Demonstrations for Dummies

We have been doing a lot of work in class about demonstrations, and I have learned a lot about what to do and what not to do during a demonstration. The basic definition of a demonstration is the action or process of showing something and how to do it. There can be demonstrations on almost anything.

Especially on the website that we all know and love, Youtube, there are thousands of demonstrations that are good and some that are even absolutely terrible.

Here I will include a video of a demonstration and say what was done well and what could of been done better.

Good demonstrations have:
- lots of video footage
- still images
- voice overs
-transitions
- music
-outside research
- exploration
- explaining what to do, not just showing it

Not so good demonstrations:
-do not have a good balance between video footage and still life photos
- do not explain whatever is being demonstrated
- are silent
- have awkward angles
- are shaky

Overall this video was a good demonstration. I loved the inclusion of the music, and how on the side of the screen there were captions of what to do. This made the video very interesting to watch and easy to follow. However, it would of been more realistic and personal if the artist was actually painting the portrait right in front of us. I also wish that there were more voice overs of us actually hearing the artists voice. Again, this would of been more beneficial because the video would of been more personal. The artist does have a youtube channel with slower tutorials with voice overs, but I think they would have been beneficial in this specific demonstration.

This brings up a question, is there a different between a demonstration and a tutorial? Maybe I will research this for another blog!

Demonstrations

Today in class we discussed demonstrations in a classroom. I have already done my demonstration video, however, after this discussion I decided to go back into my demonstration and edit it to make my thoughts more clear and concise.

One video I included is entitled "The Science of Happiness". This video is a demonstration that deals with a project typically done with the practice of Art Therapy. This project deals with how colors can relate to emotions and how to portray that in a piece of artwork. I actually did this project and the end result is shown below:

Things to consider when putting on a demonstration:
Questions - engaging the students, having them speculate with you
Terms and words - make sure you put them in context
Gathering all of your materials
You might need to record your demo more than once
Detail shots

As a result of talking about copyright and appropriation, it got me thinking about not only different artists, but how this is applied to art education.

An artist that stood out to me who appropriates artwork in Marcel Duchamp. One of his most renown pieces of art is L.H.O.O.Q (1919) which is a Ready Made of the Mona Lisa.

A ready made is a piece of artwork that is slightly changed in order for it to be called that artists own. The object or painting is typically already made, the artist just has their own artistic license to change an element about it to make it their own.

This has to do with appropriation because appropriating a piece of artwork is copying or taking a piece of artwork, however you are slightly changing it and altering it to make it your own.

A question arose about how copyright and appropriation work when it comes to Education. If you are using something for specific reasons such as Education or even a Parody, that is fair use. This question came up because last semester for a lesson plan, I needed to find materials to assess student artwork. I chose a rubric and I found it online. I took that rubric and matched it with my project and altered some elements, would this be copyright or appropriation? What do you think?

While talking about documentaries, the first thing I thought of was Netflix. Netflix is full of different documentaries on topics from History to Animals to Food to Traveling to Money. One documentary that stuck out to me was called Discover Planet Ocean (which I have actually watched several times).

In this documentary, Josh Duhamel narrates the story of a team of cinematographers as they travel through the ocean to study the bond and relationships between underwater sea creatures and humanity.

I love animal science and animal research and this documentary was one that really stood out to me.

Hi everyone!

So this week we focussed a lot on copyrighting and ideas immediately started flowing in my head. Newspaper articles and documentaries started popping up of issues with technology, social media, privacy and censorship.

For this blogpost, I decided to focus on iPhones. More specifically, the iPhone 5s and 6 and how it has a fingerprint scanner in the phone. The fingerprint scanner is how you can unlock your iPhone.

Initially, society thought this was an incredible and mindblowing utility. However as time went on, this utility tapped into our security and privacy.

Below is an article I discovered on the Huffington Post about the iPhone 5s and 6 fingerprint scanner and how that scanner can result in you being hacked. Read more here.