Adolescent Adventures in Technology

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The Practices of Investigation:

Adolescent

Adventures

in Technology

Program in Art and Art Education



The Practices of Investigation:

Adolescent

Adventures

in Technology A TEACHING PROJECT BY SANG-BIN IM

Program in Art and Art Education


Times Square 2005/sangbin im

Sangbin Im is a digital artist who exhibits his work regularly in New York City galleries. He holds an MFA from Yale and is currently a doctoral student in Art and Art Education at Teachers College Columbia University. The work included in this volume was produced during one semester of teaching at the Heritage High School in New York City.

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Introduction Sang-Bin Im is an artist who enjoys working with adolescents. This little book captures something of the excitement his teaching brought to a group of young people at the Heritage High School in Harlem, New York City. While many of the young people in his group were computer literate, some were not and most had certainly never used their skills for creative purposes. Inspired by Sang-Bin’s teaching and the examples of his own work, the adolescents acquired new skills with which to construct and express issues of personal concern. The images they produced bear testimony to the ambiguities of identity and the kind of trenchant social critique which color so much of the adolescents’ experience of growing up in this twenty-first century world. The interplay of material from

inner personal lives and from the media culture is here made possible by the flexibility of the digital media which allows for the switching, overlapping, and integration of multiple vantage points. Many of the images in this volume are accompanied by explanatory verbal statements and the reader is reminded that for many of these young people English is not their first language. To retain the authenticity of personal voices, thus, each statement has been left as it was written. — Judith M. Burton Program Director, Art and Art Education

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I wanted them to decide things out for themselves, and take charge of them since they are the authors of their projects.

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An Artist In The High School As a digital art teacher, I know that young people love to use the tools of the digital medium. Even if they find traditional art materials difficult to manipulate they can use digital tools without embarrassment and to express their inner ideas. While traditional art materials allow young people to express a range of thoughts and feelings, new and different aspects of experiences and ideas can be called to the fore by the manipulation of digital tools. It is important to recognize that it is not the tools and techniques by themselves that are important but the ideas and experiences they call into being and the distinctive way they give expression to these thoughts. In my first class with students at the Heritage High School I let them examine and question my own digital work so they got a sense of what I do as an artist. As classes got underway I gradually introduced ways of working with digital tools but always in relation to exploring the students constructive and expressive possibilities. My assignments were quite loose in that I offered a variety of choices of themes so that each student could work towards their own interests. One early project was to make a book cover, imaginary or real, where I introduced a couple of digital techniques such as importing images, making selections, ordering layers and inserting texts using Photoshop. I did not want to overwhelm students with too many techniques just enough to feel they could make their own decisions,

and could be authors of their own expressive ideas. Towards the end of the semester I wanted them to work from their own personal interests. They each discussed their ideas with me and whatever technical knowledge they needed I taught them. By this time they knew there were a lot of digital possibilities so they could make their own choices about whet they needed to learn to develop their ideas. In this way, I did not influence them too much but gave them the responsibility for their own learning. I also wanted them to be aware that technique should not dominate their ideas, but serve their ideas. As we came to the end of the semester I let them know that their works would be in an exhibition in the school gallery and invited them to write statements to go along with their digital works, I explained that the visitors would be curious about how they arrived at their ideas. I asked them to think about the questions that visitors might be interested in as they looked as their digital art. This was my first experience of teaching high school students in the inner city and I learned much from them. I wish I had these kinds of experiences when I was at school. ­­â€” Sangbin Im

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Digital Art

ExhibitioN I:

Book & magazine covers, images

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Jessica Ventura This is a Magazine cover that I designed to represent me. I used topics and words that I thought would describe me as an individual. While doing this project I thought about how people who know me and strangers alike would describe me. I thought back to things my close friends would say about me. I also thought about personal experiences to finish this project. At first, all I could come up with was a loud and outspoken girl who wanted to take on the world on her own. But then I began thinking about my relationship with my boyfriend and how we saw a future for ourselves. In the magazine cover you can see that I refer to my boyfriend and I as getting married which is something that we talk quite often about. I also named the magazine “Cosmopolitan� because men have Playboy and us women have Cosmo. I consider Cosmo as a bible. Every month that magazine lands in my hands without any hesitation.

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Cosmopolitan

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Katherine Tejada I decided to make this picture because my favorite cartoon is winnie the pooh. I thought it would be a great example to others about friendships. Also I thought this would’ve been a book for younger readers to show them to be friendly and nice to others. First I goggled a picture of a forest and then took another picture of winnie the pooh and his friends. The whole idea was to put them in a mysterious place were they seem amazed by nature. This whole setting would make them bond and become better friends at the end.

Winnie the pooh and friends

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Evil Eyes

Cristopher De Luna I decided to make this picture represent ANGER. Anger because this is the way surten people feel when they are so pissed off. They feel like a whole bunch of bats gathering and devouring anything in there sight. By anger I mean the type that makes people wonder how it would feel by killing someone. I don’t actually mean that I feel like that but this is just an explanation of anger.

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A falling night within the wind

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Yasmin Medina When I started “Night Fall� I had an idea on how it would look like. In this art I wanted the viewers who would look at it, to think what this really means. As I started I knew it would end with various meanings within the art. Not with one but various. In this art I wanted to draw leaves falling and the background to be blue to a dark color. I want the viewer to imagine the leaves falling to the ground. So the viewer could see the night being changed into a more like fall scene. The colors of this art are to represent the season fall coming in the night, while leaves are starting fall and fly within the wind. I want the viewer viewing this art to feel when autumn (fall) comes during the night and not during the day. The night seems like a better way to mix colors so leaves could stand out and the grass and the moon. I did not want the viewer to imagine the colors all blended in. The viewer should feel a warm sensation when thinking of fall as the leaves are falling within the night.

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Maria Ortiz While doing “Dead Girl”, I wanted the viewers to get a feeling of suspense and thrill. I wanted them to really think about and look at the title and try to picture the rest of the story. The fact that it’s night, that there’s a lighthouse, and the fact that there’s a cross right on the edge of a cliff, and the open sea behind it, it all made me wonder about how we can combine all of these things to make people have fear, or questions about it. Now that it’s done and put together, I see it the way i wanted people to look at it, and the way that I myself wanted to see it. I’m a person that really likes art, just because there are no rules and because you can come up with something out of no where, and make it A Cross between Life & DEATH

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into something special.


THE STORY OF BUGS

Jorge Ceron One day Bugs Bunny AKA Adam met the few unknown gods of the other planets that is not Marven. These gods help him with his “little problem” if you know what I want to say. this gods needed his help to hummer the Elmer’s (the big headed people,who like to kill little aliens like them) after this unexpected catering help both sides. The Elmer’s came to earth to get the bunny but we all know the story. So the gods have a safer planet and Buds has no more problems with the girls but now his running from Elmer. with all have to be grateful to the gods because of them we all get hammered by the story’s of Bugs and Elmer.

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Mark Rivera these “men� fight together against their enemies. Wielding their weapons they are ready to shoot whatever is coming their way. Shows the strenght of a humanm being. Against all odds. Fight for freedom. fight for your country

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Fight for Freedom

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Raysa Valerio I have to be really honest. When doing this project I had a basket full of nuts in hand. I wasn’t in the right state of mind to actually stay in class and do exactly what he expected. So, I started doing what ever rowed my boat. I was just adding quotes, and things I had in mind. Just to throw it out there. You could say, I was in the mood for writing. I added the discombobulated star to show my Random Ways. The emphasized green because it’s the best out of all six. And well. The background attraction, because it’s what I’m attracted to. I have little hints and phrases for which I could only narrow it down to only one person. And the rest. To all others in this mighty world. THE END<3 Lost In The Sphere

P.s. My Name Is Raysa Valerio. Best Preffered name [Ray]. I Have A Rare Personality That Some How You’d Love.

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Rainbow Music

Anais Martinez My name is Anais Martinez. The name of my exhibition is rainbow music. I called it this because I like girls and guys and the rainbow represents my gay side. The music notes represent the fact that I am a rapper and I love music my word revolves around it. The girl is actually 3 different pictures; the hair is from one girl the body and face from another and the wing from another. It represents‌ I actually don’t know I just felt like doing it.

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The Block of Life

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Anna Mendez Hello my name is Anna Mendez the tittle of my picture is “The Block of life” In this following pictures you would see figures on what students do after school, what is happening during school hours while we are learning and how our neighborhood looks. For example the picture that’s is the middle of the wallpaper with a group of girls just having clean good fun after school. This artwork is about just having fun with your close friends

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L.C.D.S.

Auredy Sanchez Hi my name is Auredy Sanchez and my artwork is called L.C.D.S. you probably thinking what the heck does that means well, it doesn’t really mean anything in particular it just means lowest common denominators which reprensent a subject that we learn in math class in freshman year. You see I love math so much that I feel inspired by it and I feel like I can use it in my everyday life. The date that you see in the picture which is 10.17.06 is a very funny story because at the beging of that lesson I never could really understand it until that dat when it just hit me and know I feel like I could solve it in my sleep. 24


Digital Art

ExhibitioN I:

Collages

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The Many Faces and Sides of Me

Jessica Ventura This piece is titled “The Many Faces And Sides Of Me.” This is a collage of different aspects of me. Some of the pictures were taken during school with friends, while others were taken on my personal time, in my own personal space. There is no particular order in which these were taken. I wanted people to see that even though there are many pictures of me (no, I’m NOT conceited, just very very confident), there are also pictures of my closest friends. I wanted people to see that I have many different sides. I have a silly side, a serious side, a sometime very weird side. I want people to see that I’m me!

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Saile Lopez In this project, I chose to do it on something that I really admire and relate myself to. I chose Bruce lee because he’s my role model. I’ve seen almost all his movies and my room is full of Bruce lee’s posters. I was thinking to show what I was feeling tortes him. You might be asking right now why a girls’ face is attched to a man’s body. Well I’m going to tell you is because I want to be just like him not physical wise but mentally. I wanted to show it this way because it makes me feel and look like

Bruce lee/me

if I was him. What Bruce and I have in common is two things: first, we both have strong attitude, and second, we do martial arts. So I took pictures of me and pasted them on his body so you could see what I feel. That’s how I chose to do it on my role model, Bruce lee.

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Untitled

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Heidy Leon My work is very weird and very mocab. If it scares you then that’s great because that’s exactly what its supposed to do. There are hidden things behind the pictures so look closely okay!! If you like weird and scary things then my work is perfect.

There is not really much to say about this work just that mostly everything is upside down and I think you are wondering why. Well I’ll tell you. The reason why I have everything upside down is because I’m an Atheist and I don’t believe in God and its pretty self explanitory because you can see the cross upside down with a pentagram in the middle of it. Hope you like the work and enjoy it okay.

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untitled

Yasmin Medina

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untitled

Kenny

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untitled

Katherine

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My Life

Anna Mendez In this assignment that I did in class is called “my life” because it describes of when I was a little girl my life wasn’t really like a normal childhood. it was a nightmare for me the fire describe where I was living in because I felt like I was in hell the smily face show how I would show everyone and tell everyone but in the inside I was sad and scared. The little girl that you see represents me. The upside down cross that you could see is their because I’m catholic and believe in god but in those moment I felt that god wasn’t in my side, was mad at me and that I had deserved everything that was happening to me. But know that I look back I know that god was always there for me and helped me in every step of the way even though I was going through rough times.

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Maria Ortiz For this project, I did a lot of work. I had to look for specific pictures that were able to fit in with what I was doing. I couldn’t just randomly choose a picture that was scary enough and nice enough to include it. I had to look for plenty of images, think if they were appropiate, and then I had to think if they were good enough for me and if I liked them enough to create a title and a story out of them.

For “The Unknown”, when I first saw the picture, I really liked it. like the way the colors and the image stand out, because they don’t necessarily make the image completely scary. Anyways, I wasn’t sure if it was going to fit in. So I kind of had to give it a lot of thought whether I should include it or not, and if I was, how should I name it to make it seem scary enough and give the image a whole story behind it. At the end, It did turn out to be one of my favorite ones though. I guess this is due to the bright colors that really make it stand out, as well as the image.

My second favorite book cover is “The Hidden Secret”. The way the girl’s expression is, it makes me feel like she actually knows something. Something that’s dangerous, and yet, has to be known. I also enjoyed doing the different color eyes, the blood dripping down from her face. I really enjoyed doing this, specially since I didn’t know I was capable of doing this type of book project.

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Deadly

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untitled

Auredy

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untitled

Chris

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untitled

Raysa

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Different Anais

Anais Martinez Different Anais. This explains the many sides of me; it describes the things I like for example cars, flowers, and gum. I also describes what kind of fashion I like including fitted hats, sneakers and boots and sunglasses. Some of the thing I am interested in are pregnancy and anime amongst other things. The reason I did not put them in any type of order is because my life is really coroted and I never do anything in order. I tried matching the colors but then I got tired of doing that so I just put it in any order. The book with no words represents the unwritten part of my life.

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Jorge Ceron This picture has a background in space. Jorge’s face is like stars in the background. This picture has the zodiac; they are represented with robots that are the zodiac animals. You can also see some different type of milky ways in the back. On the left top corner there is earth and the sun. The sun is smaller than the earth because I was trying to make it look like it was far from the earth. The planets are covered by Jorge’s face because I wanted to make it look like Jorge is strong and powerful. I picked the space, as a background because I thought it will look good. In the center of this picture is the yingyang. Where the ying is there is Jorge’s good faces and where the yang there is his bad faces. Jorge is the master of the zodiac that is why he is in the middle of the animals and their signs.

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The Zodiac Signs


Digital Art

ExhibitioN I:

Comics English as a second langauge

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Adderly

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Control


Angely Martinez This is a comic story about a shoe that wishes to be free and some day to be a beautiful lady because she suffers and feels lonely. I chose to write a story about a shoe because I love shoes, but most of the time they are just on one side of my room. I don’t wear them very often. This is a ceramic shoe that decorates my room and it was very difficult for me to find it in stores. It is very special to me. In the pictures, I used books, a tissue box, paper clips, and other things to create a setting of my room. I used the program Comic Life to make this comic in which I added the text and different moods to the pictures.

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Cleubel De Los Santos This comic was about three different places. To complete this comic I reflected on how I feel in different places. The first place I chose was where I feel most comfortable, the second place was where I feel a little comfortable and the third place was where I wouldn’t feel comfortable at all. In the first panel, the place I feel most comfortable, the places I chose were Dominican Republic & Dyckman. I feel comfortable in the Dominican Republic because that’s where I get my roots from & I lived there for 2 years. I chose Dyckman because I’ve lived there almost all my life. I went to school there, I got family there, I have a lot of friends there, and basically I have everything over there. The second place I chose was Harlem. I go to this part of the city everyday because my school is here. I feel a little comfortable here. I’ll say that I feel a little comfortable because I don’t know everybody in Harlem like I do in Dyckman. The Third place I chose was Iraq and Compton. I’ll say I would feel very uncomfortable there because there’s a lot violent going on in those places. There’s a war going on in Iraq. In Compton there’s a lot of gang violence in that city. For wearing a certain color you could get jumped. As you see I have a paper in front of my face in my photographs. The reason I did that was because I didn’t feel like taking pictures that day and that was the only way I would take them. The effect of the paper in my face shows that people can’t see my facial expressions and therefore no one knows how I feel in any of those places.

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Saile Siramad Lopez This is my comic “The Impatient Purple Belt.” When I was starting this comic I wanted to do it on something that represented me. The karate belt represents me as a serious and disciplined person and it also shows what I like to do which is fight and discipline my body in ways that mostly no one does. Since I had to take care of my little brother and do a lot of schoolwork last semester, I didn’t have time to go to karate. So I chose to do my comic on my belt not getting out and being stuck in the closet. As you can see I tried to show my belt having ideas about how to escape like getting out the closet, hiding my coat and getting in my coat’s pocket. I wanted to show how anxious it was to get out. That’s how my comic got the title of “The Impatient Purple Belt.”

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Steven Marmolejos My comic is about places were I feel most comfortable, place were sometimes I feel comfortable and a place that I don’t feel comfortable. In the first panel I chose a baseball field. This is the place were I feel very comfortable. I feel very comfortable because I love baseball and I have been playing since I was 9 years old. The other panel is the Lamborghini Gallardo Supperleggera. Last summer I went to the auto show javetts center and took a picture with the same car. This was my favorite car in the whole show and every time I go to the auto show feel comfortable. My last panel is about a dream that I had when I saw the movie KING KONG. This place made me feels the least comfortable. It was a very scary dream

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Angely Martinez This comic is about three places: in one I feel comfortable, in another one I feel sometimes comfortable, and the last one I feel least comfortable. The first photo in the comic takes place in D.R and this is the place I feel most comfortable because it is in my country. The second picture takes place in Times Square, New York City. This is the place that I feel sometimes uncomfortable because New York is sometimes stressful and I get really tired. However, I still love New York. The last picture in the comic takes place in Central Park, where I feel less comfortable because there are mosquitoes. When it rains it gets really wet and in the spring (when you can get a cold or allergies) the climate is not very stable. Photoshop helped me to build this comic by adding cool things to my images like backgrounds and putting different expressions on my face to make the images look more realistic.

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Eduardo

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This publication has been made possible through the generous support of the Florence H. and Eugene E. Myers Charitable Remainders Unitrust.


The Practices of Investigation The Art and Art Education Program of Teachers College Columbia University is pleased to sponsor a series of publications under the general heading: The Practices of Investigation in which the idea of practice is defined in terms of pedagogy, art and research, and investigation as an openness to discovery, systematic inquiry, and unveiling the hidden and unsuspected order of things. The series aims to make a contribution to the domain of art education in which knowledge and practice are in transition, open to question and subject to considerable contemporary debate. Faculty and students, working separately and in collaboration, have contributed each volume. Taken together, the series feature a wide spectrum of practical investigative work with children and adolescents in studios, museum settings, and out of school. Leaning more towards theory, the series also encompasses short synopsis of the variety of dissertation topics undertaken by doctoral students in the Program. Other volumes advance thinking about classroom art practices at all levels of schooling, while others question the dominant aesthetic-artistic foundations underlying the various practices of art education itself. The series has been originated and edited by Judith M. Burton, Director of the Program in Art and Art Education. She gratefully acknowledges the participation and support of the art education faculty and students, and the Myers Trust which has made publication and dissemination of this series possible. Titles in Publication 2007 Dissertation Monographs Volume 1 Dissertation Monographs Volume 2 Adventures in Art History Museum Interactions: Personal Responses & Educational Perspectives Everyday Art Experiences as ‘Education’ We ‘Heart’ Art Adolescent Adventures in Technology Interpreting Blueprints: Beyond Standards and Scripts

Program in Art and Art Education 525 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027


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