Create your own Jackson Pollock!

Are you right brained or left brained?

Find out through these internet quizzes. Your journal assignment today is to spend lab time trying out these questions. Review at least 3 of the quizzes. Write your results in a journal entry. Once you have finished answer the questions below the links.

Here are the links ...

1. brain type test
2. hemispheric test
3. intelliscript quiz
4. lifescript quiz
5. mindmedia quiz
6. brain balance quiz
7. creativity test
8. right/left brain quiz for students
9. brain dominance test
10. spinning lady picture quiz (more about it here)

Reflection questions:

1. Were your results consistent? Explain why this happened (or why this didn't happen).

2. What do you think it mean to be right brained or left brained? Explain your thoughts in a few sentences. Back up your ideas with research from the internet if you have time.

9/11 & the Art of Memorials

For more information on the art of memorials and WTC site news explore the links below:

1. Latest Design For WTC Merges Old & New (New York Times)
2. National Memorials Webquest (Google)
3. Google News Topic: National Memorials
4. Google News Topic: World Trade Center
5. Field guide to US Public Monuments & Memorials
6. The Role of Public Memorials (NPR)
7. World Trade Center Memorial & Museum Site
   

Politically Speaking Collage - Artistic Research

Which candidate's views are most like your own?

Visit these links for information on where the candidates stand on the ssues:

1. Barack Obama on the issues
2. John McCain on the issues
3. NY Times Election Guide 2008 (all issues)
   
4. CNN.com (all issues)
   
5. Obama-McCain Comparison (all issues)
   
6. NPR Comparison (all issues)
   
7. Citizen Jane (all issues)
   
8. CNN Money (financial issues comparisons)
9. Grist.com (climate, energy issues)
   
10. WebMD (candidates views on health care)

Where does your political compass point? Take this online test.

Political Art

Art with a Message





























Interested in learning more about the intersection of Art & Politics? Check out these links...

1. Design of Dissent: Online Gallery
   
2. Center for the Study of Political Graphics
   
3. Graffiti Art and the 2008 Election (LA Times)
   
4. Another Poster for Peace
   
5. Propaganda Poster Remix Project
   
6. The Sixties Project: Protest Poster Gallery
   
7. Obama Art Report Blog
8. Virtual Museum of Political Art
9. Art Threat: Blog about Art & Politics
10. My Yard: Your Message Sign Contest
11. When Political Art Mattered (NY Times Article)
12. WWI Posters Online (Georgetown University)
13. National Archives: The Art of War
14. Yahoo Directory: Political Art & Propaganda
15. Flickr Photo Group: Social Change
16. Art for Social Change.net
17. Intute Arts & Humanities Links: Political Art
18. Washington Post Article: Shepard Fairey Poster

A few artists who work with political themes:

1. Shepard Fairey: OBEY art
2. Kathe Kollwitz
3. Banksy
4. Diego Rivera
5. Robert Weaver
6. Sergio Hernandez
7. Sheryl Oring
8. Steve Shepard
9. Chaz Maviyane-Davies
10. Dorothea Lange

Do you know of other interesting websites or artists that we should add? Post your suggestions by leaving a comment. Thanks!

Alison Jackson: Contemporary Pop Art

about the video: British artist Alison Jackson talks about her provocative explorations of celebrity culture. By making photographs that seem to show our favorite celebs (Diana, Elton John) doing what we really, secretly, want to see them doing, she's questioning our shared desire to get personal with celebrity culture. Funny and sometimes shocking, Jackson's work contains some graphic images.

about the artist: Why can't you make it through the checkout line without flipping through page after page of pregnant celebs in Us magazine? Alison Jackson knows why. And she photographs the people you think you recognize doing what you really want to see.

Recognizing the deep-seated need of the world public to see the Queen mum seated at the toilet, Elton John getting a colonic, and Keith Richards ironing his knickers, Alison Jackson set out to create the images that we really want paparazzi to capture. Armed with cheap photographic equipment, celebrity look-alikes, and a canny sense of what we think people are doing when we're not looking, she creates images that are equal parts belly laughs and pure scandal.

Jackson's newest book, Alison Jackson: Confidential features over 300 of her images in outrageous succession. She is also the auteur behind the popular BBC series "Double Take," which focuses on the (fake) outrageous behavior of dozens of popular British political, entertainment, and sports figures. Her biggest frustration is the penchant of her doppelgangers' real life subjects to take on behavior more outrageous than her photographs.

"She fearlessly tugs away at the curtain that separates what we assume we know and what we really know about our icons and movers-and-shakers, and the result is stunning" --Sharon Steel, The Phoenix

(information courtesy of TED)

Edward Burtynsky's Manufactured Landscapes

Edward Burtynsky speaks about his photography.

To describe Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky's work in a single adjective, you have to speak French: jolie-laide. His images of scarred landscapes -- from mountains of tires to rivers of bright orange waste from a nickel mine -- are eerily pretty yet ugly at the same time. Burtynsky's large-format color photographs explore the impact of humanity's expanding footprint and the substantial ways in which we're reshaping the surface of the planet. His images powerfully alter the way we think about the world and our place in it.

With his blessing and encouragement, WorldChanging.com and others use his work to inspire ongoing global conversations about sustainable living. Burtynsky's photographs are included in the collections of many major museums, including Bibliotèque Nationale in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A large-format book, 2003's Manufactured Landscapes, collected his work, and in 2007, a documentary based on his photography, also called Manufactured Landscapes, debuted at the Toronto Film Festival before going on to screen at Sundance and elsewhere. It was released on DVD in March 2007.

When Burtynsky accepted his 2005 TED Prize, he made three wishes. One of his wishes: to build a website that will help kids think about going green. Thanks to WGBH and the TED community, the new site, Meet the Greens, debuted at TED2007. His second wish: to begin work on an Imax film -- and this work is now ongoing. And his third wish, wider in scope, was simply to encourage "a massive and productive worldwide conversation about sustainable living." Thanks to his help and the input of the TED community, the site WorldChanging.com got an infusion of energy that has helped it to grow into a leading voice in the sustainability community.

"One possible rap against his portfolio -- it prettifies the terrible. Burtynsky calls his images 'a second look at the scale of what we call progress,' and hopes that [they] acquaint viewers with the ramifications of our lifestyle."

-- Washington Post

(biographical information courtesy of TED.com)