Star - The National Society for Education in Art and Design

26
ICT
Beyond primary
A snapshot of digital art in the future
Ross Wallis presents a snapshot of
secondary digital art, emphasising that
the skills and experiences we expose our
pupils to in the primary years can help
create the designers of the future, and
answers a reader’s question: What do our
pupils do when they leave to go to
secondary school; where can skills and
interest in digital art lead to?
As an art teacher, I have gradually
specialised in working with digital media.
I am building up a repertoire of ideas for
activities involving a potent mix of
traditional and new media. The intention
of this article is to share some of this
through a snapshot of the projects of this
academic year to date.
START THE MAGAZINE FOR PRIMARY AND PRE-SCHOOL TEACHERS OF ART, CRAFT AND DESIGN
I take a small group of enthusiastic juniors
for a weekly after-school activity. My plan
was to mix digital media with drawing,
painting and other traditional media.
The very first lesson involved taking a self
portrait using the computer’s built-in
camera. In my lesson plan, this was to
take a couple of minutes at the start of the
lesson, but I lost the rest of the session to
hilarity, my plan falling apart as the pupils
played with the digital effects that
squeezed and distorted their images like a
hall of mirrors. Such is the power of digital
media. Frustrating as computers can be,
they can also be captivating. Children love
to see themselves on screen, and using
computers can add magic to lessons.
We took Year 7 on a trip to the Eden
Project so a jungle theme seemed fitting.
It being the autumn term, there were lots
of colourful leaves to be collected and
scanned. The scanned leaves were then
assembled into jungle pictures using
‘Copy’, ‘Paste’ and ‘Transform’ in Adobe
Photoshop, with the paintings of Henri
Rousseau as inspiration. The jungles were
then populated with crazy animals,
created by finding images on Google, and
combining the top half of one creature
with the bottom half of another.
The theme for Year 8 was Myths and
Legends. In the initial discussion about the
project ahead, the class chose to do an
animation based on a Greek myth. With
the class divided into smaller groups to
create each chapter or scene, silhouette
puppets were cut from black card, with
limbs articulated using split pins. The
action was filmed on digital movie
cameras connected to Macintosh laptops
running a wonderful stop-frame animation
program called icananimate. As the
project progressed, some of the students
worked on titles, some on sound effects,
some on the musical soundtrack, and
others script and narration. As homework
for each session, I set a little research
project: in this case, it was obvious that
they should look at the work of great
animators such as Lotte Reiniger and
Oliver Postgate.
In the Indian summer at the start of the
term, I worked outside with the Year 9
students. They worked in groups, each of
which was armed with a simple digital
camera and a tripod, and created stopframe
motion using themselves as the
subjects. For inspiration we looked at the
classic Canadian animator Norman
Mclaren, but there is a great deal of this
type of animation to be found on YouTube
at present too. In one of the best of these
animations, the students actually used
their shoes rather than themselves,
creating a tour of the school. Stop-frame
animation does not need special
equipment. The simplest digital camera
linked to any movie-making software that
will import still images can make quite
sophisticated animations. Two other
movies from this session were the girls
who made themselves disappear in quick
succession behind the thinnest of trees,
and a group who created a sort of ballet or
synchronised swimming display on the
grass. The technique they need is called
pixillation, and can produce effects with
the slapstick qualities of early comic
masters such as Buster Keaton, or the
antics of The Goodies and the mad
professor from Vision On.
Later in the term, students worked in
groups to create a two-minute public
service advertisement on an anti-smoking
theme, the outline plans of which we
entered in a Channel 4 competition called
‘Breath’. The films were shot around
school, one involving some great acting by
a passing teacher! Students were able to
take roles within the group, behind the
camera or in front, creating sound tracks
and titles using software such as Apple’s
Garage Band and iMovie.
In Year 10, small groups and individuals
continued to experiment with animation,
over a longer period and with greater
sophistication. One student recreated a
still-life painting using real objects, which
he then animated. The original painting
cross dissolved into the animated version.
A Year 11 student has become very
proficient in the use of Flash, and has
programmed some fantastic interactive
works: screens of coloured lines
reminiscent of Bridget Riley or Mark
Rothko that react to the movement of the
mouse, changing colour or moving.
A second student has become fascinated
with clocks, creating a number of his own
clocks, using Flash as the engine to make
his digital works of art tell accurate time.
A third student is passionate about the
whole punk rock genre. He has taken
photos of his punk rock peers and is using
Photoshop to create moody images with
altered levels of colour and contrast. To
add spice to a Year 10 visit to a gallery, we
asked students to talk about paintings in
the exhibition from the point of view of the
painting’s subject. Back in school we
combined the sound track with a
reproduction of the work so the subjects
of the paintings appear to talk about
themselves. This was done with a
wonderful bit of software called Crazy
Talk. I used this software to experiment
with some self portraits that another
group had produced, in effect getting the
drawing to evaluate itself.
2
ICT
At sixth form level, I have several students
experimenting with photography in
different ways. One is creating stunning
images using coloured dyes, water,
mirrors, distorting lenses and digital
distortions in Photoshop. Another is very
keen on the work of photographers such
as Henri Cartier Bresson and Robert
Doisneau. He has persuaded his parents
to take him on a trip to Paris this Easter so
that he can produce images of Parisian
café life for his A-level examination. A
number of these senior students are
creating websites to publish their work,
with integrated blogs to explain the
processes they use and the influences on
their work; all the traditional sketchbook
work translated into digital format. Other
students have experimented with
scanning and self portraiture, and are
currently in the process of making
photographic screen prints from their
digital creations.
I have given a very speedy snapshot of
two terms of work, and have not even
touched on the many technical and other
issues that working with digital media
generates. The computers and software
are expensive and prone to error, much of
the work is done in groups rather than
individually, and often these groups need
to be out of the classroom, in charge of
expensive equipment. When students use
images found on Google, there are
copyright issues, and issues of child
protection when they put their work back
onto the web. Sites like Bebo, Facebook
and YouTube have great potential, but are
fraught with issues for teachers and
teaching in this digital age. But I will finish
where I started: despite many challenges,
my experience of experimenting with
digital media in the art room is generally
motivated students being creative, having
fun, coming to lessons with enthusiasm,
working at home and sharing their
experiences with me, all the things that
excite me and keep me motivated as a
teacher. I’m hooked.
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