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place of the body in education.
Education is increasingly technological in interaction with materials.
By this I mean that, because of costs, education on computers is increasingly
replacing education with real materials.
For example, in biology, it is cheaper and, frankly, safer to review a
frog’s anatomy on a computer screen than it is to provide each student
with a frog to dissect.
This increased dependence on technology, coupled with the continuing emphasis
on learning from the combination of books and lectures removes the students
from an encounter with real materials and the feeling that is associated
with real materials.
In discussing this with people, I have been told that students are beginning
to look for increased opportunities to engage in the world as the world
exists for itself, by which I mean a world not displayed on a computer
screen, in a book or in the sanitized versions with which many of encounters
we have with the world are framed.
Nearby our office, at Venice High School, the students have prepared a
garden where they grow vegetables and flowers. At Connecticut
College, where my youngest son teaches, a dormitory has created a
garden to grow organic vegetables for the campus cafeteria. These are
examples of students seeking opportunities to encounter the world, as
it exists for itself.
Increasingly, in digital art education, students are also seeking opportunities
to engage with real materials.
As an example of this: Bonnie Barrett teachers graphic design at Cerritos
College in Southern California; Desktop Publishing, Computer Illustration
and Lettering.
The students in these classes are most responsive to lettering, lettering
by hand with brushes and lettering pens. Her interpretation from her interaction
with these students has been that they are responding to the opportunity
to use their hands and their bodies in manufacturing letters on paper
directly.
Please understand that these are students preparing to a career in graphic
design, students for whom the computer is the center of their training
and their ambitions and the tool for their self-expression.
The aspects of engaging the world through materials and the action of
their bodies in this engagement seems to be a somewhat new experience
for these young students. As we rush forward in preparing students for
a life of work in the digital virtual world of computer technology, without
undervaluing the ways computers can engage and involve students in art.
I believe that the world is finally finding a balance between the original
novelty of the computer as a means of expression and, for young people,
the discovery of the hand tools of art and their relationship to the computer.
The novelty of the way a brush is handled in relation to the brush tool
in computer illustration software can be an epiphany to a student unfamiliar
with the roots of design and art. The things should be taught together
and by teaching them together the student can be grounded in art fundamentals
and their antecedents in the history of art.
Young people are hungry for an opportunity to create with their bodies
and hands. Computers are wonderful as tools and technology can and does
interest student however, it seems, that we are on the verge of finding
a new balance with students discovering an equal interest in using traditional
tools. The computer is not a novelty for a young person, it is simply
part of the background of their lives as is the automobile, cordless phone,
television, air travel and whatever other technological advance is or
will be.
Read our September essay: The
Ways Artists Support Themselves
Read our August essay: Why students should copy
the great works
Read our July essay: Hidden Clues in Works of
Art
Read our June essay: The Mathematics of Art
Read our May essay: The Importance of School
Art Competitions
Read our January essay : Art History
and the Internet
Read our March essay: Ink Jet Printers
and the Color Wheel:
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