Week #5 More Human Than Human Blog Posting

1. What are the most interesting discoveries you made watching this video?

I thought it was sort of neat that all of the ancient Egyptian depictions of a human were set on a grid and made perfectly measured. I didn't know this and the back story of how this discovery was made was kind of interesting as well. 

2. What do you think about Vilayanur S. Ramachandran theory with the chicks?

I feel like is sort of odd that the chicks went even more crazy with three red lines instead of one. It does sort of make sense when tied in with human nature though. Our brains are instinctively wired in some ways and this does makes sense when being compared to the voluptuous figure in the beginning of the film. Perhaps we do have a love for the over exaggerated. 

3. Do you see any connection between the art/subjects  in this video (Venus of Willendorf, the Herring gull chicks, Egyptian images of the human body, Kritian Boy) and the way the human body is portrayed today?

I think something that has not changed much in thousands of years is our desire to find the unattainable. Just like with the chicks and their fixation on the three lines instead of one, we are obsessed with "better" and "perfection". The Egyptians had an idea of the perfect form and just about every other civilization had an idea of the perfect form. We are no different, we portray bodies in a certain way and usually the image is unattainable. 

Word Art/Word Clouds

similarities and differences?

I found Word Art to have more design options and they were very easy to use. I liked the way that the words were organized to edit each word individually. Word Cloud seemed dated to me. The options were very simple and did not give me enough creative freedom.  

Content and how I might use it in my classroom.

The content of my word cloud is the characteristics of a good art student. I'm actually going to print my apple design and hang it up in my after school program room. Its a nice way to display expectations in a fun and creative way. 

How could I use word clouds with my students as a lesson?

Word clouds could be used to list design elements in a piece of art work or just a lists of elements in general. In my after school program it might be fun to let the kids each make a word cloud with words that describe theirselves. 

https://wordart.com/create

https://worditout.com/word-cloud/create

Logo Project

1. Describe the process: creative thinking skills and ideas you used in the logo creation.

I started brainstorming by writing down things that I felt like represented me. Then I reached out to a few people who I feel know my character pretty well and asked them to describe me with three different objects. This actually turned out to be sort of fun, as I in turn matched friends personalities to different objects. What I found was that generally my friends all described me as the same objects. Most people listed the sun and flowers first.  

I knew that I wanted to include the name "Rae Khahn" in my logo. I've been signing all of my work with this condensed version of my name for years. So it seemed fitting to include a sun in my logo playing off of "Rae" and rays of sunshine. 

I ended up deciding on a chalk board font. I felt like that played into me being an aspiring educator.

2. What was the most important discovery you made in the creation of your logo?

While working on this project, I found that even the smallest changes made a difference. Trail and error. If I thought something looked a little off that maybe it needs to be rotated a bit or scaled a bit. Every small change made a difference. A little goes a long way for a logo as well. Simplicity seemed to be key when trying to keep my logo from appearing too busy. 

3. Describe the tools and how you used them in Adobe Illustrator to create your logo.

I used the ellipse tool and the spiral tool to create the center circle. Then I used the polygon tool to create a triangle. To cut the rounded piece from the bottom of the triangle, I used the ellipse tool again and then used the shape builder tool to delete the circle, leaving behind the desired negative space. I filled all of the objects with a yellow color. Then I used the test tool to add my name and change the font.

4. What is the most important information you learned from watching the videos, powerpoint, and reading material  for this project?
For me I think that more important this was to just see the process. The steps of trial and error. The 1000s of drawings, the conceptual thought behind each drawing. Those are the things I carried with me the most as I went into the beginning steps of designing my logo. 

Video Reviews-Marc Prensky

1. What do you think of the term: Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants?

I think this is an interesting way to categorize generations. Digital Natives describing the generation of kids that do not know a world without high speed internet and smart phones. While the Immigrants are those that had to adapt and learn about technology as a new tool.

2. Where do you fit in?

I feel like I am of an age group that sort of sits right in the middle of this. I remember getting our first computer and I didn't have a cell phone until after I graduated from high school. I grew up without smart phones and high speed internet, but I saw the rapid development of these technologies in my late teens. I have an appreciation for both sides of the spectrum I suppose. 

3. In regards to the Digital Divide, how do you see it impacting education?

Digital Divide refers to the gap between countries that have regular access to high speed internet and computers and those who do not. So if the schools that have access to these technologies adapt their teachings it creates a large divide in education and how it is executed.

4. What are the most interesting concepts Prensky presents? Why?

Prensky discusses the idea of open cell phone tests. I thought this was interesting. It would allow the teacher to ask questions that focus more on the ability to process information rather than the ability to retain it.

5. Is there anything Prensky presents that you are skeptical about? What is it and why do you think so?

In the last video Prensky presents a picture of a toddler on a little bicycle looking thing with a tablet mounted to the front. I'm not sure if that is a serious image or not, but he goes one to discuss how we must dive into technology. I'm very skeptical about introducing technology at a young age. I'm closely involved with raising my nephew and we give him as few toys that require batteries as possible. As an art educator in the making I feel that technology has shortened the creative attention span of most kids. 

6. Do you think technology is important in an art classroom? Why or Why not?

I think that there is certainly benefits to technology and wonderful opportunities that it presents. However, there are still many classic forms of art that require old fashioned time and work. 

7. How do you imagine you will (or will not)  incorporate technology in your classroom? 

I incorporate it in my after school art program right now by using it as a tool to find ideas and inspiration. I also use it to look up tutorials when kids ask to do projects that I am not familiar with. In this way it is a great tool to not only teach the kids, but for me to learn from. I would image that I will continue to use it in a similar way in a classroom.  

Adobe Illustrator Videos - Blog Posting

What is Illustrator?
There are two types of graphics: Vector graphics can be scaled up or down without losing quality while Raster graphics are a fixed size and will lose quality when scaled up.

How to create a new document
Go to Windows --> Properties --> Edit Artboards
You can have multiple Artboards open in one document

Work with artboards
The Artboards button on the right side shows the different Artboards in a document, the Artboards button to the left allows you to click and scale Artboards or even create a new one. The Artboards Options button on the top allows you to scale the size of an Artboard precisely.

Draw, edit, and re-edit shapes easily
All shapes can be controlled by the points around them using the selection tool or you can edit them more precisely by going to Shape in the Control Panel. From this control panel board you can scale the object, rotate the object, round the edges, etc.

Use Brushes
If you go to the brushes panel and click in the top right corner you can open the brushes library. There are a lot more options in the brushes library.

Apply colors
"D" key returns you to the default white fill with black outline. There are so many different ways to adjust color. If you double click on the color menu on the left panel it will bring up the color picker.

Create text
If adding text over an object do not click the object...hide or lock it.

Transform artwork
If you go to View you can hide the bounding box on an object. The free transform also allows you to distort the perspective of an object.

Understanding the Control panel
The control panel changes so that you can adjust whatever object you currently have selected. It goes from the most important things you can adjust to the left to the lesser important to the right.

View artwork
If the piece of art that you've created is bigger than a standard size paper that your would print you can break the image up into tiles. To create tiles go to View --> Show print tiling.

Organize content with layers
The layers work the same way in Illustrator as they do in Photoshop. They help you stay organized.

Kevin Tavin Lecture

1.) 3 most interesting facts and why?

• Visual Culture is not just what we see, but HOW we see it, how the source effects it and us, and WHOM we see it with. Not just who is physically present, but whom we are mentally present with. I never really thought about this before and it adds a new level of discussion as to how we absorb an image differently when seeing it with different people. 
• Tavin talks about an instant where Guanica (an antiwar piece) is covered so that a speech could be given to convince the US that war was the right answer (The art work would be hanging behind the speaker if not covered). This sort of ties back to our discussion a week or two ago about editing photographs. Was removing this painting from the background ethical? I had never heard this story before so it stood out to me. The quote "if we do not learn from history, we are destine to repeat it" came to mind as I heard him talk about this.
• Near the end of the lecture Tavin talks about how schools have become a less important source for a childs education. He mentions the Box Tops program where kids can cut "Box Tops" off of cereal boxes and soup cans to help raise moneys for their school because they are so greatly lacking funds otherwise. This isn't exactly a fact, and we all know that there are a lot of issues with the current state of the education system in America, but it made me stop and think when he talked about this. He mentions that his step children (I'm assuming they are not American) find Box Tops strange... And I would image that the concept is strange to a person who lives in a place that puts more emphasis on public education. This part of the lecture was important to me because it made me reflection on how I can help to change this. What is lacking in schools that they are being considered less of a primary source for education?

2.)The Role of an art educator in regards to visual culture... I feel that art educators are weighted with the job of exposing students to visual culture. Not just one viewpoint, but all different viewpoints. It is important that we make students well rounded by representing different cultures, peoples, and thoughts. Tavin discusses letting students come to their own conclusions. You can hope they eventually make it to the same conclusion you have when viewing a piece of art, but you should let them get there on their own. Not to "predetermine" the reaction to something. This is important to remember when standing in front of a classroom.

3.)I think one of the most important things I took away from this lecture was to teach a non-biased, and well rounded class. I also like the idea of discussing social issues and how visual culture does or does not feed into them. He uses the example of Disney and I think it would be interesting to not only hear a kids perspective of this, but to make them aware of it in hopes to not let them fall prey to it.

Adobe InDesign Videos and Articles

1. "InDesign is the industry standard for publishing projects." It seems like it's the ultimate resource for formatting documents and other forms of publishing for a business or group. In my circumstance, not being very familiar was Adobe, the most important thing I gather from this video is that it looks similar to Microsoft Publisher. I have to try to not be intimidated by these programs and just keep practicing.

2. When setting up the format for a document the "Facing Pages" option makes for a book like layout. Also Command+N opens a new page.

3. All images and text exist within a frame in InDesign. In order to place a new piece of information onto the document, be sure to un-click from whatever frame you are currently working in.

4. InDesign makes working with text pretty simple; It seems like there are a lot of shortcuts to adjust formatting in a document. Something that I think will be helpful is dragging the eyedropper over a word which will copy the formatting of that word and then changing the formatting of another section to match the eye-drop.

5&6. This article contains a lot of information that really does not mean anything to me because I do not have Adobe on the computer that I am working on currently and cannot follow along in the program as I read. I'm going to save this article for future reference though because I'm sure all those words mean something and they'll come in handy eventually... It seems like a character style refers to font while paragraph styles refers to both font and format. The two are in separate panels so they can be controlled separately. The section about importing a word document explains how to keep the styles or change them to something in InDesign. That section will probably come in handy when merging files together.
(Working with Character Styles: https://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/how-to/indesign-formatting-text-character-styles.html?set=indesign--fundamentals--work-type)

Digital Imagery Week 2

1. How do digital images play a role in your day to day life?
In today's world, digital images are everywhere. They're on billboards, our phones, and all our other smart devices. For me as an artist, they are even more prevalent as I take this class about media arts.

2. How do digital images play a role in your personal life?
 Whether or not I want them to, digital images play into my personal life all of the time. Social media is everywhere and it effects how we perceive our friends, our families and ourselves. Perfectly posed and edited photos set a standard for what we except in our personal lives.

3. How do digital images play a role in the way you experience your world?
I feel like all three of these questions have very similar answers... Similarly to how digit images in social media effect our personal lives, it effects the way we experience the world. A good example of this is the person at a concert who watches the entire show through the screen of their phone. That persons experience of that event is very different from the person who actually enjoyed the moment. All for the sake of capturing photos and videos to share on social media.

4. Thoughts on ethics and aesthetics as it relates to digital imagery manipulation?
This is a huge problem for me. Nature is beautiful all on its own, it does not need to be touched up or edited. All we are doing by making these edits is changing what we perceive as beautiful and making that standard unattainable. It really bothers me that they touch up animals. The one article talks about sheep that had to be edited to look whiter. As a girl that grew up around farms, I can tell you that sheep are not white. Why would we even expect them to be white; They live in barns.

5. What are your thoughts on these manipulated photos?
Some of the photos don't bother me too much, for example the photo at Kent State. Removing the fence pole from above the woman's head does not really change the focus of the photo, it just makes it look nicer. However, most of the other photos that are important historical photos should not be edited. We should not be able to sensor out people from history, if we do not learn from it the first time, we are destine to make the same mistakes.

6. Which of the examples is the most impactful?
The picture of Ulysses Grant during the civil war sticks in my mind because it is actually three separate photos. I think it's even more so disturbing that this photo from the civil war in 1864 was edited. At least in today's world we expect images to be manipulated... the general public in 1864 probably did not even know it was possible to alter a photo. That fact alone somehow makes the manipulation worse.

Photoshop Adobe TV Videos

(Part 1)
One of the most important things for me in the "Photoshop Work-Space" video is the ability to change the view of multiple documents with the Arrange menu. This seems like it will come in handy when trying to organize and multitask.

The "Working with Layers" video was pretty enlightening for me. I think it's helpful to know that I can create a new layer with the "New Layer" button. By using this button I can separate each step into a new layer. This video shows a lot of different ways one can play with the layers and I think it would be interesting to just sit and play with the layers of an image after watching this video.

The "Selections 101" video shows that you can un-select by using Command D, but it also talks about the "Re-select" option in the Selection menu. This is helpful to know about. I think that feature is the most important thing I learned from this video.

"Smart Filters" is interesting because it shows how you can filter an image, similar to how you would on a Social Media site like Instagram, but it shows how Photoshop allows you to filter the image in a more complex fashion. For example it shows how you can adjust a filter even further by using the "blending options" under the filter icon in the right side panel. The only thing I don't understand about this video is the "Smart Background" stuff they were referring to...

(Part 2)
sharpen-a-photo
This training video will help with all future projects, not just the next one. Just like they say in the video, all photos can stand to be sharped. What I might consider for our next project is over sharpening to create a dramatic effect. I selected this video because I know that sharpening is important when editing a photo, but I don't really know a whole lot about it.

improve-tones-levels
This is another video that contains good general knowledge. This video shows how to adjust the contrast levels and brightness. I know that for my selfie project, my photos are pretty dark so I will want to be able to adjust their brightness. Knowing this is what made me select this video.

color-management-basics
Wow! Who knew changing the color of something, such as a flower, is so simple! This will be a fun tool to play with on the project; maybe I could change the color of my glasses. With each video that I watch I feel a little more confident to play with all the different tools. There seems to be an endless amount of features in Photoshop. I did not quite realize what this video was about when I selected it. I thought it was about adjusting or enhancing the current colors. I was pleasantly surprised to see that one change the color of an object entirely.

After watching a few videos, I have decided that is is a great resource for someone like me who is new to Photoshop. I am saving a link to this page to refer back to during projects.