Holidays are funny times aren’t they? I guess most people that I know think I get to much holiday. They think that’s what it is… that I switch off and do nothing – teachers switch off and do nothing!
How does one switch off from art? From teaching?
I’m not saying I don’t enjoy my holidays. I use them to re-energize, plan, mark, make, think, evaluate…. The artist generally appears and the teacher observes from the wings… like a magpie with his eye on the glitter…
I’ve been working and thinking…
What if I’m looking in the wrong place?
What if…?
Three things happened this Christmas that have altered my approach and thinking… I think! Given me new direction… subject matter…
I like to drive. It leads to moments of meditation, Zen… not that I’m unsafe or don’t concentrate; but my mind wonders and spins webs, connecting thoughts, memories, ideas… I drove around 1500 miles this holiday… friends, family, duty.
Stimuli 1 occurred whilst driving to visit my mother in hospital one evening. I was listening to Radio 4; didn’t catch the name of the program; discussion going on about technology. I use iPads to make the majority of my own work these days, so my ears pricked up and I zoned in. “The problem with education these days” the commenter stated, “is that we don’t teach our pupils the code. We just let them play with the software, so they don’t really learn. We need to teach them to design, code and innovate”. Of course this echo’s Michael Gove’s digital literacy speech of January 2012, but that shouldn’t detract us from the point it makes – one that I hadn’t heard so clearly before.
“We need to teach the code”.
I love apps. I know how to use them. They are easy to use… too easy? But what does the potential to develop them offer? How does one develop them? How does one teach to develop them?
That’s thought 1. Hold on to it for a while. It’s my starting point.
Stimuli 2 started occurring to me whilst I drove my way through the rest of the holidays. I started to become increasingly aware of signs alongside the roads I travelled down. No, not signs. Visual information boards that I instantly understood and would probably be able to follow in any country around the world…
A code?
Modern hieroglyphs that future civilization will spend years deciphering and wondering about their uses? Sounds stupid really, but I’ve come to taking them for granted after nearly 25years of driving…
What if?
I’ve started to create my own visual code (image 1)… to place over what is already there… back to my graffiti roots… modernized… imagine what could be done in city centers… rough parts… gun crime… little codes to test peoples reactions… would they notice? Would it change feelings? Attitudes? Behaviours? Is this the code I should be teaching?
Stimuli 3 came at the end of one of our journeys – a visit to my partner’s sister’s family. Her husband, a research scientist – highly intelligent, started making paintings a few years ago in the evenings after work; a hobby…
but…
His paintbrush is a matchstick or cut, cotton bud pole. He describes his work as “having an interest in mathematics, numbers and the relationship between them”. His paintings are generated by converting a number, or a series of numbers into colours, and transferring them as dots in simple patterns.
Essentially painting codes…
Pixel… pixilation… pixelated…
The make up of an image? Deconstruction? The code of an image? DNA?
This fascinates me. In my search for an exemplar, perhaps this sets me on the right path? Yet I need to understand what I need to teach, further. How do I teach the code? Is it relevant? Where will it lead? Is this the change I seek?
I have started to play in the search for the next exemplar. Taking work; pixellating it and then reconstructing it to create new. In search of a current, readable code that not only can be played with but also re-invented altered and utilized differently.
