Student Essay Assignment:

For the Essay you have a choice:
Choice 1:
Are Video Games a Serious Art Form?
Read the following essay:

Art Form for the Digital Age.
http://www.stanford.edu/class/sts145/Library/jenkins_artform.pdf
First of all you must decide what you would define as "real art"
Some good sources to mull this idea are http://www.arthistory.sbc.edu/artartists/artartists.html
http://arthistory.about.com/cs/reference/f/what_is_art.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art

Some popular digital video games can be found at the following website:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games



Traditional Artists to choose from:

Pablo Picasso
Vincent van Gogh
Leonardo da Vinci
Salvador Dali
Claude Monet
Henri Matisse
Andy Warhol
Georgia O'Keeffe
Paul Cezanne
Raphael
Michelangelo
Wassily Kandinsky
Rembrandt
Goya
Edgar Degas
Peter Paul Rubens
Diego Rivera
Jackson Pollock
Rene Magritte
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Edouard Manet
Edvard Munch
Frida Kahlo
Titian
Piet Mondrian
Albrecht Durer
Marc Chagall
Caravaggio
Edward Hopper
Paul Gauguin

Student Essay Assignment:
Based on your own personal definition of what you think real art is, argue whether a specific video game could be considered an artform in itself. When you do this you should consider two questions:

Is only the artwork (digital painting, drawing or sculpture) in a video game artwork, or is the actual game mechanism (the way in which the game is put together or played) also an artform in itself?

To prove your point one way or the other you should compare the video game to a previous traditional work of art.


Setup of the Essay:

Intro Paragraph:
You must state what you think original artwork is- give a definition.
You will state that you are doing a research essay on a particular gaming artist. You must state that they are creating original or unoriginal artwork based on your above definition. You will prove this by showing in your essay, that their artwork could be done or not be done by one of the earlier masters using traditional processes and materials; or that it is has been copied or created through digital software techniques already created (i.e. filters etc.)


Paragraph 2-3:
Describe one digital video game program. You should do this by giving an accurate description of the media, theme, and historical influences on the work. · What formal components (line, shape, colour, texture, value, space, balance, unity, contrast, emphasis, pattern, movement) can you find in this game? What is the purpose or message in this game?


Paragraph 4-5:
Explain how this game is, or is not, an extension of traditional artworks and foundations. Can this game be created utilizing only traditional art tools and techniques? Why or why not? Is the game mechanism an artwork in itself based on your definition?


Paragraph 6 and 7:Compare this work of art to a work of an earlier artist who uses traditional methods and media. Why does this traditional artist fit within your definition of what you think real art is?


Paragraph 8:
Based on these examinations state why you think this game is a recreation of art before it and is not real art, or is it truly original piece of artwork.


Paragraph 9:
Arguments against your point.


Paragraph 10:
Summing up of arguments and final conclusion


Include a bibliography and footnotes


Choice 2

Is Digital Art a truly real artform?
To explore this question read:

In favor:
http://www.3datadesign.com/gallery/eng/isdigitalartreal1.php
http://community.imaginefx.com/blogs/chenyuns_blog/archive/2007/05/12/Digital-Art-is-Not-_2200_Cheating_2200_.aspx
Not in favour:
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/commentary/theluddite/2006/08/71599

Again similar to the essay choice above your are to choose a digital artist to write about:

Digital artists to choose from:

http://dam.org/artists/index.htm
http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Visual_Arts/Computer_Generated/Artists/

Tradtional Artists are the same ones listed above.

Student Essay Assignment:

Students are to research and write a comparison contrast essay on a digital artist versus a traditional artist.

Setup of the Essay:
Intro Paragraph:You must state what you think original artwork is- give a definition.
You will state that you are doing a research essay on a particular digital artist. You must state that they are creating original or unoriginal artwork based on your above definition. You will prove this by showing in your essay that their artwork could be done or not be done by one of the earlier masters using traditional processes and materials.


Paragraph 2-3:Describe one artwork of a prominent digital artist. You should do this by giving an accurate description of the media, theme, and historical influences on the work. · What formal components (line, shape, colour, texture, value, space, balance, unity, contrast, emphasis, pattern, movement) can you find in this artwork? What is the purpose or message in this art work?

Paragraph 4-5:
Explain how this work is, or is not, an extension of traditional artworks and foundations. Can this artwork be created utilizing only traditional art tools and techniques? Why or why not?

Paragraph 6 and 7:
Compare this work of art to a work of an earlier artist who uses traditional methods and media.


Paragraph 8:
Based on these examinations why you think this pieces of new media art is a recreation of art before it or is it truly original piece of artwork.


Paragraph 9:
Arguments against your point.


Paragraph 10:
Summing up of arguments and final conclusion



Include a bibliography and footnotes

The Essay is due on the following dates:

Rough Draft (optional hand in for 10 marks and editing by teacher) Monday January 16th.
It will be given back on Monday June 1st.
Final Absolute Due Date: Friday January 20th

The Art of Collage

For this exercise you are to look at 3 collage artists who you like and 3 you dislike and post them on your own blog with a picture. Look at the following website: http://www.collageart.org/

Different Types of Collage and Cubism

A collage (From the French: coller, to glue) is a work of formal art, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. Use of this technique made its dramatic appearance among oil paintings in the early 20th century as an art form of groundbreaking novelty. An artistic collage work may include newspaper clippings, ribbons, bits of colored or hand-made papers, portions of other artwork, photographs, and such, glued to a piece of paper or canvas.


Techniques of collage were first used at the time of the invention of paper in China around 200 BC. The use of collage, however, remained very limited until the 10th century in Japan, when calligraphers began to apply glued paper, using texts on surfaces, when writing their poems.

The technique of collage appeared in medieval Europe during the 13th century. Gold leaf panels started to be applied in Gothic cathedrals around the 15th and 16th centuries. Gemstones and other precious metals were applied to religious images, icons, and also, to coats of arms.
In the 19th century, collage methods also were used among hobbyists for memorabilia (i.e. applied to photo albums) and books (i.e. Hans Christian Andersen, Carl Spitzweg).



Collage in Painting

Collage in the modernist sense began with Cubist painters Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. According to some sources, Picasso was the first to use the collage technique in oil paintings. According to the Guggenheim Museum's online article about collage, Braque took up the concept of collage itself before Picasso, applying it to charcoal drawings. Picasso adopted collage immediately after (and was perhaps indeed the first to use collage in paintings, as opposed to drawings):
"It was Braque who purchased a roll of simulated oak-grain wallpaper and began cutting out pieces of the paper and attaching them to his charcoal drawings. Picasso immediately began to make his own experiments in the new medium."

In 1912 for his Still Life with Chair Caning (Nature-morte à la chaise cannée),[3] Picasso pasted a patch of oilcloth with a chair-cane design onto the canvas of the piece.

Surrealist artists have made extensive use of collage. Cubomania is a collage made by cutting an image into squares which are then reassembled automatically or at random.

Inimage is a name given by René Passerson to what is usually considered a style of surrealist collage (though it perhaps qualifies instead as a decollage) in which parts are cut away from an existing image to reveal another image. Collages produced using a similar, or perhaps identical, method used by Richard Genovese are called etrécissements by Marcel Mariën from a method first explored by Mariën. Genovese also introduced excavation collage (that includes elements of decollage) which is the layering of printed images, loosely affixed at the corners and then tearing away bits of the upper layer to reveal images from underneath, thereby introducing a new collage of images. Penelope Rosemont invented some methods of surrealist collage, the prehensilhouette and the landscapade.


Collage was often called the art form of the twentieth century, but this was never fully realized.Surrealist games such as parallel collage use collective techniques of collage making.
Another technique is that of canvas collage, which is the application, typically with glue, of separately painted canvas patches to the surface of a painting's main canvas. Well known for use of this technique is British artist John Walker in his paintings of the late 1970s, but canvas collage was already an integral part of the mixed media works of such American artists as Conrad Marca-Relli and Jane Frank by the early 1960s. The intensely self-critical Lee Krasner also frequently destroyed her own paintings by cutting them into pieces, only to create new works of art by reassembling the pieces into collages.

The above exerpt was taken from wikipedia.com

1. What is collage?
2. Using the website: http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/cubism/ or http://instruct.westvalley.edu/grisham/1d_analycub.html, http://instruct.westvalley.edu/grisham/1d_synthcub.html and answer the following questions:
3. What is cubism? Give a general definition.
4. How did it start?
5. What is analytical cubism? Name a piece of analytical cubist artwork.
6. What is synthetic cubism? Name a piece of synthetic cubist artwork.
7. Do you like cubism? Why or why not explain using the vocabulary of the elements and principles of design.

Assignment:

Step One Answer the questions above on your blog or post your answers on your own blog.

Step One:  paint a portrait of yourself using layers like was done in Grade 11

Step Two: fragment or break that painting a part so that it becomes either a synthetic or cubist self-portrait
(Make sure that you keep a copy of your original painting as you will need it). Every time you make a major shift or change in your original portait painting you must save it as a new layer.

The work should show some aspect of your personality in it.

Introduction to blogging on the course

Welcome to the AWS 4M blog.

This is where much of the information related to the course research can be found. It is suggested that in order to answer questions posted on the blog that you create your own blog and when you post a response link your blog.

Example

Post: The answers to this section can be found at johndoe@blogspot.com