Computer Graphics Art Curriculum Resources

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1 Computer Graphics Art Curriculum Resources Dena E. Eber Bowling Green State University Bowling Green, OH USA Abstract This paper describes the Computer Graphics Art Curriculum Resources project, which is a plan for collecting, jurying, and disseminating computer graphics art curriculum via the World Wide Web. It is a way for digital arts educators to share information a specific discipline within computer graphics, view suggested requirements for a degree, or view hardware and software recommendations. All curricular, degree, and equipment recommendations will be the result of juried materials that professionals in the digital arts field will submit. Keywords Digital arts curriculum, computer graphics, art curriculum resources, digital arts degree. 1. INTRODUCTION The Computer Graphics Art Curriculum Resources project is a plan for collecting, jurying, and disseminating computer graphics art curriculum via the World Wide Web. The intention of this paper is to propose a plan that will open a dialogue about how best to implement the project and why such a resource is needed in the digital arts. I envision a multi-phase project that, when put into place, will continue to grow and change with advances in technology, aesthetics and societal attitudes about digital media. The project seeks to solicit arts curricula from educators in the computer graphics community. These will be juried and made available to other educators. The information will include curricula for the kindergarten level through post-college education and will consist of four main phases: initial solicitation, jurying, dissemination and an ongoing process of the first three. Below I introduce some of the theoretical issues surrounding the need for such a resource, followed by details of the four phases and a discussion of the current website structure. Appendix A is a list of focus areas. 2. THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS We are presently experiencing a cultural shift that is embracing the evolution of a new digital medium that I believe we do not yet fully understand. We are still developing the appropriate language to describe what new digital media is. Indeed, the entire impetus behind Lev Manovich's Language of New Media [Manovich01] is to attempt to create " both a record, and a theory, of the present." He further states that he aims " to describe and understand the logic driving the development of the language of new media." In Manovich's examination of new media language, he seeks to describe it and thus define its cultural role in today's society. This, of course, might very well change, as new digital technology becomes a more conventional part of our culture. Describing new media is especially important to digital artists because the description elicits an understanding, and that understanding, in turn, allows artists to either make commentary about digital art with the medium or simply use it as a tool. In either case, a landscape that changes every six to eighteen months does not provide much time for those who use digital media to do something meaningful with it. The rapid changes in computer graphics and digital media become even more challenging for those who teach others how to use it for an artistic end. Not only do art educators need to understand the digital medium and what to do with it, but they also help others achieve that vision and discover innovative approaches to creativity. To add to the complexity, many digital innovations afford ways of thinking that not only extend what has come before, but also provide novel functions that invoke unique ways of thinking. So, along with understanding the medium and how to be creative with it, digital and traditional art educators must also discover the innovate ways of thinking that new technology arouses. Once they master the latest technology and its implications, art educators must invent assignments and lessons to extend that innovation to their students. During the Eurographics/SIGGRAPH Workshop on Graphics and Visualization in Education (GVE '99) held in Coimbra, Portugal, art educators stressed, among other things, that curricula should focus on creative and tech-

2 nical concepts, over simply teaching hardware and software [GVE99]. Still, the changing hardware and software influence, and in some cases transform, conceptual possibilities. Technology does not change art and creativity. Rather, it changes how we understand it and how we can observe things that we did not see before [Lovejoy97]. Because of this, and for pedagogical reasons, digital art educators still need to stay current with new digital trends. The goal of this project is to provide resources to help those who teach digital arts or traditional media that incorporate computer graphics to be successful with curriculum development. The fast pace of change in the digital realm makes gaining mastery of the technology a constant challenge. With the added layer of facilitating creativity and innovation with the technology, art educators will benefit from examples, assignments and other recommendations that the Computer Graphics Art Curriculum Resources page will provide. I believe that as digital arts curricula grow, so too will the digital medium and how we embrace it in all of the arts. Perhaps this project will contribute to situating the digital medium in the larger art context to serve not only digital artists, but artists and art enthusiasts of all kinds. 3. PHASE 1: SOLICITATION In the first phase, members of the Arts Curriculum Committee will help solicit curricular materials from other educators, including departmental curriculum, teaching methods or pedagogy, syllabi, sample projects and lessons, examples of student work, recommendations on hardware and software and recommendations on text books, videos and CDs. These materials will be in a number of different focus areas, which are listed in appendix A. To solicit materials, I will use the SIGGRAPH Education Committee website and ask the Arts Curriculum Committee to use personal contacts to target potential contributors and to post a prepared call on professional listservs. In addition, we will post the call for participation on the Education Committee website and circulate postcards at the SIGGRAPH annual conference and at other related conferences, meetings and workshops. The call will include all of the content areas that I have already specified as well as a URL where contributors can upload materials. For more details about submitting materials, see the Website Implementation section. The materials will then be juried to not only ensure high quality recommendations, but also to give accepted materials the juried status for tenure and promotion purposes. 4. PHASE 2: JURYING OF MATERIALS In the second phase of this project, members of the arts curriculum committee will jury and select the materials for dissemination. The jury will include educators in K-12, higher education and adult education who have expertise in one or more of the focus areas and will jury within their expertise. The chair of the arts curriculum committee will ultimately decide what is included in the resource database. I feel the best option is for the committee members to jury materials via the Education Committee website twice per year. Due dates of early September and early March will allow educators time to submit materials they developed for the current semester. In turn, this will give time for others to incorporate the suggestions in the following term. In an ideal world, it would be best to have all jurors meet in one physical location for one weekend to review materials. This would not only be cost prohibitive and logistically complex, but there would be too many people to agree on all the focus areas. The jury will be large so as to include experts in all the focus areas, and they will only be responsible for reviewing the content that we assign them. If the content is on-line, the jurors will be able to review materials in their own time and submit results by a given deadline. Because in the end all materials will be viewed on-line, there is no reason to see them in any other format. For at least these reasons, I feel the "on-line jury" is the best solution to the review of materials. However, if financially feasible, it would be advantageous to have one annual meeting with a subgroup of the jurors to discuss materials for the catalogue and CD and to evaluate the current state of the materials. Because the technology and attitude of the arts community to digital media are in flux, the teaching methods and ways of thinking with the technology continually evolve. What was once innovative could soon become common and perhaps even overused. Discussion of these issues on-line would not be as focused, in depth, and as productive as a face to face meeting. 5. PHASE 3: DISSEMINATION OF MATERIALS In the third phase of this project, members of the arts curriculum committee will make the content available to the larger computer graphics community through both the Education Committee website and an annual publication that will be distributed at the SIGGRAPH conference and other pertinent meetings. For a detailed explanation of the website design, see the Website Implementation section. The publication will take the form of a booklet and perhaps a CD-ROM. Interested people will be able to order materials via the Education Committee website for a small postage fee. All publications will point to the website for more content and information. The website will be the main focus of this project and include all juried materials, while the annual publication will contain highlights from the website. Although Quick-

3 time movies will be included on the website, we could produce a limited number of videotapes or CD-ROMs with higher resolution and longer examples, which can also be distributed at the SIGGRAPH conference. 6. PHASE 4: UPDATE AND MAINTAIN THE FIRST THREE PHASES In the fourth phase of this project, members of the Arts Curriculum Committee will continue to solicit, jury and disseminate arts curricula as specified in the first three phases. In addition, the committee will prune old materials to make room for new and updated approaches to teaching and recommendations about technology. 7. WEBSITE IMPLEMENTATION The Computer Graphics Art Curriculum Resources main page will contain a short overview of the project and the option to perform three different functions: jury materials, submit materials or view materials. See figure one for the main page. A test site, now a work in progress, is available at htm Figure 1: Digital arts curriculum main page The jury page will only be available for those who are on the jury and will require a username and password. The materials in the jury section will each have a reference number so jurors will know what materials they are responsible for. The jurors will be able either to view content while online or to download files to their computer. When they have finished their review, the jurors will fill out a standard review form with a place for comments that they will back to the Art Curriculum Chair, who will make final decisions based on the reviews. The submit page will be for anybody wishing to offer materials for review, but will also require a username and password. Those interested simply need to contact the arts curriculum chair for the security information. In the past, many upload sites have been saddled with large bogus files from people wishing to fill up or otherwise damage the system. If we require a password, at least the

4 Arts Curriculum Chair will have a record of all the people who have asked for it and that would be one more hurdle that a potential hacker would have to clear. Within the submit section, the authors will first choose from either degree curriculum, hardware or software recommendations, or curriculum by discipline. In all three areas, authors will supply their contact information, and the system will assign a reference number to the submission. If the authors are submitting curriculum by discipline, they will choose a focus area from those named in appendix A. From there, they may identify the material, for example, a syllabus, assignment, course notes or example student work. If the authors are submitting degree curriculum, the system will ask them for a recommended target population. The view materials section will be the dissemination hub and will be the place where anybody who has the equipment to gain access the World Wide Web will be able to see and download curricular materials. See figure two for an example. technology, our world changes so quickly that we often find ourselves weeks, if not days or even hours in front of our students. It is true that the principles behind technology, software, and successful artistic content do not change and should be the focus of teaching. However, both students and teachers still need to know how to do things with their rapidly changing tool-set. Further, new technological innovations expand not only the physical possibilities of art, but free the artistic and creative imagination in novel ways. Artists like Hannah Höch made collages long before computer graphics technology was available, but technology has made collaging techniques more immediate and has provided a continuum of artistic possibilities. Figure 2: The view materials page is the hub of curriculum dissenimation. Like the submit page, the view materials page will give the user three options: degree curriculum, hardware or software recommendations or curriculum by discipline. The degree curriculum will be classified by K-12, two-year institutions, four-year colleges and universities, adult education and other areas, and the curriculum by discipline will be sorted by focus area. This section is in essence the outcome of the project. It is my hope that we will keep this area current and that it will provide the insights to help those in arts education get information about curriculum in the digital arts. 8. CONCLUSION One goal of the proposed project is to help arts educators keep up with and gain access to high-quality pedagogical materials. As with all disciplines associated with digital However, in relying on the technology too heavily, artists run the risk of losing out to it in a way that their art becomes what the technology provides rather than what they might wish to express with it. As Walter Benjamin warns in his essay The Author as Producer, the machinery could, if not balanced with artistic end, control the production of the work, thus hindering the artist's voice. For this reason, arts educators need help understanding the technology and how to use it to make art rather than getting lost in "chasing" it. Instead of re-inventing curricula, a resource such as the database I am proposing will help digital arts educators plan, keep up with, and ideally foresee problems with certain media. The ultimate goal is for the instructors and students alike to create rich and powerful works of art and a pedagogical information database will allow instructors to focus more energy on creativity. REFERENCES GVE99] Documentation of Workshop on Graphics and Visualization Education is on-line at < [Lovejoy97] M. Lovejoy. Postmodern Currents: Art and Artists in the Age of Electronic Media. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Simon and Schuster.

5 [Manovich01] L. Manovich. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. APPENDIX A FOCUS AREAS 2D imaging 2D painting and drawing Art foundations or digital media in general foundations Digital arts foundations, specific to digital arts majors 3D modeling 2D animation 3D animation Graphic design Web art and design CD authoring art and design Interactive installation Virtual environments Digital video and film Concept development Computer graphics history Theory and criticism in computer art Cross media (digital and traditional) Algorithmic Sound Printing Computer graphics in traditional painting and drawing Computer graphics in printmaking Computer graphics fibers Computer graphics sculpture and jewelry Appendix A: Focus areas for curriculum by discipline.