Learning Theories

Learning theories examine how people and animals learn. It is composed of three styles including Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism. Behaviorists focus on cause and effect relationships through behaviors as descriptive of ones internal processes. Conditioning, teaching of a particular behavior, is one popular method of behaviorists. Classical conditioning creates relationships through association, like when we associate the coca cola font with the product itself. Classical conditioning uses consequences to reform behaviors, incorporating positive and negative reinforcement to increase a particular type of behavior, positive and negative punishment to decrease that behavior, and extinction (the lack of any consequence). Cognitivism looks at the brain as a computer in the way of processing information by focusing on internal rather than external events. It recognizes three different memory stores to register, process, store, and retrieve information. Five strategies for retaining information include rehearsal (repetition), organization (chinking of information into groups), elaboration (clarifying and understanding information), imagery (recreation of facts in our mind), and schema (using mental structures to relate information to). Constructivism says experiences provide humans with knowledge, thus information is unique to each experience. Meaningful activity creates valuable knowledge, so genuine participation is necessary. Encouraged activities include problem-oriented lessons, visual formats and models, cooperative learning, exploration, authentic assessment, and project-based learning. Its criticisms are that this theory can't appeal to each individual's skill set, students may choose not to participate, skills may not transfer well into real life circumstances, and not all topics can be covered with this method. A key end point this lesson provided was highlighting the importance of audience, topic, and environment when choosing a teaching format.

I expect that, throughout my career as an artist, I will be consistently expected to learn new things in order to innovate them into my work. In the name of efficiency, there is definitely a teaching style I prefer to use and to be used on me. It is based mainly on the learning theory of constructivism. Since the verb "construction" is often required when creating art, (whether constructing an atmosphere, performance, or literal object), it is only obvious that a teacher should present a demo for their students and allow them to experience the act they are being taught so that they can do it on their own one day when that skill becomes necessary. Also, when watching and participating in demos, I like to draw out, step by step, the actions on takes in carrying out this demo to further commit the practice to memory; it's like living the experience for the second time and allowing it to be replicated, image by image at a later date. Because of its personal nature that allows a more participatory and organized setting, this will most likely be the approach I take when trying to learn new practices or when teaching them to others so that I may continue my lifetime of learning most efficiently.

In 1994, Chinese artist Xu Bing set up a series of installations resembling classrooms that were designed to teach gallery-goers the art of 'ancient Chinese calligraphy'. Given all the tools an outsider would traditionally associate with the act of calligraphy, they were encouraged to construct these elaborate characters under the belief that they were writing Chinese; but the language was of pure invention by the artist, and was a fusion between traditional English and Chinese letters. English letters were merely made more square to take on the image of the Chinese character, and the audience was still expected to begin to understand what the words meant when continually meditating on their writings. In this work, Bing wanted to transcend language barriers and offer the experience of the art of calligraphy as another way of enabling understanding between cultures. Once an audience member experiences the spirituality of their meditative state, they then realize the similarities between two seemingly different peoples.

Podcasting

According to the about.com article about how to create podcasts, a podcast is an audio file which you can share over the internet so that others may download and listen to them using audio players like itunes, windows media player, etc. Creating one is relatively easy once you learn how to record your sound, convert it into an mp3, and upload it for others to download. The tutorial uses the popular program Audacity to record and edit their sound because it's easy, free, and has advanced feature options. Its LAME mp3 extension exports your audio file as an mp3. An alternative is Windows Sound Recorder which accompanies all Windows OS's. You must find another program online to convert your wav file into an mp3. To record, hit the red circle and begin speaking into the microphone. Keep track of the audio size by right clicking the file and clicking properties. Uploading usually involves rss coding, but there are many programs available that do that step for you. For example: MyRSSCreator.com. Now, you must upload your rss to a server, your website for instance, and anyone who wants to listen to your podcast can simply subscribe. List it in a directory so it's easier for people to find who don't know you. The CNET article estimates the price of this endeavor to be $50 and up along with up to 4 hours of input. This article also suggests testing your rss feed here by simply typing in the address where it is located. The difference with video podcasts, so called vodcasts, is simply attaching video to your audio file. This article provided a lot of really good advice on how to film your video, like avoiding wide shots with lots of detail and instead doing closeups. Because of low resolution, texts are difficult to read, so avoid being reliant on them. Also, keep it short to keep your audience's attention. iTunes has a large supply of the most popular podcasts. Free Sound is a good source for free audio that you can use in your podcasts.

Personally, the vodcast seems like an exceptional tool for learning art processes from a variety of teachers. Like an exchange of knowledge, I would definitely use this source to share what I do know about art creation, like the techniques I've learned in my own art classes on printmaking or digital art softwares, and then borrow the information offered from the videos of others. I have often used these very tools to gain knowledge about how to use specific materials in my sculpture class. These materials, like silicon mold making methods, were once so foreign and intimidating, that I may never have even attempted using them in my own work.

A particularly intriguing podcast is the Museum of Modern Art Podcast. Rather than walking through the museum with a large group of tourists, I appreciate the idea of going through and experiencing each piece of art more intimately, at your own pace. Also, beyond the tour guide, the podcast invites artists, curators, and other guests to give their input on each individual work.

My Audio File

Your Personal Yoga Session

I created this audio clip as a way to experiment with the similarities between yoga and inspirational, subliminal tapes. Just as the effects of subliminal tapes rely heavily on the strong belief in its legitimacy by the user, the religion of yoga responds best through the faith and level of spirituality of the listener. In addition, there are implications of consumerism and monetary gain in this comparison since both are deemed as 'trends' and exploited for their placebo effects while also being labeled as mechanisms of deception.

Often, art pieces require another layer to be effective, such as sound or video. I would definitely use audio such as this as a supplement to a sculpture in order to better express my ideas. Audio often simulates an environment you want to place your viewer in, so that what you are presenting to an audience become more believable. In fact, I'm probably going to be using this audio for a preexisting piece artwork that I had already created. It was deemed less successful since it tried to simulate a situation with creating an adequate environment. You can't expect an audience to respond a certain way if you don't use indicators to nudge them in a specific direction. This can be done with audio or video clips, or with both.

Take the work of Tony Oursler. If he did not use projections or audio, his blank-faced dolls would lie lifeless and unemotional, and few would be able to respond to the psychotic tones of Oursler's installations.

Digital Technology

Digital and analog devices are similar in that they both take your input, whether it be your voice over a phone line or your favorite tv show through your cable device, and convert it into something else. What that something is, is all the difference. Analog tranfers data in what the readings describe as "electric pulses", while digital information is transferred into a binary data incorporating the numbers 0 and 1. The reason digital is often preferred is because it requires a lot less information than analog, because it is composed of a series of those two numbers. A small variation in the order of these numbers creates completely different data, and the possibilities of creating new series of coding are endless. Photography is a good example that is given. The first cameras, which were analog, are often revered for their excellent quality. Light sensitive paper kept in the dark inside the camera is 'exposed' to any light outside where you press the button that opens the lens. Because the data is not converted into a series of numbers, but is a "chemical process", the picture taken retains its initial integrity and it can be blown up to larger scales without any damage to the quality. But digital is still preferred because of the massive amount of information the camera can hold, while still taking high quality pictures. The data is captured and transferred into this numerical data through CCD's, Charged Coupling Devices. Often when you are buying expensive cameras, you are buying them for a better quality CCD because it gives better resolution, or image quality, to your pictures by offering more pixels to fill with that binary data. Look at a picture up close, and you'll see the effect of low resolution through the jagged edges, which are actually the pixels. Increasing pixels per square creates smoother edges. More pixels does not mean better color quality, but a sharper image with more details captured, along with larger file size requirements. Expensive cameras need much larger sd cards to store more information, with a higher class grade. Because digital photography has an internal processor to convert data from pictures you take at an instant, you can view your images right away rather than going through a chemical process to see if your pictures turned out well. Digital video is similar, this is why so many digital cameras can now take short videos also. Normal quality videos turn out 30 frames of moving data per second, like taking 30 pictures in a row every second. These play at 24 frames per second, meaning some quality is lost. Any fewer frames that 12 per second creates a choppy effect, like a stop-motion video. Video compression is used to convert data from your camera to smaller, more usable sizes, which also leads a drop in picture quality. Lastly, PDA's, personal data assistants, are like mini computers in that they store data, work as organizers, and can be used to make phone calls.

Knowing the workings of digital technology is imperative to my art field. Just like painting or printmaking, I've learned that digital technologies are just tools in creating the far more profound concept of art itself. Beyond that, I've learned that digital technologies are very different and unique kinds of tools, because the options are virtually endless. You can manipulate any photo, sound file, or video so much further than its original form, or reality itself. I forsee myself using photography and visual software often in my future art career so I can stretch the limits of even my own imagination in my works. There is also a certain tone in the medium you choose to create your works. To use a digital technology versus oil paint raises the question of 'traditional', or 'fine' art. Because of the associations the mind creates when looking at a piece of art, I must consider what it means when I use digital technology in art creation. This has already been an interesting concept for me, and I recently created a digital piece called Limited Edition where I went out in nature and photographed pieces of paper litter that I had found and signatured. I mounted all 50 of these photos and arranged them as one would expect in a gallery setting -signed, numbered, and dated. This work examined the cyclical, absurd nature of 'art' as something valued through the author's signing and the edition of the piece. The duality of paper, as its value changes in its setting is also considered, especially considering the role of the 'gallery'. This piece first came into mind in my digital imaging class when I was trying to define value in digital art. I was very skeptical of how an intangible work, or something printed onto paper, could ever find value (monetary, not emotional or conceptual value) in the art market. When I use digital technology in my art in the future, I intend to fully comprehend the purpose of the medium itself.

A fantastic digital artist I've recently discovered is Maurice Benayoun. He created large-scale interactive installations, often using highly complex virtual reality softwares of his own design. His works mostly comment on the current state of media and the systems of society, and how these elements relate to the new technological age. More specifically, he tries to place human characteristics onto the cold nature of technology. This is exactly what I mean by using the digital medium with purpose. My favorite work of his is SFear. Maps of emotions are extracted in real time from the internet. These words used to describe emotions are projected onto a helium globe, with their sizes correlating with the number of hits on the internet according to the 3200 biggest cities around the world. Small discs below the projected globe show tangible maps of e-mapping stills. This work uses technology, something absent of all emotion, to describe the most human qualities. Does the tangible presentation of emotion make us feel like the machine is connecting to us, or is it simply spitting out information to satiate the most primitive form of emotional contact? Even the discs are made to look like skin, the peaks like the goose bumps we feel when experiencing surges of emotion. These stills are simply another way for the machine to try and make us believe we are connecting to it; thus the machine is a deceiving, sly, and intelligent entity, but it will never have emotion.

E-Reading

E-Reading can be used didactically, to describe a certain concept to the reader for their better understanding. Unlike face-to-face oral teaching, E-reading is capable of integrating imagery, and thus involves and tests the reader's visual literacy skills. It also can use video or audio files; and since it's online, it's highly accessible. An example of E-reading was given. As this E-reading suggests, symbology has always been an integral part of the communication of our society. Unlike language, this visual dialect varies through each culture and adapts to the change of time. For example, it is possible that future generations will be able to easily recognize the new pepsi logo, while we would be able to catch reference of the previous one much more easily. The reading also points out the elements that combine to form visual compositions: dot, line, shape, direction, texture, hue, saturation, value, scale, dimension, and motion. The source also shows a picture to describe each of these terms. This is exactly why E-reading has become so valuable as a teaching tool, it provides so many different levels of supplementary information. The reader can read along at their own pace, click on the links for further definition, and have the image supplied to back up their understanding of the written word.

E-Reading is often the very second thing I turn to when I'm preparing myself for a new art project, following face-to-face consultation with peers. This is because of the immense variety of opinions and information it offers me. Especially when I'm working with materials to create a sculpture that no one I know has worked with, I can simply log on to the Instructables website to find out the methods I need to take to complete my objectives. Instructables is a just another kind of E-learning, sharing website, specifically organized to be read in a step-by-step format. There are pictures to go along with text and oftentimes outside links to further your search for information. I can see myself in the future, as an artist, continually returning to E-reading sources like this to discover newer and better ways of constructing my projects.

This reminds me of a recent gallery opening in the Reitz in honor of the Future of Digital Studies conference. Hundreds were invited to bring their laptops in order to interact with John Cayley's installation, Imposition. Participants were asked to pick a language, (English, French, and German) from one of four possible passages, crank up the volume, and let their music blend and eventually synchronize through a specialized detection software. In this way, the space became a symphony of translations. As the piece progresses on your computer screen, you see the passage slowly appear as a mixture of all the languages, along with an accompanying image. The image can be of anything: a person, nature scenery, anything that will give you your own individual interpretation of the seemingly incoprehensible words. This piece, along with Cayley's other digital poetry projects, explore digital interpretation of language and how easily they flow into one another.

Visual Literacy

Imagery can have an impact on the way an entire society functions on a much more influential level than mere words. Attached to our continually increasing reliance on visual stimulation as a tool in popular culture needs to be a heavy emphasis on maintaining responsibility with those who create and activate the imagery of our visually literate society.
Scott Grieger is an artist who focuses on how symbology affects our everyday emotional state, especially on a subconscious level. His show and installation titled Be Here Now! was highly influenced by how such corporate symbology is tied to militaristic intentions and will ultimately usher in Armageddon. One important piece of the show was his "swooshtika", which arranges a series of Nike swooshes in such a way to form a swastika. Grieger is referencing the power of images to control thought and stimulate action. They are hung on two sides of the gallery like impressive banners used as tools both in corporate hype and promoting government propaganda. A thermometer placed before a "red hot" globe suggests urgency and as the temperature slowly increases, one senses that the amount of time before the end of the world is quickly decreasing. All this imagery leaves the audience highly anxious and proves Grieger's point that a visually literate culture has the ability to be manipulated easily into forming one emotion or another, which may then lead to either action or inaction. While the corporate world might suggest inaction toward current environmental and political issues, Greiger's imagery encourages being proactive against such schools of thought.

The Key Elements of Design: CRAP

The outline given through this week's lesson is no different from the ideology of color theory, the perspectives of foreground and background, and the creative use of space as taught in an academic art setting. Good design conveys information clearly and purposefully.

Contrast is what defines the foreground from the background. High contrast results in sharper imagery, while low contrast can be fuzzy and difficult to perceive as there is less definition seperating the background and foreground. oure White on black and pure black on white are the epitome of high contrast because no two "colors" could get further away from eachother on the gradation scale.
          
           Believe it or not, color doesn't always produce contrast since some colors are exactly the same gradation. Place one scale of bright reds that gradiate down to a dark red next to another scale of bright blues that gradiate down to a dark blue, put them in greyscale, and they become exactly the same color of grey! The color gradation is shown below next to their respective greyscales.

Repitition of organization is another method to make sure the information is being clearly conveyed to the reader. If all of a sudden, my oranizational paragraphs become sporatic, it may place stress on the reader and compromise my original intention to instruct. Repitition produces strong design because it can provide consistency and clarity. Andy Warhol used this idea of repetition to define popular culture and its relativity to mass production.

Andy Warhol, 1962, Marylin Prints, screen printing

Alignment should also be clear to the viewer. Words are usually read left to right, while imagery is viewed beginning at the left in a clockwise manner. Knowing this will help us as designers create works that cater to these tendencies so that meaning is easily discovered without too much effort. Foreground and background are additional routes used to appeal to more visual methods. If foreground and background are easily distinguished, perspective can be mastered and the viewer can have a sense of where they are in relation to the piece. If objects in the foreground appear closer and in the background appear further, there is no confusion from the viewer. Artists like Julian Beever can skew perspective, making them appear clearer in one angle, but greatly skewed at another.

Proximity ensures appropriate associations. The text that is to be read together need to be close together, but not too tight as to make it difficult to read or clumsy-looking. Like the body can control our breathing without our concentration, design also needs to be intuitive.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 applications, as they are used in educational settings, promote interactive social learning. Users are able to share the knowledge they have while also profiting from the knowledge of others. Another guideline of such programs is that they be relatively easy to utilize by the user while also encouraging collaboration.

In 2000, Victoria Vesna greeted the new technological millennium with Project n0time, an interactive installation solely based online for the similar purpose of web 2.0 applications. Vesna wanted users of this program to create online personas, one or many, whose key objective was presenting all the knowledge they had to offer the online universe. People with a particularly populr set of knowledge gained more friends, while those offering very little usually had less "hits". Out of the many ways to socialize online now -dating sites, facebook, twitter- creating one based solely on the acquisition of knowledge brings the concept of internet technology back to its original purposes. That's where the title 'n0time' comes in; to create a community of people with no time. It refers to the ease of acquiring information when such social site is strictly set around the premises of supplying data through real-time human contact.

Visual Representation of Project n0time users' avatars that describe the amount of knowledge they have to offer through a network of keywords, or "tags":