Through this class and this article, The Mind of the Artist / Scholar: The Howard University Department of Art Takes a Philosophical Look at Art Education by Dr. Tony McEachern, Chairman, and Associate Professor I have gained a better understanding of how I would use new media in my classroom. As Dr.McEachern describes the art department at Howard University I am intrigued by the use of new media. Like my assignment I created in this class, I would like to make all of my art courses research-based, much like my own practice. As a sociologist myself, I find it incredibly necessary for students especially students of color to use their art to amplify their voice. I believe that high school students need to have deeper concepts in order to connect with the work and be more passionate about what they are producing. "Playing" with new media the last 2 weeks has allowed e to see that I do not think it is helpful for the young artist, especially those who might be distracted by the technique and not think of the concepts. as a maker, sculptor, and drawer I do expect to show some technique without informing concepts for I value figure drawing more than I do coding and this class has not changed my perspective. I believe my use of new media will come through the push for research I want my student to me more than an artist. I believe new media tool will allow many students to become artist/scholars, using their concepts to drive their techniques, pushing them to create rather than play.
Below are quotes from Dr.McEachern articles along with a link to the article to read.
“Empowered by their knowledge of the arts, humanities, sciences and digital technologies, our artists, designers and scholars are prepare to service society on a local, national, and global level.”
“And though there are many existing frameworks in philosophy, three significant theoretical positions have strongly influenced the artist/scholar of this paradigm of Interpretive Theory. These three theoretical positions are hermeneutics–the use of textual analysis to understand the inter-subjective meaning of society; phenomenology–the use of subjective experience to understand the social world; and symbolic interactionism–the use of significant symbols with shared meaning to understand social interaction. These positions are frequently used as underlying frameworks for our creative investigation and resulting expression. Art is structured on philosophy, sociology, psychology, and more and these theoretical positions help our art students create expressions that are grounded in theory.”
“The artist/scholar’s ontological position is that of the social constructionist as most artists adopt the perspective that social reality is based on the inter-subjective agreement of shared definitions and meanings based on the symbolic interaction of members within a specific society or a collective of like publics. These symbolic interactions are embedded with codes that can be interpreted by other members of the society, or learned individuals external of a given society.”
“We as artists/scholars are, indeed, social scientists in our own right. And as such, we have to adopt, support and teach a method of inquiry that is in line with our philosophical commitments and values. For the most part, we reject the rigidity of the systematically procedural laden scientific method, as we seek, not to explain the world around us from an objective-realist perspective, but to better understand its quality and richness. ”