One of the things that I find difficult about teaching
project based courses is that I constantly second guess the assignments. I find
that I really don’t do this if I am lecturing or even leading a discussion on
articles or plays. But, by asking open ended questions I really need to be prepared
for what ever answers come out. So – generally – the night before the projects
are due I lay awake and think – was this an appropriate question? What will the
students get out of answering it? How will I keep them occupied and thinking
about the course material for the full class period? Will we have enough time
to look at and discuss all the projects? But more and more I am starting to
trust the process. I have yet to be disappointed with the outcome – and this is
over four classes and probably somewhere in the vicinity of 20 projects. What
attracts me to these kinds of questions for material like generative art,
postmodernism, aesthetics of dissonance, and chaos theory is that the subjects
are about ideas – not facts, not skill, not mastery, but ideas.
So – for this project students were asked to place two or
more pieces (any medium) in proximity so that the pieces comment on each other.
The point of the project is to begin to engage in a conversation about fragments,
quotations, juxtaposition, reappropriation, disharmony. Its hard to get that
all in in one project, but it raises certain questions that can be addressed
later in the term.
As I have mentioned a number of times in class – what is
important about these projects is not only that the student engage in the
process of answering the question, but that they are able to see about 19 other
answers to the same question. As expected – some projects seemed simple – a
basic juxtaposition between objects – but when we began to tease out some of
the implications of this juxtaposition even the simplest projects seem far more
complex. I would love to teach a class of about 10 – then we would have enough
time to dive into the process behind each project. With 20 that is just not
possible. I have no idea how I managed 30 last year. The e-portfolio is a
potential solution to this, but that really depends on the student.
What I love about assignments like this is that it is often
difficult to tell what is intended as a project and what is simply a pile of
things just strewn about the room. It does raise the issue of intent as well as
frame of mind. There were a number of pieces where I simply couldn’t tell if
they were student projects or not. It forced me to reevaluate what it was I was
looking at. In a very phenomenological way it caused me to bracket my
assumptions until I could figure out one way or the other. At times I really
couldn’t. It will be interesting to review the student posts on their
e-portfolios and see if I missed anything or over interpreted anything.
Disclaimer: My intent with this blog is not to name names,
but some projects I really do need to talk about because they sparked an
interesting conversation or thought process. It doesn’t mean I value other
projects less, it is just these specific projects sparked something.
One of the projects in the first section caught my eye
primarily because of the student’s reticence to show it to the class. The
juxtaposition of Obama’s speech post Newtown shootings with a laugh track. Yes
– it sounds jarring – and it was – but not necessarily for the reasons I
initially thought. Created between these two pieces was a tremendous amount of tension.
It also opened up a space of play in which the viewer is left to decipher the
meaning. Talking with the class it was clear that reactions were widely varied.
There was a similar reaction to the presentation of a swastika as a unified,
linear, beautiful object for project 1. It clearly points out the power of
images like this, but also of the range of possible meanings once you get past
the initial reaction.
The second section yielded an interesting discussion about a
mask that was propped up by an iphone. The student initially claimed that the
phone was not part of the piece – and yet – for most of the viewers – it
clearly was. This was a great space to begin to explore the idea of context as
well as indeterminacy. We make choices everyday and often do not think about
the implications of those choices or possible readings of them. Most of my arts
training has been to close down those possibilities by making specific choices.
But, even then there is a flexibility of meaning. This also opened a space to
begin to discuss the notion of “text” in a postmodern way. Students discussed
“reading” these objects, scanning them, interacting with them, searching for
meaning or meanings. Many of the projects were as dense as a novel.
Next – a free day to decompress from the projects and review
them. I have a list of questions
to pose. We will see where it takes us.
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