Tesni Stephen

M A K I N G   O U R   V O I C E S   H E A R D

Makey Makey Musical Painting/Drawings

Overview: The emphasis on high-stakes assessments in formal education programs leaves little room for creative expression. In this unit the students will identify some of the difficulties that hamper expression and successful communication. Students will then reflect on their personal strengths and offerings which they contribute to the world. Students will translate their individual ideas into an abstracted work of art, which represents the difficulties of expression and communicating. After the individual making, the students will come together in their small groups, connect their individual works of art forming a collaborative, performative piece using Makey Makeys. The Makey Makey literally brings voice to the individual/collective artworks. We will look at The Light of Human Kindness—a Richmond mural created in collaboration with Hamilton Glass and Patience Salgado.

Concrete assessment: Mr. Harnsberger is especially detailed when it comes to assessing students fairly on abstract and group work. We will address this throughout by having writing prompts and reflections which will let us understand if the students are using their abstract work and resulting Makey Makey performances in order to express their own and collective voices in a meaningful way. We will also encourage each group member to take on an active and specific role (technical help, art director, project manager, photographer, videographer, and writer) in order to individually assess students’ involvement in group work.

Big Idea: Expressing Yourself

Key Concepts:

• Voice

• Communication

• Collective voice

​Essential Questions:

• What strengths and qualities make up your personal voice?

• What does healthy communication and expression look like?

• How do you and your teammates express your individual voices as a collective whole?

Rationale: The students that we are working with this semester are enrolled in an IB Art IV class, which can be limiting at times because of the highly-structured program and emphasis on observational drawing. Students wanted time to express themselves and be more free. Mr. Harnsberger is currently doing a unit on abstraction and has just finished a project in which students individually made an abstract work of art from a representational drawing of found objects. We will continue this unit on abstraction by moving into non-representational abstraction. We will create an individual abstract work about our own voices and then work together as a group in order to bring actual collective voice to our works with Makey Makeys. This unit emphasizes individual expression as well as working together and group expression.

Target Student Group: IB Art IV, 14–15, 9th grade, urban public high school

Cultural Responsiveness: This unit takes into account the individual needs of students while also working to create a successful group work experience. Learning about your own strengths and expressing them, learning about other’s strengths and how they express them, and putting those strengths into action can help the culture of any classroom. This acceptance of yourself and others can then translate into the real world as well.

Specific Unit Objectives: Students will learn about Patience Salgado and Hamilton Glass’s mural project and discuss individual expression and how people can come together. Students will identify their own voice and how they express it by responding to a writing prompt and creating a colorful underpainting. Students will discuss healthy communication and create graphite lines on top of their underpaintings to represent this. Students will learn how to work in teams with a Makey Makey then work together to create a physical sound work that represents their voices being heard as a collective. Students will be responsible for documenting the process and the final Makey Makey performance through photos and video.

Lesson 1- Introduction: Finding Our Voices

Objective: In our first lesson, we will introduce the The Light of Human Kindness, a mural by Patience Salgado and Hamilton Glass (HAM) and examine how the artists collaborated with each other and the community to create an impactful message. We will watch a video of the performative aspects of the piece in which the mural lights up using conductive paint and human connection. Additionally, we will discuss some of the ways in which expressing oneself can be difficult and communication can be hindered. The students will visually represent something about themselves that they wish to express by creating an abstract work of art. We will discuss how it can be hard to find the exact words that perfectly describe what we want to say, which is why some people turn to art as it can help express things that cannot be expressed in words. We will review the terms, “abstract” and “nonrepresentational” art. We will discuss the art making and emphasize the importance of the group work component of the final piece. Students will come up with multiple ideas and thumbnail sketches for an expressive colorful painting. We will watch a short video on the Makey Makey to preview the final, performative component of our art project.

Lesson 2- Lines of Communication

Objective: In our second class, we will have a prompt that asks what may prevent people from expressing their individual voice? This can be in the form of writing or a graphic novel style. We will then come together and look at the work of Titus Kaphar and critically discuss what his paintings may mean. Then we will discuss how voices are heard or go unheard in our own lives. Where are people heard or unheard? What are some of the difficulties that get in the way of expressing yourself or communication? What does healthy expression or communication look like? We will talk about line work and how we can take our original painting which is an abstract representation of our own voices, and manipulate it with black graphite line in order to express a new meaning of collective voice and communication. What might this look like? What type of lines could we use? We will add black graphite lines to our work to represent this. At the end of class we will preview how the Makey Makey works so that we can think about ideas for the last day. Testing station for the graphite lines, contact point has graphite on both sides of the paper.

Lesson 3- Making Our Voices Heard

Objective: For our final class, we will work in teams to create a piece of sound art that connects all of our artwork and makes our “expressive voices” heard. When students walk in there will be a prompt asking students to talk about their teammates’ qualities. Again, students can do this in writing or in a graphic novel style. We will then come together as a group and discuss what makes a team work well, and what may hinder a team. How do you use your strengths to contribute to the whole? We will go over different jobs this team will have and ask everyone to sign up for one of the jobs: technical help, art director, project manager, photographer, videographer, and writer. We will explain that they will be assessed on how well they work as a team and the final product that they produce. Since this this artwork can only be hooked up to a Makey Makey now, we will explain the importance of documentation. Their final documentation will also be assessed. We will do a quick review of how to utilize the Makey Makey and let people experiment before committing to an idea. Each group will end up with their four pieces of individual work and their collective documented sound project. Each group will also write a collective artist statement about their final piece. We will then reflect and assess how the week went.

National Art Standards:

• VA:Pr6.1.IIa Make, explain, and justify connections between artists or artwork and social, cultural, and political history.

• VA:Re.7.2.IIa Evaluate the effectiveness of an image or images to influence ideas, feelings, and behaviors of specific audiences.

Virginia Art SOLS:

• AI. 8 The student will select and apply elements of art and principles of design to communicate meaning in works of art.

• AI.13  The student will analyze works of art as representational, abstract, or nonrepresentational, including non-objective and conceptual.