Digital Media Final Performance and Artist/Educator Statement

Artist/Educator Statement:

First, off let me say that I absolutely loved my group for this collaboration project. We proved that group projects can be a success in the classroom and students can collaborate in positive ways like teachers want them to. From the start of this project, we all just loved to share our ideas and listen to each other. We had such a good group conversation the first couple of days, deciding what topic we wanted to focus on. We couldn't stop talking about all the ideas we had. This just proved to me that just like us, the students we teach will have a lot to contribute from their experiences, they have all of these amazing ideas in their head. As teachers we have to give them opportunities to share their amazing ideas and use their creativity in the classroom. We should allow their ideas/concepts to develop and come to full fruition. Also, I think naturally with group projects there are some students that are more of the natural-born leaders and other students that are more quiet leaders. I felt like I was more of a quiet leader, but sometimes if you get too many strong-willed students in one group it doesn't work so you need a balance of the strong leaders and the silent leaders to know how to follow and compromise while still adding their ideas. We really came together as a group. I think the topic of women's experiences at BYU and sharing our individual experiences with that was really uniting and liberating. There was a sense of relief as we shared our stories, and realized that we all had similar feelings with our experience of going to school at BYU. 

 We all added something to the project: Paige was the one to come up with the baking cookies idea of the cookie-cutter BYU experience and put together the picture video, Mandarin was the group member that always asked all the right questions to get our group headed in the right direction, Meagan was the audio specialist and also edited the video, Kaily really helped with providing props and materials we needed like the aprons, Katelyn wrote out the whole script online with all of our lines, the Prufrock poem and sound cues, and Kassidy and I were the reinforcers touching up a lot of the project and providing good feedback and commentary throughout the process. Kassidy, Paige and Mandarin were the theater majors of our group and so they had a lot of experience and expertise with the theatrical aspects of the project. They choreographed our body movements in the presentation while Meagan, Katelyn and I (the English teaching majors) organized the lines and arranged the script so the Prufrock Poem and interview stories flowed nicely. I contributed a lot to making sure the script was organized in it's ideas and sounded good, as well as found a lot of good Prufrock lines to match our interview stories of good and bad dating and roommates experiences.  
I also learned how media and theater performance go together and media can enhance theater! I just read Meagan's blog and want to remember what she said: "I think I also learned a lot more about how literature, theatre, and media can all work together to create some amazing art." This is one of the big things I also learned. The Thevenin article says, "Media arts educators who explore the relationship between media and performance help their students to create new ways of performing and of understanding performance." I also think it's important to let our students make creative decisions, polish their work/editing, and get peer feedback like we did!


After our final group performances on Monday, we had a great class discussion on how we can take what we learned from this project and use aspects of it in our future classroom. Some of these comments I will share were mentioned by my classmates,but I really love what they said. As an English teacher, I really loved how our group took an English text like the Prufrock poem and were able to use it in creative ways to better understand it. Katelyn mentioned this and said how we were able to take a difficult text, that is really hard for many student's to understand, and make it more accessible by performing it and manipulating it in creative ways. Thevenin adds to this: "The students make these texts their own through their performance of them." This made me think of hard texts like Shakespeare, and how I can help my students better understand Shakespeare by allowing them to perform it. And not just perform it but add visual, audio, and body effects. Students are so good with technology, so why not have them incorporate technology and media more in the English classroom? I think this could help some of the old classic, difficult texts like Shakespeare and T.S. Elliot come to life for students.Theater groups across the world take Shakespeare and put a spin on it in their theater performances. Why not have my students do the same thing? Why not allow them to use more performance, technology, and collaboration while learning these texts? Another classmate of ours mentioned how she liked that our professor's main focus with this project was the "process" and not so much the product. Too often, teachers are so focused on the product and forget how important the process is in student learning and exploring creativity. I like how this project was broken up into a step-by-step process. One day we focused on identifying and narrowing a topic to pursue, another day we did interviews, another day we focused on the script, then the media, then the bodies, then the visual and audio, etc. Learning is a process and as teachers we should remember to stress the process. I also think I can use audio and visual technologies and body movement more in the classroom to help with student learning. This makes learning more visceral and lively in the classroom environment, which will help my students retain their learning.

My favorite part of this process was finding a topic/story we were passionate about telling (student choice/interest)and then using the interview process to learn more about our subject. First off, this proved to me how important it is to give our student's choice in some of the assignments and projects they do, because they will most likely produce better work/projects when they are interested and passionate about what they are doing. Second, this whole project taught me a lot about learning from other people, not just from my classmates but the interviews we did outside of class. I can have my students interview other people outside of class so they can see that learning is something that happens not just in school but outside of school and the classroom, when they go out into the world and inquire. Finally, I like collaboration projects, whether they be creative or not, because they incorporate so many different types of learners and abilities. Projects like this allow every member of the group to contribute something special and learn from their peers. I learned a lot from my group members, but also a lot from watching the other group. I learned a lot from this class about using critical creativity and intention in the classroom, and I'm excited to go into the classroom and have this new mindset.

Here's a link to our final script:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VBnQ5zgKJb_I6IAB-rAHros0vodQM7oHQhJRFN4IV2s/edit?usp=sharing

For future reference:
Thevenin article: Performing and Media
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_dmVHISIRL4R0VZWmdGNnI1aFE/view

Digital Media Performance Script

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w83_lnNu2NeJ5O-yXmmS3sn4dSPamJ3S/view?usp=sharing
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1isnfFvWh7_kCy2Oc1QpnXaMPw_wl6TJob4hGvmi5C9Q/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/document/d/169uJZqAYZ2nYblCqMNxIMYECHpVx4qNpe_aQrbZPsgs/edit?usp=sharing

Interview Video

Questions:

1. What is a story about a dating experience you’ve had at BYU?
2. What is a story about friends and/or roommates you’ve had at BYU?
3. How was your relationship reality different than the expectations you had coming to BYU?
4. If you could give your past self one form of advice about relationships at BYU (friends, roommates, romantic), what would it be?

Stefani Sanders is my sister! She went to BYU from 2012-2016 getting her degree in marketing. She is now happily married and expecting a baby boy in July!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szD6CwGoJi4&t=20s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arLiDJmuXGc&t=13s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUsKernBYRY&t=1s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQpd1Wqw1gs&t=4s

DMP Key Text

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock 
We chose this key text because it encompasses the anxiety and realities that surround making and exploring relationships, particularly in this transitory time of our lives.  
We plan to pull in everyone's texts to highlight different aspects of relationships between friends, roommates, and significant others, emphasizing the juxtaposition between expectation and reality and the validity of the individual's experience. 

Common Media Artifact Assignment

Create a multimedia artifact that fulfills a common educational purpose.

1. Select a significant purpose typical of your discipline/grade level.

My name is: Shelby Sanders

My content area/discipline is: English

The grade level I plan to teach is:  8th grade

The typical educational purpose I will address is to advertise an event or special program, communicate with parents and students, and fundraise for this special program and event.

My reason for choosing this purpose is:

My educational purpose for advertising and informing students and their parents about Smithsonian Student Tours is it that it gives students an opportunity to travel to educational sites around the world. Traveling is one of the best forms of student's furthering their education, as students are immersed and have real life experience in what they are learning in class. They get to see first-hand the cultures, sites, and landmarks they are learning about in history or English class. One or two teachers and the Smithsonian organization helps direct this trip for students. On Smithsonian website it describes: "Smithsonian Student Adventures partners with schools and educators to create dynamic programs to destinations around the world." Traveling through this program provides an enriching and safe experience for students. It is also an educationally based program. It's goal is to offer travel programs across the world for high school students and give them a great learning experience through travel. There are many Smithsonian museums and sites throughout the world. We will hold fundraisers as a group throughout the year to help students and their families meet the costs of travel.

The multimedia artifact I used to achieve my purpose was a flyer. 

The technological tool I used to create this artifact was word processing. 

What have you done to try to evaluate sources for bias and avoid biased portrayals of diverse identities?  Why is this important? Is there an avenue for every student who would want to do it?

On my flyer I made sure to include fundraising information to show that this event/tour won't discriminate against students with different socio-economic classes. All students will be given the means to participate on the trip/tour event if they do the fundraising with our group. Fundraising gives every student an opportunity to join and participate.I also included an "If you are interested" section with contact and meeting information to help parents and their students know what to do if they want to get involved. I also gave them a link to the Smithsonian website so they can have more information on the actual tours, and be able to evaluate the Smithsonian program.

HERE IS MY FLYER:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WjmBO0BIWnQxqE99G9ztKelzVscM231U/view?usp=sharing

Smithsonian Student Adventures partners with schools and educators to create dynamic programs to destinations around the world. In order to provide our participants with a unique, adventurous, and safe experience

Creative Unit Project "Speak"

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ql4rIlwMxMReco0WqdKJ0GDQeC4RWk_hGrVGcPQTnJE/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14vzGUvsEGgzo4BcXrK63NZGpjQWYPjzFGl7FwRhJrD8/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/document/d/15F3D0YFcue-euJvi-8K0kH0BEY0ryYr1g2xsmMK8t9U/edit?usp=sharing

Speak Playlist

1. Hate Me-Blue October
This song describes how Melinda felt when all her friends abandoned her after what happened at the party. She didn't have very many friends to start off her freshman year, and her parents were worried about her just like this song starts out with his mom calling.
2. Fireproof-The National
I think this song really captures how Melinda feels when she is going through her depression. She is numb, trying to be strong, but really she is breaking inside and nobody seems to notice. Andy "IT" keeps harassing her outside and inside of school, and how she reacts to him kind of reminds me of this song. This song has that mood and tone to all these feelings.
3. Hide and Seek-Imogen Heap
Melinda uses the janitor's closet to hide from her troubles. It is a place where she feels safe and protected, but she knows she can't hide forever. She knows this isn't healthy, and she will have to face life eventually.
4. The Fear- Ben Howard
Even though this song talks about fear it also has a hopeful ring to it. When Melinda starts to express herself through her art, she also feels a little hope but she also is still holding on to some pain and fear that she has to work through. Mr. Freeman helps her overcome her fear through art and tell her story.
5. What About Us-Pink
I think this song encaptures all the victims of rape. It represents how what was supposed to be this beautiful moment of human connection for Melinda was robbed of her. She doesn't trust people and love anymore. It reminds me of the writing on the bathroom wall of all the girls that had been silenced and now they are standing up.
6. Til' It Happens To You- Lady Gaga
I don't know if this is in the correct chronological order of the book, per say, but it is an honest song about being a victim of rape and what it feels like. Lady Gaga actually wrote the song about her experience. There is a lot of guilt, shame, and silence. I like the line in the song that says, "It won't be real", like how Melinda was in shock after going through this. Melinda also felt like it was her fault what happened to her, until she finally realized it wasn't.
7. Shake It Out- Florence and the Machine
This is the perfect song to show how the book ended. Melinda finally broke her silence and spoke to help someone else, her friend Rachel. She also speaks through her art. Her school mates finally stand up for her as well. The song shows Melinda's transformation from keeping secrets and being scared, to finally facing her demons and moving forward in her life. The rhythm and cheerfulness of this song represent that.

Tableaux Image and Media

Based on your creation experience what are the possibilities and limitations of integrating performed images and media images to make a statement or tell a story?

I think this activity would be very useful when doing a unit of or reading a play in class. Students can create a tableux image of a scene in Shakespeare's Hamlet, for example.  Being thoughtful about the composition in the tableux is very important to show their overall understanding of mood, character relationships, conflict and theme of the scene or story. The creative constraint of the still image limits students but is also helpful in pushing them to include only the most important themes and objects in the composition to communicate the mood, character, and themes. The challenge is to show their understanding in one still image or tableux.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kNmDd9gSvQG-n42JaLPfNYGGXs1ac9Vf/view

Catalogue of Critical Creativity

Creating with Words: Blackout Poetry
I've seen this used a lot in English classrooms. It gives the students a chance not just to read poetry, but to be poets themselves. In black poetry they highlight the words that mean a lot to them and cross out other words and phrases. In this sense, the student shows they know the deeper meaning/theme of the poem or their new composition and interpretation of it. I could use this in a unit on poetry or to better understand an article or text. It's important that teachers do what Burvall suggests: "Ask students to document the INTENTION behind their blackout poems by writing or recording their explanations" (147). This isn't just a piece of cool art to give to students without content. What students blackout shows their overall understanding of the theme and meaning. This activity asks students to construct, rearrange, juxtapose ideas, uncover hidden meanings and establish new relationships in the text. 

Erasure poems are another option, they are a spin-off of black poetry!

Creating with Images: ImagED 
Students find images to explain and show their understanding of a concept. The images must convey the essence of the concept. The three activities are Icon Challenge, Five-Card Flickr, and Two Images, One Question.The whole point is to synthesize complex ideas into simple but poignant images, like Burvall says, and thus students show understanding of content. 
Icon Challenge: Students find or design icons, that stand as symbols to represent an idea or concept. They learn the important nature of icons as a means of communication. A series of icons can tell a sequential story, just like the EMOJI story activity.  



Again, it is important that teachers have "students explain their intention--why they chose those particular aspects of the subject to translate into icons and why they designed the icons as they did," as Burvall suggests (170). 
I really like the idea of creating a library catalogue of "four-icon novels" and displaying the posters around the class or school. 
Five-Card Flickr

In a nutshell, students can use this activity to help them create a story from the images, or to use images to convey a story or match the content of a story, poem, text, speech or concept.
Students really have to think deeply and know the content to match it with images.
I really like the "Three of Me" activity that Burvall described on page 174. 
Two Images, One Question
I can do this with my students when they are working on oral presentations and research topics. The images and question act as essential prompts to the research. The students will have to think metaphorically and critically about the images they select. Burvall says, "The images students find should serve as prompts for their presentation of the information (172)". Then students come up with an "original" question or discussion prompt for the third slide. 

Creating with Sounds: Playlist a Life
This time, instead of using pictures or icons to demonstrate a concept or story, students use music to demonstrate the life or times of a subject. They make a playlist, choosing songs because of their lyrics, tone or themes that go along with the subject. They find songs that represent significant moments in the story or about the person. Consider having students make a playlist for a book like The Great Gatsby. Have them write a couple of sentences on why they chose each song. Scaffold student learning by having them do their own autobiographical playlist first. This representing things through a musical lens, would appeal to a lot of kids!

Creating with the Body: Dallowinian Party
Burvall described this activity: "Demonstrate the personality traits and mindsets, relationships, and dynamics of a group of individuals or characters by staging an improvised, role-play dinner party. During periodic breaks in the action, use first-person, in-character, stream-of-consciousness journaling to explore the attendees' thoughts and feelings" (217). It also says, "Dallowinian Party requires students to apply their knowledge of characters and personalities to an interactive and original context" (219). The teacher should be a facilitator of the overall interaction and conversation. 
I think this activity would be very useful to help my students understand character personalities and motivations by taking on the role of the character or acting as them. How fun! I could definitely see this activity working for some of the books we read in class. The students will need to understand the character very well in order to play their role and behaviors. This activity also encourages student WRITING with their stream-of-consciousness reflections, killing two birds with one stone. The debriefing at the end allows them to reflect as well on the whole experience. In order for this "party" to not get out of hand, the students should know it is a graded oral presentation or performance. The teacher or a student can serve as the host of all the guests at the dinner! All the guests should have a relationship to the host.
The pre-activities are very important as well, like building a family tree to show how the guests are connected or know one another, as well as the list/bowl of "interruptions". I also love how students can dress up as the characters for this! They will really enjoy that part. And they can have food...sounds like something every kid will like. I would do this activity as an assessment but also as a sort of reward for getting through a unit or difficult book. What if one or two students don't know the character they are role-playing? How do I keep all my students accountable to know their character so they won't interfere with transmitting the content and understanding to other students? I don't want this to get out of control. Overall, I love the interactivity of this!


Creating with Stuff: Board Game Remix
Have students create a board game with objectives, rules, game pieces and game play based on the context of a story like say, Beowulf or Homer's Odyssey or Iliad. I think this would work best with a story with a lot of action and plot, or the hero's journey. By creating a board game, students demonstrate their understanding of a given plot line, process or journey, and things such as conflict, climax, resolution. The game design must represent the key information and concepts of the book. 
However, there are other game options besides just making a typical board game, such as remixing and mashing up games such as word games, strategy games, and chance games into a completely new game. Students become inventors and creators of the rules and name of the game. What student wouldn't want to get the chance to make their own game? How cool! Another assessment, besides the finished designed board game product, is to have students play the game and video/record their intentions of the game. It also allows students to understand and break the limitations of the game genre. 



Creating with Social Media: Volley
Students collaborate and exchange ideas back and forth and build upon the work of another through visual and verbal metaphors. Some ideas for this are: visual verse, blimage, vizvo volley, hashtaggerie and headline riff. A student shares something and another student responds or exchanges with it in a different medium such as an image, poem/prose, audio, blogpost or hashtag. In this way, students are exchanging or sharing content knowledge. This "volley" can be between a team or group of students, say classes, or just between two individuals. 

Textual Poaching: An Identity Remix

The media representations I chose to reflect on my culture were paintings or the visual arts. The history of paintings goes way back in time. Paintings have been an important artistic medium spanning cultures, continents and time, and the nature of this art has been constantly changing—from religious, classical paintings to more abstract and conceptual paintings. Paintings have an inspiring, beautiful way of communicating messages, strong feelings and emotions in people. I also think that words and quotes have the same effect on people of communicating a powerful message and producing strong emotions and feelings. For my remix, I decided it would be cool to try to combine painting with modern day quotes. How powerful would it be to combine two very inspiring, meaningful art forms in one representation? Paintings have not been traditionally and historically represented with words. Most paintings don’t include words, only the artist’s name at the bottom. Paintings rely more on colors, images and figures instead of words to communicate a message. In comparison, quotes rely more on the power of words, not images, to communicate a feeling or message.

I got the idea for my remix from the collage of quotes on my Pinterest boards and thinking of how much these quotes mean to me. I pin way too many quotes on Pinterest because quotes give me hope and inspiration. A quote, just like a song lyric, can communicate the way I feel and my deepest thoughts in a way that I’ve never been able to put into words. I believe that the artistic medium of quotes has become very popular in social media, speeches, print text and other contexts in our contemporary society, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that quote pictures/blocks are a fairly new artistic medium. I liked the idea of remixing the old historical painting with the new contemporary quote block/picture. I drew on the paintings of Leonid Afremov and Vincent van Gogh’s “Café Terrace at Night” because their paintings seemed to mimic the same feelings and messages expressed from the quotes. The paintings of Leonid Alfremov, with all the colors and contrasts and figures, especially stirred up similar emotions and expressions of liveliness that I felt while reading the quotes on my Pinterest board. The painting and quote seemed to connect in a meaningful way.

I used Adobe photoshop to recontextualize the paintings with the quotes, to enmesh and ingrain the quotes into the visual arts. I had to take the block quotes from Pinterest and insert them as a layer into the painting. I used many photoshop tools to do this. I wanted the quotes to look like they were a part of the painting, to really be enmeshed in the texture, colors and layers of it. I wanted it to feel like the quotes and painting were a part of each other—that together they had shared meaning and power. This remix meant a lot to me because visual images and words make me feel deeply and can stir up emotions. I’m excited to see what overall effect it has on my classmates.

I like this idea of remixing or recontextualizing historical texts—re-envisioning and responding to them in new ways. We respond to the old and recontextualize it in our contemporary world, thus forming a new text with new meaning and significance. I think it’s important that we realize most artists and people “do not always create new objects and forms but RESPOND TO PAST and PRESENT conversations” (Barney 145). Hence, we don’t live in a vacuum. We are constantly responding to each other's work, to the things around us, the things in our history, culture and identity, and inserting ourselves into the conversation. We re-invent and play with the old. We do this through adding, cutting, reassembling, manipulating, mashing, expanding, revising, de-centering and covering. Who knew there were so many ways to remix? When students get the chance to experiment and remix an old form, they see how everything is interrelated and intertextual. The main take-away I got from this project and lesson, is to give my students opportunities to respond to old forms in new ways, which Barney calls conceptual and historical responding literacies.

https://www.google.com/search?q=leonid+afremov&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=KDEQowTpk1GuKM%253A%252CU8kYr9y9N6WhfM%252C_&usg=__-BlC1LucW3UwmSj63xSBWNbjQrU%3D&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-zqmt767ZAhVFAqwKHTo9AZEQ_h0IgAIwGQ#imgrc=_


https://www.pinterest.com/shelbkristine/remix/

Wonder Woman Remix

Artist Statement: We were thinking about Wonder Woman's outfit and representation and how we could mix it up. We thought it would be ironic to change the flag, because DC's Wonder Woman is part of the Justice League which is supposed to be fighting for the world and not just the United States. What would she look like representing other countries instead of just being the traditional American superhero babe? Why in the first place did Wonder Woman only wear the stars and stripes? What does this say about the historical context and message?

Process Piece

I'm not going to lie, I wasn't in class on Wednesday and this assignment kind of threw me for a loop. The prompt especially left me wondering what exactly was an artistic "process" I could do in relation to the Barney reading. It said to document some type of process, which is an act of human labor with a beginning, middle and an end. But how did a process of human labor connect with the Barney reading? I never thought of a process of human labor as connected to artistic creation. However, I'll come back to how I started to think of this assignment metaphorically and in broader terms. 

Processes is an ambiguous term and can mean so many things when it comes to artistic creation, but the prompt gave me somewhat of a direction with the process relating to "human labor". Immediately, just like many of my classmates (I read their blogs) I thought of showing the process of getting ready for school or possibly baking cookies. These were acts of human labor in which I could show their processes. But I was also thinking efficiently and thought, "Why not show the process of cleaning my room and cross off two things on my to-do-list?" I made a video of me cleaning my room and all the processes that go along with that like making my bed, organizing my desk, folding my clothes, and vaccumming the floors. I took the idea of a silent video form very literally and paid homage to the silent films (Charlie Chaplin) of the early 20th century.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C11v7xcIZb4

Now, as far as how this assigment relates to the reading I thought of how going through processes in life like cleaning my room are a lot like going through processes in art. When cleaning my room I'm going through the process of moving, organizing, transforming and creating a product of a clean room. In the process I'm thinking of how I want my room to look and be represented. Paraphrasing the young boy's comment in the reading:
It's not just like I snap my fingers and my room is suddenly immaculate. I don't just clean my room right away; it was kind of a long process to get to the finished product.

Going through the process of creating is what helps us gain experience and make meaning for ourselves. In this class I haven't just read ABOUT art (like Barney discourages teachers from having their students do), but have wrote about art texts through actively creating and engaging with them. Barney says,"Reading print texts about artistic practice is not the same as engaging in authentic artistic practices." Just like learning the practice or process of cleaning my room, there are artistic practices and processes of inquiry to be learned by students about the arts. I see this activity as a metaphor to what we should be teaching our students about "art as a process", just like Mr. Baker did with his class in showing them the artistic processes and inquiry that jewelry artist Jan Yager went through. She went on an artistic investigation asking questions, exploring, collecting, gathering information, researching, looking at old artifacts to get ideas, drawing and photographing plants and delimiting her investigation in order to create her jewelry and finished product. That is what I want to help students understand--that creating art is a process. Or like Barney says, "To create in the visual arts means to engage actively with visual arts research methodologies--the disciplinary methods and philosophies surround the selection and use of methods, materials, processes, and contexts."  I want them to come to terms with what artistic investigation is and how and why artists engage in artistic inquiry. Just like Mr. Baker I can help students experience and understand the processes artists use in their creations. I'm still not sure exactly how I could implement this in my English classroom, but the idea sounds nice and I'm looking forward to our classroom discussion on it.

2 Quotes that really stuck out to me from the Barney reading:

• To create in the visual arts then is to “write” visual arts texts. To be able to do this requires more knowledge than simply reading or interpreting print texts about visual art, although this is often an important aspect of being able to participate in visual art as a community of practice. More importantly, to write a visual arts texts, one must have experiential understanding about how visual arts texts are created in context. 

• The literacy focus in a visual arts course should not be solely about the ability to read or even interpret what is written about art but to begin to contextualize and engage with art as a complex disciplinary practice, along with its discourses, methodologies, and interpretive frames for meaning making

Medium Specificity: Photography

https://www.instagram.com/katiehogganphotography/
I want to give credit to the person that helped me with these photographs: Katie Hoggan

Artist/Teacher Statement: 

The digital media form I chose to fully explore was photography. I’ve always been interested in learning more about photography since I think it is such a cool medium, and it worked out perfectly because my roommate is a photographer. This weekend I was able to go do a photoshoot with her to fully explore this medium as she tutored me through the camera workings and software editing. She had a project to do for school as well, and while she took most of the pictures of our subject, she helped me use her camera and take some of my own. Photography offers a lot of affordances as a digital medium. More so than other digital mediums, photography is able to capture a moment in time. It is able to express and capture a portrait of a person, subject, or scene so intensely and so beautifully. That is what I loved about photography and wanted to explore myself. You see photographer’s pictures or photography online and it celebrates those moments and elements of life. Also, one of the biggest affordances of photography as a digital medium is how much you can edit the photographs! My friend Katie taught me just how much photographers put into the composing and editing of their photos. I wasn’t aware of how photographers can change the exposure on their cameras with ISO, shutter speed and F Stop and how many settings there are on a camera (at least nice cameras). Not only is there a lot that photographers edit while composing and taking the pictures, but there is a lot of editing software to use after. I don’t think audiences are always aware of the editing of the original photograph. I used photoshop and editing techniques such as clone stamp, dodging and burning to edit/manipulate my photos to the way I wanted them.

Some of the limitations of photography are that in only capturing a single image, pose, movement or overall moment, photographers have to try to fit everything they want to communicate and include in one picture. Photography can tell a story and show movement just like film can, but it is more limited by its form. Photographers must be smart and thoughtful in the composing and editing of the photographs, in order to completely capture everything they want to in the photograph. This is why photographers take so many pictures on photoshoots—to get the right ones. We ended up taking about 400 pictures! Another limitation of photography is that if you want high quality photos you need a good digital camera/software and the knowledge to use it. I gained a lot of respect for my roommate Katie and this profession/artistry in general, because of the expertise and money it takes to do photography. There is a lot more to learn and know about photography than I ever gave it credit. You can’t just pick up a camera and take pictures and know how to use it (well maybe with a cheap camera or iphone). There are a lot of settings and equipment on a nice camera that photographers know how to use/adjust. Now I realize how much my roommate had to study and learn at school to be a photographer and take good pictures. You have to get the settings of exposure and lighting just right and coordinate the numbers on ISO, shutter speed, and F stop right where you want them before taking the picture. You also have to know how to compose the picture, how you are going to set up your frame and where you are going to place your subject. You want to make sure the person you are photographing feels comfortable and looks genuine, because if they look posed or stiff it looks awkward no matter what they’re doing. Katie says, "With composing its learning to give the least amount of direction to the person but still have them look good, because the more direction you give them the more tense they get unless they are more experienced and not self-conscious in front of the camera, which is not the case for very many people." Luckily, the girl we shot had a lot of experience with photo shoots before, and she knew dance/ballet so she was very comfortable in front of the camera. I still don’t know half of all there is to learn about camera settings, composing and the editing software but it was so interesting. 

From this project and Thevenin’s “Responding” essay, I’ve learned that as a teacher I can aid my students in responding to and within particular digital mediums by going through the processes of responding through class discussion, creative production and self-reflection. I will aid them by stressing inquiry, because we all start by having questions about a medium, like I did with photography. Class discussion should revolve around questions and analysis of a medium. Then students find a “source of inspiration” that they are interested in to do a creative project on. I want my students to be able to analyze the affordances and limitations of the medium they chose to see it’s unique characteristics. If affords some things like photography did with editing and capturing a moment in time, but also limits some things like with movement/motion and sound. Then the class and the individual can reflect on ALL the different art mediums and their unique characteristics for use. The main take-away I got from my individual exploration is that just like Katie tutored me in an art she was skilled at, students can also tutor each other in certain mediums and in an art they are good at. I never would have explored professional photography to this capacity and been able to produce these photographs this quickly/easily without a tutor. She bridged that gap and made it accessible. She made me appreciate her art that she was so passionate about. Even though she helped me the whole time, I still got opportunities to make my own artistic choices along the way with editing. I think students can do this tutor/learner thing too. Having students tutor each other in digital media is a very great idea and possibility in my classroom. I also want to teach my students to appreciate professional artwork and see how much goes into these artist mediums in comparison to other qualities of art. There are different qualities of art. If they have opportunities to learn from professional artists and tutors they can see this.