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The Innovating Pedagogy report is an annual overview of edutech from the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University. The 2013 report, the second in the series, selects 10 emerging innovations from the long list of existing technologies which the institute believes have the potential to make a significant impact on education. These are not technologies which are in development or even new, but rather technologies and ideas which are already being effected but have room to expand. The report ranks each innovation in terms of potential impact and timescale for implementation, describes its current application, and then explains the pedagogy behind the innovation and how it could be re-envisioned for maximum impact. One of the innovations described is the broad concept of digital scholarship.

Potential impact: medium/high
Timescale: short

According to the report, the must inclusive definition of digital scholarship is simply "changes in scholarly practice brought about by the use of digital and networked technologies." Most of the resources profiled on this blog, for example, fall under this umbrella term. The report highlights four major areas of digital scholarship:

The Innovating Pedagogy report is an annual overview of edutech from the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University. The 2013 report, the second in the series, selects 10 emerging innovations from the long list of existing technologies which the institute believes have the potential to make a significant impact on education. These are not technologies which are in development or even new, but rather technologies and ideas which are already being effected but have room to expand. The report ranks each innovation in terms of potential impact and timescale for implementation, describes its current application, and then explains the pedagogy behind the innovation and how it could be re-envisioned for maximum impact. One of the innovations described is harnessing crowd learning.

Potential impact: high
Timescale: medium

            When I stepped onto South Street I immediately felt aspects of my home coming back to me, the quirky atmosphere, interesting shops and coffee houses, and art lining the streets. I felt connected to South Street, to the gardens, to the food. Everything connected me to the play and to the experience of travelling through South Philadelphia. The streets created the perfect board for the game I was about to find myself in known as experiencing a city.

            As a player in the game, my main goal was to find as many mosaics as possible throughout the city, with no rules attached expect to have fun and observe city life on South Street, and the surrounding grid of streets, homes, and artwork. Flanagan describes games as “inherently non-liner,” and this is how I felt my game on South Street managed to play out.

I still remember the last family dinner I had before I left home. I have about twenty relatives invited and everyone had a talk with me, and there’s one sentence they have been repeating: Don’t wander alone in the city, stay in your dorm when it’s getting dark.

And when I take the class trip of play in the city, I have always feared the messed-up American metropolis would give me some scary encounters. Diversity of strangers----those who my parents always told me to stay away from has planted deep-rooted fear in my mind.

The city is a concentration of humanity. It demonstrates economic triumph in tall buildings and the downfalls of humankind in its homeless population and high crime rates. The modern art world often lives between these two aspects of the city. While art needs money in order to survive, it also needs thoughtfulness, honesty, and some spontaneity in order to make a statement and be provocative. Money can produce a biased prospective and dilute arts’ meaningfulness, so art usually tries to survive only on a substance level of money, with enough room to play with ideas.

Artists are described as “creating outside commercial establishments.” (Flanagan, 3) according to Critical Play by Mary Flanagan. Isaiah Zagar follows Flanagan’s definition of an artist. Zagar’s art was rejected by museums, so he brought it to the streets. His art form is mosaics, which he layers on top of buildings in his hometown of Philadelphia. His mosaics are made of tiles, molds, broken mirrors, bicycle wheels, bottles, and other found objects. Zagar’s Mosaics are so widespread in Philadelphia that they have become part of the cultural identity of the city. Even though Zagar’s mosaics are less prominent than the cities’ museums, they are more unique and regional.

From the Flanagan article I chose to research Atsuko Tanaka, who revolutionized the meaning of play with her Electric Dress which was designed as a cross between a traditional kimono and the new age of technology. It was a full body dress with hundreds of light bulbs in primary colors that would light her up and “blink like fireworks.” This piece spoke to me because it not only took the art form of fashion, but it also was influential in the new wave movement of technology, as it was created in the year 1956, and she would then wear her creation to various exhibitions over the years, expressing her playfulness and imagination.

There is nothing quite like standing in the entrance of a building, looking down, and realizing that you can see through the floor. Nor is it quite like glancing up, and noticing a large naked figure staring at you from the ceiling. Then again, Isaiah Zagar is not your typical artist, so one should not expect a typical entrance to his life-work. The Magic Gardens in Philadelphia, PA are something else; completely covered in tiles and metal, glass and wood, the structure looks like something better suited to Wonderland than Philly. Yet Philly is where it calls home, and it is all the better for it; after all, in Wonderland no one would think twice about a giant wall of china and bottles. In a small residential area of Philly, the striking contrast makes the garden all the more arresting, all the better for it. The Magic Gardens, despite its name, has very few living plants in it at all; more are painted on the walls, but this is far more a garden of sights and insights than fruits and leaves. Every square inch of the space is covered in one material or another, used in the most unusual ways; things are drawn or painted onto some tiles, other tiles are arranged into figures. Some spaces have no tiles, but only ‘other’; broken crockery, smashed mirrors, carefully cut shapes and outlines. Words are a part of the presentation, but not always for the reading; some are arranged to be read, yes, but others are positioned not to be read, but so that people know the words are there; perhaps they are placed too small and too high to be read from street level.

After reading the introduction of Critical Play, I started to question if I played critically in Philly. I think the answer is no. According to Flanagan, “critical play means to create or occupy play environments and activities that represent one or more questions about aspects of human life.” During the visit in Zagar’s Magic Garden, I didn’t really think about how this shining and beautiful garden is related to human life. Instead, I just took time to enjoy being surrounded by mosaics, telling my groups how incredible it is, and taking interesting photos with them. Besides the Magic Garden itself, being with my group is the part I liked the most. I have thought about how it would be if I was there myself. Could I have spent one hour there?  Probably not: it is such a small garden actually. But I think I did play “ …the use of play forms as forms of bonding, including the exhibition and validation or parody of membership and traditions in a community.”, Flanagan puts this sentence in Critical Reading. With my group, I did play.

Phoenix

MLord

Play in the City 028

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

To Subvert With Pomegranate

As a player in the city, I “explore what is permissible and what pushes at that boundary between rules and expectations” (Flanagan 13). For a long time now, I have understood instinctively that art, to me, is a way of surprising people. The first person who put this sensation into words was Dorothy Allison in her essay, "This is Our World." Allison described art as a way to challenge and to cause people to think about the ideas that they prefer to shove aside and pretend don't exist. My reaction to this was an intense sense of "I'm not the only one." According to Mary Flanagan, not only am I not the only one, I come from a long line of artists who see art as their tool to shock and surprise—their instrument of Duchamp’s “spirit of revolt” (3). “As the connection between art and critical play continues, artists will further explore embodied play and situations in and efforts to ‘unplay’ preconceived notions of…everyday living, and rework them” (Flanagan 148). Preconceived notions are exactly what I have been fighting, armed only with a pineapple and a pomegranate.

 “Artists make words touchable, create palindromes, do street intervention, and even skywrite from airplanes to disrupt the everyday actions in the city.” Flanagan, 14

There is something defiant about Isaiah Zagar’s mosaics. Cities are built for efficiency, functionality, but not necessarily beauty. Yet, around South Street, a glimmer of light in the gap between two buildings could mean a mosaic of mirrors and color. Zagar’s art is a street intervention, playfully ignoring Philadelphia’s figurative and literal grids to bring a different dimension into its streets. 

Zagar’s mosaics are inherently spontaneous. He doesn’t always plan ahead where his next mosaic will be, what it will look like, or where he will get his materials. Many of his mosaics spill across alleyways and onto the back walls of houses, creeping along fence lines as if they’re no longer in the artist’s control. The mosaics fill cracks in alleys with seemingly random words and images. Looking at a map of Zagar’s mosaics is not like looking at a map of a typical art gallery. The mosaics make no distinctive pattern and many do not even appear on the map. In the magic gardens, the route you take is not restricted to a path. Zagar’s art defies the city’s nearly symmetrical grid pattern in its meandering nature.