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MSDE

Africa & Its Influences, Jazz & America, and Considering the Postmodern

2000
University of Maryland, College Park


Program Abstracts


AESTHETIC CRITICISM IN THE ARTS CLASSROOM
(JULY 9-10)

Dr. Sydney Walker: Multi-Arts with Big Ideas
The session opened with the question, Why integrate the arts? A group discussion of this notion followed with the presentation of an integrated curriculum model structured around big ideas. Participants explored the model through interactive activities that addressed such questions as What are big ideas?, Why are they important for student learning?, How do they work with integrated curriculum?, and How can they work with my particular art area? The session layed the foundation for the participants' work during the rest of the institute. At the conclusion of the session, participants were familiar with how big ideas can create meaningful connections for integrating the arts curriculum and understand a process for making this happen.

Catherine Hays: Technology in the Arts Classroom
Multimedia technology can be a valuable tool in the arts classroom; the added dimension of images, video or audio has the potential to engage students in new ways, meet the needs of various learning styles, and provide access to content that might not otherwise be available. In this two part workshop we looked at strategies for developing multimedia projects development, finding resources for digital media, and selecting the appropriate development tool and delivery medium. Participants gained a stronger sense of the technological resources available for use in their classrooms through demonstrations and the exploration of sample projects. In addition, participants worked collaboratively to develop sample projects based on topical areas relevant to the institute.

Dr. Marilyn Stewart: Why Our Questions Matter
The session focused on content and strategies for engaging students in inquiry-based learning in the arts. Through a series of interactive activities, participants identified the questions we ask as we create, perform and respond to works of art. Arts inquiry was shown as grounded in what ordinary human beings routinely do. Teaching strategies were offered as ways to help students be deliberate and reflective arts makers, performers, and responders. This approach to teaching and learning in the arts highlights the role of the arts within the human experience and, especially, in the day-to-day lives of our students. Participants had the opportunity to find references to this inquiry-based approach in the Maryland State Essential Learning Outcomes for both High and Middle Schools in their own arts areas. They also were encouraged to raise questions and offer comments throughout the session.

GROWING IN AND ACROSS THE ARTS (July 10-19)

AFRICA AND ITS INFLUENCE

Music Performance/Studio Masterclasses

Diali Djimo Kauyate: West African Drumming Workshop: Djembe & Doun Doun Drumming. This workshop allowed participants the opportunity to experience and learn to play drum rhythms on the Djembe and Doun Doun drums focusing on the music of Manding West African traditions. Participants were introduced to the djembe and doun doun drumming techniques through a multiplicity of rhythmic partners that are used in combination to make up distinctive rhythmic forms and compositions for the djembe drum orchestra. Participants also learned about the significance of rhythms in Manding cultures and the symbolism and values of the music in its historical, ceremonial and social context in societies of African people.

Theater Performance/Studio Masterclasses

Clinton L. Carbon. Colonial authorities tried to forbid indigenous performance in Africa because they considered it pagan and feared its potential for subversion. Africa has no performance that resembled the forms that European colonists knew. The tension between the colonialists' heritage and native indigenous forms created a vigorous and dynamic spectrum of performance. Africans used an array of performance modes to avoid the differences of tribal language and the oppression of governmental official. Performance modes such as audience participation, dancing, music, song, drumming, storytelling, masks, costumes, mime, ritual initiation and recitation caused new ays of communicating and shaped African theater all over the continent. The use of these forms has had a profound effect on world drama. Participants discussed the modes of performance, view videotapes, listen to audiotapes, read samples of African drama and experiment with African performance modes to create new approaches to production theater.

Visual Arts Performance/Studio Masterclasses

Joyce J. Scott. This studio experience explores the continuity between thread and needle, family and fabric, and the African diaspora. Artist Joyce J. Scott took participants on a journey through the rich dialogue of her artistic family and the connection of generations with the traditions of the African diaspora combining the mediums of fabric and beads. Participants learned how to utilize family and cultural narratives as material for artistic creation, and will discuss methods for eliciting these narratives from their students.

 

JAZZ IN AMERICA

LECTURE SESSION I

Dr. Kip Lornell: Jazz in Twentieth Century American Culture. This session traced the development of jazz since its birth in the deep South during the era of Jim Crow. But rather than explore its history in a chronological fashion-from New Orleans Brass Bands to present day jazz/pop hybrids--we looked at the intersections between jazz and important times & figures in American social history. Three examples of these intersections were Louis Armstrong, the swing era, and Black Nationalism during the 1960s. They were investigated via a lecture that will feature numerous video and audio examples.

LECTURE SESSION II

Dr. Kip Lornell: Vernacular Black Music in Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. is a city divided largely along racial and economic lives. Most people know Washington as a Federal enclave that attracts millions of tourists who come to visit the Mall, the White House, and the City's various monuments. But there is also D.C., home to nearly 400,000 African Americans, who are largely invisible to most tourists. Black Americans in D.C. have developed one unique form of popular music (go go) as well as helping to promote "shout bands" (a style of Pentecostal sacred music) to a high level. This course will explore the history and significance of these two musical forms in our Nation's Capital.

Music Performance/Studio Masterclasses

Chris Vadala: Back to the Basics! This session consisted of a concise seminar highlighting one of the key elements of the jazz tradition. The presentation focused on live and recorded examples with class participation (bring instruments, piano, amps & drum set provided) as well as an overview of current pedagogical materials and approaches.

Theater Performance/Studio Masterclasses

Living Stage/Oran Sandel. This was an interactive workshop correlating improvisational theatrical technique and the improvisational nature of Jazz. This was an opportunity for teachers to share ideas about what theater and music is for them, as well as to experience the aesthetics of jazz through voice and movement.

Visual Arts Performance/Studio Masterclasses

Al Smith: A Visual Jazz Workshop. This session was an exploration into the spacial perception of music (rhythmic figures, melody lines, pitch, volume, tone color, pattern, texture, architectural structures and others) as subject matter for painting. In counterpoint, the time valued process of scanning the deep, shallow, and decorative space of the picture plane is metaphorically presented to create the duration feel of quarter, eighth, and sixteenth-notes respectively. As a bridge between seeing and hearing, the organizational principles of visual design and music theory are compared. A jazz aesthetic concept was presented by encouraging the participants to perform collaboratively. Through the technique of collage, participants can "share language", "exchange riffs in the manner of call and response" and practice "listening energy." Like a jazz combo, the form of collage provided for the student's quick response, individual expression, while simultaneously being responsible for the total art work.



CONSIDERING THE POSTMODERN

Lecture Session

Dr. Greg Metcalf: Aesthetics of the Postmodern. Postmodernism is something everyone knows about but everyone seems to know it to be something different. At a simple level, a collapse of traditional categories and boundaries is an essential part of the postmodern experience, but the apparent chaos often seems more trouble than it is worth. This lecture was intended to provide a tour through the confusion regarding postmodern thought and provide basic signposts as well as pointing out productive paths for later pursuit by teachers and students. The central themes covered were: 1) the idea of postmodernism; its precedents, prevalent definitions, and the relationship of postmodernist art and culture; 2) the critical theorists of postmodernism; their essential ideas, and the postmodernist erasure of the line between artist and critic; 3) a consideration of what postmodern art looks like and what it is, with examples from a range of media, old and new; 4) the role of computer and video, both as media for the creation of postmodern art and as creators of the postmodern condition; and 5) the troublesome issue of ambiguity and the different experience of postmodernism for teachers and students.

Music Performance/Studio Masterclasses

Dr. Robert Gibson: Dream Music: A Composer's View of Computer-Generated Sound. Composer Robert Gibson, who has worked with computer applications for music composition since 1986, demonstrated and discussed various software applications that he used in the composition of Mist (1995/97), a work for double bass and computer-generated sound. Mr. Gibson views these applications as metaphors for the way composers think about sound created by the computer. The lecture/demonstration included applications for sound synthesis (Csound), digital editing (Sound Designer and Pro Tools), and digital signal processing (Hyperprism). In addition to these professional-level applications, alternative resources for the classroom that are either free or low-priced shareware available on the web were included in the discussion.

Theater Performance/Studio Masterclasses

Tony Tsendeas: The Postmodern, the Theater and the Director: or "Theater As Alchemy." This session was essentially a director's view on Theater and the Postmodern. It was therefore a subjective assessment garnered by varied professional theatrical experiences. The format was lecture/discussion & demonstration, ending with the group "getting on its feet" and participating in theater games and exercises. This provided an additional tangible by-product of teachers learning new games & exercises, which they can then take back to school. The session will first quickly define elements of postmodernism in The Arts to create a working theory. And in a very post modern move, also explored while some caveats about using "post modern" as a designation of a discernible style. 20th Century Theater was traced focusing on two "theatrical points of view"-Subjectivity and Objectivity. We investigated the intended audience experience for each point of view, and how these points of view have manifested themselves in a variety of styles. Contemporary examples of Postmodernism at work in the theater will be sighted, focusing on two performance pieces by Action Theater. Finally, discussion of "Theater as Alchemy," a theory for a practical approach to making theater. This approach was considered within the context of post modern theory.

Visual Arts Performance/Studio Masterclasses

Dr. Greg Metcalf. In this studio session we attempted to apply some of the core concepts of postmodernism to the visual arts. With images of recognized postmodern visual artists as the point of departure, participants will create simple artworks. The conceptual basis of the projects will be collage and bricollage (two- or three-dimensions), working with the ideas of 1) creating new or multiple meanings through the juxtaposition of source materials, 2) creating new or multiple meanings through the transformation of source materials, and 3) the creation of nontraditional aesthetics through the juxtaposition of media and/or technique. Actual projects will be based in the simplest mediatransfer--printing and xeroxing, cut-and-paste collage and glue assemblage, graphite and paints--the projects can be easily translated and applied to multimedia, video and computer projects if such resources are available to students in the schools. Attention was also paid to practical issues of assigning and evaluating these projects in the classroom setting.


Sponsored
by The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, The Center for Renaissance and Baroque Studies, and the Maryland State Department of Education.

   
We welcome your comments and suggestions
The Center for Renaissance & Baroque Studies
0139 Taliaferro Hall
The University of Maryland
College Park, Maryland 20742
301-405-6830
Last updated June 11, 2007