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On Wednesday, April 1st, artist Shing Yin Khor along with Professor Shiamin Kwa  hosted a Zine Workshop in the new Carpenter Media Lab in conjunction with the East Asian Language and Culture course: Everything But the Table (EALC 345). The Carpenter Media Lab was a great new space for digital collaboration as the students quickly got to work making their own zines within one hour with art supplies scattering the tables. 

Though much of Khor's work is printed or sculpted, the internet has become a gamechanger for artists like Khor. Through fundraising platforms like Patreon, artists of all kinds can create sponsorships where their fans can give monetary support in order to receive exclusive blog posts and updates as well as gifts and subscriptions. Furthermore, publishing platforms such as Issuu have made it easier to share zines and publications digitally.

VoiceThread is a user-friendly way to share power point presentations, videos, photos, and other media. Students and professors can record video or audio responses, draw on the media to highlight certain points, and comment in text form. This site is useful for discussion outside of the classroom, allowing students to focus on the topic at hand and reflect in a collaborative way.

Want to Learn More?
Read how VoiceThread describes its capabilities.

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Capabilities

Through VoiceThread...

Professors can:

• Upload power points
• Upload question slides for comment
• Comment on students’ writing in video, text, and visual formats

Students can:

MediaThread, a project created by the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning through the Digital Bridges Initiative is a service that allows you to blend your thoughts with multimedia sources and share them with others. MediaThread supports video, images, metadata, and many content websites listed below. Most compatible with Firefox, MediaThread is currently being used by Columbia, MIT, Wellesley, Dartmouth, The American University in Cairo, and many other institutions of higher education.

Who can do what with MediaThread? Through MediaThread...

While looking through Chapter 5 of Critical Play by Mary Flanagan I became interesed in an artist who was mentioned only briefly. His name is Allan Kaprow and it is his work that coined the term Happening, something we all experienced a few weeks ago.

A Happening is a work that is shaped through audience participation. It creates a narrative through interactions of the participatnts and the Environment. The Environment is the space where the work occurs that encompasses everything that is needed for the work- people need only enter for it to begin. 

Kaprow's most famous work is "18 Happenings in 6 Parts". Reading about this work reminded me of "The Quiet Volume". It involves participants moving through a series of three rooms while following the direcctions written on three cards and the sound of bells to indicate when to move on.

On Fridays I work with a 2hr long class with 4-6 year olds. Usually, the weekly projects correspond to modern artists, but this week they worked with the Valentine's Day theme. There are 9 students in the class (8 girls and 1 boy), in the full age range. 

Exerpt:

During this class, something that stood out to me was Ms. A's helping the kids with many of their projects.

Cut-out hearts: fold square paper, draw half of heart, cut out along line. Some kids needed/wanted more help with this process than others. Ms. A would fold and draw for many of them, I was trying to show them how to do it by example, then see if they could do it on their own. Maybe this was a little too challenging?

Much of my experience has been with slightly older children and/or in more "educational" environments (schools and a museum that was all about educating children through creative projects). But should this placement (an art center) not be as challenging as a school? It's always still a learning experience. Also, because I am working with younger children (4-6), where is the line between encouraging challenging learning experiences and helping out with things that might be too advanced for a certain age group? Especially for young childred, there are certain developmental ages that really dictate what a child is capable of doing (i.e. scissors with the 2 yr olds).

Maybe I should read up on these stages...any suggestions?

Our discussion today reminded me of a story I listened to on NPR last week about the multiple perceptions of Jesus. It is really very interesting. This is the link:   

http://www.npr.org/2012/11/19/165473220/color-of-christ-a-story-of-race-and-religion-in-america

Hey everybody, I don't really know if this has any place in this Ecological Imaginings class, but maybe if we can imagine the preservation of women to be a form of ecology, not unlike the preservation of all plant life, animal life.

I just wanted to call everyone's attention to this excellent documentary currently being shown on PBS on Mon & Tues nights at 9:00 PM.  I imagine you guys have lots of time to watch films, yeah!  But this is an amazing series.

"Half the Sky" about gender based violence.

Here's the link to the first & second segment:

http://video.pbs.org/video/2283557115   

http://video.pbs.org/video/2283558278