2007 November Meeting Minutes

Meeting time: November 5, 2007.
Member present: Metaphor Voom, Rhianwen Enzo, Talitha Choche, Gamilon DeCuir, EXB Allen, and Kristy Handrick
Announcement:
1. I move the meeting place from the ground to the air. Here is quieter than the ground floor. I put a transparent wall on the border in case no one will fall. Because of the height, maybe not everyone can fly to here. So, there is a free flight feather next to the screen on the ground floor. Please feel free to take and wear.
2. We are going to have our group website soon. Hopefully I can finish it before next time group meeting. Before 2008, this group website should have a discussion board, at that time all members can do asynchronize discussion on the web. (I am applying that from Yahoo now. If anyone has better idea about where to apply the discussion board, please let me know. Thank you. )
3. The website will include what is InAEA, News, Meeting Minutes, SL URL, discussion board, Members gallery, Members linkK (If you have any thought, please send me IM to let me know! Lets make InAEA a better org. )
Discussion: What’s next! When everyone can be an artist to have personal show on the web, what art education should do? Where is art education going?
Art education can go in many directions. Just like RL, it is up to the educators and the students. The limits are only with the educators and students and their perceptions of their limitations and contextual limits. The trick is in educating the public about the art. It seems like we are always in the process of restructuring the language of art so as to facilitate communication. But ultimately, that is what art is V language. There are hundreds of artists on the web, but how is their work moving an agenda forward? The art educators today who are aware of this issue will have to help their students learn to interpret. Artworks beyond visual means not instead of visual means but in addition to the visual. The change in students since computers certainly bugs those who are teachers already. Computers are only another tool in the large toolbox. There are still many traditional art skills that we can and should teach in art class, but thinking has to be the #1 basic. Visual culture is “inherently interdisciplinary” as Nicholas Mirzoeff says. We have become the ultimate visual society. When teaching student to think through the art making process was not interested in art begin to get very interested. My first reaction to visual culture was that they were trying to replace art with visual social studies, but I have come to understand it in a better light. I have seen students take art more seriously and get more excited about it once art education moved from just making “pretty things” to having the art connect with real current life. Asking them to think beyond just the surface is hard for them at first but then they catch on. Many more advanced students feel we are being condescending if we say art is only about formal qualities. The trick with teaching through visual culture is too not let concept keep you from also teaching the basic skills and techniques that it take to make art.
Field trip: Vive Voce – Art Center, Belleair Shores (241, 116, 21)
Next meeting time: December 3, 2007 6:00 pm PDT (SL time)