Multimedia critique

This has been a very eventful year for me starting last summer with the production of a multimedia show for the Fringe Festival with poet, Michael Heller, to creating animations of paintings by Elizabeth Osborne for Jeanne Ruddy Dance to the production of Mural in Motion, a large scale projection with music. In Philadelphia, we are lucky to still have our music, art and dance critics and a growing number of arts bloggers, but who should you call when your performance combines these disciplines? How many critics feel qualified to assess more than one art form? Many times a critic will be favorable (let’s face it-that’s a good thing) but fail to mention one key component like costume design in dance or music in a video performance. Should multimedia critiques break down the process so readers understand the merging of the arts or simply capture the effect of the moment?

I am not complaining but do feel that I am one of a handful of composers who are also video artists. I think our numbers will grow as composers are introduced to video editing earlier in their lives. This is not a new art form but rather an art form that is growing. I think collaborations are also on the rise. Who will assess this progress? Do we need two or three specialists to assess one performance?

Mining old books

My sister Esther is a writer, bookseller and has a deep love of books for all their possibilities.  We were discussing how old books are being mined for their illustrations since the digital representation of illustrations are shortchanged in the publishing of new books. She also told me that many people are taking old covers of books and creating journals since these old covers never fall apart.  Most interesting was her story about how a friend of hers takes old books and creates her journal by crossing out words she doesn’t want to use.  She tells me that she often sees this person in the cafe hunched over a bunch of old books with a highlighter pen.  What a fantastic idea!  I was thinking that if I were to do this with old scores, I would be limited by the composer’s conventions.  I could create something out of Bach but Beethoven…?  This idea has my mind racing.

Edward Tufte in NY

The last time I was in the same room with Edward Tufte was in a day long seminar with about 1,000 other people after the publishing of one of his books on graphics and the communication of data.  It took me about 15 minutes to get over being awestruck after entering his sculpture gallery in the Chelsea district and being asked if I would like to join a tour with the artist himself.  He was already speaking, standing beside a gigantic sculpture of a fish (Magritte’s Smile) and was describing how the sculpture changes given the weather and time of day.  This was a reoccurring theme and he also mentioned that there was a “foreverness” to sculpture as opposed to sitting in front of a computer.  I thought of Paul Lansky returning to acoustic instruments after building a career in computer music.  I found that there were a few sculptures that I could contemplate for a long period of time including “Towers” and “Zerlina’s Smile” which feature clean lines and a sense of artistic purpose.  I especially enjoyed the vertical lines he created in his 9/11 memorial “Towers” because the lines together provide a sense of the towers and the finish really does play off the elements and can take on wonderful colors and shadings.

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/sculpture

Towers by Edward Tufte

He has a number of whimsical pieces that are fun (esp. the “Rocket Science” series) although I am not a dog person, so the dog pieces were lost on me.

It was a pleasant surprise to be able to ask questions of someone who has been an inspiration to my work, and it was a rare opportunity to hear him talk about his own artistic process.  It took me some time to realize that he is in the process of reinventing himself to the public.  While he has done sculpture for some time, he is now living on the other side of his brain and it was a pleasure getting to know his process.

Beyond tools, taking Music Education Global

I was going to write a post that shared technology tools that William Bauer’s overviewed in his session at ISTE called, “Integrating Technology across Music Curriculum (I will put bullet points below),” however during the session, I found myself thinking about the Keynote address by Jean-François Rischard in which he emphasized the importance of teaching students to be active global citizens and how teachers can encourage student action to solve the world’s problems.  Mr. Rischard’s message was lost on me that evening because of a very tired presentation which included the worst PowerPoint slides I have seen in 10 years.  However, it was the next day and upon reflection, I began thinking about how a music teacher might encourage active global citizenship….so I asked Mr. Bauer.  His suggestion was to include lessons about music from other cultures in my curriculum.  I told him of teaching about the importance of the Gulf Coast culture in the creation of many important American musics in my Music of Many Cultures class.  But that was not the point.  While this unit was cathartic to me during Hurricaine Katrina, it did not DO anything.  My question was what can I have students DO to be active global citizens after spending two weeks studying about the culture and musics of the Gulf Coast.  My personal apologies to Mr. Bauer for this “left field” question-he was very gracious.   I’ve taught about cultures through music and about how music can help bring about social change but I think my teaching could be more effective if were connected to solving world problems.  Obviously, this couldn’t happen with every unit but there may be a theme I could weave throughout the class.

I was happy to talk to Marilyn Bernard after the session.  She is a New Orleans native and told me that she organized a fund raiser called “Measure for Measure” after Katrina and raised money for every measure played.  She also suggested I go on the “Taking it Global” website at http://www.tigweb.org/ for ideas and there is a wealth of ideas there including specific projects students can join.

As you can probably tell, I will be thinking of this for a while and will post my progress.

_________________________________

Here are some new tools Mr. Bauer presented:

A new web 2.0 notation program with lots of possibilities: http://www.noteflight.com/login

A music tuner:http://www.mymusictuner.com/

An excellent site for string pedagogy with lots of instruction videos: http://www.uvm.edu/~mhopkins/string/

Free notated music-choralwiki:http://www2.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Pagegutenberg:the sheet music project: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:The_Sheet_Music_Project                      Blank sheet music, http://www.bandmusicpdf.org/

Lots of ideas of what to use with smart boards:http://mustech.pbworks.com/

Rock and roll hall of fame – lessons connected to history

Library of congress: music and the brain podcasts

musictheory.net

Rethinking Arts Education at ISTE

For an outline of the session that I presented with Karen Kolkka at ISTE 2010, see Jamie’s Blog at:

http://artsinpa.blogspot.com/2010/06/sessions-from-iste2010.html

The Differentiator at ISTE

Challenging the Gifted Student using Google Apps and Web 2.0

Chris Atkinson

This was a resource sharing session and Chris went through how he uses a lot of cool tools.  List and his comments can be found here:

http://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1GnisZI3Dj-VZR6_jD1bgr3E4Uz4EM_0KCdpcb-wXIcY

(Note: please don’t use Glogster-it is an a poster making tool that is an assault to a student’s sense of good design)

My favorite new tool is “The Differentiator” which is a web 2.0 tool that incorporates Bloom’s Taxonomy to create lessons.  I tried it out with a music lesson in mind and it did not work since the content listed was limited, but I do think it will work for other disciplines.

Try it out here:

http://www.byrdseed.com/the-differentiator

Supporting Innovation in Education

At a poster session at ISTE 2010, I was introduced to the Goldie Anna awards given out by the New York City Department of Education.  These awards are designed to identify innovative practices in the classroom that are then shared with a partner school.  The awards are between $10,000 and $30,000 and the program is supported by 4 major companies.

Look at the website below for information but also look through the award winners for great ideas.

http://www.nycempowerment.org./goldieanna