February 24, 2004
Grey Tuesday
I weigh in on the collective artist protest Grey Tuesday and discuss copyright and art and appropration a bit at my blog caught in the web today. Essentially, why is "rock music" considered a lesssor art not worthy of the fair use protections of visual art or classical music? I think its simply prejudice. Download the tracks of The Grey Album at my site (these tracks will only be up for 24 hours).
Posted by Eleanor Ramsay at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)
October 27, 2003
Bye, Bye Slides??
From Monday's Boston Globe. Eastman Kodak has said that they will cease making slide projectors in July 2004. New purchases of slide projectors has dropped dramatically as more people use videotape, CD-Roms or the Internet to present slide shows of visual material.
As more classrooms are equipped with video projectors the audience for new purchases of projectors has dropped. Apparently, few consumers bore their neighbors with slide shows of their vacations anymore either, according to sales figures quoted in the Globe story. While digital scanning and presentations can be effective and may, ultimately, be easier to run, at what cost? Will we lose our appreciation of the crisp color and reproductive quality of slides as we become accustomed to the inferior, but passable, quality of jpegs?
A Projector Slides off Into the Sunset
Posted by Eleanor Ramsay at 12:35 PM | Comments (1)
September 30, 2003
Art, Education and New Media
There are many ways to reform education with technology. Artists and art educators should take a central role in the development of visual and new media literacy and in expanding knowledge and discourse on new media form and aesthetics.
The Art, Education and New Media research group maintains the website MassArtEd.org as a development resource for students and researchers associated with the program. Contact Eleanor Ramsay for more information about using MassArtEd.org for your research projects.
Posted by Eleanor Ramsay at 01:17 PM | Comments (1)
April 23, 2003
AE-Content Survey Results
Massachusetts College of Art, in partnership with Boston Public Schools, is preparing an exciting summer program for BPS art teachers: Beyond Making and Taking: Placing Content at the Center of Teaching and Learning in the Visual Arts. This free program will consist of two week-long summer institutes held at MassArt, for which PDPs and graduate credit will be available, followed by a one-day professional development conference and the launch of Art Matters, the AE-Content network.
To better find out teachers needs and interests, Massart recently sent every BPS art teacher a survey. The results are in.
The Survey and results are posted at the wiki.
Posted by Eleanor Ramsay at 08:59 PM | Comments (0)
March 16, 2003
Autonomy and Mass Media
How does an artist maintain creative autonomy while navigating the mass of mass media?
Media literacy involves technical, cultural and creative intervention. Navigating pop culture and understanding what globalization means to individual voice is part of the territory of working creatively in new media. Sustaining an artistic voice demands deep attention to the shifts in society and what technological realms they bring about. Teachers must be prepared to deal with the media-related work that students bring to them. This goes beyond the technical and into meaning, intention and the humanness of making. Teachers should learn how to use this medium as a fluid -- to embrace methods that continue to emerge and reshape the discipline. A new media teacher should also be a practitioner of new art forms such as multimedia for non-liner storytelling; robotics for interactive installations; and the Internet for virtual art. Making their own art will not only provide ideas for their classrooms but also sustain their own creativity.
I am currently revisiting the writing of Guy Debord and the Situationists movement of the early 1950s. I also perceive our media society as a complex network of control mechanisms, which can lead to the distribution of cultural misinformation. The concepts of others such as Marshall McLuhan and Dominic Strinati can translate "mass" to "new" media with remarkable ease. In the last 5 years, discourse on new media literacy has become more available and the work of people such as Kathleen Tyner and Sandy Stone inspire me for their feminist perspective on creative literacy in a digital world. All of these theorists discuss how access to knowledge is becoming more difficult to find due to the ways that new media is accessed and content is distributed. This irony merits attention from anyone using the technological infrastructure we live within, but in particular, visual artists. Information is pushed more in visual form than ever before yet the general population is woefully unprepared to decipher that they are looking at. Formalizing this dialogue through teaching art has rendered a new, rich and creative domain for educators and one that offers an innovative alternative to the current media literacy dialogue.
Is there a visual way in which we can invite art educators to use this on-line discussion? Can our threads be visual rather than text based?
Art educators evaluate curriculum though the rubric of goals, methods, and assessment. How can a website assist with these processes? Is there a rubric for new media educators?
Would it be helpful to focus on the discussion of creating creative autonomy with mass media?
Posted by jen hall at 02:44 PM | Comments (7)
March 10, 2003
technology and the art teacher
As an Art teacher, how can a virtual community such as AE-Content supplement your work? How does technology currently fit in to your art or teaching?
Posted by Eleanor Ramsay at 04:30 PM | Comments (2)
