When artists work in a studio, a useful part of the environment is the ability to give peer critique, suggestions and even evaluations of how a work is functioning. In lieu of a physical studio, this component of the course and project aim to create a virtual studio that enables the same type of communication.
Part 1: Upload your Project to ComPAIR
To start the online peer review process, please upload a rough or complete draft of your work, and please provide a working title for the work. As it is a visual artwork, it should communicate with the viewer visually so do not add an explanation, however you should add notes of what sources you are appropriating. If the work is unfinished, you may add a description of what you still have left to do. But remember, do not add an explanation, your project should explain itself visually! At this point you should have your idea and sources found, and brought some into Premiere for rough editing to work out formal decisions in how you will execute. A rough MP4 file of your project can be uploaded to ComPAIR for your peers to see and critique at a maximum of 250 MB. Please create a compressed version and reduce the file size to upload it. Another option, if it is too large, is to upload the video on a free video platform, such as vimeo, google drive or youtube, and paste the link into the text box in Connect. If you password protect the video, remember to give the password!
Part II: Online Critiques
You are then asked to compare student projects and give thoughtful feedback. The online critiques will have NO BEARING on your grades, and are a tool to help you grow with the project and generously create a sense of community, not count as peer grading or competitive in any way. This is about making people better and reach their potential in the project. You are graded on how generous you can be to another student in improving their work. A review of the process is as follows:
- The peer review is set up to do comparisons (2 projects) of peer work, three times.
- Therefore, you are to complete three sets of comparisons, viewing 6 works, writing 6 feedback boxes of approx 200 considered words each (total of 1200 words).
- For each comparison pair, you have three specific questions to answer. They are provided on the comparison form.
- After completing the three question comparison, you are able to give feedback to each student you have compared using the comparison rationale as a way to foster feedback.
ComPAIR Questions
1. Which project demonstrated better purpose and precision in presentation, editing, and formal delivery decisions?
Specific to time-based works, you can think of:
- Footage framing choices (letterboxes, uneven proportions, etc)
- Placement – form, scale, balance, etc…
- Composition of scenes individually
or as multi-channel displays (for projects that play multiple footage in the same screen) - Timing, build up, duration
- Pacing & rhythm
- Use of repetition or lack of
- Framed edit points (in and out)
- Duration, looping or ending, a scene or compilation, etc…
- Deconstruction of narrative elements
- How scenes interact
- Colour and density balance
- Role of sound, how it is aligned
- And other areas by which stylistic editing and visual choices are rendered
2. Which work better utilized a conceptual framework that revealed or uncovered hidden meanings?
This is the category that deals with meaning. Is the work critical?
- What is the main idea or purpose of the piece?
- What is foregrounded? What associations does the work evoke?
- How do display or editing choices influence how we see the footage or artifact?
- Is there anything in the work that references outside of itself? Is it common knowledge, or is the reference provided somehow in the work?
- Does it change how you approach or interpret meaning?
- How does the title further play with the arrangement and information?
- Are pertinent symbols or themes researched and handled with intellectual understanding?
- What is at stake? If the piece changes how we understand something –how does that challenge how we know?
You should compare how the appropriated footage is understood in its initial context, and how it has changed viewpoints in the new rendering, this should reveal new insight to the meaning -should bring about a change in the audience’s reception of the footage.
3. Which project did better to meet (or even surpass) the challenges of the project goals of how one can use appropriation to change insight on an artifacts meaning?
Project Goals particular to Appropriation
- Borrows from the world around us, and uses particular footage that reflects cultural codes we need to dissect in order to add layers of complexity to viewing
- Evidence of knowledge and further research into background information and status of footage used in the project and ideologies it carries
- Spent time with borrowed footage, finding just the right points to pursue a poignant unravelling
- Recognize the nuanced and complex aspects of appropriating footage, using the act in a respectful yet critical way
- Using authorship in a contemporary understanding of current issues and deliberations
- Engages with time-based/moving image with attention and conviction
- Creatively problem solves challenges of critical and complex negotiations of how meaning translates
- Reveals new aspects or calls our attention to how an audience understands certain established meanings in a way that we can’t help but ‘feel’ and ‘reflect’ on our positioning, leaves space for a viewer to contemplate
Rubric
(This part of the online peer review is graded automatically by the Canvas/ComPAIR system)
| Criteria | Total: | 5% | |
| Submission | Successfully Uploaded (1) | Not Uploaded (0) | 1.3% |
| Comparison Questions | Complete (1) | Incomplete (0) | .66% |
| Feedback | (in other description) | 3% |
Feedback
This grade accounts for the online peer critique written feedback. This feedback box is vital! Please deliver generous and thoughtful constructive feedback so that the student may improve or understand where things may have gotten distracted. The feedback box answer will be delivered to the student who has created the work, please be tactful and appropriate in your answers. Comments are meant to be constructive and helpful for the student who receives it; understand that text can come across sternly, and you are to be mindful in how it reads. All judgements are to be backed up by hard proof found in the work.
- In the feedback box, write one succinct paragraph (minimum 200 words) for each work advising them of how the goals of appropriation as a critical art form was achieved, or how it could be pushed further.
- Take the time to describe how you analyzed and interpreted the work.
- Did the artwork meet the criteria and communicate a purposeful appropriation?
- Did all formal and process decisions demonstrate appropriation?
- Are any execution decisions arbitrary or distracting to the greater meaning?
- Was there a personal investment, originality and creativity in approaching the subject matter?
- And finally, if there are areas of the project that could have been improved you should relay this, you may want to add suggestions/examples on how they could do this.
Read Feedback & Make Improvements
Allow the lessons of viewing the other work inform your self-evaluation. After looking at other work, think of what you might change or reconsider about your own work.You will receive feedback from your colleagues that should help you to improve your work as well. You are allowed to change it as much as you want from the input you received, and in some cases, you may wish to start again, (as long as you learned from your previous iteration of the project what you wish to improve). Please read your feedback to see where there might be disjoints in how your project is functioning to a viewer. From here, you can adjust. You are allowed to make changes on your project after this peer review, that is actually the point! Please reflect on this process in your project reflection.
Feedback Rubric
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