In an attempt to see what some of the art world is saying about privacy and technology these days I ran across artist Zach Blas who is creating masks that I found to be very intriguing. Zach is taking pictures of people who share some sort of demographic such as race or sexuality. He then aggregates their physical features using 3-Dimensional software to create a mask that is then unrecognizable to facial recognition software. He began doing this because he was concerned that facial recognition technologies have programmed certain physical characteristics as a base or norm for identifying very diverse groups of people.

The following video explains further how facial recognition technology heavily relies on norms of race, age, class, and sex. This inherently will cause the technology to discriminate against minorities which is what inspired Zach to create his “Facial Weaponization Suite” series.

What I find interesting about Zach’s work is the way that it comments on how masks are viewed in our current society. Many countries around the world have laws making it illegal to wear masks during a protest. In New York it’s illegal for 2 or more people to be wearing a mask in a public place together. In Canada new laws can give people a sentence of up to ten years for wearing mask where a riot is taking place. Some of the fear around masks is legitimate and understandable but the government might be contributing to it for there own agenda of creating facial recognition databases. What is interesting about Zach’s masks is that they are simply worn by people who would rather not be racially profiled. Unlike the scary undertones that some local government laws might project, this time the good guys wear masks .

Facial Weaponization Communiqué: Fag Face from Zach Blas.

I for one think this is a nice change of pace for the modern mask. After all masks have been found in different cultures and societies for centuries. Ancient Greece used masks to depict theatrical tragedies. Countries in Asia and South America placed gold masks on royalty for burial. In other parts of Africa and Asian masks have been used in rituals related to hunting, fertility or religion. Masks are continually utilized today for purposes of festivities as well as protection from cold winds. All of these examples are positive examples of masks being used throughout history, I find it refreshing to see an artist creating masks that draw attention to the fear that surrounds masks all the while questioning the validity of technologies that governments use to “keep us safe”.

When I look back on my Coetail experiences I think there are several ways in which I have engaged in on-line communities and used them to help my professional growth. From the very beginning in course one I was introduced to readers and immediately got sucked into Digg.  There are so many different blogs out in the art world and art education world that I have been plugged into for the last two years.  As a result I am constantly discovering new artists that I am then in turn sharing with my students and colleagues. One Artist I recently discovered through my Digg reader on Colossal is Scott Blake. This was a great little video I showed my animation students when I was introducing the simple idea of flip books and stop motion.

In an attempt to take my online professional community one step further I set up a twitter account. I was hoping to begin to develop a community on twitter that would keep me informed and discovering new ideas. Unfortunately that hasn’t happened for me just yet.  I’m not giving up but it has yet to become a regular check in for me. One on-line community that has suddenly taken off for me though is pinterest.  It was all a little unexpected but as an art teacher it total make sense.

I’ve been viewing other peoples boards for a while now because they are constantly popping up when I am doing searches that might relate to a material or concepts that I’m preparing to teach in my room. Earlier this year I finally decided that it was time for me to start making my own boards on pinterest. The plan was to simply have a holding space for things that influence me or ideas that I might want to revisit for a future lesson.

What surprised me shortly after I set up my account was how many people I knew were suddenly following me.  Many of these people are artists and art educators that I have know or come into contact with professionally or academically at some point.  I have loved seeing what types of things some of my previous colleagues have been pinning.  Some of them are even creating boards for specific classes where students can also share images on subjects that inspire them.  I love this idea and would like to explore it in some of my future classes.

The most exciting discovery for me though with my new interest in pinterest has been the ability to share images with my current colleagues.  The other art teachers that I currently work with are also on pinterest and we are all constantly pining images on each others boards that are related to conversations and units that we are currently engrossed in.  My colleague Michael and I teach different sections of the same class.  We have been doing some redesigning of our classes this semester and pinterest has become a great communication tool for us to share images. We often share ideas we feel we could use in class or use to help guide the design of our units. I have to say that this use of pinterest has been an unexpected and very pleasant surprise.

I do hope to get back to my abandoned twitter account at some point but for now I think I would like to work on nurturing this new found community in pinterest and explore its possibilities.

As I was doing a little research into problem based learning, also know as PBL, I quickly found myself watching videos and reading articles about project based learning, also PBL.  Soon enough I lost track of whether or not I was trying to learn about ProblemBL or ProjectBL.  I began to wonder whether or not this was a common issue and what really was the difference between the two.  I actually found this very helpful chart from Edutopia that helps to spell it all out for me.

As you can see there are a lot of similarities between the two teaching methods. Both strategies seem to engage students in independent and collaborative problem solving skills. They actually seem to be more alike than different, I think the changes come in the actual problem that is being looked at.  As an art teacher I see a lot more potential for the arts being a part of project based learning rather than problem based learning.  With project based learning there is a final product that is often constructed some how.  This may not always be the case with problem based learning because it is more often than not linked to a single subject matter.  I could see problem based learning being easily applicable to a design class, where real design problems are presented but with project based learning we wouldn’t be limited to only design problems, we would have a larger array of artistic avenues to present our findings because it would often be interdisciplinary.

Project based learning actually reminds me of STEAM (better know as STEM). STEM is project based learning that incorporates Science, Technology, Engineering and Math into one problem. STEAM integrates the arts into that same problem. Often times STEAM can lend itself to functional design problems but it is not limited to that.  I once taught at a school where we helped the kids to present their STEM findings through artistic expressions.  Our presentations involved art installations, dance, song, light shows and instrumental performances.  Often times several artistic elements were combined to help present students findings.  It was exciting to see these types of problems be presented in such artistic and expressive ways.

 STEAM isn’t the only application of project based learning that is possible for art teachers though. Art is a project driven subject, the challenge for the teacher is to find the real world problems to apply. I think this could be the challenge for many teachers.  Finding the problems.  We need to be finding the problems with the students.  That is where these projects need to start and I’m not so sure that problem based learning is helping the kids to come up with the problem.  I think it is helping in many other areas but it is also important the the problem presented art of interest to the student and that they are real problems. I suppose that STEAM always helping kids come up with the problems either.  Usually the problem is presented and the students try to solve it.

How can we help the students to find the problems? This is where I look at art from another lens.  That is one of the things I love about the arts is how versatile it is.  From one artistic lens we can use art to help us solve problems like in the cases of functional design and STEM.  With another artistic lens we can use art to help point out the problems.  Artist are asking hard questions all the time and expressing their findings and wonderings about the world. Maybe we need to start looking to artists to help find the problems more often.  Contemporary artist are showing us the problems in their own way.  We need to be observing first in order to start any problem solving. Observation then enquiry, as an artist that is one thing I know for certain.

Here is a contemporary piece done by the Spanish Art collective Luzinterruptus exactly what I’m talking about.  Observing, wondering and showing us problems our world.  This could be a good place to insert a few questions.