I have been reflecting and feeling the need for a new project to keep my #4life badge in the DS106 community. It is true that one cannot keep up the intensity of experience that comes with doing the full course for the first time. Yet, I have kept involved and creating for the last year.<\/p>\n
One of the things I notice is that I have become lazy about narrating my work and, if I am honest, lazy about giving time to the art being created by the community. This ties in for me with my other involvement in online educational communities<\/a> – how do we learn\/support the type of engagement that encourages people to join into the wonder that the web can be?\u00a0<\/p>\n And then this lands on my stream:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n I follow and get inspired by The Art Assignment <\/a>daily. I often adapt their assignments for our Daily Create<\/a>\u00a0in DS106. I have a list as long as my arm of art assignments I will try one day. \u00a0I watched Sarah talk about how to critique at a time when I was struggling with some of the dark under belly of the web – it is just not okay to threaten people’s lives and harass them because I disagree with their views. I have been shocked by what I have read<\/a>\u00a0and have written a post<\/a> to help digital storytelling students at York College to engage with these issues. None of this felt constructive enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And then this lands on my stream: The critique Assignment!<\/a>\u00a0Somebody called Joanna (update: who read this little post and reposted on the blog, thank you Joanna<\/em>)set up a Tumblr to do the very thing that Sarah suggested in the Critique episode. Joanna is on fire<\/a> and I have not been able to keep up with all her critiques – but what a great thing to do: To give time to fellow artists to explore their art. I read her manifesto<\/a> for this project and wow! I have been following since day 1 and thinking about it. I could not make the commitment to publish as regularly as she does, but surely I could do something?<\/p>\n And this morning Art on the Couch<\/a> was born. I firmly believe in the ‘show, don’t talk’ ethos of DS106<\/a>, although I do use 10 words where one would suffice most of the time. (For those of you visiting from other web spaces: DS106 is a Digital Storytelling Course<\/a> which run on the web and at various universities mainly in the US)<\/p>\n I was inspired by Joanna and Sarah, but I do not have their skill. What little I know about art critique I have picked up from learning to comment<\/a> on DS106 blog posts. I am just a beginner artist and never in my life did I think of myself as a budding art critic – it takes a lifetime to learn to do this well. I am just a psychologist playing at being an artist and loving it.\u00a0<\/p>\n I did what I do best. Google it.\u00a0<\/p>\n I have a whole lot of resources to try: I have learnt about the Percy Principles<\/a> of composition, found an awesome Prezzi<\/a> on the process critiquing art and this incredible wiki<\/a> that seems to have everything I ever needed to know about critiquing art. There are also the resources Sarah recommends and I will be publishing the transcript of her programme in the next post – it deserves study.\u00a0<\/p>\n My commitment to my DS106 fellow travellers<\/strong><\/p>\n I will limit what I do to DS106 art. I have created a submission form for you to submit stuff you want critiqued knowing that I am learning as I go.<\/p>\n Click here to go to the form and submit.<\/a><\/p>\n I found the work of a wonderful man. His name is\u00a0Marvin Bartel<\/a>\u00a0and he has a lot of material online to help people like my learn art critique. From his work I created a Google Form which I will use to do each critique. You can view<\/a> it but not edit it.\u00a0<\/p>\n My plan:<\/p>\n I think if you tag any art you want critiqued this way anywhere on the web I can find it on Google eventually. Clearly easier for me if you use the submit form.\u00a0<\/p>\n I plan to keep reading and updating resources under that tag as I go. The Google form is laborious but it take on board something I believe in strongly enough to have written a whole book about it – engagement takes time<\/a>. Sarah talks about this in her episode and Joanna is mindful of this in her manifesto when she commits to spending at least 5 minutes with the art she critiques.\u00a0<\/p>\n It is clearly possible that nobody will submit anything. I can live with that even if I shall cry daily into my coffee that my great project is bombing…So, initially I will take the Daily Create site, select random<\/a> and pick one submission from that random daily create to work with. I will do the same with the assignment bank, pick a random assignment<\/a> and select from it. (Update: jimgroom<\/a> suggested I also use our DS106 in[Spire] <\/a>website, where we submit art that inspires us from the whole of the community. I will select from there too).<\/p>\n In my ideal world other DS106 peeps will want to join in and write up critiques. I can repost anything tagged #artonthecouch here on Tumblr. if you use the same tag on twitter, I can find stuff elsewhere on the web. There is a rule if you do submit a critique you must fill in the google form <\/a>for the piece of art you are critiquing. I am doing this to make sure we show we care for our art by spending time with it and reflecting on its meaning beyond ‘interesting’.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n