2012-04-19T11:47:52-04:00 lifetype-1.2.10_r6971 http://www.rjsullivan.com/blog/rss.php?blogId=10992&profile=atom Copyright (c) tag:blogs.artspan.com,2012-04-19:33389 2012-04-19T11:47:52-04:00

Ok, so in the early 90s, approximately 10 years after I started working with computers, I was somewhat enthralled with the Cybepunk movement and went to a really wild Cyberpunk convention in LA ...

Art and Culture Ok, so in the early 90s, approximately 10 years after I started working with computers, I was somewhat enthralled with the Cybepunk movement and went to a really wild Cyberpunk convention in LA where I didn’t really understand what the hell was going on.  I wish I had read Hathaway’s work prior to going as, while I had a great time seeing virtual reality for the fist time and other techno things, I was still scratching my head as to where all this stuff was taking us, the Internet hadn’t really eevn come to be at all at this time circa ‘92. As a kid, I was really enthralled with science fiction almost to some kind of weird fault, (probably inspired by the Jetsons’ cartoon series).  I envisioned a future with flying cars, jet packs, no trees and only shiny modern looking things everywhere. It seemed like some kind of “natural” predilection on my part.  My father worked for GE and  had brought home a dial driven analogue computer that looked really cool but all it really did (as far as I could tell) was make adding and subtracting easier.  I would also wait with bated breath for the GE “futuristic” publication he’d bring home for me. The magazine would come out once a year and it showed how in a few short years how cars, appliances and houses would look. I couldn’t wait for the future!  Fast forward a few short years, say age 12 or so, as I began to appreciate the environment, acoustic rock, dirty jeans and unkempt hair, and I left most of that “future” stuff in the past… I developed a serious suspicion of technology, avoided learning about computers in college only to regain that interest, mostly from a practical perspective, in the early 80s when I started working with early mainframe based computer graphics systems as a technical illustrator at Sperry Rand Corp.  We drew, with computers, pictures of “fire control” equipment that weren’t for putting out fires (as I finally determined) by were for “firing” nuclear warheads at other parts of the world….yikes! Which brings me further ahead to all my reading through the ages and of course thinking about things and what humans are capable of and while I certainly appreciate and was really interested in what we were asked to read and look at this week, it still makes me wonder if the Pandora’s Box we’ve opened up is somehow evident of a certain penchant we humans have for technology that will eventually render us obsolete as a biological or sentient being. One thing, with all the cyborg discussion, that wasn’t really discussed (though mentioned somewhat) is the fact that AI (Artificial Intelligence) is coming on really strong. I have read that in a few short years we will have computers whose thinking process will mirror that of any super smart human, and much more logically. Which brings me to this discussion about the half human half machine concept. While in the interim, it’s definitely going to be much needed, as prosthetics are a great new technology  and getting better and better as the article about the male model shows, but when will computers become so smart that they will figure out that logically thinking, biological things are really not that efficient or needed and take it upon themselves to simply rid the world of this inefficient life form? After all, everything that is electronic is hooked up to a computer, our city grids, our water supplies, our weapons of mass destruction…etc. etc.. I know it’s such a downer to think about…but riddle me this… In the late nineties I worked (as their web developer) for the Life Extension Foundation LEF.org (LEF is actually mentioned in an article that was linked up to the “Mystical Bodies I” article we read) and in case no one’s ever heard of them, they’re a group of people, and pretty well respected scientists, that advocate the use of vitamins and other nutrients to extend our life. And as mentioned in the Hathaway article, there are scientists hard at work at getting us to live longer, some say the future has us easily living 200-500 years or more. The owners of LEF, Bill Fallon and Saul Kent, were said to wear these specially built helmets whenever they flew in an airplane so that if there were to be a crash, their head would stay intact (supposedly) so that their heads could be taken to their “Cryonics” chamber in Arizona (many LEF people are cyrongenicists;  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenics   meaning they will have their bodies frozen after death so that they may be thawed and revived at some future date) and hopefully be able to be revived at some point in the future. Now, the point here is that they’d only have a “brain” but I guess one could only assume that if science can thaw dead people and cure them (post mortem) from whatever they died from, they will most likely be able to provide the needed body parts. Anyway, this is where I go back to the AI computers…do we really need these bodies? Isn’t the information that is in our brains, our life? One other thing not mentioned is the interplanetary colonization theory that we humans have really been colonized from some other planet and actually foreign to this place called earth and maybe that’s why we have this proclivity to destroy our biological environment…and in the end, all we really need is our brain, our information…to live forever in some cyber heaven…so the moral of the story is perhaps (if you've read this far..thanks) but in the ebd, we can’t lose our heads now can we? tag:blogs.artspan.com,2012-04-07:33107 2012-04-07T21:20:26-04:00

With all the hoopla about Damien Hirst's recent "Spot" paintings, I couldn't resist making an animated GIF that is a fake advertisement of my versions of variations of his Spot paintings ...

Art and Culture With all the hoopla about Damien Hirst's recent "Spot" paintings, I couldn't resist making an animated GIF that is a fake advertisement of my versions of variations of his Spot paintings (with the exception of the last "12 spot" painting, as it's an actual copy of a Hirst painting) and the ridiculous prices they’re fetching (200K a spot it seems). This is a comment on the arbitrary "market maker" pricing going on in the high end fine art sales market and of course the fact that, at the end of the day, Hirst's Spot paintings look like a Twister game mat to me and to many I suppose.  While Hirst's paintings look somewhat visually appealing, I am coming to the conclusion (after all these years of defending artist's "freedom" to do what ever they want)  that so much of the post modern, and even modern era, is really an exercise in artist's self indulgence that is many times often producing banal, self indulgent and lacking in substance art that ignores much of what is really important about these times.  Many artists will disagree based on their own individual prerogatives to be separate from the world and therefore produce work for themselves, or a small group of buyers that have been convinced of a particular artist’s "genius".  Could this really all just a case of the “emperor has no cloths" syndrome.  Suzi Gablik, in her book,  The Reenchantment of Art,  devotes her whole book to the criticism of much of the modern era and much postmodern art. She claims individualism is what made scientists like Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) create the monster he did…and that the scientific based notions of the world that the Enlightenment brought to us has gone overboard by not questioning what one is doing as it relates to the overall common good, as much (according to her) of the self-centered modernist approach to art making. Contemporay German sociologist and philosopher, Jurgen Habermas,  is quoted on page 67 in reference to artists having a social purpose; (artist should find)  "beautiful ways of harmonizing interests rather than sublime ways of detaching oneself from others’ interests."  She talks about a new artistic ideal when she also writes on page 67,  "mutual cooperation for the common is an ideal within the partnership model, that serves as a template for a different understanding of moral responsibility, not as issues of rights and laws, but rather as imperatives of responsibility and care."  She quotes David Bohm (an American-born British quantum physicist)  who commented about some of Richard Serra's work, also on page 67;  "It is impossible to have true individuality except when grounded in the whole. Anything which is not in the whole is not individuality but egocentrism…. (she went on to write) The avant-garde proceeded to scorn notions of responsibility toward audience…the failure to relate (to society) was actually considered a cardinal virtue.” (1992, p.60, 67) I'll leave you with one last quote of hers from the same page (there is so much on every page of her book) "modern aesthetics does not easily accommodate the more feminine values of care and responsiveness, of seeing and responding to need." Certainly Hirst’s recent Spot paintings are colorful and fanciful, and there is a need for that, but are they worth in the millions? Is any art worth that much? How important are his "spots" really?. Much of Hirst's past work has been off-putting, as so much modern and postmodern art is to so many…have we turned a corner, does the artist have to only make art for the “insiders” the supposed in the know” the ones that “get it”? Or is there, as Gablick suggests, something more important we need to do, more significant, more holistic, more enchanting?  I have really only followed Hirst tangentially and have to say I really never was that thrilled with the work of his that I have seen (and I must confess, I am not sure I've ever seen any in person) especially the ones he got famous for, fish in formaldihide, rotting cow and bull (banned in New York because of fears it would "prompt vomiting among visitors"). My point is that this Dadaesque stuff has been done, if it were 1920 or so I may be more impressed with what he's doing, but we've been there done that, the artsit is free to do whatever, I get it, we all get it (or anyone that's been to looking into it). But is it really saying anything of value, is it evoking any emotions that are doing anything but assaulting our senses? Are they really worth millions of dollars? I rather like his spots over much of his other work. My point is, as I think Gablik's point is, is that the artist producing work for themselves or a small group of "insiders" has been going on long enough (since the Dadaists perhaps) and there are more significant things an artist could do especially in these times when so much is awry. Market makers are ruling the art world and are what, for the most part, it's all about it appears. tag:blogs.artspan.com,2012-03-29:32883 2012-03-29T10:59:24-04:00

As Noam Chomsky points out mainstream papers always have a “business” liftout section but hardly ever a “labour” section. Business interests are those reinforced by the ...

Art and Culture As Noam Chomsky points out mainstream papers always have a “business” liftout section but hardly ever a “labour” section. Business interests are those reinforced by the media most strongly as these reflect the ethos of those who commission ads….The spirit of experimentation and play is at the very core of culture jammer aesthetic…Artists as Pixel Pushing Cyberserfs  (David Cox, Notes on Culture Jamming  www.sniggle.net/Manifesti/notes.php . ) All the above are from David Cox’s piece in this week’s readings. I know it seems to many that pointing out all our culture’s short comings is a “negative” thing.  I have to stop and tell myself that to not be wary of the class that is dominating our culture (that is the multi national corporate neo-liberal elite) is (and I think Noam Chomsky would agree) to become a non-thinking person.  I have acquiesced enough to the “powers that be” in my life because it’s so hard to affect change and to even discuss what is at the heart of our culture’s problems is to appear as a “downer” or “negative” person. But the internet has its ability to be more than the proverbial  “canary in a coal mine”, which is what’s always excited me about it, though I have never been able to be more than that “canary”, and most of us are not despite the internet’s ability to self-publish, culture jam and create memes…but there’s always “hope in life” as my mother liked to say. Starting with legislation that began as early as 1819, ( Dartmouth College v. Woodward , 1819), which recognized corporations as having the same rights as natural persons and as recently as 2010 with the Citizens United ruling, our western culture has been having a love affair with the corporation.  But like many lovers, this lover has proven detrimental to our well being.  The Culture Jam and Meme Warfare article homes in on this and suggests that the kernel of our culture’s problems is the deference we give to corporations. It suggests  that the corporate state has actually “jammed” our culture to the point of brainwashing all of us into thinking that the corporation is the only reason we have anything, e.g. en masse middle class economic status for one (which is eroding fast). The irony, I think, is the only reason we have a big middle class in the west is because of government or a collective effort  which really got it’s groove on in this country with Roosevelt’s New Deal, and probably in Europe with the American backed  Marshall Plan, but that’s a whole other topic for discussion.  In the Culture Jam and Meme Warfare  article Lasn calls for a “Media Carta” (a play on the Magna Carta which is the basis of our modern democracy guaranteeing individual rights) and is a “ call to rewrite the corporate ‘genetic code’ so that corporations have less license to become social and environmental predators, and more responsibility to the well being of society.”  Know doubt the Internet is giving power to individuals that have never been realized to perhaps counter the corporate ideological saturation of our culture through the individual’s use and creation of viral memes and cultural jamming, but this article was written 12 years ago, and has anything really changed?   Lasn also says “How much harm does a corporation have to do before we question its right to exist? The so-called “corporate veil” lets the people behind a corporation off the hook in regard to legal culpabilities for the most part, and if that’s so, how can a corporation have the rights of an individual. Just like the bumper sticker says, “I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one”.  Corporations operate in a public space and as Pickeral points out in the Culture Jam and Meme Warfare  article, a corporation is a “private entity controlling a private good….A private entity monopolizing a public good? (e.g airwaves) A private corporation defending it self on the grounds that it is private seems to obviously condemn them when they are managing a public space.” The truth is so simple though (like a little meme graphic perhaps) and  so much is amiss because too many people don’t want to realize the true nature of what the multi-national military industrial complex has done and is doing to our world. Pretending that certain things don’t exist, like the proliferation of oil based plastics used for anything and everything, without any concern for its effect on the public good e.g. the environment.  Also, the spending (and we lead the world in this wasteful use of resources) of inordinate amounts of money on weapons of mass destruction.Pretending this reality does not exits, or worse yet, buying into the idea that the corporations have a right to do these two things  is something we post-moderns are good at I suppose, what choice do we really have?  But is it the ultimate acquiescence to the corporate culture that promotes these attacks on the public good by telling us profits create a great standard of living or that weapons “defend freedom” (or whatever platitude about “freedom” you want to insert) something we can do anything about without a huge paradigm  shift  in our thinking? No it’s not. Lasn asks, “What is the big issue of our time?” here is my “clear answer”.  The big  issue of our time (and here is where I bring everyone down, and I’m sorry but it’s the “issue” that no one wants to think about, and really at the core of our postmodern dilemma, if one ever takes the time to consider it) is that we have only had the ability to totally and instantly annihilate the world for a mere 60 years or so…60 years of restraint, 60 years of pretending everything’s OK, 60 years of testing our collective resolve… only 60 years… it’s a wonder anyone gets anything done. Now there’s a bell that can’t be unrung, there is some toothpaste that’s not going back in the tube, there is a meme that translates into a collective denial that is at the root of all our problems. We’ve traded universal healthcare as well as educating and feeding everyone for it. Who or what can jam that culture of denial…? If you meme well, you may be able to…one can only hope.     tag:blogs.artspan.com,2012-03-01:32227 2012-03-01T19:18:09-05:00

From my own experience over the last thirty years or so, i t seems abundantly clear to me, education curriculum has been co-opted by a segment of our population more interested in creating ...

Art and Culture From my own experience over the last thirty years or so, i t seems abundantly clear to me, education curriculum has been co-opted by a segment of our population more interested in creating good workers than good thinkers. Henry Giroux, in his article Chartering Disaster; Why Duncan’s Corporate-Based Schools Can’t Deliver an Education that Matters writes; “Public schooling is more and more shaped by a pedagogy of containment, security and conformity that undermines critical thought, teaching and dialog while emphasizing market values that often create what William Black calls a ‘criminogenic environment’ – one that promotes and legitimates market-driven practices that include fraud, deregulation and other perverse practices” (Giroux, 2010). In general, I would suggest the lack of interest education administrators lend to the study of art and liberal education has more to do with a recently developed misguided notion of what exactly an education is supposed to be, rather than an overt attempt to create more Bernie Madoffs. Though creating Bernie Madoffs, or creating a ‘criminogenic environment’ such as what spawned the resent banking crises, is a prime example of the prevailing meme in our education system which results in costly sociopathic criminal behavior.  Our new Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, in attempting to promote privatization of our public schools, is a major case in point of an administrator with this mentality. In the same essay mentioned above Giroux opines, “Duncan ignores, if not disdains, a long tradition in American life extending from Thomas Jefferson to C. Wright Mills and Hannah Arendt in which it has been recognized that citizens are produced, not simply born, and that public schools are the crucial political site where socialization for a healthy democracy takes place” (Giroux, 2010). I would propose there is no real devious and concerted effort to flout these classical ideals, but that these principles have been increasingly ignored over the last thirty years because of a great transformation and paradigm shift that has taken place as a result of, ironically, an attempt to better democratize higher education for the “common” good. While public education in our country has been with us since colonial times, the beginning of the end, it seems, of offering a public education (particularly post secondary) unconcerned with priming students for the marketplace, started with Roosevelt’s GI Bill. A truly great piece of democratic legislation, the GI Bill made higher education an accessible goal for millions of Americans that could never before afford it. This boon in millions of common Americans entering higher education for the first time brought with it a “vocational school” mentality that has appeared to have insinuated itself into our public education system at all levels, especially the more economically challenged segments. This attitude is quite possibly the root of today’s education problem. It needs to be uprooted; after all, the mindset is relatively new and in my opinion, has yet to produce any sustaining growth or much less blossom. By “vocational school” mentality I mean a predominate notion that education is nothing more than a precursor to and preparer for employment and at best only tangentially concerned or related to ideals of what a classical education should be. The fact that higher education was, prior to the GI Bill, a bastion of the privileged class and used predominately to reinforce long standing traditions of educating people without concern for “finding a job”, is something we don’t normally see written or talked about.   A good many of the of people graduating from colleges and universities prior to the GI Bill had positions waiting for them through family connections or, in many cases, did not even need to be concerned with making money, as they already had plenty. This is still the case, especially for the predominantly privilege class that graduate from prestigious private colleges and universities. Over and over again I read accounts of people that graduated from, for instance, Harvard or Yale, with a degree in history for example, who go on to obtain decent positions with banks, media companies or other major corporations. There is an assumption that they probably have pretty good connections for obtaining these good jobs, but there is also the thought too that these private school graduates are “educated” individuals that can enter these institutions as employees and learn the “pragmatic” aspects the positions entail, on the job. These individuals didn’t necessarily need to have learned these “technical” and “practical” fundamentals at college or university, that’s where they got “educated”.     I am not suggesting a public good, such as the GI Bill, is something we need to end because it is quite possibly responsible for turning public education into a huge “shop class”. No, what I would propose is quite the opposite. We need more types of programs that stimulate, encourage and enable everyone through different types of public compensation to get an education, and ideally a very “broad” education. And where my vision perhaps deviates from an education focused on nothing but classical modes of learning, I would suggest a marrying of the two, vocational/technical and classical, so that we advance a society whereby everyone is exposed to the richness of both a liberal and pragmatic education that reveres classical education, labor, work, technology and entrepreneurism equally, and as something we all participate. In this perfect world would result in everyone having to do their our own “work” and “labor” because if we provide everyone with great educations, there will be few people that will want to wash dishes and cut grass for meager wages. In this more perfect world we will have created, by default, an economy whereby, because of laws of supply and demand, we will have to compensate all vocations, and rightly so, with professional wages.   No doubt there have been recent road blocks to realizing a more egalitarian and liberal education in this country as the standard. The old guard of true liberal arts education seems to have died out resulting in the relatively recent taking over of our schools by technocrats and administrators fraught with MBAs and short on true classical educations.  However, through speaking out and making people aware that a shift has occurred for the worse, I feel we can put our country back on course, especially as more empirical data comes in showing that standardized testing and for-profit schools are not fulfilling the false prophecies of doing a better job of educating our failing students. Delacruz’s “four frame-works” (Delacruz, 2011, p. 8) in her essay entitled, The Teacher as Public Enemy #1, A Response: New Approaches to Art Education in These Most Uncivil Times (2011) could serve as a splendid step by step guideline for any and all educators to get us on the correct track of educating today’s populace. Amongst these four frame-works she states the most important step we teachers need to pull out of the catacombs of seemingly lost or at least challenged ideals, is to “advocate for a notion of the commons and the pursuit of a global and civil society” (Delacruz, 2011, p.7). Giroux points out an irony that seems to have surfaced of late when he criticizes anti-intellectualism in America by pointing out many people resent intellect “as a quality which almost certainly deprives a man or woman of the common touch” (Giroux, 2011). The founders were inspired by ideals the Age of the Enlightenment brought to the “common” person, and that is, knowledge is for everyone because ultimately a knowlegable populace benefits the “common good”. We need to get back on track toward a once “common” mode of thinking that suggests everyone should be able to bask in the “common” ray of enlightenment.   References   Giroux, H. (2010, June 25). Chartering Disaster; Why Duncan’s Corporate-Based Schools Can’t Deliver and Education that Matters. The Freire Project [Online website]. Retrieved from http://www.freireproject.org/blogs/chartering-disaster:-why-duncans-corporate-based-schools-cant-deliver-education-matters-henry-   Delacruz, E. M. (2011). The teacher as public enemy # 1: A response in these most uncivil  times.  Art Education, 64 (6), 7,8. tag:blogs.artspan.com,2012-02-25:32108 2012-02-25T10:43:38-05:00

A s an artist and educator, and a student in the MA Art Education program at UF, I would like to discuss something that seems to be falling by the wayside in our schools, and that is ...

Art and Culture A s an artist and educator, and a student in the MA Art Education program at UF, I would like to discuss something that seems to be falling by the wayside in our schools, and that is "creativity". Inspiring or encouraging our students to be creative is something that is done less and less it appears in our FCAT-centric, standardized testing infused world, or as Daniel Pink calls it; our SAT-ocracy. Daniel H. Pink in his book, A Whole New Mind (2004), makes an interesting point when he reminds us how the folk hero, John Henry, in his race to manually beat a steam power hammer and loses, that 19th century machines proved they could replace human backs. In this century it is technologies that are proving they can replace human brains. It's not the whole brain that technology can replace, thankfully, but certainly the part of the brain that is or has been overly preoccupied with being able to calculate things. Many neuroscientists claim this to be the left side of the side of the brain and that the left side governs our abilities to think rationally and use brute calculation. (Pink, 2004, p. 42) While we all use both sides of our brain some neuroscientists say many professions use it more than others. Some of the most common occupations that use the left side of the brain are professions like engineers, computer programmers, lawyers, accountants and doctors. These are professions it seems the majority of children have been most prodded into going into, especially in the last 50 years or so, because for the most part, society rewards those professions with high salaries. But they are also the professions that are seeing a good amount of out-sourcing to developing nations occurring as well as computers taking on many of the tasks. Engineers and technicians in developing countries, who are getting paid significantly lower than workers in this country, not to mention computers in general, are producing engineering drawings, reading medical charts and imaging, researching case law, and in general "crunching" numbers. All things we relied on and paid (and still do) high salaries to left brained, singularly result driven people to do. Developing countries are also producing engineers and technicians (or number crunchers) at a rate exponentially higher than what we do here in this country. Does this mean we need to produce more of these types of workers in our schools? I don't think we do, but I do think we do need to produce or encourgae more creative thinkers for the simple reason that creative thinkers are better equipped to navigate the volatility that defines so much of today's global economy and life. The one thing that will forever separate us from a machine is our ability to simply be creative. Melody and Larry Milbrandt in their essay entitled Creativity: What Are We Talking About? (2011) write that "creativity is so ill-defined, ambiguous, and fuzzy so that no common agreement exists on its meaning"(Milbrandt, 2011, p. 8). Maybe we can define creativity better by its antonyms and according to Thesarus.com they are; uninspiring, unproductive, unimaginative, untalented. Certainly not anything we'd want our children or really anyone we want to hang out with much to be, right? And I would suggest those are things that aren't going to keep a culture alive and growing either. We use the word "creative" pretty creatively though, and being creative can also mean we "experiment" and many times that can lead to some disastrous things. Does anyone remember the term "creative financing"? That phrase is probably responsible for the recent great recession we're all still reeling from, (albeit, it could be argued that bankers taking advantage of people is more the culprit here than creativity itself). The point is being creative does not necessarily mean that we write a play, paint a picture, score a film, or make conceptual art. What it does mean, I think, is that we cannot rely on a machine to do or be creative. But in order to create we need to be able to experiment and we need to be willing to accept consequences of what this experimenting can result in happening. We cannot let ourselves acquiesce to a sterile life, career or society by limiting or discouraging the act of creating. Trying to make humans into machines will be our death knell and that is all too often what is happening in our schools today. By avoiding trouble through being too careful by perhaps trying to make machines out of our students is inviting sterility to take over our culture, and sterility can only lead to our demise. Freedman in his essay Artmaking/Troublemaking: Creative, Policy and Leadership in Art Education (2005) elucidates on what it means to "cause trouble" in regard to art education in particular; "The kind of trouble caused by a good art education results in change, change in the way students think, change in the way they behave, and specifically a change of mind leading to creative action....I view creativity in terms of its social and cultural contributions; creativity can be seen as an act of leadership as well as the expression of an individual. From this perspective, to be creative, action must be constructive, and perhaps, even reconstructive" (Freedman, (2005) p. 205) While we typically see a 'troublemaker' as someone that is threatening our very being, many times the troublemaker is just someone that is crying out to be heard, to be realized, to simply "be" human. Civilization certainly means we all, above everything else, treat each over civilly, and in our attempts to create a well organized 'civil' society, we are probably creating the opposite which is a culture of non-critical thinking drones. A Quick "Creative Exercise" The Surrealist artists had a great game they played called the Exquisite Corpse. It was played by everyone thinking of an adjective, noun then a verb, without seeing each other's addition (Gude, 2010, p. 37) then putting them together to come up with what was very often a bizarre but interesting story or poem, as is the phrase 'The Exquisite Corpse'. For this exercise in creativity, I am going to ask that everyone write down one sentence. I will take it upon myself to start the story or poem off with the first sentence; The girl was looking out of the window. Please write whatever comes to mind; we'll then put them together and read the story if we have time, if not I will send it to everyone. This will be a great way to create collaboratively, as well as enable us all to contribute as individuals and maybe come up with some interesting ideas about how we educate learners. Thank you for having me here tonight and I hope I did not cause too much trouble. tag:blogs.artspan.com,2012-02-13:31840 2012-02-13T10:02:47-05:00

 On countering the ignoring and fearing of the Internet While an obvious asset to the digital age is the Internet or new media’s ability to provide us with instantaneous ...

Art and Culture  On countering the ignoring and fearing of the Internet While an obvious asset to the digital age is the Internet or new media’s ability to provide us with instantaneous information on any subject, it seems as though this reality has been quickly relegated to the ‘taken for granted’ category of our collective consciousness or worse, deemed ‘suspect’ in the eyes of so many.  While a healthy questioning of any information is important, it seems there is an effort afoot, whether intentional or not, within our formal education system to deemphasize the Internet’s incredible usefulness  as an educational tool by dismissing it as being without professional merit, not a very reliable source of information, and/or potentially dangerous. The Internet’s ‘leveling of the playing field’ or the democratization of information and distribution has not been fully conveyed to students in such a way as to develop within many students a sense of awe or reverence for the medium that I feel it deserves.  Why isn’t it a main objective of most educators today to present to their students the importance of the Internet as a self-education tool and to encourage students to take full advantage of this medium?  Most notably, this author feels strongly that it should be expressed to today’s students that this new medium (the Internet) is perhaps the main, if not the only, conduit to a learner’s self-actualization and freedom in today’s world. In the essay New Media Art Education and Its Discontents (Scholz, 2004) the author begins with a discussion about “file sharing” or “free cooperation” (Scholz, 2004, p. 96) being more accepted in places like “Social-democratic Germany” (Scholz, 2004, p. 96) rather than “the United States, with its iron grip of student loans and corporate credit reports” (Scholz, 2004, p. 96). (Some may also find it somewhat ironic that it seems it’s the Europeans, not the Americans, that are most questioning Google’s use of personal data and tracking, see Somini  Sengupta’s article Should Personal Data Be Personal , New York Times, 2012). Scholz even uses the metaphor of “jazz musicians and dancers who improvise study the moves of the others and take turns leading” (Scholz, 2004, p. 97) as an example of how “free cooperation” works in the traditional collaborative arts.  Scholtz alludes to the idea that the visual arts is more subject to being able to take advantage of this “free cooperation” in ways that it was never able to and “in spite of these examples and the interest of artists, most art institutions are neither interested in nor supportive of free cooperation” (Scholz, 2004, p. 97). This lack of interest is an example of the appreciation deficiency for the medium by institutes of learning I see most every day, which is sadly reflected in many of my students. The Free Cooperation Conference, which took place in April of 2004 at the State University of New York at Buffalo, is discussed by Scholz as a forum that intentionally did away with and criticized the “ritualized academic structure of panels and the essentially noncommunicative forms of the keynote speech (which) feed into the celebrity system, reinforcing hegemonic paradigms that get in the way of genuine dialogue and of hearing diverse, emerging voices” (Scholz, 2004, p. 98). Scholz argues that “increasingly, formats of the sciences are unnecessarily imposed on the arts, driven by business logic of many universities that will acknowledge an art project as fundable if it affirms scientific formats of research” (Scholz, 2004, p. 99).  At issue here is the author’s concern “with boredom, apathy, and anti-intellectualism in American undergraduate new-media classrooms, the role of the teacher, and issues of teaching beyond “’just-in-time-knowledge’” (Scholz, 2004, p. 99).  (Just-in-time-knowledge “are skills necessary for the job at hand, rather than basic, broader skills” (Scholz, 2004, p. 100) and is a direct reference to  a way of procuring inventory in today’s factories or businesses in order to reduce the possibility of warehousing extraneous inventory…which begs the question, is there such a thing as extraneous knowledge?) Scholz is questioning the validity of a conductor or leader thus inadvertently addressing why the Internet (a leaderless monster) is held in contempt or at least not taken seriously enough by education establishments. The notion that the Internet not be taken for granted feeds into the idea that the learner takes a hold of their own education and with the help of instructors be shown how they have the power and ability, unlike any other time in history, to gather and process ideas and information.  As an educator I agree with Delacruz in her essay From Bricks and Mortar to Public Sphere in Cyberspace: Creating a Culture of Caring on Digital Common (2009) when she states “our jobis to find meaningful connections to the things students care about and to make that content worthy of study” (Delacruz, 2009, p.12).  New media has the potential to enable the learner to quickly obtain useful and useable information they’re interested in knowing and that ability can only embellish the learning or art making experience.  I do not think schools are utilizing the Internet to this end well enough.  There is a downplaying of it as a repository of useful information and the best educational tool to come along in 500 years. There seems to be more of a criticism or dismissing of it as a place that has an over abundance of useless and even dangerous information as alluded to in Delacruz’s citation; “restrictive school policies truncate and confine teachers’ classroom technology practices” (Delacruz, 2009, p. 10). Because of the Internet being viewed with suspicion by many schools and educators, and because of the sense I have that it is being taken for granted, what I feel is needed in today’s schools is a comprehensive Introduction to New Media course. In this new course the instructor may relate to students the full breadth of potentiality and possibility this medium has, as well as its importance to their education and the world, and particularly to the democratization of the world.  A practical discussion about how to actually utilize search engines and research ideas and how to recognize when information may be bogus and when it’s not, or when it doesn’t even matter, should be part of this Introduction to New Media course.  Also, a thorough review of how the newest and most used repository of encyclopedic information (Wikipedia, an anathema to formal education) is used should be part and parcel to this course.  It appears that many of my students have been convinced by other teachers that everything on Wikipedia is bogus. This notion has to be dispelled and a full explanation of how this new “Global Commons” (Delacruz, 2009, p.9) system, through a consortium of self-regulating peers and users, serves up important information, instantly. A brief lesson on how difficult it once was to obtain information prior to the Internet may be relevant and useful from a “putting things in perspective” perspective.  Additionally, a lesson on commenting on blogs or websites and news sites should be a part of this required course, as well as a lesson on creating blogs and websites.  A survey of websites like http://freerice.com , a site that actually donates rice to developing countries when people use it, should readily convey the medium’s direct ability to do things for the common good.   Finally,    an overall discussion of net neutrality and its detractors that threaten the life blood of the Internet should be required study in this course.   “Here there be monsters” is not the tack we need to be taking, however, if the Internet is a monster, we should be bending over and kissing the beast’s feet, instead of fearing or ignoring it,  for it could very well be the saving grace of humankind, or at least, democracy. References Delacruz, E. M. (2009). From bricks to mortar to the public sphere in cyberspace: Creating a culture of caring on the digital global commons.  International Journal of Education & the Arts, 10 (5), pp. 10, 12  Scholz, T. (2005). New media art education and its discontents.  Art Journal, 64 (1), 96-100.   tag:blogs.artspan.com,2012-02-02:31527 2012-02-02T16:39:49-05:00

In the know Stuhr, Petrovich-Mwaniki, and Wasson in their  essay Curriculum Guidelines for the Multicultural Art Classroom  (1992), rather succinctly sum up what a multicultural ...

Art and Culture In the know Stuhr, Petrovich-Mwaniki, and Wasson in their  essay Curriculum Guidelines for the Multicultural Art Classroom  (1992), rather succinctly sum up what a multicultural education should be when they concur with the idea that “many educators view the primary aim is an equitable distribution of power and resources among all individuals at all levels of society” (1992, p. 16). This is a noble and lofty goal and one that needs to happen if we are to ever finally end the ills that plague society. The authors also do a good amount of encouraging the involvement of the student participating in the education process in such a way that involves their input and what they "know" about their own personal identities. I think this type of empowerment is critical to getting the students to understand their importance as individuals, and that they count and what they know counts, something I rarely see in the Adult Education classes I teach (average age is around 20 yrs.). Gorski’s essay,  Complicity with conservatism: the de-politicizing of multicultural and intercultural education  (2006) gets pretty dicey as it really criticizes that teaching multiculturalism can sometimes succumb to a “phoning it in” syndrome, or “going through the motions”, or worse, become lead by individuals that actually are surreptitiously interested in keeping the “white privileged” agenda, in much the same way we’ve seen many progressive movements become  headed up by conservatives (I think of James Watts, arguably an  anti-environmentalist heading up the EPA back in the eighties, as being perhaps the first example of this type of conservative usurping of a progressive agenda.)    I especially enjoyed Gorski’s criticism of educators capitulating to what he calls The  Ruby Payne Syndrome.  Ruby Payne wrote a book called  A Framework for Understanding Poverty   in 2001 that apparently has become   “with little critical analysis, standard fare in US multicultural education classes and workshops” (Gorski, 2006, p.171). Gorski makes a great point when he criticizes Payne for reversing the “cause and effect relationship” (Gorski, 2006, p.171) regarding the cause of poverty.   I hear this type of logic so often when discussing problems with students. People will say something like “it’s the parents” or “correct behavior has to start at home”. I agree, parents and home life can be and many times is a major source of problems and does have a direct effect on student behavior and success, but poor parenting or involvement more times than not is the result of a parent’s poor education, which is generally a result of a financially disadvantage situation which may have its roots going back many generations.  It is my opinion, and undoubtedly the author’s (Gorski et al) too, that breaking the cycle of poverty and poor education is a crucial societal responsibility. I like the way Delacruz breaks down things in  Multiculturalism and Art Education: Myths, Misconceptions, & Misdirections  (1995) when she delineates 6 areas of misconception about multiculturalism. One being  Multiculturalism is for the “Others”  (Delacruz, 1995, p.57) when in fact, as she points out what James Banks wrote (1993), it’s not about “them” it’s about “us”.  I have found, ironically, most so-called “whites” have a multicultural background themselves ( I myself have a great grand mother on my father's side that was quite possibly  full blooded Abernake Indian), but many are in denial. Plenty of “white Americans” have Native American as well as African American heritages as well as multiple European heritages.   Which brings me to the concept of labels like “white” “of color” “black” “Latin” etc.. I think it’s time we get rid of these labels and use the world “heritage” to define people (if we really think we need to define people in such a way). As no one is “white” or “black” or “Latin”, we are Americans of a certain cultural heritage, European, African, Latin, etc., it just seems to be a more accurate description that's less reliant on a phenotype or inadequate superficial description. Shouldn’t we all be inquisitive and try to “know” about all sorts of things, isn’t that what “educating” oneself is about? Isn’t multiculturalism really just that, an attempt at expanding our world and knowledge while democratizing the education system with the ultimate objective of giving everyone a “true” and “actual” equal education experience and opportunity?   tag:blogs.artspan.com,2012-01-22:31344 2012-01-22T17:37:57-05:00

Week 1: Elluding the Illusion I saw a great bumper sticker the other day, many of you may have already seen it…it read; “I’ll believe that Corporations are people ...

Art and Culture Week 1: Elluding the Illusion I saw a great bumper sticker the other day, many of you may have already seen it…it read; “I’ll believe that Corporations are people when Texas executes one.” As leading scholar in art education, Doug Blandy, alludes  to in regard to Citizens United, the notion that a corporation has "the rights of citizens and (are) granted  they and their surrogates the right to spend an unlimited amount of money on political campaigns” (Blandy, 2010, p. 251, Sustainability, Participatory Culture, and the Performance of Democracy: Ascendant Sites of Theaory and Practice in Art Education ) as upheld by the Supreme Court in  2010 in  Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission,  reflects a prevailing notion or meme that  is probably at the heart of why our educational system represents a cultural lag in our society.  It seems to me too that Supreme Court decisions like the above, and its popular mindset, is why our education system leaves so many of our citizens  in the dust and unable in many cases to even read much less become self-actualized in any redeeming way.   At the risk of sounding too ideological or grossly opinionated, I would think it’s hard to not argue that our country’s religion is capitalism and any threat to the notion that it should not be, or that the profit motive should not be deified the way it is, is thought to be sacrilege.  But until we come to terms with the fact that our education system, if not our whole economy,  is broken for the simple reason that we would rather uphold this notion of capitalism as religion  and continue to waste resources on  its multi-trillion dollar military industrial complex,  than give everyone a true educational experience, we are, as R. Cary suggests in his Critical Theory: A philosophy for praxis in art education” essay,  falling prey to what Hegel called the “coercive illusion  (Cary, 1998, p. 28). The coercive illusion here is that most people are unwittingly forced into believing or thinking that we need to spend an inordinate amount of our resources on the military as well as our prison system in order to preserve our way of life as consumerists (whether we're able to actually afford it or not). The change that is needed, and what Ken Robinson’s video,  Changing education paradigms  so succinctly and entertainingly laid out, is a drastic transformation of the education paradigm in our country, if not the whole world. As Robinson clearly points out, our education system's MO is at the very least more than 100 years old and therefore this conversion is long overdue.  What I do not feel is articulated enough and what I didn’t read at all in the reading for this week, is the importance of small classrooms, particularly for the very early stages of the education process, pre-school through 9th or 10th grade.  If we are really serious about turning our culture around, creating fewer stressed out and alcohol/drug addicted individuals, less crime and more self-actualization, then  instead of  funding the military on the scale we have been for the last 60 years, I would suggest that our society fund education to the point whereby we can  mandate that every classroom be no more than 10 students, at least until high school and that every teacher have qualifications approaching what is required to teach in our universities.  My ideal art  class or environment would be along the lines of students at all levels exploring their own interests. This ideal “school” would have numerous avenues for students to explore.  There would be technology and art centers that would be open at least 16 hours a day whereby students could utilize any media they desire to express or create whatever they choose.  I like what Cary suggests in his Critical Theory essay and that is concern for social justice through the emancipation of the oppressed (1998, p. 9) as this  is what is needed most in our society, or at least the realization that it is needed. The notion never really and truly gained any traction, at least to the degree needed to really emancipate a majority of people and thereby create a true democracy.  It’s a neo-Marxist ideal that us Americans find hard to swallow because of the prevailing coercive illusion that bullies us into instinctively rejecting anything that even hints of socialism, much less Marxism. Emancipation  is what we need to keep striving for, the trouble is many don’t even know they need to be emancipated, perhaps we’re all too steeped in the “illusion” we are forever coerced into believing...pick your illusion. Week 2: Wealth and Perception In Tara J. Yosso’s essay Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth (2005) he cites Solorzano’s five tenets of Critical Race Theory.  One of them ,  The challenge to dominate ideology  challenges white privilege and refutes claims that educational institutions make toward objectivity, meritocracy, color-blindness, race neutrality and equal opportunity. (Yosso, 2005, p. 73) I think this is very true to a degree and these claims act as “camouflages for the self-interest, power, and privilege of dominant groups in US society.” (Yosso, 2005, p. 74)  My experience has been that we have been trying to placate our own shame of hundreds of years of institutionalized segregation/racism by “seeming” to offer equality in the classroom, and obviously in many ways we fall short of the ideological intent.  The other tenet that I found original was Soloranzo’s  centrality of experiential knowledge . One thing I try to convey to my bilingual students is how much of an asset it is and will continue to be for them as they go through life to be able to communicate in two languages.  I let them know it is one of the signs of a truly educated person to be multi-lingual and that they should be proud of this accomplishment and ability.  I can see from their faces that many never really thought about their lingual abilities in this light. Most are shy and humble about their “cultural wealth” (Yosso, 2005, p. 69)  and I think don’t feel or even know their “knowledge counts” (Yosso, 2005, pg. 69).   Something that struck me in all our reading regarding recent understandings about race, ethnicity, culture, power, and agency is at the root of a good amount of our culture’s afflictions is something that Delacruz mention in her essay,  Nation of Immigrants (In Press), and that is issues of criminalization or engaging in criminal acts as a common occurrence in today’s society, as opposed to perhaps even 60-100 years ago.  Delacruz points out that immigrant children being uncertain about their parent’s legal status in this country has a negative effect on the child. (Delacruz, (In Press), p. 5)  In our society (or culture) many people are breaking laws on a regular basis, (some more serious than others albeit still criminal in the eyes of the state) whether it’s speeding , self-medication, lying on some official forms, reporting income,  or hiding one’s illegal status…it seems more and more to be the new normal. The criminalization of the populace that permeates our collective reality is creating a culture of hypocrites and weakening our collective psyche.  This was never the case years ago, there just weren’t as many laws as there are now. (Perhaps I digress a bit with this observation but it is something relatively new in our culture and a comment on “agency” perhaps.) I read Reay’s  Spice Girls, Nice Girls, Girlies and Tomboys (2001) and came away impressed with her finding that despite everything, boys seem to still be most respected by both genders on the playground and girls have it tougher. Is this a true reflection or microcosm of our society as a whole?  I do find it curious that woman that get into situations of power  often out-macho the men, e.g. Margaret Thatcher or Sarah Palin. (the irony is their power is a result of the feminist movement that was for the most part espousing passiveness and equal opportunities, both things the aforementioned woman are not known to be proponents.)  In summation, is it male power we’re enamored with or just “power”? In reading Wanda May’s essay The Tie That Binds:Reconstructing Ourselves in Institutional Contexts (1994) I feel she presented a constructive treatise on the problems that exist in today’s educational environment. I know that in my case, being an adjunct with no benefits and not many hours, if I were to start making waves, particularly about the exploitative nature of the use of adjuncts (which Delacruz mentions in her article) I feel it may jeopardize my job possibly.  There are things that need to be changed where I work, but having been there only three years, I have to pick my battles, which brings one to the essence of the problem…economic. In the aggregate, what I think we have is not so much a social/gender/phenotypic/cultural/linguistic problem in our society, but an economic problem, which I only saw glossed over in the readings.  tag:blogs.artspan.com,2012-01-22:31342 2012-01-22T17:06:23-05:00

If you can read this post, it means that the registration process was successful and that you can start blogging

Art and Culture If you can read this post, it means that the registration process was successful and that you can start blogging