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A Class kit is a slideshow presentation that can be used directly with your students. It contains warm-up strategies, focus artworks, artist quotes, discussion ideas, quick activities and questions to dig deeper into ideas.
Materials: Your students do not need any special materials for class kits besides a pencil and paper and objects you might find around you.
Structure: A class kit focuses on one main idea that is divided into sections by theme. This class kit contains three themes. Each class kit also contains an Acknowledgement of Country activity.
You can present the whole class kit, or treat each theme section as an individual presentation.
Estimated timing:
Acknowledgement of Country activity: 5-10 minutes
Each theme section: 15-30 minutes
Total: 60-120 minutes
Discussion ideas also contain three levels of discussion: the main question, a ‘discuss’ prompt to take the idea further, and an ‘extend’ prompt that incorporates more complex ideas. This way you can choose the depth of discussion suitable for your students.
Introduction
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Introduction
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STEAM = Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics.
While many may be familiar with the acronym STEM, the inclusion of Arts in STEAM recognises the importance of art-based learning in creating well-rounded cross-disciplinary approaches. STEAM reminds us that everything is connected.
In STEAM, Art plays the important role of sustaining curiosity, encouraging flexibility, and sparking innovation. It reminds us to learn from each other and our surroundings. Without creative thinking, we don’t have ideas, hypotheses or inventions.
Contemporary art and art thinking have a place in STEM: they can offer a starting point, a time to play and listen to our gut, or help us reflect and reassess.
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Introduction
This class kit is part of the STEAM and contemporary art learning resource set. It focuses on the the languages in STEAM through three main themes: ‘Not just words’, ‘Codes and representations’ and ‘Languages as lenses’.
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The many languages of STEAM
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At the MCA, we acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the traditional owners of the land and waters upon which the MCA stands. Find out what Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islands Nation or Country you are on and acknowledge the custodians of this land.
How might people have greeted each other here in the past: 10 years ago, 100 years ago, 1000 years ago?
Think of all of the ways that we greet one another in different languages.
Think about the place where you are now. What are all the ways people might greet each other in this place? These could be languages other than English, or they could even be actions or gestures.
Acknowledgement of Country
Theme 1:
NOT JUST WORDS
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Not just words
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In small groups think of as many different ways you communicate, including languages or codes that you might use in a day at school.
For example: English language, Maths symbols, music, or the hot and cold colours on a tap. Share these in a class discussion.
Discuss:
Extend:
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Marco Fusinato
Parallel Collisions 2008
Score for 2-24 performers, mixed media on paper, music stands, chairs and facsimile print of original score. Museum of Contemporary Art, purchased with funds provided by the MCA Foundation, 2015. Image courtesy and © the artist. Photograph: Jessica Maurer
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Parallel Collisions is both a graphic and a performance work and can be shown in a variety of forms. The ‘score’ is a series of collages of diverse material relating to conflict, outbursts or explosions: geophysical, social or political. The content includes sheet music, faces of terrorists, clippings from newspapers and magazines, cartoons and drawings that have been cut and reconfigured to graphically represent radiating force.
For each staging, up to 24 musicians are invited to internalise the experience of the 24 images and improvise on acoustic instruments, with each page thrown on the floor, facing upwards after it is finished.
About the artwork
Marco Fusinato
Parallel Collisions 2008
Score for 2-24 performers, mixed media on paper, music stands, chairs and facsimile print of original score. Museum of Contemporary Art, purchased with funds provided by the MCA Foundation, 2015. Image courtesy and © the artist. Photograph: Jessica Maurer
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Not just words
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Look at Marco Fusinato’s collages on the next slide.
Use materials you have on hand or your voice and body to interpret two of these collages into sounds.
Look at each collage for lines, colours, shapes and familiar objects. Do they inspire loud or soft sounds? Fast or slow noises? Melodious or jarring notes? Is there repetition in the collage? Can you see a rhythm? Can you recognise images that make sound or remind you of a sound? Follow your intuition! There are no wrong answers!
Not just words
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Marco Fusinato
Parallel Collisions (detail) 2008
Score for 2-24 performers, mixed media on paper, music stands, chairs and facsimile print of original score. Museum of Contemporary Art, purchased with funds provided by the MCA Foundation, 2015. Image courtesy and © the artist.
Not just words
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Not just words
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What choices did you make when interpreting the images as sounds?
Discuss:
Extend:
Not just words
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Languages are defined as “a system of communication used by a particular country or community”1.
How do you think languages work?
Discuss:
Extend:
Contemporary art does not have a clearly defined language or grammar. Each artist creates their own rules and uses their own codes. How might an artist decide how to create their own language?
1. Oxford Languages definition.
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Marco Fusinato, 2022, “Interview: The extremities of Marco Fusinato” Art Guide Australia
You have to understand and embrace your limitations and develop your own language in a way that works for you.
Not just words
Theme 2:
Codes and representations
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Pick a colour that represents how you feel right now.
Share your colour with others and see if you can guess each other’s feeling based on your colour choices.
Codes and representations
Discuss:
Extend:
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Look at the still image from Joan Ross’s video work The claiming of things (2012) on the next slide, or watch a snippet of the video online2.
On a piece of paper, note down all the elements from the video that you notice or recognise.
Codes and representations
2. You can view Joan Ross’s video online via the URL: https://vimeo.com/73357572
After you’ve written your list, circle the elements that stood out to you the most in the artwork.
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Joan Ross
The claiming of things (still) 2012
Single-channel digital video animation, colour, sound. Museum of Contemporary Art, donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by the artist, 2015. Image courtesy and © the artist.
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Joan Ross - 2012, MCA Website
I have started with one of my favourite John Glover paintings and have changed it around and added my own perspective on colonisation and what ‘being civilised’ is … I use fluoro as a metaphor for colonisation. I saw the influx of fluoro after 9/11 – in a way, fluoro represents a type of colonising, but also a type of fear.
Codes and representations
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In The claiming of things Joan Ross draws references from a wide variety of sources and invents her own visual language, for example, using the landscape painting The bath of Diana, Van Diemen’s Land (1837) by colonial painter John Glover as the backdrop. She uses the strategy of appropriation.
Appropriation “refers to the practice of artists using pre-existing objects or images in their art with little transformation of the original.”3 Take a moment and discuss this definition as a class.
Now look at the elements that you have circled on your list. Why do you think Joan Ross might have selected them? What purpose or meaning might they bring?
Codes and representations
Discuss:
Extend:
3. Definition from ‘Appropriation’ in Tate Art Terms. Available online at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/appropriation
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How do codes and languages change?
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Discuss:
Extend:
Codes and representations
Theme 3:
Languages as lenses
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Think of a piece of fruit. What are the different names or codes that are used to represent this fruit? List as many names or codes that you can think of.
You could think about the following:
Does it have different varieties? What is its scientific name? Do you know the word for it in another language? Is there an emoji? Does the fruit have any nicknames, or do you have a personal term you or someone you know uses? For example, in Southeast Asia some people call durian ‘the king of fruits’, or a toddler might call a banana ‘nana’.
Languages as lenses
Discuss:
Extend:
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Shirley Purdie
Goowoolem Gijam - Gija Plants 2013-16
Installation view, MCA Collection: Perspectives on place, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, 2021. Ochre on canvas. Museum of Contemporary Art, purchased with funds provided by the MCA Foundation, 2016. Image courtesy and © Shirley Pudie/Licensed by Copyright Agency. Photograph: Jessica Maurer
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Spoken by Shirley Purdie and recorded in Gija by Stephanie Rajalingam at Warmun Art Centre. English translation by Frances Kofod, October 2018.
I made these paintings about the things I saw when I was growing up. They show the things my old women told me. They are about bush food, the things we can eat in the bush, fruits like black plum and...bush honey. Others that I painted show those trees used to make artefacts like fighting sticks, digging sticks and coolamons...
I made these things for my family so that they learn from me after I leave them. They will look at these things I have made. It will be good for my descendants, for everyone, women, men and children, so that they will remember these things.
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In Goowoolem Gijam - Gija Plants (2013-16), Shirley Purdie has created a visual botanical ‘encyclopaedia’ of edible and medicinal plants that have been used by her ancestors, the Gija people. The work has been installed to reflect the heights of the plants, with the tallest trees in the top row, and the ground-dwelling or underground plants in the bottom row.
On the following two slides, take a look at one of Shirley Purdie’s paintings and a 19th Century botanical illustration by John Lindley.
Describe what you see in each image.
Languages as lenses
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Shirley Purdie
[Minyjaarrany (Black Plum Vitex glabrata) from] Goowoolem Gijam - Gija plants 2015
Ochre on canvas. Museum of Contemporary Art, purchased with funds provided by the MCA Foundation, 2016. Image courtesy and © Shirley Pudie/Licensed by Copyright Agency.
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John Lindley
(Psidium Cattleianum) from Collectanea botanica, or, Figures and botanical illustrations of rare and curious exotic plants 1821-26
London, Printed by Richard and Arthur Taylor, Shoe-Lane, sold by J. and A. Arch, 1821-1826. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.6215
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Languages as lenses
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As a class, discuss the similarities and differences between the two images.
Languages as lenses
Discuss:
Extend:
Discuss:
Extend:
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Take 4 small pieces of paper per person. Individually choose an everyday object you can see in front of you, for example, a pencil, a clock, or a book.
On each paper, quickly draw your object in the following ways (do not label your drawing):
Languages as lenses
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Languages and codes not only help us communicate, but they also create a framework to engage with ideas.
How does each of the STEAM disciplines use language to engage with and communicate an idea differently?
Discuss:
Extend:
The many languages of STEAM
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THANK YOU!
Find more information about the MCA’s STEAM Programs and Learning Resources online.
mca.com.au/learn