Category: 9:30 AM Class

Final Project Topic

My topic for the final project is on Bodys Isek Kingelez’s “City of Dreams.”

I chose this as my topic because his artwork is not only inspiring for architectural purposes but also gives contemporary society headway in constructing the future for later generations. Kingelez’s artwork allows young generations to have limitless dreams.

Pedagogy and Power

Pedagogy and Power: What is the banking model to Friere? Who does it empower or disempower, and at whose expense? Do you have any experience with this model? If so, describe an encounter that you have had with the banking model and reflect on it, both positives and negatives.

Paolo Freire insists on a “Banking Model of education” as a way to criticize the education system. Teachers are those who oppress students and exploit their power. Students are seen as empty vessels, containers even, through the “art of depositing,” we are filled with information. Teachers inherently have this robotic system of depositing and repeating. This cycle, Paolo Friere says, is not how it should be. Ideally, there would be more cognition and dialogue exchanged and even a mutual, fair relationship. Cognitive objects should not be held hostage in the oppressors possession.

The Banking model disempowers students and their potentials to reach certain heights that would otherwise not be known and empowers teachers at the students expense. It seems that the public school education system follows the banking model described by Friere and this is the experience I have had growing up. Teachers have the general idea of inputting information into students and have them regurgitate it with no creative room to spare. It seems as if it is a very black and white, right or wrong, yes or no type of teaching and there isn’t a lot of gray area allowed. Not all teachers teach this way and for that I am grateful. In theory, it sounds good to process information in this deposited form but in practice, there should be many other factors considered. All students learn differently, there shouldn’t be a uniform learning style; one size does not fit all.

My Art Story

To me, art is a completely subjective form of expression that can be show through many outlets like video, paper, books and so much more that it considered as vast as the world. All art has meaning behind it, no matter how strange it seems to be called art. A piece of gum carelessly stuck onto a piece of canvas may be low effort and considered trash by many, the art still has purpose and meaning behind it. Even if the artist just did it for the sake of doing so, that itself is the meaning and purpose. If people try to dispute this, high effort art is the same. If someone spent hours drawing and planning a huge painting of a human face, no matter how thought provoking and complex the reason to make it is, it still has a purpose and meaning like a piece of gum stuck on a canvas. To me, I am indifferent to art. I accept all forms of art but will only care for ones that appeal to me. I hope to understand art from a more educational perspective in this class.

Write up your story: What we mean when we say art? What is art to you? How does it fit in to your life? What do you want to learn about in this class?

My art story is that I haven’t taken an art history before and I started to learn what art was under the lectures that our professor has taught us. Most of my art knowledge is from school and it’s mostly about making art and not learning about the art work like in this class. In unit one, I learned that formal analysis is a technique used to help us understand the artwork of the author. I learned to not the judge the artwork but to embrace the art because we all have different views about art and we may have similar opinions about it. Art is a lifestyle to almost everyone because we see art everywhere from street art to art in the museum. Art gives a nice vibe when you look at some of them because they are colorful and the gesture in the artwork gives a mood for us. Art fits in my life because I see art everywhere and sometimes I would stop by and took a long look at it to understand what’s being display. Sometimes it can boost my mind because I can imagine what’s happening about it. In this class, I want learn about art expression in art history about art related to the art in the past to modern art. I may still be learning about art but I’m going to understand a lot of artworks by the end of this semester. I also want to learn how the artist decides to produce their work and what gave them the idea to finalize it.

Make an account with the Commons. Then on our class site write up instructions on how to post.

1. You go to the class site and you select our 9:30 AM class.

2. After clicking on the link, there will be our classmates blogs and there will be a plus button that says posts, documents and media.

3. You select post to start posting on our blog post site.

4. Must have a title, image and minimum of 250 word count or more on some blog post.

5. Remember to save and tag the blog. Publish it when you are ready to post it up for everyone to see.