Data-Driven Art
The Lesson
Students will begin to develop an agency mindset by choosing a thing/topic/mindset they would like to see changed in today’s world. This could range from the very personal to wider global concerns. As they pick a topic students will use the Three Y’s and circles of action to understand how this topic has a bigger reach. They will begin to investigate the UN’s SDGs to see how their personal topic ties to issues that are prevalent throughout the world, both far away and close to home.
Once students have chosen a topic, they will determine and ask themselves an essential question to help drive their research and data collection. Some data will be found, while some data may be collected by the students themselves in the form of surveys, connecting to local experts, etc.
These data sets will drive the students’ creation of an artwork that will bring about awareness, or even invoke action to create change. The data must in some way be present and visible in each student’s artwork.
Prep Work
To begin with students had to understand a little more about the process of using data sets to drive the visual aspects of their artwork. We did a series of warmup activities including a small set of drawings based off of activities they had participated in the day before. Each student was given a set of directions that tied to something that may have happened the day before. For example, "draw one shape for every time you checked your phone in class yesterday," or "shade in one area for each meal you ate." Students were delighted to see how different each drawing was even after being given the same set of instructions.
There are a number of artists, seen in this presentation, who work with data sets to inform their artworks. After a brief introduction, each student made a post to a class padlet about an artist from the presentation, one from a provided list, or one they found on their own.
The Artwork
Students used a worksheet and their sketchbooks to begin the process of determine their topic. They were asked to think about how their topic is an issue for themselves personally, their community, and for national/international peoples. They were also asked to brainstorm ways to take action for each level. Check out the entire unit for more details on each step of creating their impactful artworks.
The Results
Students were seriously involved from the very beginning of this unit. They were thrilled to draw attention to issues they felt did not have enough visibility in our school and wider communities. This personalization kept them invested even when the work got hard. And the work got hard. Many students were initially ill-equipped to do community based research about their topics. It took much cajoling to get them to call local authorities on their subject to gain first-hand information. The second challenge was finding a meaningful and impactful way to incorporate the data into a visual that would capture the attention of the intended audience. The primary route of taking action in this project was to make the audience more aware of the issue at hand.
When completed students shared out their project with each other. The intention was to also host a live Twitter event opening up their works in a digital display. Unfortunately, the craziness of a pandemic year put this part of the project on hold. Here are some of the results, as well as the presentation that was to be shared.
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