Sunday, June 14, 2009
Fast-forward: Second-last event at MLKS tomorrow!
Tomorrow (Monday, June 14th) is the second-last major ArtForce! event at the MLK School, the annual Elective Fair. There, students will be using their languages publicly for the first time!
Give Me a Sign
The next unit in the curriculum, which was to be the meat of the project as it concerned the Public Art Lab, was the Street Sign unit, officially "Symolic and Pictographic Languages" on my syllabus.
We began by looking at languages that use pictures or symbols for entire words (more accurately described as ideogrammic) such as Chinese and Egyptian. We also briefly looked at some American Sign Language.
The Chinese language was originally a series of pictograms, with origins tracing back before Chinese Bronze Age around 1700 BC (side note - I studied the Chinese Bronze Age back in my first semester at SMFA with Dr. Diane O'Donoghue). The language began as simple illustrations, before the concept of language existed in the ancient Chinese, painted or inscribed onto simple earthenware items such as bowls and jugs. By the time the Bronze Age rolled around these illustrations had become a language of themselves - drawings of ideas. The earliest known examples of these writings as a language was found on "oracle bones" which date to the Shāng dynasty - the Bronze Age. Oracle bones were typically turtle undershells or ox shoulders (although other types of bone had been in use for a while) heated over a fire until cracks appeared; they were then inscribed. Based on knowledge of the language aquired by reading the same inscriptions on bronze pieces from the era, it has been determined that many of these oracle bones were more or less stenographic notes following the activities of the Shāng rulers. What is known today as "traditional" Chinese is a natural evolution of these inscriptions - look anywhere on the internet and you'll see how various characters went from literal drawings to the relative abstractions they are today. "Simplified" Chinese was introduced in the 1950s and consciously simplifies a number of characters. Traditional Chinese is still in use, typically in Cantonese-speaking states, while Simplified Chinese is used in the mainland as well as in any Mandarin-speaking institution. Modern Chinese is no longer pictographic, although the concepts are still there.
On a side note, I studied in Beijing about four years ago. When I introduced myself to the family I was staying with I wrote my Chinese name out in traditional characters - the family recognized it as such and was even able to read it, and taught me the simplified version.
We looked at the connections between English and Egyptian hieroglyphs with the Rosetta Stone, which is written in three languages: Egyptian hieroglyph, Egyptian Demotic, and Greek. The Rosetta Stone itself is, anticlimactically, a proclamation of tax exemption to temple priests. It was found that, in the context of the Rosetta Stone, hieroglphs are phonetic characters, although further research shows that each "letter" has its own inherent meaning (not unlike in flag Semaphore).
Following that, we turned to road signs. We looked at real road signs in the US, as well as some wackier versions from overseas. We made observations about the various qualities of the sign - i.e., simplified language (if any at all), graphic depictions, etc. Then we set to work designing signs of our own.
After two days of sketches, I brought out some Universal Man templates (convertible to the Universal Woman) that I made in Illustrator and showed my students how to cut him out and repose him (when applicable - surprisingly, about a quarter of the students didn't use any representation of a person in their designs). "Finals" were created on white or yellow squares, with designs rendered entirely in black, whether through the templates, cut black construction paper, or Sharpie.
Probably one of the most valuable lessons an art teacher can learn is when to tell a bunch of middle schoolers to make "anything." By the end of the day I got some, ah, interesting designs, especially out of a group that was comprised entirely of boys - a lot of video game-inspired violence came out of them (although I have to say they really put their hearts into the project). There were some talkings-to, but I didn't ask anyone to remake their sign. The finals were mounted on my wall space at the Public Art Lab for display alongside a big steel sign, custom cut by yours truly to the dimensions of a real square road sign, that had magnetic pieces for the public to put together and make their own.
This was my major dilemma of the project - as a community artist, it is not in my interest to censor what my community generates - whatever the content, it is a reflection of an issue or idea within a community that may otherwise not have an outlet. On the other hand, I am a middle school teacher and there are certain expectations of the work produced in class, namely that nothing happens that will reflect negatively upon the school. The display at the Public Art Lab came with a disclaimer, and one will exist with the next installation of the works.
I spent a week scanning each sign into a computer and cleaning them up in Photoshop and Illustrator. I am currently in the process of finding a printer and locating a distributor for sign blanks. The signs will be finished sometime this summer, at which point I will consult with the Cambridge Arts Council to see when and where I can install them.
The sign project will remain a highlight of Project Ellipsis, as it was the project that received the most attention from probable venues. I recently had the opportunity to apply for a First Night Boston 2010 performance/installation space, and if I get it (which I will find out at the end of July), I will be installing all of the street signs on Boston Common on New Year's Eve. If that doesn't happen, I'd still like to have a big exhibition at some point, maybe as part of my Senior Project. We'll see.
We began by looking at languages that use pictures or symbols for entire words (more accurately described as ideogrammic) such as Chinese and Egyptian. We also briefly looked at some American Sign Language.
The Chinese language was originally a series of pictograms, with origins tracing back before Chinese Bronze Age around 1700 BC (side note - I studied the Chinese Bronze Age back in my first semester at SMFA with Dr. Diane O'Donoghue). The language began as simple illustrations, before the concept of language existed in the ancient Chinese, painted or inscribed onto simple earthenware items such as bowls and jugs. By the time the Bronze Age rolled around these illustrations had become a language of themselves - drawings of ideas. The earliest known examples of these writings as a language was found on "oracle bones" which date to the Shāng dynasty - the Bronze Age. Oracle bones were typically turtle undershells or ox shoulders (although other types of bone had been in use for a while) heated over a fire until cracks appeared; they were then inscribed. Based on knowledge of the language aquired by reading the same inscriptions on bronze pieces from the era, it has been determined that many of these oracle bones were more or less stenographic notes following the activities of the Shāng rulers. What is known today as "traditional" Chinese is a natural evolution of these inscriptions - look anywhere on the internet and you'll see how various characters went from literal drawings to the relative abstractions they are today. "Simplified" Chinese was introduced in the 1950s and consciously simplifies a number of characters. Traditional Chinese is still in use, typically in Cantonese-speaking states, while Simplified Chinese is used in the mainland as well as in any Mandarin-speaking institution. Modern Chinese is no longer pictographic, although the concepts are still there.
On a side note, I studied in Beijing about four years ago. When I introduced myself to the family I was staying with I wrote my Chinese name out in traditional characters - the family recognized it as such and was even able to read it, and taught me the simplified version.
We looked at the connections between English and Egyptian hieroglyphs with the Rosetta Stone, which is written in three languages: Egyptian hieroglyph, Egyptian Demotic, and Greek. The Rosetta Stone itself is, anticlimactically, a proclamation of tax exemption to temple priests. It was found that, in the context of the Rosetta Stone, hieroglphs are phonetic characters, although further research shows that each "letter" has its own inherent meaning (not unlike in flag Semaphore).
Following that, we turned to road signs. We looked at real road signs in the US, as well as some wackier versions from overseas. We made observations about the various qualities of the sign - i.e., simplified language (if any at all), graphic depictions, etc. Then we set to work designing signs of our own.
After two days of sketches, I brought out some Universal Man templates (convertible to the Universal Woman) that I made in Illustrator and showed my students how to cut him out and repose him (when applicable - surprisingly, about a quarter of the students didn't use any representation of a person in their designs). "Finals" were created on white or yellow squares, with designs rendered entirely in black, whether through the templates, cut black construction paper, or Sharpie.
Probably one of the most valuable lessons an art teacher can learn is when to tell a bunch of middle schoolers to make "anything." By the end of the day I got some, ah, interesting designs, especially out of a group that was comprised entirely of boys - a lot of video game-inspired violence came out of them (although I have to say they really put their hearts into the project). There were some talkings-to, but I didn't ask anyone to remake their sign. The finals were mounted on my wall space at the Public Art Lab for display alongside a big steel sign, custom cut by yours truly to the dimensions of a real square road sign, that had magnetic pieces for the public to put together and make their own.
This was my major dilemma of the project - as a community artist, it is not in my interest to censor what my community generates - whatever the content, it is a reflection of an issue or idea within a community that may otherwise not have an outlet. On the other hand, I am a middle school teacher and there are certain expectations of the work produced in class, namely that nothing happens that will reflect negatively upon the school. The display at the Public Art Lab came with a disclaimer, and one will exist with the next installation of the works.
I spent a week scanning each sign into a computer and cleaning them up in Photoshop and Illustrator. I am currently in the process of finding a printer and locating a distributor for sign blanks. The signs will be finished sometime this summer, at which point I will consult with the Cambridge Arts Council to see when and where I can install them.
The sign project will remain a highlight of Project Ellipsis, as it was the project that received the most attention from probable venues. I recently had the opportunity to apply for a First Night Boston 2010 performance/installation space, and if I get it (which I will find out at the end of July), I will be installing all of the street signs on Boston Common on New Year's Eve. If that doesn't happen, I'd still like to have a big exhibition at some point, maybe as part of my Senior Project. We'll see.
Monday, May 25, 2009
On the Origins of Language
To develop a unique language, it's helpful to know what a language actually is. That's where I started, in the science classroom on the third floor of the King School.
After quickly taking down attendance, and introducing myself, the class, and Project Ellipsis, I gave the first instruction of my professional teaching career: talk like a caveman for five minutes. It turns out that five minutes really is a long time for a nonsense task, and students started getting bored, so I cut them off two minutes in to ask why I had them do it. No one had any idea, so thus began a brief discussion on the origins of language. We eventually got around to my main point, and the lesson of the day: phonemes.
In 2007, I had the privilege of being among the last students of Larry Johnson while he was at SMFA, taking a class called Word Games upon which many of my lessons for this unit were based. One of the first (if not the first) things Larry taught us about was the existence of phonemes, the smallest units of language. For those of you not in the know, a phoneme is a concept representing the smallest, most basic sound that can be made by the human vocal system. We concentrated on phonemes found in the English language, which you can find here. The rest of the day was spent deconstructing words into phonemes, and seeing if we could recombine the phonemes to make new words. This exercise was based off one I did with Larry - I deconstructed the word "exit" and used the phonemes to create common words (sit, zit, exist, ticks) and put them into a text-sound poem.
The end of class was spent attempting to read a text-sound poem by Larry called Voyage and discussing what exactly was going on. Homework was to come up with thirty random words, which would be assembled into a text-sound art poem the next day. This did not work so well, so I won't go into it.
Week Two of Tools for Communicating explored the development of the English language. While Larry had a class on this as well, I really have to give credit to my high school English teacher Michael Frost (no relation to Robert) for turning me on to Old English, and indeed I pulled a few pages out of Mr. Frost's teaching methods.
After a travesty of a condensed history of the Vikingss, the Normans, and Old English (a.k.a. Anglo-Saxon, or Englisc), we turned to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (which I read for Mr. Frost four years ago), which came into the world in Middle English. I read to them, in my best Shakespearian accent, the first ten lines of the Tales (transcribed into Modern English characters), then projected them along with Modern English translations:
1 Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
(When April with its sweet-smelling showers)
2 The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
(Has pierced the drought of March to the root,)
3 And bathed every veyne in swich licour
(And bathed every vein [of the plants] in such liquid)
4 Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
(By which power the flower is created;)
5 Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
(When the West Wind also with its sweet breath,)
6 Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
(In every wood and field has breathed life into)
7 The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
(The tender new leaves, and the young sun)
8 Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
(Has run half its course in Aries,)
9 And smale foweles maken melodye,
(And small fowls make melody,)
10 That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(Those that sleep all the night with open eyes)
Naturally, their minds were blown.
We then discussed the differences we saw between Middle and Modern English. I opened the next part of the lesson with a question: where does the word "ain't" come from?
Yes, it's a word.
This led us to the exercise of the day: thinking of a "future" English. As an example, I gave my impression of a near-future Bostonian English where 'R's literally didn't exist and every vowel became a pronounced short 'A' sound, which actually ended up sounding like a monotone Southern accent (think of the worst JFK impersonation you've ever heard). We then moved on to dialects.
The language studied at the King School is Mandarin Chinese, of which I happen to know a little from studying in Beijing for a few months. I know some Cantonese from growing up in a Cantonese-speaking family, as well as a few phrases in my maternal grandparents' Toyshanese dialect. Minds were again boggled as I presented the phrase "I eat dinner" in what sounded like three different languages. I asked students to guess how many dialects of English existed (I found there are two primary dialects - American and Queen's [British], with regional varieties falling under one of the two).
We got into these regional varieties as well, by discussing and impersonating accents. I myself speak naturally with a slight New England/Boston accent (it comes out more when I'm angry), which no one noticed until I began speaking with my best approximation of a "neutral" American accent ("TV English" as I like to call it).
By the time we finished our discussions, we were getting close to the bell, so I started giving out random scenarios off the top of my head ("If cats spoke English and took over the world, what will English sound like in a thousand years?") and had the class respond with random phrases.
In retrospect, I'm thinking that some of the text-sound art stuff was a little conceptually lofty for middle schoolers, although we didn't spend a lot of time head-scratching. Everyone had fun, though, which was encouraging for me as a first-time teacher.
After quickly taking down attendance, and introducing myself, the class, and Project Ellipsis, I gave the first instruction of my professional teaching career: talk like a caveman for five minutes. It turns out that five minutes really is a long time for a nonsense task, and students started getting bored, so I cut them off two minutes in to ask why I had them do it. No one had any idea, so thus began a brief discussion on the origins of language. We eventually got around to my main point, and the lesson of the day: phonemes.
In 2007, I had the privilege of being among the last students of Larry Johnson while he was at SMFA, taking a class called Word Games upon which many of my lessons for this unit were based. One of the first (if not the first) things Larry taught us about was the existence of phonemes, the smallest units of language. For those of you not in the know, a phoneme is a concept representing the smallest, most basic sound that can be made by the human vocal system. We concentrated on phonemes found in the English language, which you can find here. The rest of the day was spent deconstructing words into phonemes, and seeing if we could recombine the phonemes to make new words. This exercise was based off one I did with Larry - I deconstructed the word "exit" and used the phonemes to create common words (sit, zit, exist, ticks) and put them into a text-sound poem.
The end of class was spent attempting to read a text-sound poem by Larry called Voyage and discussing what exactly was going on. Homework was to come up with thirty random words, which would be assembled into a text-sound art poem the next day. This did not work so well, so I won't go into it.
Week Two of Tools for Communicating explored the development of the English language. While Larry had a class on this as well, I really have to give credit to my high school English teacher Michael Frost (no relation to Robert) for turning me on to Old English, and indeed I pulled a few pages out of Mr. Frost's teaching methods.
After a travesty of a condensed history of the Vikingss, the Normans, and Old English (a.k.a. Anglo-Saxon, or Englisc), we turned to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (which I read for Mr. Frost four years ago), which came into the world in Middle English. I read to them, in my best Shakespearian accent, the first ten lines of the Tales (transcribed into Modern English characters), then projected them along with Modern English translations:
1 Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
(When April with its sweet-smelling showers)
2 The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
(Has pierced the drought of March to the root,)
3 And bathed every veyne in swich licour
(And bathed every vein [of the plants] in such liquid)
4 Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
(By which power the flower is created;)
5 Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
(When the West Wind also with its sweet breath,)
6 Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
(In every wood and field has breathed life into)
7 The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
(The tender new leaves, and the young sun)
8 Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
(Has run half its course in Aries,)
9 And smale foweles maken melodye,
(And small fowls make melody,)
10 That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(Those that sleep all the night with open eyes)
Naturally, their minds were blown.
We then discussed the differences we saw between Middle and Modern English. I opened the next part of the lesson with a question: where does the word "ain't" come from?
Yes, it's a word.
This led us to the exercise of the day: thinking of a "future" English. As an example, I gave my impression of a near-future Bostonian English where 'R's literally didn't exist and every vowel became a pronounced short 'A' sound, which actually ended up sounding like a monotone Southern accent (think of the worst JFK impersonation you've ever heard). We then moved on to dialects.
The language studied at the King School is Mandarin Chinese, of which I happen to know a little from studying in Beijing for a few months. I know some Cantonese from growing up in a Cantonese-speaking family, as well as a few phrases in my maternal grandparents' Toyshanese dialect. Minds were again boggled as I presented the phrase "I eat dinner" in what sounded like three different languages. I asked students to guess how many dialects of English existed (I found there are two primary dialects - American and Queen's [British], with regional varieties falling under one of the two).
We got into these regional varieties as well, by discussing and impersonating accents. I myself speak naturally with a slight New England/Boston accent (it comes out more when I'm angry), which no one noticed until I began speaking with my best approximation of a "neutral" American accent ("TV English" as I like to call it).
By the time we finished our discussions, we were getting close to the bell, so I started giving out random scenarios off the top of my head ("If cats spoke English and took over the world, what will English sound like in a thousand years?") and had the class respond with random phrases.
In retrospect, I'm thinking that some of the text-sound art stuff was a little conceptually lofty for middle schoolers, although we didn't spend a lot of time head-scratching. Everyone had fun, though, which was encouraging for me as a first-time teacher.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Greetings and salutations!
Welcome to the Project Ellipsis blog, not to be confused with the Project Ellipsis Blog, which is someone else's personal blogger thing.
Project Ellipsis began as a project called "..." (pronounced "ellipsis"), which was part of a bigger public art project called the ArtForce! Cambridge Public Art Lab [http://www.artforcecambridge.org - I'm also the webmaster for this site!]. ArtForce! Cambridge was born out of the Site-Specific Installation class at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, taught by Mags Harries but mostly run by us. The Public Art Lab was our way of exploring and defining public art for ourselves, and included projects such as hula hoop dances to the fresh waters of Cambridge, MA, conversations with visitors to our space at the Cambridge Arts Council Gallery, guided hikes from Boston to Medford, MA, and more.
... was originally proposed as a series of workshops to be conducted with youth groups in Cambridge - these workshops would result in the creation of cajón drums that would be painted by the youth groups and installed on sidewalk corners at major intersections, where the public would be invited to sit down and drum across the street to each other. This idea lost steam and became an attempt to get citizens to signal across the Charles River to each other using flag semaphore and Morse codes. Eventually, the workshop idea came back.
In 2005, as a junior at Boston College High School, I got involved with a public art project at U/MASS Boston called "What's the Point?" facilitated by Wendy Baring-Gould with artists Gary Duehr and Cathy McLaurin [read more]. In the project, residents, professionals, and students living and working in the Columbia Point neighborhood engaged in a series of workshops to create a "point" about the area. These "points" were digitally printed onto aluminum sheets and installed in twelve "totem poles" around Columbia Point and remain standing today. Wendy had originally intended for the project to cycle every three years, but she moved on to other things.
In 2008, as a junior at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, I was reunited with Wendy at the Boston Center for the Arts on a visit to the Medicine Wheel installation (and, incidentally, I was part of a photo exhibition at Gary Duehr's Bromfield Gallery in Boston the previous summer) and was reinspired by What's the Point?
... became a series of workshops exploring forms of communication, such as the flag semaphore and Morse code I mentioned before, but also various sign languages, ideograms, body language, and more. The project would culminate in the creation of a complete language or languages unique to the city of Cambridge.
In December of 2009, fellow ArtForce! artist Lisa Silveria and I paid a visit to the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. School in Cambridge. Muna Bruce, then-electives department coordinator, had been wanting to work with SMFA students for a long time. She offered me the opportunity to run an elective class at the King School, which was a perfect venue to run my project (and incidentally, I am an art education major at the SMFA - I love teaching!). ... began on 23 February 2009, with a classroom of fifteen middle schoolers. The class I teach, called Tools for Communicating (ironically, due to miscommunication, it was officially written down as "Tools of Communication"), is still running until 19 June 2009, a month from now.
Project Ellipsis was retitled last May, mostly due to people not being able to pronounce "..." (and it looks funny on paper), but also due to the project's expansion. I have been offered the chance to run a similar project with the Friends of Alewife Reservation, who I came into contact via another ArtForce! Cambridge project, as well as a summer program in my hometown of Milton, MA. If I'm lucky, I'll be running it in the fall of 2009 as part of my Senior Projects thesis at SMFA, and the King School has offered to run Tools for Communicating again in the spring. If I'm really lucky, I'll get to display ephemera from the project at First Night Boston 2010.
This blog is my little place for reflection on the project, as well as your way of keeping track of what's going on.I'll tell you a little about myself in another post. (Hey, it's in the sidebar now!)
Thanks for reading!
Project Ellipsis began as a project called "..." (pronounced "ellipsis"), which was part of a bigger public art project called the ArtForce! Cambridge Public Art Lab [http://www.artforcecambridge.org - I'm also the webmaster for this site!]. ArtForce! Cambridge was born out of the Site-Specific Installation class at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, taught by Mags Harries but mostly run by us. The Public Art Lab was our way of exploring and defining public art for ourselves, and included projects such as hula hoop dances to the fresh waters of Cambridge, MA, conversations with visitors to our space at the Cambridge Arts Council Gallery, guided hikes from Boston to Medford, MA, and more.
... was originally proposed as a series of workshops to be conducted with youth groups in Cambridge - these workshops would result in the creation of cajón drums that would be painted by the youth groups and installed on sidewalk corners at major intersections, where the public would be invited to sit down and drum across the street to each other. This idea lost steam and became an attempt to get citizens to signal across the Charles River to each other using flag semaphore and Morse codes. Eventually, the workshop idea came back.
In 2005, as a junior at Boston College High School, I got involved with a public art project at U/MASS Boston called "What's the Point?" facilitated by Wendy Baring-Gould with artists Gary Duehr and Cathy McLaurin [read more]. In the project, residents, professionals, and students living and working in the Columbia Point neighborhood engaged in a series of workshops to create a "point" about the area. These "points" were digitally printed onto aluminum sheets and installed in twelve "totem poles" around Columbia Point and remain standing today. Wendy had originally intended for the project to cycle every three years, but she moved on to other things.
In 2008, as a junior at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, I was reunited with Wendy at the Boston Center for the Arts on a visit to the Medicine Wheel installation (and, incidentally, I was part of a photo exhibition at Gary Duehr's Bromfield Gallery in Boston the previous summer) and was reinspired by What's the Point?
... became a series of workshops exploring forms of communication, such as the flag semaphore and Morse code I mentioned before, but also various sign languages, ideograms, body language, and more. The project would culminate in the creation of a complete language or languages unique to the city of Cambridge.
In December of 2009, fellow ArtForce! artist Lisa Silveria and I paid a visit to the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. School in Cambridge. Muna Bruce, then-electives department coordinator, had been wanting to work with SMFA students for a long time. She offered me the opportunity to run an elective class at the King School, which was a perfect venue to run my project (and incidentally, I am an art education major at the SMFA - I love teaching!). ... began on 23 February 2009, with a classroom of fifteen middle schoolers. The class I teach, called Tools for Communicating (ironically, due to miscommunication, it was officially written down as "Tools of Communication"), is still running until 19 June 2009, a month from now.
Project Ellipsis was retitled last May, mostly due to people not being able to pronounce "..." (and it looks funny on paper), but also due to the project's expansion. I have been offered the chance to run a similar project with the Friends of Alewife Reservation, who I came into contact via another ArtForce! Cambridge project, as well as a summer program in my hometown of Milton, MA. If I'm lucky, I'll be running it in the fall of 2009 as part of my Senior Projects thesis at SMFA, and the King School has offered to run Tools for Communicating again in the spring. If I'm really lucky, I'll get to display ephemera from the project at First Night Boston 2010.
This blog is my little place for reflection on the project, as well as your way of keeping track of what's going on.
Thanks for reading!
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