The Arts - As an Area of Knowledge

So when you think of the words "art" or "artist" what adjectives come to mind?
Mad, crazy, insane...
Well, OK, so the rest of this presentation will be in Italian.
Slide 1:

Alessandro immediately provides: That's Spanish, not Italian! Gracias, mi amigo!

So let's figure out what The Arts - as an Area Of Knowledge is all about.

In your TOK guide, you would have to look for them ....

And having found it, let's take another look at the larger picture. What does this piece of art, called the TOK diagram mean to you?

So, as Abhinav informs us all, the Knower is at the centre of it all. And who is this Knower? Albert Einstein...? OK, who else... great, it's all of us.

At the centre, stand I, and here is my perspective on what this picture shows: there are these two filters through which knowledge comes to me - the first filter are the four ways of knowing; the second filter are the Areas of Knowledge. The first filter helps me, the Knower, to process the world; the second filter puts everything into easy-to-bite pieces.

Whatever I think, feel, speak... everything is guided by these influences. Am I saying that nothing I think, feel or say is original, that everything is decided by all of this, that I am a mere puppet in these hands? Yes, I guess I am...

For some very odd reason, a whole lot of areas are clubbed together as The Arts. Why this is done, I don't really know...

And since the Arts - all of the above clubbed together somewhat randomly - don't restrict themselves to any particular language, let's us continue this session in French.

"Life is very nice," he says, superciliously... but without art even life has no form. But what, really, is art?
Let's examine each of the following points in our TOK groups:

What one person finds meaningful, another may feel is meaningless. Kanak and Prerna lead the way with a few strokes of the brush on canvas. Abhinav and Aakanksha wonder about symbolic meanings in visual art and theatre. Alessandro imbues cuisine with a soul and is able to see beauty in a solitary spot. Sonal, Samia and Anand expatiate on the diverse meanings [or meaninglessness] of the Arts.

And alas, even meaningful art or art presentations have to bow to the dictates of time... so we break for five days and resume our discussion on Monday, 4 April...

ADDED ON MONDAY, 4 APRIL 2011: 3.30 P.M.


To continue, we consider the following:

Feedback from the group discussions:
Vidyut/Madhav: art is something that the individual perceives; it evokes a feeling
Akhil/Sayuj: there are many different views of art - for me body building is an art; the emotion in a piece of art depends on what you think the emotion is; art is about self-control; technology and art do go hand in hand - therefore we have photography as a form of art; new forms of art are being formed every day.
Antalya/Shruthi: art has many functions - what is happening in Japan could be photographed by someone and shared in order to inform others.
The Big Debate on whether "information" can be called "art" with Adi, Samia and Kanak leading it.
Technology can enhance art - however, one shouldn't go overboard with it.
Ankit/Arushi: art binds people together; patriotism is promoted - especially through movies; art helps you to escape from worldly problems; it helps you to relate to your life, change your view [contributed by Abhinav]; plays like the Doll's House changed perspectives; technology can be used to edit others' ideas, so what happens to originality?
In response to the last question: Sonal - even when editing I still add my insight, my ideas, my creativity. Adi was of the view that editing itself is an art [I think, in retrospect, that he was talking specifically about film editing due to the example he gave - and certainly, one could call this a skill, but would that make it an art?]

As you can see from these discussions - and how intensely some of you disagreed with each other - there are different perspectives possible on every issue, and each of those perspectives is equally valid. If you approach a topic like a debater, you are quite likely to completely miss the TOK point in it. There are claims and there are counter-claims; even if you believe more in one or the other, an effective TOK approach would be to examine both for merits and fallacies. Right now, through this discussion, you are able to experience just how unstable the ground can be. This is, experientially, what TOK asks you to do: question absolutes, wonder about so-called "truths", allow paradigm shifts to broaden your understanding.


Theory of Knowledge being, as it is, a discipline in which we are encouraged to ask more questions and download less answers, I leave you with a few questions:

And finally, to acknowledge my one and only source:

Tyger's First SLC

For the uninitiated, as I was till a couple of weeks ago, SLC stands for "student-led conference"... Ahhh, I know, still pretty cryptic. Let me explain...


First, Tyger took me through his folder. It was full of work that described what he had done through various Units of Inquiry.

Too much information for adult brain... Tyger explains what he's been up to.

  

Then he showed me the boards which further described the work undertaken during the UOIs.

"We must not throw away non-degradable waste"



And finally, the games... verb dumb charades!

This I can relate to - GAMES!




Guess the word, Tyger!

So, I concluded, this is how it works. The children not only take ownership for their learning, but also take on the task of educating their parents on what they have been up to.

There was a great deal of excitement. The build up had been tremendous, the formality of the occasion drilled into each one of them. So, although he was conscious of how strange it was to introduce me formally to his teacher, he did so with panache!

For the past two days he asked me several times, "Which games will you choose to play?" There were two literacy games and two numeracy games. "Can't we play all of them?" I wanted to know. "No, you have to choose one from each." Drat.... I would've skipped the debrief happily and gone onto the games bit.

But educated I was. There was stuff on waste and what NOT to throw away [with dawning light on why the house has every packet, every box, every everything that would normally head into a dustbin carefully preserved for "recycling"]. I also found out that the human heart can keep beating even when taken out of the body... uhhhh! that's one visual that I don't want to carry.

And, ultimately, that paper is non-degradable. We recycle that too :) therefore...

Tyger, we learnt, had been a "thinker" and a "communicator". For a few moments I felt glad that "writer" is not one of the IB Learner Profile attributes [phew!]. In his adorable joined-together words Tyger had written much about his process, understood in his reflection sheet that his time management skills need improvement, and that he needed to be more organized about research and journal writing. His simple solution was, "I need to learn cursive writing. Then I will be able to write faster." He was suitably impressed that I could read his teacher's comments which were in the above-mentioned cursive writing. His mathematical calculations were impressive to me - questions that I shot at him were answered in a jiffy.

In a word, the interaction was ENCHANTING!

Photo credits: Ms Shilpa Nautiyal, Form Tutor, Grade 2

Horse Constructionism

Image - white canvas spread out on the table. Slight tang of the hot glue melting. Needle and thread in hand. The only sound in the room is the ticking of the wall clock.

It is about 8.30 p.m. and I am working alone in the art room, creating the "body" for the horse puppet. I have been working for about an hour, first cutting the cream-coloured canvas, then stitching it together strategically, and shortly, I will hot-glue down the seams.

And this is when it dawns on me, the question of puppets and puppeteers and who is creating whom. Is this a puppet that I am creating or am I a puppet being created as I create this? The thought doesn't go away. So who is the puppeteer/maker – psycho-social constructs that are mindlessly passed from generation to generation or contemporary to others? What, after all, is “joy”? Is it just a rush of adrelanin you feel when something happens [or you see something] that you have been programmed to view in a “positive” way? What is hurt? Is it a rush of adrelanin you feel..... “negative” way? Boil it down to the purely physical, that is all that it is – joy, pain, fear, nostalgia, anger – chemicals being released into your blood stream that make your brain tell you that you are “feeling” something... If you were blindfolded and handed a cube of ice, and told that you were holding a burning coal, you would feel a burning sensation in your hand, not cold... what makes you “feel” is what your brain tells you that you are feeling. If you were to observe all of this objectively, you might begin to wonder about what exactly it is [or is not] – and that of course leads you to wonder who decided [when, where and why] what a person is supposed to be feeling, and indeed who made the value judgement of good/bad, beautiful/ugly....

Finally, the thought strikes me: there's not a thought anywhere in here that is truly original/orginally created by me. A long-ago admonition echoes from memory banks: even the Rebel is conforming to the Rebellion. Then this funny story that dropped into the inbox a couple of days ago:

There is an old story about the U.S.S. Enterprise that was travelling along the Eastern seaboard. It saw a light in front and thought that the ship was going to collide with the other ship. So the Enterprise sent a signal for the other ship to travel in a different direction. "We are the U.S.S. Enterprise and you are on our course. Please go south."

A message came back, "We cannot move."

A second message was sent. "We are the U.S.S. Enterprise. If you do not move, we will collide."

Another message came back. "Sorry, we will and cannot move."

A last message was sent. "We are the mighty U.S.S. Enterprise. If you do not change course, we will destroy you--guaranteed."

The message came back: "We are the lighthouse. Your choice."

 ----

 Too often we want others to change when it is up to us to change OUR course.**

There is wisdom in this, of course. A fairly conventional wisdom that depresses pretentiousness towards change in general. But who, really, amongst all of us, is really able to believe and indeed follow such wisdom. For, if we did, none of us would ever set out to "change the world". But even as we do set out to try to do that, what are we trying to achieve? Why is my world view better than that of anyone else's? Is it really less harmful for the future of the world, or is that only MY PERCEPTION of the situation? What led, actually, to uprisings all over Western Asia - to throw off shackles, of corruption, dysfunctional systems...? Or pure self-interest to bring in better prospects for oneself - the narrow confines of improving one's lot in life in the garb of a larger goal more acceptable perhaps due to its objective largesse?

Now it dawns on me that perhaps if I shared this with anyone, they would believe I was sinking into some form of insanity - a disconnection from reality, from the materialistic, to a realization shakily peeping over the horizon that here and now, the whole idea of illusions, maya, is far more appealing than the real and the concrete. Because the concrete choices are limited to either being a puppet of some unknown, dispassionately objective puppeteer only interested in maintaining the status quo, or being the puppet of some unknown, dispassionately objective puppeteer only interested in anarchically changing the world order.

That these are all illusions is the third and only choice to maintain a sort of insane sanity. For it appears to be an impossibility, another illusion, or perhaps a self-delusionary tactic, to believe that one can be one's own puppeteer.

I do not wonder that the only person I shared some of these thoughts with maintained a stoic silence through cyberspace. 

**Source:

http://www.MarvinMarshall.com

Volume 11 Number 3, March 2011

Not Just Another Apple Story

One of my kids, Deus, sent me this story today with the stern injunction:

Must read this story  

Hi,

Food for thought - for all of you

good lesson.

A teacher teaching Maths to a five-year-old student asked him, "If I give you one apple and one apple and one apple, how many apples will you have?" Within a few seconds the student replied confidently, "Four!"
The dismayed teacher was expecting an effortless, correct answer (three). She was disappointed. "Maybe the child did not listen properly," she thought. She repeated, "My boy, listen carefully. If I give you one apple and one apple and one apple, how many apples will you have?"
The student had seen the disappointment on his teacher's face. He calculated again on his fingers. But within him he was also searching for the answer that would make the teacher happy. His search for the answer was not for the correct one, but the one that would make his teacher happy. This time hesitatingly he replied, "Four…"
The disappointment stayed on the teacher's face. She remembered that this student liked strawberries. She thought maybe he doesn't like apples and that is making him lose focus. This time with an exaggerated excitement and a twinkle in her eyes she asked, "If I give you one strawberry and one strawberry and one strawberry, then how many you will have?"
Seeing the teacher happy, the boy calculated on his fingers again. There was no pressure on him, but a little on the teacher. She wanted her new approach to succeed. With a hesitating smile the student enquired, "Three?"
The teacher now had a victorious smile. Her approach had succeeded. She wanted to congratulate herself. But one last thing remained. Once again she asked him, "Now if I give you one apple and one apple and one more apple how many will you have?"
Promptly the student answered, "Four!"
The teacher was aghast. "How my boy, how?" she demanded in a slightly stern and irritated voice. In a voice that was low and hesitating young student replied, "Because I already have one apple in my bag."
Moral of the Story:
When someone gives you an answer that is different from what you expect, don't think they are wrong. There maybe an angle that you have not understood at all. You will have to listen and understand, but never listen with a predetermined notion.

Regards

Deus Bajaj

Having spent part of the afternoon with a group of kids from the same class - whose rehearsal had finished early and who wanted to spend time with me - or, if the truth be told, pull my leg relentlessly about my [dreadful] violin recitals - I did not dare disobey the injunction! This group was the one that taught me a great deal about a lot of things when I, first as their year coordinator, then as a form tutor, had the most brilliantly illuminating years of my life. As they finally left I remembered, with much fondness and a lot of nostalgia, the two years in which we grew together...

What stands out from amongst the many experiences we shared is our annual camp at Potter's Hill, Shimla.

Sometimes, I read the journal I wrote about this camp and remember everything so clearly in spite of an otherwise uncooperative data bank of memories. One evening, as they wrote their experiences down in their camp journals, the sun set gently behind them and the warm glow combined with a chilly breeze to make a heady mixture. It hit me in the gut then: all of them had to, usually, be dragged kicking and screaming to anything that even vaguely smelt of academics. But educating them could be so effortless... this effortless.

This afternoon, the "gang" made me log on to facebook and play the video of a terrible attempt at playing Annie's Song - from a year ago. We cracked up through the 2.5 minutes that the video played - roaring at the scratchy notes, the off-key ones, the louder-than-awful ones. They asked several times why I was hell-bent on destroying aesthitics forever, tried to sneak away with my violin to prevent my ever playing it again and asked whether or not I had ever had to take the violin to the hospital. They sympathized completely with Sara's general pain; and when I threatened to join the school orchestra, they promised to pay me to stay away.

Two years ago, they taught me to laugh again. When they were put in my charge, I was known to be a formidable figure in middle school, a stern, no-nonsense person to the point of being dreaded if they got on the wrong side of the law. We had set out for this camp with much trepidation, sure that a few of them would think up a lark and drown all of us in toto. However, all of us [the adults] have only the fondest memories of the camp. It was remarkable how responsible they were in the fun they had; how caring towards each other; and how innocently considerate of us.

So, really, this story from Deus is not just another apple story. It is part of my ongoing education - to learn a little each day, to love a lot, and to laugh straight from the heart.

Thanks, guys, for being there for me :)!