Homework #10

For this week's assignment, I practiced making the circuit by recreating the circuit on another piece of fabric. It lighted up for a few seconds, and then it went off because the battery died. It's on an old eye glass wiping cloth, and I imagined it being a sweatband that lighted up from time to time.

The instructable above is from www.inventabling.com, and my instructable/ practice piece is the first image. While I very much enjoyed working and experimenting with the circuits, I am not sure if I would use them for myself or for my students in the near future. I am certainly interested in working with them, but I need more practice and motivation. Circuit sewing requires speed, accuracy, agility, and utmost intelligence. It almost seemed like drawing. 

My e-textiles workshop was eye-opening. Learning about Makey Makey was amazing, and I was inspired to do something with it. I think I could incorporate this concept into my own practice as an artist in the future, and also use them in my classroom in the future. I found this interesting because fruits and other objects gain power to become special through technology. Technology allows non-human objects opportunities to become personified. Technology gives souls to these objects. Meanings are layered, and new things are made!

Japanese artist Yuri Suzuki makes very interesting works using circuits and physical computing. He is more like a designer/engineer. In his website, yurisuzuki.com, he writes that he is a sound artist, designer and electronic musician who produces work that explores the realms of sound through exquisitely designed pieces. Suzuki was born in Tokyo in 1980, and earned a master's degree in design at the Royal College of Art in London. He has worked with a variety of musicians and companies, and his work raises questions of the relation between sound and people and how music and sound affect people's mind. Suzuki's sound art pieces and installations have been shown in exhibitions all around the world. The following are more examples of his work:

Making in an art classroom offers different contexts in "making" art. Art is fluid. It evolves with technology, and sometimes technology follows art because they are both from our imaginations. One reaches faster to the masses, and the other remains observant before a few start to recognize the other half. Painting won't die, but it will evolve. Drawing with traditional materials will stay because it is within our reach. Seeing colors and touching colors are possible with technology. 

To bring in new media to art classroom means that the times are changing. Making needs to happen in art classrooms. It is happening everywhere already, but it cannot be forced. It will happen naturally over time because time doesn't stop. So, my three points are that making itself is art, time sometimes forces disruption and evolution, and art is about adapting to the times of our current livelihood. I think I need to practice more with new media to apply them in my classroom. Things like Makey Makey I could use, but I feel that I need more time play with them myself to come up with something fun.