“Contemporary Art Studio” Practicum Experience
In the Spring of 2022, I had the pleasure of working for CAS as an aspect of my ARED 4060 / 6060 class. CAS was an experimental class. Following the work of Lisa Tan, CAS’ goal was to foster an understanding of using visual and audio art; using simple free softwares like WeVideo and Bandlab, students created work which used nontraditional mediums to tell a story and express an idea.
Me and my coworker, Claire Buchannan, successfully designed and led two lesson plans through the duration of CAS.
Find our CAS Full Curriculum here.
The first session we led was session 4; We talked with the students about LIsa Tan’s use of surprise in her work Dodge and Burn (2017-2021), and the entire session was focused on the kids finding a moment which they were surprised by to use generatively for the project they would be working on for the rest of the session. The kids used writing, drawing, and a nature walk to recall a memory with an element of surprise. than we had a group discussion which allowed to kids to share their idea.
Me and Claire were impressed by how the kids took to the ability to share their ideas and feelings; Bowie recalled a near death skating experience while Jack talked about how he found his cat, Egg, in a vent.
Shot of me and Claire dancing, a way we discovered could engage the students that we worked with
The second session we led was session 12. In this session we emphasized that the projects needed more work and time. We started the session with a game, which evolved into a work session. Finally, we ended the session by having another small discussion to discuss project on the project.
I found myself surprised by the innovation and the variety of stories that the students were considering. Irelynn found himself telling a personal narrative about Undertale, while Shrish made a video about his love of UGA football. Also interesting to me was the student’s innovative ways of tackling the project; many of them decided to use software which had not been taught in previous sessions of the course, something which refracted into their process.
