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TRANSCRIPT
Virtuwall & Curatorial Learning David R. Eicke
i263 Technologies for Creativity & Learning
PROBLEM AREA:
As a discipline of study, Art History can give its students critical and interpretive tools to more
effectively think about about how historical and cultural context have influenced not only
artists and artworks, but other cultural artifacts as well. Ideally, students will learn how to
“read” a piece of art, and will take away a vocabulary for discussing art in a more meaningful
way. Most of this learning, currently, is traditionally done via readings, exposure to seminal
works, and lectures, all followed by writing assignments.
With my project, Virtuwall Galleries, I set out to create an online tool for art education that uses
a Constructionist approach, allowing students to become curators of their own virtual space
given access to a giant and very traversable database of real-world art. My hope is that this
system can get students to think about art in a deeper way, linking works not only to other
works but also to concepts and stories and issues in their world. I also hope it can accelerate
discovery of which subsection of art or art history students are personally interested in. In a
standard art history class, it may be three quarters of a semester before students come across
something that speaks to them.
EXISTING APPROACHES:
Traditional Art History Education:
As I mention above, traditional art history classes serve to educate students about how to think
about art contextually, how to recognize formal choices and styles, and how art movements
flowed into one another. I am not in any way attempting to replace this. My project is designed
to augment an art historical education and to engage students in building something that is
meaningful and personal and that they can share. The only artifacts emerging from a typical
student’s Art History class are critical essays, which aren’t particularly well suited for sharing.
On top of that, students who dislike writing will probably be minimally invested.
Pinterest:
“Content Curation” has been a buzzword online over the past several years, and Pinterest has
been the leading platform for virtual collection of (usually) artistic works. Users find content on
the Internet and post it to “Boards” which usually have specific themes that the user chooses.
Users’ boards are usually public, and other users are able to “follow” them if they so choose. This
easy sharing and facilitated organization of artistic works informed some of my design choices
with Virtuwall. The popularity of Pinterest indicated to me that many can enjoy the activity of
curation and organization as long as they are given the freedom to collect what they enjoy
collecting and share their collections with friends.
Artsy.net Curation Contest:
Artsy’s Art Genome Project, the source of my database for this project, held an “Emerging
Curator” contest in 2014. The conditions were that the collection be related to the works of
Robert Rauschenberg and that the works included must be in the Artsy database. The winning
entry included art from ten different artists in different mediums which coalesced around a
theme of peace. While this collection is far more sophisticated than what might result from an
assignment in high school or early on at the University level, it exercises many of the same
principles I’d like to have embedded in my project. In hosting this contest, Artsy engaged the
participants with Rauschenberg’s work. From this work, they extracted concepts and ideas, then
took those concepts and extended them in order to find related works from the rest of the art
world. Artsy also imposed constraints that participants had to deal with.
Exhibbit:
Exhibbit is a new website that would be a great model for our gallery interface. The site allows
users to populate galleries with art that they upload. You can then send the galleries you create
out for people to explore. The interface’s “exploration” mode (upon receiving a gallery) mimics
the way a person normally goes through a gallery following the wall in order to look at each
piece straight on. On the other side, the creation tool allows the users to design the space the
artwork is in, which is a feature I’d like to incorporate into Virtuwall. However, this alone lacks
the exploratory functionality at the heart of what I’m trying to accomplish.
DESIGN PRINCIPLES/RATIONALE:
Facilitate Critical Thinking and Meaning Making:
Where Pinterest is lacking as a tool for learning about curation is that the contents of “boards”
are grouped by shallow organizational concepts, usually formal (e.g. “wreaths”, “pottery”,
“origami”) or occasional (e.g. “Easter”, “autumn”) . Sometimes, users will even have a board
simply labeled “Favorites” or “Inspirations” whose organizing principle is simply degree of
admiration. I’d like the system to avoid simple classifications like this and encourage students
to look for deeper connections concerning meaning and context. Art History can be thought of
not as “learning about art” but as “a discipline of study that teaches close reading, historical
analysis, and critical thinking through the lens of art” (Tani), so it’s vital to the success that
these goals be helped along by my project.
Encourage Personal Investment:
The level of motivation students have is critical to their learning, and sometimes this
motivation comes from outside influences like parents or personal ambitions. But this is not
always the case. The source of motivation was something I strongly considered when working
on VirtuWall. I wanted the investment to come from within—from students’ wishes to make
something they are proud of and show it off. This idea of sharability as a motivating factor is
something I found notable in the DigiQuilt study. They note some research from Papert:
“Constructionism suggests that engagement, and thus learning, is particularly efficacious when
learners can design personally meaningful artifacts to share with an audience (Papert, 1991).”
(Lamberty 2)
Introduce Complexity and Constraints:
In an effort to simulate real-world curation efforts as closely as possible, I’d like to impose
certain constraints on users. Constraints can be great opportunities for critical thinking, as they
force students to make tough decisions and weigh different options and approaches. We saw
students wallow in this sort of complexity in Blikstein’s observations of the students making
the model rollercoaster. Natural limitations forced them into a solution that they may not have
considered otherwise (Blikstein). Complete freedom to create anything, while being possibly
and exciting prospect, is not reflective of the real world, and it would work against any attempts
at simulation. In this specific context, an endless gallery allows for more works, and more works
allows for less deep thinking about what belongs and what does not—which is likely to result in
less thematic or ideological cohesion.
Promote Expression & Storytelling:
While I agree that the “best learning experiences occur when individuals are encouraged to
explore their own thinking process and their intellectual and emotional relationship to
knowledge, as well as the personal history that affects the learning experience” (Bers 9-10), I
would like students using Virtuwall to think even beyond their “personal history” and into the
history of their communities or nations or families. Learning to curate involves a lot of thinking
about your own decisions. It also involves an element of storytelling, which is, I think, what
separates it from “optimization.” For this, I find it useful to think of Fantasy Football, which can
also be considered a curatorial process. When curating your team from a selection of NFL
players, you face constraints like maximum size of your team, the requirement of having a
player at every position, and the fact that your competitors have selected certain players for
their team. However, your selection of players is unlikely to tell a story or even have any sort of
cohesion other than having been optimized for points. I’d like the Virtuwall system to
encourage curation that reflects a personal emotional or intellectual engagement with the
members of the collection.
Professional Feel:
Tying into personal investment is an idea of making something that seems to be beyond the
scope of a “school project.” Reminding students that they’re students is a great way to
discourage hard work. We saw evidence of this in Paolo Blikstein’s paper when he noted that
“the fact that the products generated in the laser cutter and the 3D printer were aesthetically
pleasing had a strong impact in students’ self-esteem— instead of taking home asymmetric and
fragile cardboard prototypes, they were building functional 3D objects with a near-professional
finish—it wasn’t ‘school stuff,’ it was the ‘real thing.’” (Blikstein 7)
Situate Students within the Environment:
As was stressed in the “Situated Cognition” paper, “The idea that most school activity exists in a
culture of its own is central to understanding many of the difficulties of learning in school.”
(Brown) The authors go on to argue that “authentic activity” is important for students to
engage in “because it is the only way they gain access to the standpoint that enables
practitioners to act meaningfully and purposefully.” (Brown) While it is difficult to say what a
“practitioner” of art history would be, a curator—who engages with meaning, style, and context
of artworks—is pretty close. I’d like to get students as close to the professional curation process
as possible so they can learn the most.
DESIGN:
The concept for Virtuwall arose from Artsy.net’s Art Genome Project, which allowed for an
unprecedented way of exploring the art world. The way Artsy’s database is set up allows for
undirected and interest-based perusal of works based on plain-language links between them—
perfect for those uninitiated to Art History as a discipline.
Thus, the tool started as simply an interface for layman’s exploration and discovery. Eventually,
I realized that, if used within the context of an introductory art history class, it could be very
useful as a tool for education.
In order for curators to do their job, they must have very broad knowledge of the visual art
domain and the ability to think deeply about meaning and context. High school students, my
target demographic, lack this broad domain knowledge, which can only really be acquired
through years of immersion in the art world. However, I believe they do have the ability to think
deeply about meaning and context, which is a skill I’m hoping this tool will help hone.
Context & Process:
I imagine Virtuwall being used as part of a two-week unit within an introductory art history
class. The unit would start with a trip to a local art museum or art gallery, where students will
hear from the curator about his or her creative process and be able to ask questions. Next, the
students will design their own gallery space using a basic architectural portion of the Virtuwall
application, and after that, they will populate that space with art. When they complete their
gallery, students will write about each piece they selected, why they selected it, and how it fits
with the other pieces in their gallery. With the pieces and their explanations in place, students
will pair up and go through each others’ galleries, providing feedback on their choices. Students
will each suggest one addition to the gallery they’ve visited. Armed with this feedback, students
will make any necessary revisions to their galleries (maybe this piece doesn’t fit, maybe I needed
to make this explanation clearer, etc.). Finally, the galleries are ready to be shared with family
and friends via private links and the students will be granted access to the class’s “gallery of
galleries” where each student can explore all the other students’ galleries.
Field Trip: The first activity in this system is intended to help with my design principle of
“situating the students within the environment”; students hear from a professional curator in
the environment in which he or she does the job. They not only get an idea of the thought
process, but they also may find out for the first time that this is a viable career option, and is
not necessarily just a school project. In a perfect world, students would get the chance to work
under a curator for an extended period of time engaged in “Authentic Activity” as discussed by
Brown, et al., framing art or positioning placards. However, resources are scarce, and there is no
real way to facilitate this. A one-day immersion will hopefully do some good.
Space Design: This was a decision I’ve gone back and forth on a number of times. Should we let
students design their own space or not? The advantage of allowing students to design their own
gallery is that it can help with their storytelling. A labyrinthine gallery could tell the story of a
long, confusing process or journey, or a wide-open gallery could allow for self-directed
navigation and may help a student achieve an “overall impact” by letting the attendee see the
gallery as a whole, which could enhance a gallery that was linked by visual qualities. The
disadvantage is that allowing users to create their own space is not very reflective of reality.
Gallery owners or museums can’t always build a new building every time they want to house a
new exhibit. Also, in allowing gallery design, we miss out on another opportunity to impose
constraints. Finally, though, I arrived at a decision to allow for design of galleries but limit the
length of wall students are allowed. That is, students can arrange and chop up a length of wall in
any manner they see fit, but they aren’t allowed to use more than that. This prevents galleries
from growing too large. Another possible solution is to pass the decision on to the individual
instructors. Perhaps the instructor can create a virtual replica of the gallery the students visited.
Art Selection: This is where I’d like students to spend the most time and effort, and the
interface for this process is the key to its functionality. Therefore, I’d like this phase to look and
feel very professional, as Blikstein suggested was optimal (see Appendix for images). Here,
students basically go ‘shopping’ for art to include in their galleries. The trouble with this is that
most students will have no idea where to begin or what they even like. Artsy solves this with
something called “genes” with which each piece of art is tagged. These genes can be about
medium (“watercolor”), time period (“17th century”), format (“triptych”), subject matter (“race”),
depictions (“uptopia”), origin (“Thai art”), and a number of other characteristics. This allows
students to choose works that speak to them and see what characteristics it has. Then they can
choose a characteristic and see what other works have that characteristic. This process allows
for undirected exploration and “self-directed learning,” a guiding design principle for
Montessori as outlined by Oren Zuckerman (Zuckerman 3).
Authoring: Writing about decisions and rationale helps designers to understand their own
work better, and in that way, this step is a check on whether they’ve chosen their work
thoughtfully. More than that, however, it is a large part of the way students will tell their
“story.” We need stories to make sense of the world around us (Bonsignore, et al. 18:3), and it is
essential that students use this opportunity to say something that isn’t simply “I like these
pieces of art.”
Sharing and Feedback: In the course of its design, I started to realize that if left as a
completely solitary enterprise, this unit may not be as effective. “[S]cholars of innovation have
discovered that innovation is rarely a solitary individual creation. Instead, creativity is deeply
social” (Sawyer 2). Because this project is so focused on self-expression, the collaboration
seemed best left to a revision activity. This revision will be the first exposure to someone who is
not the user and will bring a much needed outside perspective to the gallery and its themes.
Revisions: As Resnick suggests, “tinkerability” is an important aspect of a good program that’s
“designed for designers” (Resnick 4). Virtuwall should provide an easy way to swap pieces in and
out of your gallery. A learning moment may arise when a student would like to replace a piece of
art with one that perhaps does not fit the space. He or she may have to go back and use the size
filters and engage in some mathematical calculations, thereby creating a multidisciplinary
experience. Adjusting and reordering should also be simple to allow for adjustments to the
“story” flow.
Exhibition: In an effort to encourage personal investment, I would like to suggest that, at the
end of this two-week Virtuwall unit, the students include their galleries in a “gallery of galleries”
which other classmates are free to explore. If students know that their work will be seen by
others, they are more likely to invest effort in making it meaningful and high-quality. Requiring
this step would be too much, I think, in case there be a student who developed a gallery around
something extremely personal and doesn’t want the entire class to be able to access it. Several
studies cite sharability of student-design artifacts as a design principle, and I firmly believe it
should be incorporated and encourage with Virtuwall. After the exhibitions, students are free to
send the link to their galleries via email to friends and family.
SCENARIOS:
Undirected Search: What I’d always pictured since first conceiving of this project is a student
going into this project having had very little exposure to fine art, but he’d seen a poster once in
a friend’s room of a painting called Starry Night. He remembers liking it. With nothing else to
search for, he begins his search with that. The painting he remembers appears in front of him,
and he can see that it’s by someone named Vincent Van Gogh, and that it has the following
characteristics: Iconic Works of Art History, Post-Impressionism, Hatching, Times of Day, Oil
Painting, Cypress Tree, Town, and Images of France. Post-Impressionism sounds the most
interesting in that list, so he clicks that. New works appear. What do these have in common? He
is able to glean from looking at them what Post-Impressionism might possibly mean. He sees
one that’s done in colors he finds striking, so he clicks that painting. It turns out to be by
someone named Henri Matisse. This one has the following characteristics: Fauvism, Iconic Works
of Art History, Post-Impressionism, Color Theory, Individual Portrait, Hat, and Woman. Since color
is what first drew him, he chooses Color Theory. The results show a bunch of brightly colored
paintings, some of which he likes, some of which he doesn’t. The one he likes most is a cityscape
of London done in vibrant reds and yellows and blues, so he selects that one. It’s by Andre
Derain and it’s from 1906. He’s surprised, because it looks like modern art. He looks at the
characteristics of this one and sees Fauvism again. He’s never heard of that before, but it keeps
popping up on art he likes, so he selects Fauvism. The art repopulates with all Fauvist art, and he
likes just about all of these pieces.
At this point he calls the instructor over to ask what Fauvism is. The instructor says he
doesn’t know, but that we should search for it. So the two go to a search engine and look for
Fauvism. They end up on Wikipedia, reading about what Fauvism is, what characterizes it, and
what sort of political and social influences gave rise to it. Next time someone asks him what sort
of art he likes, he is ready to respond with Fauvism, and he can explain where it comes from and
how to spot a Fauvist work of art. Teaching another person about it solidifies that knowledge in
his mind and possibly even instills curiosity in another mind.
Meaning Making: A female student wants to make a gallery as a tribute to her grandmother
who just passed away. To do so, she designs a gallery with a defined path and decides that she
will take the gallery patron through the life of her grandmother, who was born in the 1920s.
Unsure where to begin, she uses the filters and searches for “farm” between 1920 and 1930.
Nothing shows up, so she adjusts her range to go up to 1940. A few paintings and a photo show
up from 1936. Two of them remind her of her grandmother, so she decides to add both of them
to her collection, where she can decide between them later. She knows that her grandmother
worked in a factory during WWII, so she next searches for factories. None really go with the
paintings she’s already selected visually, so she pauses to consider whether or not that is
important. She decides that it’s more important to tell the story than to have visual cohesion.
And perhaps this reflects the dramatic change her grandmother went through, having lived a
pastoral farm life, and then having been crammed into an urban factory. Maybe she could add
several images of the pastoral near the beginning to establish a rhythm! Decisions like this one
that take into account meaning and expression are ultimately what studying art is all about, and
if Virtuwall can inspire this kind of thought, then I would consider that a success.
EVALUATION
To help measure the success of the Virtuwall unit, I’d like to collect several usage metrics.
• Time spent in exploration: Are students going through the database quickly and picking
random art that they like or are they traversing different artistic styles and carefully
considering their choices? I would hypothesize that the longer a student spends exploring
and looking for the right pieces, the higher that student’s chance of success.
• Number of revisions: Are the students happy with their first draft? Those that revisit
their galleries and make adjustments might be those who are more receptive to feedback
and more invested in the end product. Students who finish and never return were probably
just trying to get it done and would probably have lower levels of investment.
• Number of links sent to friends and family: This could be another way of looking at
students’ investment. Is the student proud of his work and wanting to send to his friends?
However, this metric could be more indicative of extroversion or confidence, and it could
be thrown off by a student who created a gallery with a very personal theme and may not
want to share it even though he or she is thoroughly invested and proud.
• Post-unit endeavors with application: I’d like to make this tool available publicly, and
it would be interesting to see if anyone went back and made another gallery after the unit
ended.
• Interest shown in exploring others’ galleries: Another interesting metric would be
how much time a student has spent exploring other students’ galleries. I would
hypothesize that students who were especially engaged with their own projects would be
interested in seeing and attempting to understand what other students put together.
Beyond these quantitative measures, the most obvious measure of success is the depth of
meaning and cohesion in the end products. Did the students look at the artworks beyond their
physical appearance? If not, did they at least examine the uses of an uncommon formal quality?
This will be up to individual instructors to decide, and he or she can give feedback accordingly.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Right now, the galleries and Artsy’s database are only set up to house art that can hang on a
wall. Missing is the whole evocative world of sculptural and architectural art, not to mention
installations that may hang from the ceiling or rest on a pedestal. A way to handle this would be
for Artsy to start collecting and assigning characteristics to an inventory of 3D scans of art.
These could then be placed in a virtual gallery and made available for students to explore.
Another issue that may arise is the fact that many piece of art contain nudity or violence, which
could potentially upset some parents. That said, it may be important for teens to learn to take
on those issues, as they are fast becoming adults. A filtering system or a permissions system (or
both) may help to ameliorate the situation, so that’s something I’d like to take on eventually.
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