Reference no: EM133687279

CREATIVE WORKS

Overview

Creative art exploration: Document your process of creatively playing with and experimenting with one material.

Learning outcome 1: Articulate and explore the many and varied languages of human expression through personal, social and philosophical perspectives.

ASSESSMENT INSTRUCTION:

This task is a material inquiry. The goal of the task is to explore one material and document your process. The submission will consist of a series of images and writing showing the process and your thinking while doing it. This work must be informed by the set reading.

ARTISTIC LANGUAGE
Read the introductory chapter and the material inquiry chapters 2-5 of Pacini-Ketchabaw Encounters with Materials.
Look at the Material Inquiry document in Session 1.
Choose one material and the chapter on it in the Encounters with Materials book.
Closely read the chapter for the material you have chosen, making notes and reflecting as you read.
Select one other reading from the unit (either from eReserve or from within sessions 1 - 3) to support your discussion of your artistic process and how it relates to communication and expression.

MATERIAL
Get your hands on the material.
Clay - use actual clay, not playdough, not modelling clay. Use something as close to 'earth' as you can.
Paint - any kind of paint is fine, even paint made from materials around your kitchen or home.
Charcoal - you can buy artist's charcoal, or use charcoal from a fire
Paper - explore the different kinds of paper available, there are more than you'd think!

INQUIRY
Play with the material See what it can do. Use the Material Inquiry Document (from Session 1) to guide your thinking and provoke your exploration. Try to approach the material without an outcome or product in mind.
Use the ideas from the readings and let them influence what you do and think.
Document your playing and thinking as you go. You can take photographs or video. Draw. Write. Record. Collect rich documentation of your inquiry - both the physical exploration and your thoughts.
Consider personal, social and philosophical perspectives about the material and your experience of it and how you can communicate with and through the material.

FINAL DOCUMENTATION

Refine your documentation. Include the best parts of your play and exploration and connect what you are doing, thinking and feeling to ideas in the readings. Make clear links, referenced correctly with in-text citations, to the readings.

Choose a program/application to present your written and visual documentation. This could be photos on a Word Doc, PowerPoint, a Padlet, a video, an audio recording or a combination of these - there are many possibilities.

Histories and Tensions surrounding the Material (Ethics and politics) LAYER 1
Get to know the material, spend time with it, sense its possibilities and limitations.

What are the material's histories that you are familiar with?

Research other histories. Find out about the various mobilities of the material throughout time and space.

Where does the material come from? How was it made (out of what)? How has it ended up at in our classroom? Research, read, be curious.

How does the material have a life, history, and story beyond ECE (i.e., the material is not just created for children's use)? How does the material exist within social, cultural, political, geographical contexts? What discourses have the material supported, benefited? What discourses has the material silenced?

How has this material become important in the early childhood classroom? What are its uses? How do you relate to this material? How are children ‘supposed' to engage with the material? What are the ‘rules' about this material?

LAYER 2
Research and select an inspiration (outside of early childhood education). This inspiration will support you to engage in the creation process, to explore new possibilities, to challenge your own assumptions, and imagine the material otherwise.

For instance, select the work of an artist working with the material as your group's inspiration. Investigate what the artist is exploring with the material.

In question with the material

LAYER 1
Experiment with the material. Document these experimentations. While you experiment, pay attention to the following:

What the material is capable of? What can the material do?
What the material is incapable of?
How the material interacts with you, with other materials.
How these interactions shift in relation to time and space.
Generate a list of wonderings and questions (avoid answers) with the material. ‘I wonder...'; ‘what if...'

LAYER 2
Develop a vocabulary of the material. What words/concepts might describe the material? What words/concepts might challenge the way in which we often think about the material?

Develop a list of the properties and functions of the material
Develop a list of the ways in which the material moves
Develop a list of the ways in which the material moves you
Develop a list of verbs/actions that connect to this material
Develop a list of nouns that connect to this material
Develop a list of adjectives that connect to this material

LAYER 3
Write the material a poem that considers (a) the research you have done about the historical, political, cultural, social, and geographical contexts that brought the material to you, (b) your recent experimentations and explorations with the material. The challenge is to write the poem to the material, rather than just about the material. Remember to add the poem to your visual journal.