Today was technically the second day of teaching the inquiry based lesson to Mdme. Giraud Carrier's fifth grade class. Last week I presented on the topic of compare and contrast. This included a look at contrast as an element of art as well as juxtaposition as a postmodern/conceptual take or update on contrast. I was having a hard time finding really good examples of contemporary art that strongly compare and constrast. The two that I really like were One and Three Chairs by Joseph Kosuth and Neukom Vivarium by Mark Dion. I did show Banksy who uses great juxtaposition in his street art, but it doesn't show compare and contrast as much as I would hope. Generally, I think the students understood the idea.
I did really like the thoughts and discussion revolving around juxtaposition which is taking two radically different things to see what new meaning is made. I showed an example of a McDonald's billboard beneath a billboard about Diabetes. Combined, these two advertisements create a much different and deeper meaning than individually.
We also looked at a list of opposites. Before class, I was thinking about the opposites which are absolutes like Yes/No, Hot/Cold, or Close/Far. But then I started to consider the in-betweens like Maybe, or Warm, Halfway.
Today's class started with another presentation, but this time it was on inquiry specifically. We began with a discussion on the purpose of school and learning. I brought up ideas from Sugata Mitra about knowing being absolute through technology. This helped facilitate the discussion in more of the direction that I wanted to go. Students started to consider what was really valuable in learning. They counter argued with ideas about the need to read and write before being able to fully utilize the internet. Jorgen talked about being consumers vs. producers on the internet. We can't just be consuming the information of the internet or it will become stagnant and outdated. We, as humans, also need to produce new knowledge. This was a great lead in to the idea of students being able to create or construct their own learning, knowledge and meaning.
I showed my trailer from Aundrea's class to start off my presentation and the student's really liked it. They even applauded. It was great.
Then we started to unpack the word inquiry. My favorite definition of inquiry thus far is "extracting meaning from experience." It is so simple. Adding to the definition we also considered the steps of inquiry which start with a question or problem then gathering resources, researching, and experiment, then analyzing, processing, thinking, and then a conclusion and reflection.
We looked a t a few artists who use inquiry in their artmaking. We revisited Mark Dion and his Neukom Vivarium. I found a great clip of him saying that he doesn't care if people don't consider his work art or not. He is only concerned whether or not his work is engaging, intriguing, and promotes discussion. I love that as a framework not only for this project, but for my class in general.
The artworks we discussed were Hiroshi Sugimoto's theaters and seascapes, William Lamson's Hydrologies, and Ai Weiwei's Rememberings. I really like Ai Weiwei's project. When I was encouraging the students to not jump to what they want to make for their project, I referenced Ai Weiwei by asking if after he saw the news of the earthquake and the death of so many children did he decide he was going to make an artwork using backpacks? They of course said no and I think it made sense that he would research and think and gather first and then after finding the facts, consider what he could make to represent such a tragedy.
After this discussion, I released the students to start the brainstorming, idea generation stage of this project. Without using technology, I wanted them to think about two things they would want to compare and contrast (this vs that) and then from that comparison, to develop a question or questions or problem about that comparison. From my own work, I gave the example of Artificial Light vs Natural Light with the question of "How does artificial light effect me?"
The students set off like a flash with their ideas. I guess a class and a half of listening to me was boring enough to help them day dream about ideas.
One thinking breakthrough that I had which was really helpful was to ask students about the origin of their idea. That was so revealing! It really helped to get to the root of the problem.
Ella Bailey wanted to compare harsh vs soft voice. When asked where that came from, she talked about how her mother would use harsher tones to a neighborhood kids who kept requesting to play with her little brother. That made me think about the energies we give off in relation to emotion including like a teacher voice. I admitted that sometimes I use a teacher voice. I encouraged Ella to research the anatomy of emotions.
Annabelle Snow wanted to compare light vs dark generally. Digging deeper, She revealed that this idea came from drawings she was doing of dark and light dresses and how that effected the mood of her drawings.
Christopher Robison wants to explore chemical vs. Mechanical which shifted into Soul vs system or Spirit vs Body.
Annalise Drewes started with Greed and its opposite. With her, we determined the opposite would be service or selflessness bringing in the comparison of selfishness and selflessness. He question was quite intriguing. It was from a Human Development lens asking if those who grow up in service oriented households are more likely to be selfless and vice versa.
Hudson Bunker wanted to explore inside vs. outside. At first he started with fast vs slow in regards to inside and outside and running. I was a big confused with running inside vs. outside so I encouraged hime to just stick to inside vs. outside and see what directions he could go. This led him to think about creativity in regards to being inside or outside.
Max Lehman was thinking of comparing perfect vs flawed. This made me think of Glitch Art, which I showed him, which has a philosophy of finding beauty in the imperfect or broken. I tried to generalize that by having him consider thinking about viewing the imperfect as interesting, beautiful and awesome.
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