:
    Possible Uses: Collect and organize clips based on repeating conceptual elements that are not necessarily formally or compositionally similar (i.e. ‘people using the phone’ or ‘establishing shots from horror films’).
    Example: Telephones (1995) Christian Marclay
    Example    : The Meantimes (2002) Constant Dullart
    Dangers:     Uninteresting or ill-defined conceptual frameworks will lead to uninteresting inventories
  • Audio/Visual Juxtaposition:
    Possible Uses: Remove or replace audio in order to evacuate the clips original intent or alter the meaning.
    Dangers:     Don’t simply create a meaningless music video!
  • Filters, Effects & Image Processing:
    Possible Uses:  Modify the texture, color etc. of a clip so.
    Example:     Shiboogi (2012) Takeshi Murata
    Example:     Monster Movie (2005) Takeshi Murata
    Dangers:     Filters are easy and are usually superficial and meaningless! Keep in mind that Takeshi Murata writes the digital code for all of his psychedelic image compression tricks. His tools push the image loss that normally happens with online videos to a sublime and beautiful extreme! You should have a very good conceptual reason to use a filter, one that recognizes and plays off of their ready-made, gimmicky nature.

Homework Reminders

  • Upload (or provide link to) rough draft of final project to ComPAIR for peer critique by March 4 (end of day) and then critiques are due March 8 (end of day), once again no extensions.
  • Final Appropriation Projects are due in lab for critiques from March 12-21 in lab, the critique dates will have flipped, therefore if you were critiqued on the first day for the mid-term project, you will be critiqued on the final day for this project, and vice versa.
  • Remind students to bring in their draft next lab!

C-Week 5 & 6

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February 5-14 “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.  There will be an in-lecture activity that I will need help with to facilitate probably on February 5.

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 12-21

Labs

You will have 10 critiques each day over the next two classes.  Students should have been informed of their critique date weeks ago.

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 class October 16th (in lecture) and posted to Canvas lecture notes that will set them up for the process.

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 & Quiz Questions although not officially due this week, should be done this week to keep on track, due March 8, end of day
  • Next week is Reading week, have some fun!

C-Week 4

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January 29-31 “Digital Photography and Truth”

Outcomes

  • Technically execute a work of digital art, and apply formal decisions that communicate ideas visually.
  • Identify personal inspirations and interests as a way to see their own artistic agency as self-reflective practitioners.
  • 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.

Lecture

Activity:  Critiquing work  **TA’s please be sure to attend this lecture because I will be holding a class-wide workshop on critiquing.

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

Artist Workshop (45 minutes)

Please come up with ways to discuss issues of manipulation and trickery with your class.  You can have them dissect work from lecture or links below, or other ways you can uncover this idea towards helping them think about manipulation in a more critical way.  Can we trust an image?  You may want to ask how truth and manipulation might be used for issues of their disciplinary/overall interests.

Artist Ideas:

  • Hiraki Sawa
  • Chris Jordan
  • Janieta Eyre
  • Tian Taiquan
  • Jieming Hu

Take a 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). 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.

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 ——————————— Beautiful
Transcend —————————-Actualize
Action —————————— Knowledge
Disturbing ———————– Pleasurable
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.
  • Further Resources
    Some media literacy sites that might help:

Homework Reminders

  • Online peer critiques open after lecture, and stay open till 11:59pm on February 1, remind them that there are no extensions on ComPAIR and that students need their critiques back in a timely manner to be able to make improvements!
  • Projects are due for in-class critique February 5-14 (10 critiques a class for 2 weeks)