"Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language brings together historical and contemporary works of art that treat language not merely as a system of communication governed by grammatical rules and assigned meanings, but as a material that can be manipulated with creative freedom, like paint, clay, or any other artistic medium. The exhibition is divided into two sections. The first is a historical overview of 20th-century art that experiments with the graphic, sonic, and kinetic possibilities of letters and words. With a few notable exceptions, these works are confined to the two-dimensional parameters of a page. The second section presents an installation of contemporary works, most of which do away with the page; some do away with writing altogether.
The artist and poet Emmett Williams observed that "the poem as picture is as old as the hills," citing its beginnings in hieroglyphics,"
A classic painting from English Romantic artist that has been used for many book covers. Most recently encountered on cover and as guiding metaphor in Gaddis's "The Landscape of History" (very interesting book). Plan to use this first day of class to generate discussion in AP Lit about painting, literature, art, and their lives.
Good writing, like a good watch, should have no unnecessary parts, and that's what great art shouts at us: Tell the story with no unnecessary parts. William Zinsser
The Smart Set is an online publication covering culture and ideas, arts and sciences, global and national affairs - everything from literature to shopping, medicine to food, philosophy to sports.
What sorts of topics is The Smart Set presently ruminating
Blog from last year's 6th grade Language Arts class, includes descriptions of projects/activities and student reflection on activities. Lots of information about using Web 2.0 technology in the LA classroom.
"Scriptwriting is an artform, and creating art is never easy. Everytime you watch a TV show, watch a film or even play a computer game you are taking in the work of a scriptwriter.
With today being driven by the various mediums of entertainment scriptwriting has becomes one of the best page and attractive jobs going. Film scripts have been sold for in excess of $1 million. With that sort of money floating around it's no wonder people are becoming more interested in the idea of scriptwriting. "
From Mark Rounds: Web-Ed Tools Paper.li:
"The art of online storytelling is all about presentation. As a non-linear storytelling engine, Projeqt gives creatives the ability to weave together stories dripping with style and personality from Flickr photos, RSS feeds, tweets, YouTube or Vimeo videos, and any media stored on their own computers.Users can craft "projeqts," whatever their purpose may be, by adding content in the form of slides. Create a slide, name it, add tags, and fill the slide with a photo, text, video or feed. Slides are published to create the web story and be can reordered via drag and drop. Users can also create a projeqt within a projeqt to serve as a story inside a story.In private beta right now... It took me a week to get my invite."
Adam Gopnik discusses the appeal of high fantasy in YA. He misses the mark, I think, in not discussing Joseph Campbell's influence in all of this, and he's condescending throughout much of the piece, but it's an interesting analysis aside from these two admittedly major issues.
TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE AwesomeStories is large resource filled with primary-source information. Its purpose is to help educators and individuals find original sources, located at national archives, libraries, universities, museums, historical societies and government-created web sites. The site is very easy to use and is would be helpful to use with many projects across the curriculum.
Seeley notes that after a conversation with some of her students, she discovered that "most can't concentrate on reading a text for more than 30 seconds or a minute at a time. We're being trained away from slow reading by new technology."
My students have even told me that they cannot read in school because it is "too distracting" with friends and activities, etc!!! The phones are vibrating, the latest drama unfolds minute by minute--I have decided that half my job it is train them to recognize the proper environment for the proper activity. It is slow going!
I noticed this myself in my second year of college; the way I was reading (especially literature, etc) was changing rapidly as I became more inundated with short-message communication (Facebook, email, texting, etc.). I would even argue that our composition models are changing. I can fire off short bursts of information very quickly (like right now). However, I am finding more often that I may have to actually plan to find a place to read (frightening...?).