Week 2 - Curriculum in Art Ed

After reading part one of Daniel Pink’s, A Whole New Mind, in which Pink discusses the scientific aspects of the relationship between the left and right brain and their functions, I had a conversation with a friend about the content of the chapter.  Turns out, my friend created a website titled, The Beautiful Brain, which he described as “The juncture of art and neuroscience.”

http://thebeautifulbrain.com/

“The Beautiful Brain explores the latest findings from the ever-growing field of neuroscience through monthly long-form essays, reviews, galleries, short-form blog posts and more, with particular attention to the dialogue between the arts and sciences. The site explores questions of creativity, the mind of the artist, and the mind of the observer that modern neuroscience is beginning to address. Instances where art seeks to answer questions of a traditionally scientific nature are also of great interest, and for that reason you will hear from artists as well as scientists at The Beautiful Brain.”

One such artist featured, Greg Dunn, “is a visual artist and has a Ph.D in neuroscience from the University of Pennsylvania..  Dunn’s eye seems attuned to the dazzling beauty packed into the cellular architecture of each square millimeter of our nervous system, architecture that repeats itself all around us.”

I felt the website somewhat relevant in that it discusses the functions of the brain through the lens of art and integration.  It just so happens my friend is the curator of a show, partnering with the “Neuro Beauro,” in conjunction with the 2013 Human Brain Mapping Conference in Seattle, WA. 

I really enjoyed reading about the functions of the left and right brain.  Ideas such as, “The left hemisphere handles what is said; the right hemisphere focuses on how it’s said.”

“The left hemisphere specializes in text; the right hemisphere specializes in context.”

I took a lot away from Freedman’s reading this week, as well, with her thoughts on curriculum design and it’s relationship to visual culture.  She states, “Theorizing visual culture in educational settings, designing and implementing education plans, and evaluating art educational programming are all part of the social process by way of which we present the many aspects of visual forms of representation to students.”

What stuck out to me most in this chapter was Patrick Slattery’s idea that “curriculum expresses autobiography because it is created by people who leave parts of themselves in their teaching and writing.  He suggests that curriculum should focus on issues of the self, because that is where learning takes place, and that educators can use autobiography to better understand educational conditions.  Slattery’s understanding of curriculum is an example of renewed awakening to the aesthetics of education.”  The joining of autobiography and curriculum lead me to thinking of the relationship of autobiography and artwork itself.  In the same way people leave parts of themselves in their teaching and writing, artists leave parts of themselves in their artwork.  This fact alone allows viewers to glean meaning and authenticity from an artwork, as the artist is communicating who they are as an individual by creating a personal work, as well as communicating ideas about the collective identity of humanity, as he/she is a human expressing ideas of the human condition.  Each artwork has in imprint of individual and collective autobiography.  To discuss this idea further, that imprint is specific to the context of the culture in which it was created.  In other words, the imprint on the artwork can only be seen in its true form if one is looking through the lens of the cultural context of which the artist inhabited.