Choose One of the Following Lessons

FROM THE GUTENBERG PRESS TO PROJECT GUTENBERG:
THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY ON THE WORLD OF ART

COURSE LEVEL/CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LEARNERS:

This lesson is designed for 10th and 11th graders ranging in age from 16 to 17
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Standards for Art and Design in Parentheses Following Goals/Objectives

GOALS/OBJECTIVES:

• Students will learn about the history of printing, print media, technology, and visual media
  
  • Students will recognize styles from other times (A4)
    
  • Students will recognize styles of art from other lands (A3)
    
  • Students will use art as a way of thinking and communicating (A6)
    
  • Students will explore how artists/cultures through history have used art to communicate ideas, and designs (B1)
    
  • Students will understand how their choices in art are shaped by their own culture and society (B5)
    
  • Students will understand environmental and aesthetic issues related to package design, and industrial products (B7)
    
  • Students will understand and recognize that art reflects the history and culture in which created (I5) Students will understand the purposes and functions of art (J1)
    
  • Students will understand their own ideas about the purposes and meanings of art (J5)
    
  • Students will understand and apply art criticism and aesthetic knowledge in art and design (J7)
    
  • Students will reflect and talk about works of art (J10)
    
• Students will learn the basics of computer design and layout, scanning, and printing
  
  • Students will know and use elements and principals of design in sophisticated ways (C1)
    
  • Students will assume personal responsibility for learning and the creative process (C10)
    
  • Students will understand visual techniques used in mass media (F2)
    
  • Students will interpret visual images in ads, news, and entertainment (F3)
    
  • Students will recognize stereotyping in visual media (F4)
    
  • Students will know about community artists and designers (D2)
    
  • Students will be able to demonstrate that they understand formal elements
    
    • line, color, rhythm, balance
      
    • vocabulary related to doing/making (A2)
      
• Students will create a product design, book cover, package design, CD cover, brochure, iron on transfer or menu with the computer
  
  • Students will understand what makes quality design (C2)
    
  • Students will communicate complex ideas by producing popular images and objects, such as mass media, and consumer products (E3)
    
  • Students will make informed judgments about mass media, such as magazines, television, computers, films (F1)
    
  • Students will continue to use a variety of tools, such as more sophisticated application of words, numbers, sounds, images, emotions, and technology to help communicate about the visual world (K4)
    
• Students will learn how to do basic calligraphy strokes and styles on the computer
  
• Students will learn how to use computer fonts to design an illuminated letter or versal
  
• Students will use the internet to research versals and appropriate textual content
  
• Students will layout an illuminated manuscript page on the computer
  
  • Students will apply problem solving strategies that promote fluency, flexibility, elaboration, and originality (D6)
    
  • Students will use the knowledge of nature and works of art as sources for new ideas (L4)
    
  • Students will understand that art is created by people with different world views, expresses diverse ideas, and changes over time (L6)
    
• Students will learn how to do silk screen printing
  
  • Students will learn how to do color separations and registration on the computer
    
  • Students will come up with ideas and carry them through to completion of art work (C9)
    
  • Students will use their knowledge, intuition, and experiences to develop ideas for artwork (L1)
    
  • Students will continue to develop a base of knowledge and skills from which to create new ideas (L2)
    
  • Students will develop a personal style in art and design that reflects who they are (L5)
    
• Students will learn how to use digital photography to create photomosaics
  
  • Students will apply advanced craft and skills to consistently produce quality art layout and design on the computer (C7)
    
  • Students will imagine complex situations from a variety of challenging points of view (L7)
    
• Students will learn how to use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements in order to
  
  • Crop, enhance, scale, resample and repair photographs
    
  • Use filters and effects
    
  • Create and use layering
    
• Students will learn how to use Hyperstudio or Powerpoint in order to create multimedia presentations
  
  • Students will communicate complex ideas by producing design art forms such as graphic design, product design, architecture, landscape, and media arts such as film, photography, and multimedia
    
  • If possible, students will learn how to use Quark, Pagemaker, Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Director, which are standards of the publishing and multimedia industry
    
  • Students will connect prior knowledge and skills in art to other areas, such as humanities, sciences, social studies, and technology (K1)
    
  • Students will learn how to design their own web page using HTML
    

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Formal Content:

Looking and Talking:

• Students recognize and understand the social, emotional, and historical context of visual culture through time and across cultures(art vocab and history, criticism [what is art, why do people make art, how do artists use art to express ideas, describing, analyzing, interpreting, and judging a work of art using Feldman's model of Art Criticism]

  Description:

  • What is it? What kind of object, artist, dates, style, media, size, obvious subject, etc.?
  • What does the object itself immediately reveal?
  • What are the visual clues that would help you identify the work?

  Formal Analysis:

  • How was it done? Technical explanations, methods, compositions

  Elements of design

  • Form, Line, Shape, Color, Texture, Space, Value

  Principles of art

  • Emphasis, Balance, Harmony, Variety, Movement,, Rhythm, Proportion, Unity

  Interpretation:

  • What does this work mean? Is there a story --literary content?
  • Symbols or visual clues. (Iconography)
  • Any emotion or feeling?--hedonic tone, aesthetic resonance?
  • Historical period or artistic style?
  • Is this work an important example to explain some cultural, social or human activity, or interest?

  Judgment:

  • Why is this work valuable? In your opinion, is the work good or bad?
  • Successful or unsuccessful as a work of art and in what terms?
  • How can you validate your opinions and judgment?
  • Compare it with another work that is similar/different to with what some other critic or historian has said about this work?) , aesthetics, media, etc.)

  Expressive:

  • Students will understand and communicate complex ideas and emotions through art creation and reflection. (visual media and technology, literacy, production) (Making connections, synthesis of various forms of knowledge through art, integrating subject areas, invention, making use of community resources) (Visual imagination and creativity, developing and articulating personal style through art work, strengthening habits of mind-imagination/creativity/metaphor, problem solving in creative ways)

  LESSON RATIONALE

  When I began combining elements of graphic design with technology, it was 1981 and the computer involved was a 48K Apple II+ with a dot matrix printer and a 5.25 inch floppy drive. There were no hard drives for storage and no mice. There was a limited palette of black, white, green, purple, orange, and blue for high resolution programming. There were only 16 colors available for low resolution graphics. Yet one of the first fields of interest was graphic design. Before long, the first graphic tablets appeared, and students were learning how to create spirograph-like drawings in LOGO or LightBrite style drawings in Apple BASIC programming language.

  The capabilities of the computer as a drawing tool were realized almost from it's inception when main frame computers spit out detailed renderings all done in keyboard symbols and/or letters. Today, printing is the second largest global industry, and it is a given that many jobs require computer skills. Some of these are Web Designer, Visual Design, Motion Graphics, Interactive Designer, Publishing Design, Production Artist, Special Effects Artist, Video Game Designer, 3D Modeler, 2D and 3D Animator, and Multimedia Producer. Artists are expected not only to have all the traditional skills but are competing directly with those whose computer skills are superior and thus are perceived to be better graphic artists. To level the playing field, we need to make sure our students who want to compete for design jobs have both skill sets.

  INTEGRATIVE ASPECTS OF THE LESSON:

• In the area of Language Arts Comprehension, students are required to use internet resources when doing research. The students must evaluate information on the internet in the same manner as they would if researching information in texts or magazines. They are taught to treat the internet just like a text and to cite information that is directly quoted from internet sources.
  
• In the area of Communications/Media students use multi-media software to create computer generated presentations on specific aspects of the lesson. The software used could be either HyperStudio or PowerPoint.
  
• In the area of Science, multimedia presentations can depict specific mechanical aspects of the lesson such as how certain pieces of equipment or processes work, or on inventors from Gutenberg to Steve Jobs.
  
• In the area of History, multimedia presentations can depict specific biographical information or cultural information regarding key people or events having some impact on the world of printing and media which could include artists from Durer to Chuck Close, activists like Martin Luther, or events like the Protestant Reformation.

  MOTIVATION/INTRODUCTION:

  • I will be creating either Powerpoint or Hyperstudio presentations that will present the course itself and point out the iconography, formal qualities of the work, and the techniques used. I am a fairly lively speaker with a generally good rapport with teenagers, and usually use humor to help motivate my students. My enthusiasm for the work should also help as well as their natural gravitation towards the use of computers for just about anything.
  • I will be showing images of pre-Gutenberg work such as Illuminated manuscripts, Islamic and Chinese calligraphy
  • I will be showing images of Northern Renaissance woodcuts and engraving, focusing on Albrect Durer
  • I will be showing images from Art History which have become kitsche as a result of mass media
  • I will be showing images from pop culture of the past to pop culture of today in time capsule form
  • I will be using a CD-ROMs about M.C. Escher as a printmaker as well as his skill with perspective and Magritte in his use of simple imagery

  ART MAKING PROCEDURES/ACTIVITIES:

  Supplies and Equipment List:

  (non-consumable)
  • 6 or more fully equipped Mac or PC computers loaded with all software programs needed
  • 2 or more digital cameras
  • 3 or more photo quality color printers

  Materials

  (consumable)
  • 4 or more 50 sheet packages of glossy photo quality paper
  • 2 or more 50 sheet packages of glossy brochure paper or presentation paper
  • 2 color and 2 black ink jet cartridges per printer

  Organization/Distribution of Equipment and Supplies:

  Demonstration Plan:

  Step-by-step directions:

  
  Art Education Area; Department of Visual Art; Peck School of the Arts; University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
  Noreen Strehlow - Copyright March 2003