framing the art curriculum || in a postmodern backpack: basics for the art teacher on-line

National Art Education Association

In a Postmodern Backpack: Basics for the Art Teacher On-LineAuthor(s): June JulianSource: Art Education, Vol. 50, No. 3, Framing the Art Curriculum (May, 1997), pp. 23-24+41-42Published by: National Art Education AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3193694 .

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In a Postmodern Backpack:

Basics for the

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easy to get sidetracked. Often, you never know where you will end up. It can be a fantastic

BY JUNE JULIAN

MAY 1997 / ART EDUCATION



Bring along your bathing suit because the surfing is great, but bring along an appropriate philosophical framework, too. Whether you surf in text (e-mail, listservs, gophers, etc.) or in images on the World Wide Web, think of your methodology as your "shades." They tint your choices, experiences and responses, coloring your Net world in a specific glow.

As a theoretical context for teaching art with the Internet, the postmodern position is a natural. Let's look at it in relation to the question, What am I trying to teach? I suggest that an inter- esting thing to teach is practicing the postmodern attitude.

The postmodern point of view includes characteristics that are shared with the Internet: non-lineari- ty, linking, interactivity, interconnect- edness, openness, non-hierarchy, decentering, a web model, etc. Teachers and students who are collaborating on interactive Internet projects all over the world are examples of the postmoder attitude in action. A teacher in New York could publicize an interactive Internet project on an educational listserv. A science teacher in Australia, an art teacher in Japan, and students in an e-mail club in Kansas may join the project. With the power of the Internet, all four groups are interconnected, interacting, each responding to the other. They are travelers in an ever-expanding group, taking suggestions from each other and making the project happen. After all, the postmodern art teacher is unbridled by "preestablished rules" and familiar categories; "those rules and categories are what the work of art itself is looking for" (Lyotard, 1979, p. 81). The Interetjourney itself is full of unexpected twists and turns. What begins as a simple project, because of the interactivity of a

particular mix of individuals, might become enriched or modified. Because of their interaction, new categories of thinking may open up that were not in the original plan. In a fron- tier like computer networking, an attitude of looking for categories can be more edifying than one of imposing them from the outside. Teachers and students are embarking on a world- wide voyage, and, like the Odyssey, there are lots of surprises in store.

Although all sorts of Web-specific and computer-generated art exist, there is still much conventional media on the Web now, i.e., painting, draw- ing, photography, etc., which has been scanned in. Can you still be practicing the postmodern attitude if you digitize old forms like easel painting? If thinking in the old categories about easel painting is relinquished, new synergies may burst forth.

For example, students may digitize the art work done in their own art classrooms and, by placing it on a Web site, extend an open invitation to visitors to interact with their imagery. All sorts of possibilities open up. At the most basic, the art could be printed from the computer on a local printer, changed with standard art room methods and media, then scanned and sent back to the Web site, or the art could be computer manipulated. Participants' responses to student art work could also take the form of text, sound, or video.

Suddenly, instead of being a lone painting by a teenager, hung in isola- tion on a cafeteria wall, the art work has energy rays coming out of it like Keith Haring's Radiant Child and is relating to the universe. On the Web, the conventional art form is decon- structed, not only mechanically by

being digitized and appearing as pix- els on a cathode ray screen, but philo- sophically by relinquishing its category of solitude. It becomes, instead, a link in a giant net. When we practice the postmoder attitude, our artwork may no longer state a fact, but once it is on the Interet, it could ask the question, What is possible?

Of course, students have to be well informed about the ethical considera- tions of manipulating images on the Internet. It is important that they real- ize the difference between indiscrimi- nate image appropriation and participation in an interactive project where altering imagery is part of the project design.

Sharon, currently teaching art at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, posted this e-mail message on ArtsEdNet. I think it's full of good ideas for image manipulation.

SUBJECT: COMPUTERS Ideas concerning computers in

the classroom. *Do not use the computer gen-

erated image as the final work but rather use it as a jumping off point, a point of departure toward another medium. The computer generated image might be considered the sketch for another work.

*Work in the reverse. Start a work in another medium, feed into the computer some of the factors addressed in that work and manipulate these as many different ways as possible, these new ideas could then be employed in finishing the original work.

*Mixed media, combine computer images with other media in 2 or 3D pieces.

*Approach the computer with

Continued on page 41

ART EDUCATION / MAY 1997



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different ways of working, spontaneous, gestural works contrasting to carefully, methodically controlled works, compare and contrast.

*What does the computer allow us to do in art that we cannot do by hand alone?

*Just as one explores the medium of paint or clay, explore the medium of the computer.

*If a scanner is available scan in art work already completed (drawings or paintings) and manipulate these in the computer and manipulate again by hand. The idea being to work between the pull and push of the hand and the computer.

*The computer means a possibility of multiple-therefore is the computer & its printer a 20th C version of printmaking? or is it a form of painting? or is it an art medium in its own right?

*What are the limitations of computer art? How does this effect computer art?

*Combine text and image in and out of the computer, using text as part of the art form not as an addition, or separate from the art form.

Hope this helps & generates thoughts and questions.

For I too am looking into the computer in the art room/studio.

Sharon

With some mental munchies, like a philosophical framework that makes sense to you, our backpack is beginning to take shape. I am ready to teach in new categories, but Whom should I teach? I propose that we all constitute a community of learners, in "an open, interactive, communal

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Interactive Tree Chaos Series

Pleas open the Tree Images below and feel free to interact with them with an Image Manipulation program uch as

Photoshop, or print them out on your printer making changes with conventional art materil and mail them back to this site

! Bree? Clhos #1

_---Tree Chaos #2

ree Chaos #3 (With visal response from Pierre, and Tree Song by Sara, and two visual responses back from Josh)

conversation" (Doll, 1993, p.7). With art teaching becoming digital now, and with the possibility of art teachers and art students connecting to each other in a gigantic, growing network, the old hierarchy of one teacher teaching one group of students is outdated.

Can you imagine a global dialogue?

With the Interet, an adolescent's landscape painting, like Warhol's soup can or DuChamp's urinal, can be a leaping off place for a new way of thinking about art. But, really, how can this happen?

Through the process of "decentering" (Derrrida, 1972, p.251) which happens quite naturally on the

MAY 1997 / ART EDUCATION

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Internet, knowledge grows in a net of links, spreading from a multitude of nodes. As in a fish net, there is no center. In art education, a student can throw a painting into a vast sea of digitized multimedia, and it can become a node in a net, unselfconscious and part of a spreading whole.

What could happen now, with this once old-fashioned, now decentered, scanned painting? Help me imagine some interactions. Hypothetically, another student could look at the conventional representation of, say, mountains, in the painting, and respond with a graphic of fractal mountains which could be put up next to the original painting as a response to it. Later, a student might send in e-mail asking how that was done. Or an artist from China could contribute a traditional landscape with the same physical elements as the original, i.e., sky, mountains, land, etc., but in a different technique or medium within a differing cultural context. A comment form could be set up on the Web site where information and response to the various works could be displayed. The community of learners is engaged in discourse. Who are the teachers and who are the learners? What is the appropriate question now?

Practically all Web sites invite interactivity of some type. Just open any Web search engine like Yahoo, Lycos, orAlta Vista, and type in any subject. In fact, just now, I opened Yahoo and typed in the word, "Backpack." Never mind that after clicking on "Outdoor Products" on successive screens, I soon found myself on the homepage of a backpack manufacturer! What I was looking for was an example of an interactive space. There in big blue letters on a bright yellow background

shouted the imperative, 'Talk To Us!" I opened this link and

found a lengthy form that would automatically e-mail visitors' responses back to the company.

So far, this particular mental backpack has a postmodern attitude as a theoretical framework, and, in it, a community of learners, but, For what purpose? What's wrong with joy, exploration, contact? By unweighting the primacy of the individual through decentering, art projects on the Net can reach beyond the self and gain a synergy unattainable in an individual work.

Art education is beginning to rise to the challenge of the new technologies. The hardware might have changed in a huge way, but the accumulated wisdom from past art education inquiry can inform the new thinking for the new hardware. The Internet gives us a perfect model for our attitude, the open integration of numerous possibilities.

This inclusive attitude is important in art education because we are building a body of knowledge, all of us, together.

Through joyful exploring, adventuring through the mazes, looking for new categories, making contact and sharing what we find, we are building community. Art teachers from Belarus to Boston can initiate Web art projects that can engage and enrich a global community of learners.

Are we there yet? It's been a wild and wonderful trip. My backpack has a theoretical frame that I like, and, in it, a community of learners, and a spirit of joyful, exploratory contact. A lot of teaching and learning has been going on in many unexpected ways, but, How do I know that I did a good job?

Look at your on-line art education journey from above. Imagine that it is a road map with a vast network of

primary and secondary arteries, intersections, loops, dead-ends, and roads that even zoom off the edge of the paper that they are printed on. As you traveled along, munching on those ideas on your backpack, were you part of a group of interacting individuals, exploring together in an open-ended odyssey, enjoying the ride? Is your e- mail inbox full of new messages everyday, from people all over the world, discussing, suggesting, questioning, telling? If all of this is so, congratulations! You are a Net traveler who packed lightly, and wisely.

June Julian, an Ed. D. Candidate in Art Education at New York University, is currently conducting an on-line research project, 'A World Community of Old Trees," an EcologyArt Project on the World Wide Web.

http://www. nyu. edu/projects/julian/ toc.html

julianj@acf2. nyu. edu

REFERENCES Derrida, J. (1972). Structure, sign and play in

the discourse of the human sciences. In R. Macksey & E. Donato (Eds.), The structuralist controversy (pp.247-272). Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Doll, W. (1993). A post-modern perspective on curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press.

Ecker, D.W. (1992). Projects for cooperative research and development in arts education. Paper prepared for The Third Annual South Carolina Higher Education Forum, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina.

Lyotard, J. (1979). The postmodern condition: a report on knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

ART EDUCATION / MAY 1997



framing the art curriculum || in a postmodern backpack: basics for the art teacher on-line

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