Lesson 3: Fashion Sparking Revolution

Title of Lesson: Fashion Sparking Revolution
Big Idea: Revolution
Essential Questions:

• How does what we wear create statements?
• How does fashion play into the roles of our cultural celebrities?
• How does fashion have the power of advertising?
• How can we send messages of change through the means of fashion?

Objective: The student will explore the big idea of revolution through the lens of fashion. As a class we will explore cultural icons that have made statements with their fashion choices, as well as contemporary artists who make statements of revolutionary changes and ideas through their graphic work. The student will create their own statements of change through their own wearable art.

Lesson Vignette:

• Anticipatory set:
• Start with a slide show of cultural icons and their fashion statements. For example, Michael Jackson, Madonna and, most recently, Lady Gaga.
• Then discuss as a class what statements their fashions made, as well as how their fashion created revolutions in our celebrity world.
• Look at artists Stephen Jones, Luba Lukova and Jenny Holzer.
• Of Jones: How does he create conceptual statements with his hat fashions? How does the fact that they will be worn change the message? How does a hat send the message differently than another garment?
• Of Lukova: How is she send messages of change in her graphics? How does she create such strong messages in simple icons? How could her ideas of revolution be transferred to wearable art?
• Of Holzer: How do her messages differ or relate to those of Lukova? How does text alone with no visual change the meaning? She has worked with T-shirts, but how could her ideas of revolution be transferred and combined into other types of wearable art?
• Body of lesson:
• Students would brainstorm ideas of revolution and change in their artist journals. They would think of contemporary issues they would like to see changed. This could be done in a word list or web.
• Once students come up with their issue, they will create inspiration boards (in whichever manner suits them) as a way of brainstorming how they can represent their issue in the form of wearable art.
• The student will then create their fashions out of any material that further pushes their issue and statement.

• Closure:
• The students will be asked to wear their art around in public, whether this is at school, the mall, the park, etc. and record the reactions of their audiences. This will be a way of distributing their message to the public. The reactions can be filmed using flip cameras or point and shoot cameras. At the end of the lesson, we will create a class video of all the wearable art pieces and the reactions from the public.

Anna: Mini Lesson 3

Title of Lesson: Revolution in a Vessel

Enduring Big Idea: Revolution/Change. Students will be exploring how things revolve and change overtime. The students will then be creating ceramic vessels in the shape of a recent object, and on they will create a model of the old object and place it inside the vessel (or vice-versa depending on the student’s preference).

Essential Questions:
• What is revolution?
• How do man-made objects change/evolve overtime?
• Look around the class room, what in here is completely different from how it was 10 years ago? 20 years?
• How has technology affecting revolution?
• Has everything thing changed for the better? Is there anything that has changed for the worse?
• Do you prefer current or past models of objects that have changed?

Objectives:
• The students will learn about hand building clay through hands on experiences. Slabs, coils, pinch pots, scoring, slipping.
• Students will learn about ceramic history by looking at artists’ vessels.
• The students will reflect on their current and past culture to notice revolution.
• The students will look critically about how everyday items have revolved overtime and form an opinion on whether they believe the current or past item is more important.
• Students will have group discussions and share their opinions with others.

Lesson vignette:
Anticipatory set-
• I will start the lesson by showing the students an “underwear timeline”. Next, I will have the students look around the room and takes notes in their sketch books of things that looked different/had different models 10 years ago.
• Students will then decide whether these changes were for the better or for worse.
• Students will share their findings and opinions within their tables.
• Show artist that works with the same kind of vessels (Sam Baron’s telephone, boom box, typewriter)
• I will then introduce my students to various ceramic artists that create vessels by hand building (slab, coils, pinch pots).
• I will show the students short demos of how to do these hand building methods in case they have forgotten from past ceramics classes.
Body of lesson-
• Students will begin brainstorming ideas for their own revolution artwork.
• They will sketch out images of their vessel; decide which item they want to be the main shape, and what item they want to create to go inside the vessel.
• Students will create their vessels using clay. Will be hand built.
• Students will pick whether they glaze, stain, or paint their artwork.
Closure-
• Students will have a critique pow-wow.
• We will go around the classroom and students will talk about their artwork.
• They will discuss whether the old model or the new model of the object is better and the thoughts that went through their mind while creating their artwork.

Mini Lesson 3- Nikita

“Evolving Revolution”

By: Nikita Luedke

Big Idea: We will be working with the idea of “Revolution”. This lesson in particular will focus on the digital/technological revolution taking place within the US and/or globally. Students will be asked to take a positive or negative stance on how these types of revolution affect our lives now and where our future is headed, and will then animate their ideas through simple pictures using a stop-animation format.

Essential Questions:

-Is technology more helpful or harmful to our lives?

-Do you think technology is becoming too powerful for human good?

-What positives can come of digital and technological revolutions?

-What would our lives look like if we lived before the latest technological/ digital revolution? (say… in the 1930’s).

-Why do artists use stop animation today? Why did they use this in the past?

-How does using stop animation related to the idea of revolution and changing society?

-If you had the choice to live in the distant future (3010) or the distant past (1010), which would you choose and why?

-What part of society do technological and digital revolutions affect the most? Why?

Objectives:

-The students will learn about stop motion animation through hands on experience as well as through exploration of working artists and historical references.

-The students will learn simple animation techniques and tricks.

-The students will gain experience in utilizing non-classical art media (dry erase boards and dry erase markers) to produce video art.

-The students will look critically at our technology driven culture and form an opinion on whether it is a positive or negative thing.

-The students will learn to use digital cameras as well as computer software for making slideshows.

-The students will engage in peer reviews.

Lesson Vignette:

Anticipatory Set

-The Student will research the recent advancements in technology both at the national and international level.

-The student will form an opinion on wethere he or she believes this technological revolution has a more positive or negative impact on society as a whole.

Body of Lesson

-They will then express their opinion in a short narrative using stop animation style

-First they will sketch out ten basic frames in a simple comic style sketch

-Second they will begin to transfer their ideas onto the dry erase board. They will take each of their original sketches and put the transition into ten movements to get from the first frame to the second and so on. (this should leave them with 100 frames total, give or take depending on individual needs)

- They will photograph each of their drawings before they erase it and move onto the next one.

Closure

-Finally, they will put all of the photos in order from start to finish into a slideshow/film short.

-To end the lesson, the students will have a “movie day” where we will watch and discuss each of the film shorts.

http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=40497 - link to student made art work set to viva la vida

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovvk7T8QUIU&NR=1 - stop motion of various old school video games using food as props… really cool!

http://www.eraseboards.com/content/view/12/1/ - longer stop animation video on youtube (semi-professional work)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Moving_Penny.gif - moving penny ; most simple example of stop animation

Artists:

http://pharosproductions.com/aosma/aosma_masters_aupperle.html - Jim Aupperle – one of the “masters” of stop animation- this website features photographs of him working on some major motion pictures.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8JexiISPNk - amazing stop motion video of man going through his day. Choppy. (Eriq Wities) (If you are working in a conservative high school, be warned that this video does have one point where the main character drinks from a beer bottle, and another where he is smoking a cigar)

Revolution

Mini Lesson 2- Anna

Title of Lesson: Ideal Silhouettes.

Enduring Big Idea: Ideologies /visual culture

Essential Questions:

• If you could change your body in any shape of form, what would you change?
• Who decides what the perfect body image is?
• Who influences the idea of the perfect body?
• What role does the media play in pushing the idea of the “ideal body”
• What does the ideal male body look like?
• What does the ideal female body look like?

Objectives:

• The students will explore the Big Idea of body ideologies based on the visual culture. Students are exposed to ideal body images every day, either through television, magazines, ads, models, etc. Infomercials are constantly aired on TV for ways to lose weight, gain muscles, and to look great. The visual culture is continuously defining the “perfect body”. Students will explore this idea through magazines, other artists work, and by creating ideal silhouettes.

Lesson vignette:

Anticipatory set-

• I will start by handing out magazines to my students. I will want them to look through the magazines and make lists of characteristic that all of the models have in common.
• Students will share their findings with the rest of the class and we will discuss whether or not these describe the ideal image. We will discuss how other forms of media portray the same ideals and ideas.
• Students will view the artwork of Kara Walker. This will include her silhouettes and the students will need to pay attention to the amount of detail she uses in images that are only one color.

Body of lesson-

• Students will begin brainstorming ideas for their own silhouette artwork. There artwork will need to include an actual silhouette of their own body, and a silhouette of how their body should be based on the media.
• The students will be able to choose how their silhouette will be positioned and the size of their artwork. (They can be standing next to each other, back to back, one standing and one sitting, maybe looking in a mirror, etc. The choice is up to the students).
• The silhouettes will be drawn on/produced on black paper.

Closure-

• Students will record their decisions of their artwork in their journals, emphasizing how the media has played a role in their decisions.
• The students will then have a gallery walk to view the artwork and read each other’s discuss each others’ decisions. They will be able to discuss commonalities between all the artwork.

Mini Lesson 2- Nikita

Media Manipulation- “A critique on Visual Culture”

Nikita Luedke

Enduring Big Idea: Visual Culture and Ideologies

· In this unit, we will be exploring visual culture. Visual culture in relation to this lesson, can be defined as all of the visual objects and images we are surrounded with every day. Ideologies play a large part in visual culture, and tend to be completely intertwined. In this unit, we will learn more about how we read and interpret the visual culture and ideologies we are surrounded by, and then learn how to actively critique them as well as create our own. In this lesson specifically, we will be turning our focus more directly on media and marketing techniques that cater to various groups in our society, and how those create a visual culture and impact our ideologies as a whole.

Essential Questions:

· What is an Ideology? What are some general ideologies of American culture?

· Who do you “idealize” and why?

· How have ideologies changed over time?

· Do different cultures hold different ideologies?

· What is “Visual Culture”?

· How are visual culture and ideologies connected?

· What role does marketing play in forming ideologies?

· Does marketing control our ideologies, or do we influence what they put in front of us?

· How can specific images (visual culture) influence how we act, feel, or relate to people?

Objectives: The student will…

· Learn to critique various types of media images put in front of them

· Actively think about how ideologies and visual culture influence their opinions, actions, judgments, relationships, ect.

· Learn how to take an image displaying one ideology, pull that influence out, and re-create this image in a way that will showcase a different viewpoint

· Come to understand how marketing can cater to different age groups, genders, cultures, etc.

· Pull together all their knowledge of visual culture, ideologies, marketing techniques, and technical application to produce four re-created images into one comprehensive book, that will critique points of ideological tension in which they are interested.

Ads we will be looking at: Bebe women’s sportswear ad, Nina Rici Perfume ad, Tag for men ad, and McGraw cologne.

· Bebe ad will explore the use of idealized bodies to pull people in

· Nina Rici ad will explore the use of fantasy/ fun/ beauty to pull people in

· Tag ad will explore the use of “I get this/am happy when I use this product and if you use it so will you”

· McGraw ad will explore the use of celebrity figures to sell products

Artist we will explore: Instead of focusing on specific artists, we will turn to various ads from throughout history. Many of these are drawings from the 1930’s and 1950’s. We will also look at some of the artwork of Ben Frost (check images carefully, a number of his works would be highly inappropriate for the school setting)

Lesson Vignette: Anticipatory Set

The students will be shown pictures of Ads from 1930’s-2010 and will uncover techniques marketing specialists use to sell products to specific types of people. I will introduce the project, discuss a few of the essential questions, and request that they bring in a minimum of 6 ads (magazines will be provided if needed) which they feel cater to them specifically. That same day, we will learn 3 various book folding techniques they may choose from for their book’s format.

Lesson Vignette: Body of Lesson

We will discuss—as a class—the rest of the essential questions to get their minds moving in the correct direction. The students will then spend time looking at each ad they brought in, and take notes (text or sketches) on what parts of the ad draw their attention. They will pick out one the one part that draws them to the product the most, and will then begin exploring ways to change that one thing to make the ad draw in a different gender, age, personality, etc. They will collage these two opposing things into one ad (I’ve left this part vague and open to interpretation intentionally, they will be allowed artistic freedom in how they perceive this part. Some may want to collage in images from other magazines, some may want to go back in history and pull our old newspaper clippings, some may use text, some may want to draw or paint something in on top instead… all of these are okay and will make the project more meaningful to them). They will then use the 4 ads that they feel make the strongest impact and put them into a book format that they learned earlier in the lesson.

Lesson Vignette: Closure

The students will all set their books out and we will have a class go around where they will all get a chance to look through one another’s books. We will discuss which things worked well, and what could be improved, as well as what they’ve learned about how techniques in advertising affect the way they look at things. We will also go over some of the more critical “essential questions” and see how their answers compare to before they participated in the image manipulation.

Grading:

The students will be graded upon completing of 4 collage advertisements. They must write their reasoning for each one, and the way the image is portrayed must meet up with what they are saying.

Additional Considerations:

· Purposeful constraints/boundaries—What technical problems will the lesson address/explore—What conceptual problems will the lesson address/explore?

o It must be done in a book format, however, they will be able to choose which of the three types of book folding/binding techniques will present their ideas the most effectively.

o They will be asked to collage and piece things together, however, the process and materials they use will be totally up to them and will force them to think critically about what they are trying to say with each collage, and how they can pull them all together in the end.

o They will address the technical aspects of 2D composition as well as book construction

o The conceptual problems they address will vary based on what types of ads they pick to work with, however, they will all deal with the concept of how to take one ideology and transform it into another as a critique on visual culture.

Mini Lesson 2- Abbey

Title of Lesson: Gender plays a role in everyday objects
Big Idea: Ideologies/Visual Culture
Essential Questions:

• What do you think of when we say boy? And girl?
• What things are stereotypical boy things and girl things?
• Who decided this categorization of these things?
• What role does the media have in pushing these ideas?
• How does these stereotypes affect our identities?

Objective: The student will explore the big idea of gender ideologies by exploring their visual culture. From birth we are exposed to these societal norms of gender--in the hospital we are put in a blue or pink blanket depending on our gender. This is only expanded upon immensely in our everyday experiences with society and culture through ads, toys, clothes, movies, etc. The student will also explore how this defines who we are as individuals. The student will understand found object sculptures and artists who work in that media, as well as artists working with visual culture and gender.
Lesson Vignette:

• Anticipatory set:
• Start with a slide show of of everyday objects and have the class say whether the object is for a girl or boy.
• Then discuss what cues directed their answers. Does it have to do with color? Shape? Function? etc.
• Look at artists such as JeongMee Yoon and Robert Bradford
• Of Yoon: How does he use gender stereotypes in his work? What objects does he use to exemplify his message? How does using children and toys send a different message than if he used adults?
• Of Bradford: How is Bradford using found objects in an interesting way? What statement is he making with the final form of the sculpture? What does the juxtaposition of the objects and the final form say?
• Body of lesson:
• Students in groups would brainstorm objects that could be used to symbolize male and female. Then they will be asked to choose one item from the list that they feel best represents the gender. And then as a group they would gather objects that fit the stereotype of each gender. As the teacher, I would probably provide more objects as not all students may have access to enough things to bring in.
• Within their groups they would compile their objects and use them to build  a sculpture of their chosen stereotypical object. These sculptures should be larger in size. In the end the groups will end up with two sculptures: one male and one female.
• Once the sculptures are complete, we will photograph the pieces and then paint them. The male sculptures will be pink and the female will be blue.

• Closure:
• A great summary would be a gallery walk of the shadows created and asking the students to create stories of each in their journal. This will give them an opportunity to decode the visual cues and explore the story-telling aspect of the lesson further by creating their own.

Mini Lesson 1- Abbey

Name: Abbey
Title of Lesson: In the Shadows
Big Idea: Fear
Essential Questions:

• Why are we scared of the dark?
• What are we afraid of?
• Why do shadows play tricks on us?
• Why are silhouettes more frightening than fully detailed figures?
• How can we tell stories with shadows?
• How can we represent our shadowy fears with paper?

Objective: The student will explore the big idea of fear and what scares us through the medium of negative figure drawing. The student will create “shadows” of their fears in a life-size format as to create a semi-installation piece. During this the student will explore the ideas of positive and negative space, silhouettes and figure drawing. They will explore shape and contrast extensively in creating these shadows.
Lesson Vignette:

• Anticipatory set:
• Start with a clip from an age-appropriate horror movie that shows a scene with shadows.
• Discuss the scene and cinematography. What made this successful? How are they playing on our fears? Why are shadows scary?
• Look at artists such as Kara Walker and her work with silhouette stories. Also explore artists that use fear in their work such as, Joshua Hoffine, a horror photographer that creates scenes from childhood fears, urban legends and scary stories.
• Of Walker: How does she use silhouettes to tell a story? How is she including details for the viewer, but with only using black silhouettes? How could these be transcended into shadows that we fear?
• Of Hoffine: What ideas is he exploring? How is he capturing our fears? What details does he include to push those fears? How is he telling stories in a single image? How can we combine his work with Walker’s?
• Body of lesson:
• Students, maybe in groups or with partners, will brainstorm characters or figures that provoke fear, considering the attributes and characteristics that make them frightening. Then they’ll practice drawing outlines of these figures. Once they’ve practiced and created a mock of their life-size figure(s), they will draw it out on black paper to create the shadows.
• Students will then use props to create a scene for their shadows. (I envision this developing further into a photo project, installation piece, digital work or combination of these).

• Closure:
• A great summary would be a gallery walk of the shadows created and asking the students to create stories of each in their journal. This will give them an opportunity to decode the visual cues and explore the story-telling aspect of the lesson further by creating their own.