Art Education and Online Communities

Social networks are becoming more and more mainstream with the advent of facebook, twitter, and second life. This social connectedness has many rich possibilities. For example, sometimes they banish loneliness and help foster new friendships. Personally it has been a great way for me to keep up with my sister in Florida who is expecting her first baby. I have gotten to see pictures of her ultra sounds and also pictures of her and her husband getting ready for the big day. These networks also leads us to a cognitive surplus of information that can be informative but sometimes a little overwhelming.

However, when one thinks about what happened in South Hadley in regards to bullying, we are reminded on the dark side of these networks (blog to come on this soon).


For the first time in history we have bits of information floating out on the web in these social networks. How they evolve will reflect a lot about us. Also how they evolve will change us. It is exiting to be a participant rather than observer in 21st century new media. As an art educator I would like to ponder how we can introduce our students to the creative explosions it can produce in our changing world.


Historically a “down town” was the place for distribution of information. Then came the industrial revolution and with it more urban areas. The advent of t.v. gave was to lots of passive sit-com watching during our free time. These social networks are great places to engage in active thinking within the communities.

New Generative Topic

After thinking about surveillance and privacy i have fine tuned my generative topic.

Now my topic is this:

How does new media technologies influence the psychology of self within a group dynamic? What is in our human nature that motivates us to put up status reports? Also what are some negative and positive effects can these sites have on adolescence that have not yet fully matured developmentally. How can self and groups be taken advantage of by government or consumer society? How can they use it to their advantage (promote self)?

Questions to Ponder about New Media and Privacy

Social Networking is a great way to keep up with others. However it contributes to huge collections of personal info and images. Here are some questions to ponder.


Is this aggregation of personal information a bad thing, or a good thing?
Is it dangerous or freeing?
What responsibility do users of social networking sites have in posting about themselves and others?
What responsibility do social networking sites themselves have to make privacy controls easy to find and use?
Is society's notion of public and private changing as a result of social networking?

Surveillance/privacy

Surveillance/privacy


I talked to my group members about what generative topics we could choose. We all seemed to be most interested in privacy and or surveillance. So we did some research on artists who use these concepts. Once artist I came upon is Lee Walton. I spent a lot of time on his web site. He seems like a real lovable guy. His art is really funny. I regards to our topic he does art on facebook. Basically he takes his friends status reports and then films himself acting them out. He posts the films to vimeo and of course onto his facebook status page. This artwork can be viewed here: http://www.leewalton.com/projects/fbook/index.html

In regards to our generative topics we thought about reality t.v., cameras in public installed by the government, what it feels like to be filmed, filming people when they don’t know it, and how we all enjoy watching people on film react to particular situations (when they are unaware of being filmed). It would be fun to do social experiments in public to see how people act in certain situations. For example I know of a guy who secretly filmed himself screaming in downtown crossing and on the film no one came to his aid. People just walked past him.

Also I came across another artist that performed mini plays in front of surveillance cameras. This is very creative. This type of art shows that new media can create a venue for art to to seen that is out of the regular gallery space. Lee Walton’s art can be seen anywhere video is played. Or even anywhere folks can perform status reports themselves. Another artist named Kate pocrass had portable exhibition venues inside her hat and jacket.- contents of wallet She also has an art exhibition where you call a hotline and listen to her instructions on the message. She will often instruct those to go to a special shop, talk to the owner, or view something form a particular vantage point. Check it out here: http://www.mundanejourneys.com/

New Media and Interest Driven Learning

New media in art education opens the venue for a creator rather than consumer model. For example can be seen here: http://chinatownbanquet.org/about.html The banquet project is a multimedia project to raise awareness of Chinatown culture and its history. This site is a great example in how the visual arts can create community development and education. This site was made by high school students that is a great example of interest driven learning.

In my opinion today’s new media can be a great tool to propel interest driven learning with youth. New media allows youth to choose what they are interested in and access it.

While doing some research I came across an article titled New Media and Its Superpowers: Learning, Post Pokemon (A talk for 
The National Association of Independent Schools
February 25, 2010), in the article the author said “We know that most learning and engagement happens outside of school. For decades, progressive education has worked to integrate the learning happening in schools with what kids find important and meaningful outside of schools.” New media is a great way to do what this author is talking about.
Imagine if we can sneak in learning onto kids online social activity. For example, I often check my facebook page. It is a great way to keep up with folks. I also play Farmville. I have a nice simple farm. In the game I must harvest my crops in time or they will die. This automatically gives me insight of the sense of urgency or timing it takes to be a farmer. Now they say on Farmville that co-ops will be coming soon. I’m looking forward to that. Visual media will keep my attention for hours on end if I am not careful.

I then went to this site: http://www.uic.edu/classes/ad/ad382/
which gave the following information about media education:
Studies show that media education is most effective when it includes:
both media analysis and production
teacher-created combinations of activities, rather than off-the-shelf curricula
coordinated efforts across all subject areas

This site was very interesting: http://www.uic.edu/classes/ad/ad382/ and had some curriculum which incorporates new media.

I also found an artist named Cao Fei who is featured in season 5 of art 21. In her art she creates a world in second life called RMB City. It can be seen here http://www.pbs.org/art21/index.html.