16.12.12

Coming Up With Words - Wordle

Let's think of all the words that come up to your mind when thinking about ART. Create beautiful word clouds out your own brain-storm using Wordle.

Work in pairs and create the biggest cloud in the class.


You can think of places, materials, styles, periods, categories, related to ART.






13.12.12

Urban Art and Museums - Voicethread



Have a look at the following VoiceThread presentation. These pictures depict works by urban artist Banksy.

Most of them were shown in a retrospective at the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, his city of origin.

Can you identify any familiar topic or a message that the artist want to transmit with each artwork? Write down or record your voice with your impressions on each slide.

Open discussion: should these works be in a museum? Why do you think that?

12.12.12

Polemic Fresco Restoration


The image of the restored Ecce Homo fresco by an 80 year-old lady in a village near Zaragoza was echoed in the media from all over the World. Have a look the following two headlines from newspaper articles published by British newspaper The Guardian:








HEADLINE 1
Ecce Homo's amateur 'restorer' finds notoriety raises interest in her own art
Cecilia Gímenez, the 80-year-old responsible for the 'worst restoration in history', attracts bids for her own painting on eBay




HEADLINE 2
Ecce Homo 'restorer' wants a slice of the royalties
Cecilia Giménez, who made a painting of Jesus look like a very hairy monkey, wants economic compensation


Then, try to match the following comments made by readers with one of the two headlines. There are 3 comments corresponding to each headline.


COMMENT 1 "I will throw a jelly donut at a painting in the Louvre for a pound."

COMMENT 2 "I prefer the restored version."

COMMENT 3 "This is much better than the orginial. Good pictures of Jesus are ten-a-penny. There is only one Jesus that looks like an old lady and painted by an old lady."

COMMENT 4 "Who's to say Jesus didn't actually look like that anyway?
Anyway, I bet she gets a priority place in heaven because at least she gave it her best shot and that's more than anyone else had ever done."

COMMENT 5 "This has got to be a joke. she's lucky not to be prosecuted for vandalism."


COMMENT 6 "Good for her.I bet there haven't been as many people interested in that church as there are now for the last 200 years.
Give her some dosh and let have a go on a few other dusty pictures."


Once you have completed the task, we will discuss about the issue. Are there any comments do you agree with? Why?





The Mysterious Vivian Maier






The discovery of thousands of photographic negatives of Vivian Maier has changed the life of John Maloof. Amazed by the quality of the material he has found, he is now devoted to scanning all her photographs and spread the fame of this woman who was not a professional photographer, but whose artistic sensitivity had nothing to envy to the street photographers from her time.

Read the following questions and watch the video. Then, answer the questions:

What was Vivian Maier's occupation?

What sort of pictures did she use to take?

What do you think the reporter meant by 'The picture of Vivian Maier herself is still developing'?

Where did John Maalouf discover Vivian's negatives and personal belongings? Choose your answer from the following options A, B or C:
   a) a flea market
   b) an auction
   c) an abandoned house

Where were Vivian's photographs published for the first time?

Based on what you have learnt of her from the testimonies speaking in the video: how was her personality like? Was she an introvert or an extrovert person? A social person or a lonely one?



A Wall Full of Emotions - Wallwisher

This activity is all about sharing small stories about images and emotions. You will be asked to find an image (it might be a picture taken by you, or an image found on the Internet) that you think that it expresses any of the emotions mentioned in this list:


anger,
friendliness,
boredom,
confusion,
bliss,
contempt,
happiness,
despair,
affection,
fear,
frustration,
joy,
hope,
surprise,
rage,
sadness,
generosity,
amusement,
grief,
love.

Once you have chosen the picture (see below for instructions), stick it to the 'Lost for Words' Wall on Wallwisher. Following Susana's example, write down why the chosen image suggests you a certain emotion.

How to copy images found on the Internet on Wallwisher's wall:

Step 1: Go to the website were the image is located:
Right button click on image: "copiar URL imagen"

Step 2: Go to the Wall 'Lost for Words':
Double click on any part of the wall and a small window will be created 
Click on the chain icon and paste URL. Don't worry if the image comes out too small, when you finish publishing your entry, we can click on it to make it bigger.

Before you start: Go to the next post and complete the activity proposed.


 

A Wall full of Emotions Previous Activity: A Quick Thought about Grammar

Before you start looking for your images and writing eagerly, have a look at Susana's post on the website:

Identify these tenses within the text:

Present Simple
Past Continuous
Past Perfect

What role do these tenses play within the discourse?

Tell the class about it and take this into account when writing your post.

Trying to Put Feelings in Order - Mindomo

Can emotions be classified and put into a mind map? This will help you to learn new concepts and vocabulary. 

Look at the list of words on Wallwisher's activity list: 


anger,
friendliness,
boredom,
confusion,
bliss,
contempt,
happiness,
despair,
affection,
fear,
frustration,
joy,
hope,
surprise,
rage,
sadness,
generosity,
amusement,
grief,
love.


 Can you make your own mind map with these words using Mindomo? Here you can find an example: 






Make your own mind maps with Mindomo.

28.11.12

Questionnaire

Create Your Own Glog - Glogster



A Glog is an on-line poster. You can add and share photos, videos and sounds.

Create your own Glog about a city you have recently visited or that you really like. Include information on: a monument worth visiting, food, leisure activities, and a curious city fact. Have a look at my example first, and don't forget to correctly use: past tenses, time adverbs and comparative and/or superlatives (These will be the minimum grammar requirements).

Have fun and be creative!!

27.11.12

Creative Writing With Google Docs

WRITING A COLLABORATIVE STORY BASED ON THE ARTWORK ‘PRIMA FACIE (THIRD STATE) FROM AGHAST TO UPSET’ (2005) BY JOHN BALDESSARI



John Baldessari is a North American artist born in 1931. His work is considered as ‘conceptual’, which means that its main intention is not aesthetic, but intellectual. Throughout his artistic career, he has studied the associations between images and text. The work you can see in the picture below shows how easily we can alter the meaning of an image, just by putting some words next to it.


TASK
Probably, John Baldessari took this image of a woman from a magazine or from a commercial film still he found in a flea market. Can you imagine who this woman was and what happened to her? I’m sure you will have thought of it by now and some answers would have come to your mind.

Find two more partners and discuss about what might have happened to this woman. You will have to write story in three paragraphs:
1) Introduction - presentation of the main characters and the setting.
2) Body - development of the events.
3) Ending - how the events are resolved, what are the consequences of the events to the main characters.

Include as many adjectives shown next to the picture as you can. You can use a dictionary to look up for the words you may not be familiar with.

PROCESS
One of you will need to create a google document like
this one and click on ‘share’. There, write the email addresses of your partners.


Each student will have to write one paragraph on its own following the order given above. That is, the student responsible for the introduction will start writing first. Then, the next one reads what it has been written before and continues with the story.


DON’T FORGET THAT THIS IS A COLLABORATIVE WORK, ALL PARTS MUST BE RELATED IN CONTENT AND FORM !!


GOOD LUCK !!