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  Big Data Visualities

  Ron Wigglesworth

  Make sense of abstract Big Data numbers by creating concrete, static or kinetic images/visualities which communicate or translate the meaning of the numbers to a human scale of understanding. The subject of the visualities should be created in each student’s artist voice, with the freedom and empowerment to express their own social, economic, political and ecological concerns so his/her work has personal meaning and strength of concern. Employ art hand skills in 21st century postmodern art by using Big Data to illustrate interdisciplinary social justice concerns in visualities, created to move a viewer to action.

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  Exploring Public Space: Interventionist Artworks and the Creative Disruption of the Everyday

  Jack Watson

  1. Attempting to bridge a gap between artist and spectator while also challenging the elitism and preciousness associated with art, artists have long sought ways to blend the art experience into the everyday. From the ephemeral performances and “social sculptures” of 20th century conceptual art to the culture-jamming interventions of contemporary street art, there is a rich historical context for engaging directly with the spectator in public spaces. Taking artwork into public spaces in the form of actions rather than objects – actions which involve the participation of the spectator – bypasses the negotiations and mediations that take place when a viewer experiences something presented as “art”, and opens generative (and unexpected) spaces of dialog and meaning-making. In this unit, high school students will collaboratively plan and implement public space interventions of their own design.

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  Power Issues in Everyday Life ÷ Socially Engaged Art = Empowerment

  Hoyun Richter

  This lesson is facilitated so that students can identify and expand their perspective on a power issue relevant to their lives through dialogue, analysis of relevant artworks, and everyday examples. Artists Suzanne Lacy, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, Emily are introduced to discuss power and powerlessness.

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  Women of Our Worlds: Women Raising Voices Against Violence

  Patty Bode

  In a high school painting and drawing course, students investigated what contemporary women artists were making, saying, protesting, and changing in multiple art worlds. Group dialogue centered on generative themes in which students chose interconnected topics of combating domestic violence, affirming diverse body expressions and family relationships to launch a painting on canvas project. Students took leadership in activism to invite community workers into the art room resulting and in-school interventions such as, installing art exhibit in the school office, and projecting text and imagery in school cafeteria walls. Expanding into the community, students produced and installed info-art-posters in sites where they knew women needed access to information such as nail salons, homeless shelters and the employee break rooms of low-wage employment retail stores. This led to students teaching painting classes at a local women’s shelter. The study of contemporary women artists empowered students to reconsider what counts as art, and re-envision their role as art-makers in their worlds.