I recently finished some freelance work for RISD. The Department of Teaching + Learning In Art + Design (TLAD) is hosting a summer institute for Art Educators. Participants will spend a week working with Artists In Residence while creating personal studio work and will have access to studio space 24/7. The program culminates with an exhibition at RISD’s Sol Koffler Gallery.
If you are a Providence area Arts Educator interested in participating, email teachlearn@risd.edu.
Back in January I participated in Global Game Jam at MIT. While there, I worked with Game Designer Bernie Dodge and Programmer Hao Chen, creating an educational game about hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and its potential impact on the environment and economy. The game encourages students to consider the various factors involved from the perspectives of politicians and environmentalists. It is a multiplayer game designed for use in the classroom.
We just got the exciting news that our game will be shown at the Games For Change Festival this June in NYC. My teammates and I will all be in attendance.
This week MIT’s Media Lab is hosting ScratchEd, a conference centered on Scratch. Scratch is a programming language that breaks down code into visual blocks and allows users to animate objects on the screen without using more complex programming languages. When combined with LEGO WeDo sensors and motors it can also be used to animate physical objects. Scratch is incredibly versatile and can be used in conjunction with everything from an xbox Kinect to simple handmade sensors.
Prior to the start of ScratchEd, the MIT Media Lab hosted a variety of different workshops demonstrating the wide range of potential uses of Scratch. I chose to attend Physical-Digital Chain Reaction: WeDo + Scratch. Above is a video of the final run of our collaborative virtual/physical Rube Goldberg machine. You can’t see everything, but as the ball comes around watch the laptop screens and how the digital ball triggers the levers that push the actual balls.
You can view a larger version here.
Each group was responsible for catching the physical ball of the team to their left. When our sensor registered the other team’s ball, it set our virtual (animated ball) in motion. When the virtual ball bounced off the right side of our screen, it triggered a lever, the green and gray LEGO device sticking up behind our computer. This lever set our physical ball in motion, rolling down the ramp and off to the next group.
Take a look at this video for a more straightforward example of a physical-digital chain reaction.
I recently purchased my first ever fixed lens. Today was the first chance I’ve had to spend a significant amount of time playing around with it. It’s definitely going to take some getting used to. The true test will be the first concert I shoot with it. If anyone has any tips or tricks for shooting with a fixed lens, please send them my way!
DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY | TEXT AS IMAGE
I’m starting over with two new classes of Digital Photo students and thought I’d share one of my favorite projects from last semester. Drawing Inspiration from Stefan Sagmeister’s “Things I Have Learned,” students generated inspirational phrases. They then constructed each word using a variety of different materials and photographed them individually. The above images are words taken from the photo sets of two different students.
As our first assignment in AP art this year, students created political posters solely using cut paper. Their goal was to create a poster that compels the viewer to take action.
If you like what you see, give them some love, as they have submitted their work to the Say Something Poster Project.
Click here to give these students credit for their awesome work!
Last week I was invited to teach an art lesson at a local high school. Given that it was on such short notice, I decided to use a modified version of a lesson developed at RISD with fellow MAT Amanda Gross. This assignment was designed to make drawing more approachable to students at all levels by focusing on humor instead of realistic rendering.
This past Monday I had the opportunity to teach a Media Arts lesson to seventh grade students at Q2L in NYC. The lesson I taught used animation as a context for breaking down movements. Students used their own bodies to analyze dance moves and then reanimate them using stop motion animation. Working together to animate one single clay figurine, each group added ten frames of animation to the piece. The end result was a collaborative animated dance.
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