growing up online

the part of this video that affected me the most was the part about the middle school boy who killed himself because of bullies.

my younger brother was bullied a lot in middle school, kids threatened to kill him, and he would come home crying everyday. he eventually had to change schools and from there his life spiraled downward and he has yet to bounce back. i honestly feel like the bullying he was a victim of was a major catalyst in his life and led him to make more and more bad choices in hopes of being accepted and having friends. i feel so lucky that despite all of the problems he was facing he did not do anything drastic like the boy in the film. my heart goes out to him and his family.

Internet Art

This is actually the first time I have ever heard of the term "internet art". It really is just anything that has been scanned or taken a photo of, and as soon as it's on the net, its internet art. The scary thing about internet art is that once you post something online, it is no longer yours. This is a really touchy subject for me as an artist, who runs a website and daily blog, uploading artwork and images all the time. Basically, I do this to get exposure, gain clients, etc. 

The market is huge on the internet. Someone can now base their entire career on the web, through a website, an online store, a blog, etc. It is amazing how fast the internet has grown and how many new jobs it has created. 

The internet can be viewed as art if you really think about it. Every web page is designed...even the crappy ones. Children and students who use the internet are exposed to this every time they open up a web browser. It is only natural to give more information on the internet as an educator, and to understand and learn from them as well.

Response: Reading 2

After reading the piece I found the authors final "wrap up" to be helpful.  His reflections of what was done correctly and how he would change certain parts of the unit were really interesting.  On a broader note, the piece was helpful in giving a description of how one can approach the teaching of internet art in the high school classroom.  The student's initial lack of care in the subject was strange, considering how immersed their lives are in the internet.  The students craved the comforts of the utilitarian basic website format, while struggling through worksheets about specific internet works of art.  

It is safe to say that this need for comfort disconnected the students from the artwork in the initial phases and caused lots of frustration.  The teacher brilliantly used these struggles to engage in the "what is art?" debate with the students.  This debate is important to have in all art classrooms, especially those that are introducing new media to skeptical students.  There really isn't one answer to this debate, but by opening up conversations in class, sometimes you can nudge open a close-minded student or open up the eyes of another.    

Internet Art

The term “Internet Art” was a new term that I learned by reading the article. I did not realize that website design would be part of “internet Art”; I would have thought it was a type of design. I guess it is understandable about when someone take a picture of their artwork and later put on their computer is a whole new medium. This would be where people tend to lose their copyrights on their own artwork. Since the internet is so easy to access, the person could just copy and paste the images on to their computer. They could add a dot or two and claim the image to be theirs. Similar to Duchamp’s “Mona Lisa”.

self portraits...oops I did it wrong.

I didn't see the post about the change in assignments on here until right now as I was about to upload my self portrait from last week... I already re-interpreted the digital one from class instead...here's that and an old self portrait of myself I did as part of a series a couple years ago.  

Internet Art

I had actually never heard the term, internet art, before reading this article. I noticed that the article was written in 2004. That may seem recent, but Myspace was just getting started as a social networking site and Facebook had not launched yet. I remember teaching art at camp in 2004 and do not recall the campers (ages 7-18) too concerned with the limited internet access at camp. I suspect that the students’ responses to internet art would be very different had the study been conducted today.

The portion of the article that resonated with me was under the heading, “Form and Function: Internet Art versus “Typical” Websites". The students’ confusion about internet art versus websites with a clear function sounded like a typical reaction from a student to a perplexing piece of Postmodern artwork. I think the debate of internet art may fall more appropriately under the art versus design distinction. I personally feel that while there may be defining characteristics between the two, design still falls under the category of art.

I am not nostalgic when it comes to the definition of art, and I believe that new genres should be acknowledged, explored and analyzed in an art classroom. The depth that the teacher goes into internet art should depend on whether it is a digital arts class or a general art class.

Net.art Response

I was surprised that the students Colman worked with had such difficulty with Internet Art. I thought that because students are so familiar with the Internet they would have been able to understand it, or at least discover out how to interact with it and make meaning of it as they went along. Is it because the Internet is something so familiar to them as a non-art form that seeing it used in a new way made such a huge impact they were not sure how to react? Was it just the shock of being presented with the familiar in an unfamiliar way? I wonder, if Colman had started off by comparing Internet art to other art forms would students have had the same reaction?

It seems to me that introducing Internet Art in a visual arts class, especially a technology class, makes complete sense. Introducing students to as many different art forms as possible is part of the job of an art educator. The fact that Internet Art is such a new art form makes it an especially interesting topic to introduce. It is not very often that a new art form is introduced, and being able to learn about a new art form, as it is being explored and debated, is a very rare opportunity for teacher and students. Not only will it enable the students to consider their own understanding of what art is, it requires students to reflect upon the Internet, as well as technology, and its use and meaning in their own lives. The Internet has become another aspect of life that students, and people in general, take for granted. People are used to using the Internet to get information almost instantly. It has become just another routine in daily life. Internet Art, like any other art form, makes you stop and think about what you are seeing and how you are interacting with it. Internet Art is another tool for teaching students to reflect on and understand what they see and experience.