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Week 7

This week we had two really wonderful guest speakers.  Curator Lisa Dorin came and spoke to us about her career as a curator and specifically about her work on the Sharon Hayes exhibition.  I thought one of the most interesting things she shared was that her favorite part of her job--working with living artists--can also be the biggest challenge of her job.  She explained that she loves being an advocate to help make the artist's vision happen in the museum, but on the flip side, sometimes certain ideas and requests are just not possible.

Troy Klyber is the Intellectual Property Manager here at the museum.  We were particularly excited to talk with him because we had lots of questions about the types of images/music/etc that can be used in the Digital Collage projects and still make them legally in-the-clear to post on the museum website.  He talked to us about copyright laws and the idea of fair use.  He said that a lot of people ask him about if the museum "goes after" people who use AIC artworks in commercials, ads, products, etc.  Interestingly, he said his job isn't so much about policing use of the museum collection as it is to make sure that the museum itself is fairly using the collection!  He loves the research and investigation that comes with tracking down artists and estates of artists who have died.  Just after his talk with us, the AIC blog featured a post by Troy about this issue.

Another highlight of the week was going to the ASM College Fair.  We have a few seniors in Teen Lab who were able to get lots of important and useful information, but it was also a helpful orientation to the process for underclassmen as well.  ASM offers some great resources about the college process on their website too.

Sharon Hayes: Spoken Word DJ performance

On Thursday we got to check out Sharon Hayes's Spoken Word DJ performance for the opening of the special exhibition featuring her work.  She mixed audio from historic public speeches and news broadcasts like a DJ mixes music.  Many students documented the performance as potential material for their upcoming digital story collage projects.  We get to meet with the curator on Monday to learn more!

Thinking about Themes

Terah led us on an improvised gallery exploration of a theme.  First we discussed what a theme can be and brainstormed a list of ideas in the studio.  After some very (un)scientific voting, we landed on a theme to explore together: BLUE.  Amanda suggested Ed Ruscha's City for a starting point.  As our conversations in the gallery went on, each student wrote notes, words, and associations on post-it notes, which we compiled on a collective poster.  Three students were designated photographers, and they collected images to document our walk and the works we considered.  Ultimately, our improvised stops and the conversations we had at each work provided the kind of elements that we could use to develop our next project: digital story collages.

Digital Collages - inspiration!

Here are some digital stories created by teens and teachers who participated in other programs at the museum, as well as other examples from the Internet.  What techniques could you emulate?  What could you do differently as you develop your theme through your own Digital Collage?

AIC examples

• Liel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26C4FM8JY7E
• Rouge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUOp-XGdK70
• Angel: http://www.artic.edu/aic/education/teens/project_gallery/movies/angel/angel.html
• Time: http://voicethread.com/#q.b1246683.i6704288
• Looking at the Stars: http://voicethread.com/#q.b1231374.i6634281

Other examples

• Fredniesha's Story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVDzIHbaT78&feature=related 
• Matt's Story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvCRHTQwXAk&feature=related
• Color Poetry: http://voicethread.com/#q+colour+poetry.b39992.i209930 
• Emma's Garden: http://digitalstories.yale-wrexham.co.uk/storypages/emmahall.html 
• Acceptance: http://digitalstories.yale-wrexham.co.uk/storypages/joanlittlehales.html

Personal Museum Maps - Presentations with Staff

We had a wonderful group of museum education staff members turn out for our midterm presentations of our Personal Museum Map projects.  Students each created a collage featuring a selection of works or spaces from throughout the museum.  Many included a packing tape transfer technique as one of their collage element layers.  While their final collages did not necessarily need to read visually as a literally map, they needed to include the museum map in "some way, shape, or form."

In small groups, teens took the staff members around the museums on a tour of their collages, stopping to talk about their selections along the way.  These collages will be included in a final exhibition (which the students will plan) in the Ryan Education Center.  Here is a glimpse of their work and tours.

Found Text Poetry

We used the words collected through our Text Glimpses activity in the gallery on Oct. 20 to write found poetry.  After creating a group bank of words from our own lists, we each wrote a stanza to add to a group poem.  We began by thinking about the theme "life in the museum," but some of us ended up going in slightly different directions... post-apocalyptic museum, anyone?  Here's the result (sorry, guys, if the order is slightly different -- the sheets got a little mixed up).

Anyone have any title suggestions? 

Industrial City
Museum Admission is mine!
Cafes and levels
I find it beautiful.

Beautiful art is a garden around the world.
Warmed photography is special towards mom.
Pressure between beautiful, not nothing.

Paradise is the key to no pressure.
Hidden cities' elevators is love.
Virgin child's modern wing is Paris.
Hidden cafes everywhere between polished laptops.
MINE!

Don't do that.  The people stay nervous.
Look carefully, hidden dead bodies.
Find them.
The path finder in my mind is the Devil inside me.
The Devil.
Creepy bloody stuff in my Perfectly imperfect world.
The beauty.

Virgin Child leaves outside, crying.
Window city hidden in beautiful Beast.
Dead bodies everywhere, fantastic!
Mom, Devil is in side me, hidden inside mind.
Emotional war open, running is key..
God is mine!

Around the world no exit.
Dead bodies everywhere,
She's crying.
Reminds her of war,
Emotional beast in Paris.

Even beasts find it,
Between industrial archives:
A chance to win,
Running, unarmed, toward the polished city.

I break their neck
On membership desk.
Devil is inside me.
There is no exit.

Paris has a garden that's hidden.
The walls move and you find dead bodies.
The dead bodies are my grandchildren.
But it's okay because it's a perfectly imperfect world.

Every day life, love, Paris.
Crying and cursing.
Photography of every Sunday in the parks archive.

Polished key.
Chance to win marvelous path
Finder to Paradise around the world.
Paris.

I'm fantastic in my mind.
Can you find it?
It's hidden, get the key.
Open it wide look carefully.
Everything in my mind is everywhere scattering.

Look carefully, restroom that way.
Explore its beautiful hot marvelous reflection.
Work hours, exit, leave now, don't stay.
Terminated but stop, no pictures, photography.

I have the key to my mind that lets me think.
Can you see?
That's why I have to archive goals.

Personal Museum Map Project

Today we will begin our Personal Museum Map Project.  These will be individual projects that will reflect upon our museum experiences thus far.  Since our experiences in the museum are unique to our own personal interests, navigating the museum is an important part of how we create lasting impressions.We will be creating personal map collages that describe who we are as individuals and how we record memories, collect images and sketch ideas that inspire our work.  Many artists have used the idea of a theme of the map as collage or have used the concepts of collecting, space, time, and architecture as ways to create beautiful works of art that define themselves as individuals.  Here is a list of artists that work in this manner that you can look at to draw from for inspiration:

Mark Bradford
Mark Bradford (Art 21 video)
Joyce Kozloff
Landon Mackenzie
Matthew Ritchie
Julie Mehretu

Mark Bradford
Whore in the Church House, 2006
Mixed media collage on canvas
103 x 142 in. (261.6 x 360.7 cm)

                                   
                                                                 Copyright © 2009 Rubell Family Collection. All Rights Reserved.

More....Roger Brown Study Collection Field Trip Pics

This album contains pictures taken at the Roger Brown House on our field trip on Wednesday, October 19, 2011.  The collection offered more than enough IRONY, which made me think more about the meaning behind each piece.  Hopefully this field trip gave you some insight about what a "collection" is and inspired ideas about how a collection and its content can tell a story.

Meredith and I would love to read your comments on these pictures and about what you took away from this experience at the Roger Brown House.  If you took pictures, please remember to post them on your blog!

Thanks,
Joel

Visual text

This week we're going to start off with some poetry-writing, which we will install on our Collaborative Mapping Project in a visual way.  Here are some examples of artists/designers working with text in a visual way.

Courtesy of Axis Maps

Holstee Manifesto

Stefan Bruggemann

Leon Ferrari and Mira Schendel (MoMA exhibition)

Axis Maps

Paula Scher

Catching up!

Since we started this class blog a little late, I'll do my best to play catch-up on what we've been doing so far.  The first three weeks of the program were very busy!  We've been keeping ongoing notes and sketches in our physical sketchbooks, which we kicked off with personal collages, as well as digital sketchbooks in the form of our blogs.

We've spent a lot of time in the galleries, starting with writing diamante poems.  Then we did a Directed Wandering Project, where we searched out works that fulfilled certain criteria.  Then we picked one of those criteria and developed a whole album of images from the collection, along with captions annotating our observations, thoughts, and reflections.

We've been on a fieldtrip to the MCA, where we saw Pandora's Box: Joseph Cornell Unlocks the MCA Collection.  We looked at works by Joseph Cornell and other contemporary artists affected by his ideas and work.  Back at the Art Institute, we looked at some Cornell boxes in our own collection and did an exquisite corpse writing exercise, inspired by Cornell's Surrealist contemporaries.  Cornell not only collected ephemera from his daily life, he arranged it in thoughtful ways through his boxes.



Then we had a special treat when guest artist Regin Igloria visited Teen Lab to talk about his sketchbooks and how other artists have used sketchbooks as part of their practices.  He brought sketchbooks of his own (and ones by his students) to show us.  We are beginning to think of our own  sketchbooks as spaces for brainstorming, documenting, collecting, daydreaming, creating, and problem-solving.

We also began a Collaborative Mapping project, in which we're tracing our paths to the museum by collecting images, text, and ephemera on our way to the museum and combining them into a group collage.  Most recently we went on a fieldtrip to the Roger Brown Study Collection and saw how this artist collected all sorts of objects and arranged them in his home.

Here's a slideshow of images from the Roger Brown Study Collection. I created my own mini-collection of textile pieces I liked:

Documenting Teen Lab

Welcome to the Teen Lab Fall 2011 class blog!  You are all keeping blogs to serve as  your Digital Sketchbooks throughout the program.  While your Digital Sketchbooks are personal to your own experiences and ideas during the term, this blog will serve to document the class as a whole and provide resources.