Sensing Change
1 Teaching the Senses
In the first few chapters of his groundbreaking book, A Whole New Mind: Why right brainers will rule the future, business guru and bestselling author Daniel Pink describes the current socioeconomic landscape as one which is globally competitive, technologically and mechanically advanced, and largely saturated with goods, services, and visual culture; forces which are pushing us forward into a new age and a whole new way of thinking. In our march toward what Pink calls the conceptual age, “We've progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. And now we're progressing yet again - to a society of creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers” (Pink, 2005), characteristics which are distinctly encouraged by the arts and manifested in those who labor to make and understand them. The implication of this new reality for arts education is clear; the skills and sensibilities nurtured by the arts and for the arts are precisely those which will define the paradigms of our economy and culture in a future that may already be upon us. If we embrace Pink's predictions regarding our society and economy, we are obliged to make art education indispensable, even to students who don't see themselves as career artists. If we accept Pink's thesis that the Conceptual Age is upon us, we cannot afford to marginalize the arts, but should be looking for ways to incorporate its tenants and principles into every aspect of the education process, letting synthesis, experimentation, critical questioning, divergent thinking, and meaningful context become the glue that binds disparate content objectives together, forging a unified effort in the development of whole persons, capable of plasticity of thought and big picture perspectives. Many people are asking, what can we give to the society that has everything? What career path does one take when so many jobs can be outdone by technologies or outsourced to other countries? What does success in “The Conceptual Age”look like? Art educators are uniquely poised to respond to these questions by cultivating the six essential capacities, or “senses”, Pink describes and incorporating
Sensing Change
2
them into their curriculum; design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning are the pillars of “a whole new mind” for the 21st century. Pink's six senses provide a succinct response to the imperative questions, what should we teach about art? and what can we teach through it? Not only can each sense be regarded as a “big idea” (Walker, 2001) around which to build curriculum, but taken as a whole, the senses create a fresh new vocabulary for representing our aims, as well as framing the criteria for post modern assessment. Teaching for the “senses” can help us to embrace and foster the capacities so urgently needed to prepare our students for their future in the Conceptual Age; a globally competitive future in which creativity and vision are valued at a premium and personal fulfillment and meaningful work are the foremost measures of success. In Practice: Teaching the senses Teaching for Design Design, according to Pink, is “a classic whole minded aptitude”(Pink, 2007, p 70) in which left and right brain come together in a seamless merger of utility and significance. Teaching design with the 21st century student in mind requires that students are challenged to evaluate their aesthetic responses to design decisions, as well as the meaning of design in modern culture, and the practical impact it has on their daily lives. The economic climate of the conceptual age has has brought design into the lexicon of everyday experience and raised the bar in terms of what we have come to expect out of our goods and services. Twenty-first century designers and entrepreneurs know that they must consider the human element in every situation, and that “To maintain our... advantage, we must move beyond function, understand context, harmoniously relate the unrelated, recognize emotional responses, enjoy the process, and highlight our individuality.” (L. Bartlett, personal communication, April 18, 2012) Design relies on all of Pink's other senses and encourages complex, multimodal thinking. In other words, “No matter what
Sensing Change
3
path these students pursue, (design education) will enhance their ability to solve problems, understand others, and appreciate the world around them - essential abilities in the Conceptual Age.”(Pink, 2007, p. 74) One way in which we might encourage students' thinking about design in their world is by asking them to keep a design journal, taking note of their encounters with both good and bad design. Remind students that design is all around them. Virtually every man made object we encounter has been designed in some way. Ask students to consider their emotions and physical responses as they encounter a particular object, space, or experience and try to articulate what it is that they see, hear, feel, or sense that elicits that response? What purposeful decisions might have been responsible for their experience? How might they improve or alter those decisions to produce different results? Once students have been introduced to thinking about design in this way, organize a design detective field trip. Gather students in a busy shopping center or mall and ask them to look closely at the diversity of design decisions present in that particular setting. Ask them to compare their experiences at different stores and their reactions to different products, explaining what makes each one distinct, what the intentions of the design might be, whether or not they believe the design experience produced the intended result, and how they might improve or alter it. Back in the classroom students might work to redesign a product, service, or brand to improve it's aesthetic or practical value. Teaching for Symphony The sense of Symphony is a matter of seeing the larger picture, of detecting patterns, understanding one thing in terms of another, sensing relationships, and commanding “the ability to marshal those relationships into a whole whose magnificence exceeds the sum of its parts”. (Pink 2007 p.141) We currently exist in a society full of “multi-isms”: we are multicultural, multimodal, multimedia, multitaskers. In this climate, the ability to cross boundaries and bring disparate ideas together is more valuable than it has ever been before.
Sensing Change
4
Art making and viewing depend on our ability to recognize pattern, see relationships, and understand metaphor. Without these “right brain” capacities images would literally be meaningless. In some ways symphony, or seeing the big picture, is also a process of distillation. Creating an effective metaphor requires that we get to the heart of something; that we understand its most essential qualities. To approach a problem or idea “in a contextual, big picture fashion [is] to distinguish between what really matters and what merely annoys” (Pink, 2007 p. 143) One cultural example of this synthesized distillation is the celebrity signature scent. Student's might explore this concept for themselves through a project in which they design a cologne or perfume that captures the “essence” of a particular artist. After selecting an artist and researching their biography as well as the themes pervading their work, students would need to synthesize various aspects of an artist's aesthetic, persona, and big ideas, finding the common thread, or essence which ties the whole together. Students would be creativity responsible for branding, package design, and promotional materials which express the conceptual “vibe” of the artist. Because none of Pink's senses stand alone, but instead overlap and weave seamlessly into a unified whole, it's easy to see how an activity like this might integrate well into a unit on design such as the one discussed above. The relationship of the senses themselves, and our ability as educators to bring them together through meaningful discussion and art making further underscores the importance of symphony in our work and in our lives. Teaching for Story One of the many casualties of transitioning into the conceptual age is the value of facts and figures. Today, facts are cheap. Thanks to information technologies that could scarcely have been imagined a generation ago, people can access virtually any useful fact instantly, almost anytime, almost anywhere. What's more is that most of us don't remember our past experiences or think about our futures as a series of facts. We automatically place ourselves, others, and everything that happens
Sensing Change
5
within a greater narrative (Pink, 2007). Pink (2007) describes the sense of Story as “the ability to place facts in context and deliver them with emotional impact” (p. 103). Stories, verbal or visual, edify the facts, imbuing them with meaning, making them more real and more valuable to us. Those in the arts, of course, have always been subliminally aware of this, less concerned with the dissemination of facts than the emotional response which can be elicited by crafting them into the appropriate narrative. The nurturing of our student's imaginative capacities is an endeavor that pervades every level of our efforts in art education. When we ask students to rely on their imagination we essentially ask them to make up a story about “that which does not yet exist” (Liu & Noppe-Brandon, 2009, p. 8) or to recontextualize facts or past events in a personal, meaningful, or creative way. Because story is how we think, how we remember, and how we imagine, virtually every creative action requires the capacity of narrative thinking (Pink, 2007) Implementing narrative into our curriculum may help students to “employ visual means to communicate personal experience” (Esser-Hall, Rankin & Johannes Ndita, 2004, p.137). One possible exercise might involve asking students to create a book cover for their own autobiographical memoir. Students might consider depicting a “pregnant moment” from their own life story, using suspense and tension to draw the reader in or contemplate symbols and color pallets which set the right tone and evoke emotion. Examples could be examined by displaying various book jackets with the titles covered and asking the students to deduce what the book might be about, providing visual evidence for their assertions. The final project might even include text, replete with inside cover synopsis and snippets of critical acclaim. Some students may want to use the jacket as a skin or cover for their visual journals, making a project like this a great bookend to be placed at the beginning or end of the year. Teaching for Empathy
Sensing Change
6
Empathy can be defined, simply, as the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, but what empathy does for us in our daily lives is so much more. It is the cornerstone of emotional intelligence, leadership, and ethics. One might even argue that it is what defines us as a species. Empathy is an instinct without which our daily interactions with others would be an arduous chore and collaborative productivity would be impossible. Art is no stranger to empathy. The creation of art is an endeavor to unite maker and viewers through shared experience, deepening our mutual understanding of the human condition. Much like the capacity for story and narrative thinking, empathy relies on our ability to imagine that which may not be directly experienced by the individual. Students might explore the experiences of another by creating their own story booth. StoryCorps, a nonprofit organization whose mission “to remind one another of our shared humanity, strengthen and build the connections between people, teach the value of listening, and weave into the fabric of our culture the understanding that every life matters”("Storycorps," 2012), has collected and archived more than 40,000 personal stories and interviews at the American Library of Congress. Students could conduct a similar exercise by interviewing and recording the personal story of a partner. A thematic parameter might be imposed, for example, “tell us about a personal memory related to a pair of shoes”, allowing the diversity of individual experiences with similar subject matter to become more clear. Students could then be asked to create a handmade book which relays their partner's story through a combination of text, original images, and/or found objects, encouraging students to think deeply and symbolically about the experiences of another person. Teaching for Play Last year I experienced my first encounter with purposeful play. As part of a graduate course on curriculum development my classmates and I participated in a lesson exploring the possibilities of play as a utility in the creative process. During the lesson we were given a pair of scissors, an
Sensing Change
7
unlimited supply of plain white paper, and five minutes with which to produce as many paper sculptures as we could manage. We were urged by our instructor not to over think it and reminded that quantity, not quality was our objective. Some of my peers took to this task with apparent joy and ease. Others cringed a little, and as for me, a knot began to form in my stomach. The idea of working quickly and carelessly toward an unknown goal left me paralyzed. Every cut, tear, and fold was agonizing. Doubts and questions haunted me for the duration of the five minute ordeal, and then the sad truth sank in. I had forgotten how to play. Step two of the lesson provided relief when we were asked to select a few of our sculptures, pair off into small groups, and use what we had made to create a new collaborative piece. Sharing the burden of final decisions with others, my tension eased and ideas flowed more naturally. Finally we dimmed the lights, brought out some flashlights, and spent the rest of the class period photographing what we had made, experimenting with light and composition. When the luminous, blue, O’Keeffelike image appeared, as if by magic, on the LCD screen of my camera, I realized the true value of this experience. The final image made little mention of the scraps of paper I had fretted over just minutes before. By sheer accident something serene and altogether unexpected had emerged. Had I been trying to take a picture that looked like this one, most likely I would have struggled for hours, straining to get the lighting just right, adjusting the settings on my camera, shifting my perspective ever so slightly; by the time I'd finished, the joy and spontaneity would have been thoroughly wrung out with no guarantee that I would ever have achieved the intended results. Play allows us, at times, to forgo any particular vision at all, skipping straight to the process, letting chance and inhibition decide the outcome. For adults, the greatest obstacle to play is not work, but fear. “We fear the judgment of our peers...this fear causes us to be conservative with our thinking� (Brown, 2008). We have been conditioned by experience to find the right answer, rather than as many answers as possible, to produce
Sensing Change
8
results, not possibilities. Creating a safe and supportive environment for this kind of risk taking and experimentation is vital. In the arts classroom, a well directed play activity becomes an act of serious artistic research in which new discoveries are made and self-efficacy and confidence are bolstered. A thoughtfully designed activity, such as the one described above, would provide sufficient parameters to guide student's thinking toward desired concepts, goals, or solutions, yet keeps the possibilities open ended, making room for stunning surprises and teachable moments. Teaching for Meaning Through meaningful art making students learn to examine themselves, identify with others, and consider the broader context of ideas, objects, and images in culture. Art is not only an outlet for self expression, it is a means of understanding and exploring our world. Through art and the translation of symbol systems, new meanings can be assigned and old meanings can be re-imagined or better understood. The arts can engage students in a way that other subjects often cannot, by making the work deeply personal to them, providing a way to explore their identity and show others who they are. Art can also embody the pursuit of a more transcendent meaning, exploring the value and purpose of one's life as a whole. The life of contemporary Chinese artist Ai Weiwei exemplifies the relationship between meaning of this kind and the role of art in society and culture. Using his art as a platform to advocate for social justice, Weiwei's own life and physical well being have been placed in jeopardy. Yet he insists, “I have to speak for generations who [don’t] have a voice… I have to speak out for those around me who [are] afraid; who think this is not worth it; who totally give up hope...I want to set up an example” (Chung & Branigan, 2010). Introducing students to artists with bold, actionable purposes, such as Ai Weiwei, may help them to realize the power that exists within their own choices, words, and the art that they create.
Sensing Change
9
Meaning is uncovered in examining why artists make the decisions that they do. Each of the senses provides a different lens for investigating this fundamental question. When art education is genuinely meaningful, students come to understand the power that art has in the world, the power of their own voices as artists, and their worth as unique individuals. Conclusion Regardless of whether or not Daniel Pink's global forecast proves true, the senses he discusses are, in fact, some of our most valuable human characteristics. The preservation and nurturing of these ideals is key to building the promising future we all envision for our students. The generation to which we are currently teaching is poised, in unprecedented ways, to be not only informed about, but authentically aware of and engaged with the global shifts, challenges, and conflicts that they will face in the future. They will need to use their knowledge and their “senses� to make opportunities for themselves wherever they go in the world. To achieve this they will need optimism, imagination, the ability to recognize pattern, to understand human desires and emotions, and above all, to create and derive meaning form the din images, voices, persuasions, and sensations that infiltrate the modern psyche on a near constant basis. These capacities may not only help them to succeed professionally, but offer them a more rich and fulfilling experience of life; and that, ultimately, is what the Conceptual Age is all about.
Sensing Change
10 References
Brown, T. (2008, May). Tim Brown: Tales of creativity and play [Video File]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_brown_on_creativity_and_play.html Chung, D. & Branigan, T. (2010). Ai Weiwei: Life is never guaranteed to be safe. The Guardian [Video] Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/video/2010/mar/18/aiweiwei-turbine-hall-tate Elliot W. Eisner (2002).The Arts and the Creation of Mind. New Haven: Yale University Press. Esser-Hall, G., Rankin, J., & Johannes Ndita, D. (2004). The narrative approach in art education: A case study. The International Journal of Art & Design Education, 23(2), 136-147. Retrieved from http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-JADE.html Freedman, K. (2004). Teaching visual culture, curriculum, aesthetics, and the social life of art. Teachers College Pr. Liu, E., & Noppe-Brandon, S. (2009). Imagination first. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. London, P. (2001). Toward a holistic paradigm in art education. Baltimore, Maryland: Center for Art Education, Maryland Institute College of Art. Retrieved from http://www.mica.edu/Documents/Art Education/HolisticMonograph.pdf McKee, R. & Fryer, B. (2003, June). Storytelling that moves people: A conversation with screenwriting coach robert mckee. Harvard Business Review, Retrieved from http://hbr.org/web/specialcollections/insight/communication/storytelling-that-moves-people Pink, D. (2005, February). Revenge of the right brain. Wired Magazine, 13(02), Retrieved from http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/brain.html?pg=2&topic=brain&topic_set= Pink, D. H. (2007). A whole new mind, moving from the information age to the conceptual age. New York, New York: Riverhead Books (Hardcover). Storycorps. (2012). Retrieved from http://storycorps.org/
Sensing Change
11
Unrath, Kathleen, and Melissa Mudd. “Signs of Change: Art Education in the Age of the IKid.” Art Education (2011): 6-11. Walker, S. R. (2001). Teaching meaning in artmaking. Worcester, MA: Davis Publications.