"Art and Fear" creativity and outlet

Feb 3  older post from my Ceramics blog #h817open

ELearning and Digital Culture

ELearning and Digital Culture 2

I seem to be asking a lot of questions in this course and I'm not very good at positing deep thoughtful answers for them. But maybe it's enough to have found some things to think about.

Currently reading a book called Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland. There are a lot of things that are sort of relevant to the idea of social media allowing us all to be creators.

They talk about the materials being neutral. What is real is what you do with them, not what you intended or wanted. "Your materials are, in fact one of the few things you can reasonably hope to control. " They argue that ultimately, the most successful artists are the most persistent. Those who are unwilling to give up making art when a public outlet for their creativity does not appear. How would this apply to the social populace as creative beings? If Facebook or Flicker went away would all these newly minted photographers stop taking pictures? Would they find a different outlet?

How much does the instant gratification of seeing and posting and feedback change the dynamic between artist and creativity?  The artist I know still review all images, think about them, think about their message, think about the technique before putting an image in a gallery or portfolio.  To do anything less cheapens the art.

If you think your work is about the tactile but most people are seeing your work on-line does that make their experience less valid? You can't control another persons reactions to your art.

First Post

why you’re studying this course:  Want a better understanding of open on-line learning and how it might be leveraged in the museum environment.

what your background is: Medical Illustrator, Museum Educator  and Collection Manager for the Human Developmental Anatomy Center at the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

I was a part of several early (10 years ago) experimental on-line learning projects teaching embryology to high school students.  Most recently I was part of the Digital Cultures and E-Learning Mooc that just finished and it was a fascinating experience.  While I'm pretty technically savvy I don't bother with social media much as it takes too much time from hands on things that, quite frankly, I'd rather be doing.  But I do see the value in it and I'd like to explore the possibilities and the balance between the real and virtual museum education environments.

 Linked-In had a great conversation on http://www.contactnorth.ca/trends-directions/evolving-pedagogy/5-ways-online-learning-enabling-change-post-secondary-education.  My artifact sort of stems from that.

It's pretty simplistic, just a Google Trends analysis of a few words related to open learning.  I was a bit surprised about the results actually.  I hadn't expected to see such a long decline in searches related to E-Learning.  Perhaps it was because the ability to deliver had not caught up with the idea of it.  To me, big jump in the last two years is showing that even though there was a long delay from conception to implementation people were waiting.  I guess advent of a set of portals, tools and probably reasonably high speed connections that make on-line learning possible for the average person.