Look Beyond One Right Way

A review of a new book about the US artist, Alexander Calder, described how he employed physics in the service of art. Reading this, I was reminded that my sister, who has an art major degree. looked at a drawing of the coronavirus and saw a similarity with the look of the Times Square ball that drops on New Year's.

     Science, it seems, also could be employed in the service of art. Picture how the motion of constantly copying genes could be expressed the way Calder incorporated motion in his art.

     Every field can be expressed in art. If employees were encouraged to design and decorate their cubicles, the idea of dressing to express on casual Fridays might lead to occasional happy hour tours of minimal and exuberant art in employee spaces. Consider the variety of ways food can be arranged on a plate; how politicians around the world express their policies in the green, pink, yellow and red-white-and-blue graphics on their campaign posters; and how the pattern of interstate roads moves the eye across a country like the lines on a Mondrian painting.

     "(I)t is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self," said British psychoanalyst, Donald Winnicott. Viewed this way, laughing at and ignoring an individual's creative spirit stifles growth and development. Hitler may not have been a great artist, but wouldn't humanity have been better off if he expressed himself in art rather than in creating the "final solution"?

     Family life could be much fuller and much more satisfying, if each member were encouraged to create. It is easy to laugh at a relative's out-of-the-box ideas and creations, but during the coronavirus lockdown, we have seen the joy of family members taking videos, dancing, singing, playing musical instruments, taking photos out of windows, painting, cooking, reciting original poems, sewing colorful protective masks, and tailoring outfits for pets. Some people have the confidence to never doubt themselves, but being laughed at is enough to discourage the creativity of most.

       Finally, observation helps nurture creative expression the way my sister connected seeing  a drawing of COVID-19 with the Times Square ball. When Calder awoke on the deck of a ship one day, he saw a red sunrise on one side and a silvery moon on the other. In the solar system, he realized two very different phenomena are related, just as the moving parts and shapes on his mobiles would   be connected later.

     Encouraging observation and nurturing creative expression beyond one already established right way of doing something can benefit self, family and maybe even humanity.

Follow the Interest

Just as criminal investigators are advised to "follow the money," "follow the interest" is good advice for those hoping to engage young people in world affairs.

     A variety of interests might draw a student to Africa. Consider fashion. What inspired Ruth E. Carter, the costume designer for Black Panther,  the comic book-inspired movie kids are eager to see? Like Carter, who studied African tribal patterns, colors, and silhouettes, fashion conscious movie goers will be inspired to think about how they too could incorporate the Ndebele neck rings Okoye wears in the movie into their outfits.

     Students interested in film careers won't think twice about casting people of color from any country in the movies they plan to make. They know Lupita Nyong'O, a young Nigerian-raised star won an Academy Award for her supporting role in 12 Years a Slave.

     Fashion designers-in-the-making also have seen Nyong'O modeling African-inspired clothes in Vogue. The magazine also introduced them to Nigeria and the Lagos-based Maki Oh, the designer responsible for the dress Michelle Obama wore on a trip to Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2013.

     Paul Simon's interest in music caused him to sing with Mama Africa Miriam Makeba in South Africa in 1987 and to record his Graceland album with South Africa's Ladysmith Black Mambazo choral group. The British hip hop grime of Ghana's Stormzy draws the current generation of music trend setters to Africa.

     With the Olympics approaching on February 9, student downhill skiers, cross-country skiers, bobsledders, figure skaters, and speed skaters might want to learn more about what produces champions in Austria, Germany, Russia, Canada, and Sweden.

     Those interested in soccer, already follow their favorite sport in Barcelona, Madrid, Manchester, and Brazil.

     And if students like food and cooking, those interests can take them anywhere in the world.  

   

Artists Invited to The Daydreamers Club

A young friend of mine, Hawwaa Ibrahim, who was a finalist on the "Project Runway, Jr." television show, is inviting artists working in any medium (fashion, art, dance, music, drama, writing, photography...) to share their stories in a social media "Daydreamers Club."

     Ms. Ibrahim believes art is not a waste of time. In fact, she is of the opinion that the stories artists can tell about their refusal to give up, when they encounter obstacles and setbacks in their artistic endeavors, might provide the inspiration people in all fields need to make the world a better place. She thinks there is a lot to learn from the creative minds that know how to put their imaginations to work overcoming adversity.

     Those artists willing to share stories about how their artistic life began and how they have maintained focus despite difficulties, can go to hellohawwaa@gmail.com. In the subject line, write "I Dream in Daytime, and provide your name, email address, and a description of your artistic work, so Hawwaa can contact you.

   

   

Music and Art Join Laughter as Best Medicine

Realize it or not, when members of the audience receive shaker eggs to participate in making music at Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, they're receiving a dose of health-giving medicine.

     According to a two-year study based on interviews and case studies, activities, such as percussion music making and conducting, drawing, painting, and writing poetry help keep people well, relieve symptoms, improve sleep, and aid recovery from depression to chronic pain to strokes.

     An article in The Guardian by Mark Brown (July 19, 2017) said British ministers reacted to the report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arts, Health and Wellbeing by noting the per patient cost savings from a decrease in medical consultations and hospital admissions credited to the arts.

     Artist Grayson Perry said, "Making and consuming art lifts our spirits and keeps us sane."

Soft Power

What changes minds, governments, behavior? The idea that a trainer can get a horse to do something by using a carrot that rewards or a stick that hurts translates into soft power and hard power. In international relations, hard power takes the form of tanks, bombs, drones, assassinations, prison sentences, torture, and economic sanctions. Soft power can defeat an enemy without firing a shot or sending anyone to a dungeon.

     Young men from Loyola University in Chicago, Illinois, began kicking a soccer ball around in Andahuaylillas, Peru. Children heard the familiar sound and joined them. Adults came to watch and some also joined the game. The Loyola students were in a program exploring the way sports can be used as a means of youth and community development. Communities determined to prevent gangs from destructive activity during summer vacations can beef up policing and arrests or they can work with businesses to provide summer jobs and with parks to leave the lights on for midnight basketball games.

     Why were a female music group, a Ukrainian filmmaker, and a blogger sent to Russian prisons and penal colonies? Why are Hong Kong book sellers in Chinese prisons? Authoritarian states recognize the soft power of music, film, social media, and books to overthrow repressive governments.

     Fashion, video games, educational systems like Montessori or Suzuki, and ethnic foods also spread values and cultural influence.

     Of the millions of people who have visited Disney theme parks, few have noticed the employees dressed as costumed characters when they enter or exit the park. The doors they used are in dim, uninviting alcoves away from the fun, excitement, and bright lights designed to entertain visitors.

     The bottom line is: recognize the impact, influence, and power of soft power.

(You can find additional information about the influence of films and soft power in the earlier posts: "You Oughta Be in Pictures" and "What Moscow Could Learn from History."

   

Coming Soon: Global Citizen Festival

Saturday, September 24, 2016 is the day to be at the Global Citizen Festival. (MSNBC will carry the festival on TV. Check local listings.) On the Great Lawn at New York's Central Park, the agenda will include solutions to world problems, especially poverty, and performances by Rihanna, Kendrick Lamar, Demi Lovato, and Metallica.

    Global Citizen is a worldwide effort that mixes music with actions to support girls and women, health, education, food and hunger remedies, water and sanitation, and the environment.

     Speaking at the UN General Assembly on September 20, 2016, President Obama echoed the ideas of Global Citizen. He repeatedly said young people throughout the world have unprecedented access to information and ways through social media to express themselves. They care about the environment, and they are more tolerant than previous generations of differences in religion, race, sex, sexual orientation, and ethnic and historical backgrounds. Technology and their own eyes enable them to see the contrast between poor and rich, slums and skyscrapers. They want greater control over their own lives and to share the benefits of free trade and advances in technology. They are not satisfied to let 1% of humanity control the world's wealth.

      When global citizens take actions (emails, tweets, petition signatures, phone calls) to fight poverty and worldwide injustices, they earn points they can redeem for tickets to attend shows, events, and concerts, such as Bieber's Helsinki on Sept. 26, 2016 and Sia's in Boston on October 18, 2016. Details are available at globalcitizen.org.

   

Back to School with a New Perspective

Preparing for a new school year probably doesn't require the purchase of a harmonica, paint brush, and Thesaurus. Yet Einstein played the violin, Samuel Morse painted portraits, and Galileo wrote poems.

     Study after study shows the value of the arts. Playing music asks the brain to coordinate the notes eyes see and two hands play, to listen, and to recognize rhythms. Add dance and the whole body gets involved. In the process of drawing, painting, sculpturing, and writing stories, essays, and poems, students tap into their creative juices, express emotions, and discover their individual identities. Mistakes are made and corrected just as they are in every subject and life.

     Music, art, and literature connect students to each other, their communities, and the world. One study, for example, found that children who participated in a dance group for eight weeks were less prone to anxiety and aggression compared to a control group. At the same time, the arts promote the creativity and innovation needed to deal with a rapidly changing global economy.

     Consider how one kindergartner used an art project to discover there were two ways to find the total five. While one student had shown five by taking a photo of two red scissors and three blue scissors, another saw five, because the direction of four scissors pointed left and one pointed right. Math and science thrive on the same unexpected discoveries and strategies celebrated in the arts. Is there another way to do something is a question that has produced a Salvador Dali and a Thomas Edison.

Education for All or One?

Is it possible to reconcile the two approaches to education that are at odds these days?

     On the one hand, there is an emphasis on using standardized tests to evaluate students, teachers, and schools. Even writing assignments require a student to follow a standardized five paragraph format that begins with a thesis followed by three paragraphs presenting arguments to justify the thesis and a conclusion.

    The other approach to education recognizes everyone's need for decent housing, health care, food, clean water, a certain amount of sleep (See the blog post, "Sleep Deprived Test Scores."), and, yes, education. But this approach also sees individuals with different abilities and argues that setting the same goals for every student is a waste of time, money, and energy. It unfairly blames students for not working hard enough and/or not wanting success badly enough. Yong Zhao, a professor of education at the University of Oregon, also observes that what is not measured, such as creativity, sports ability, and music, unfortunately becomes unimportant.

     Researchers David Z. Hambrick, Fernanda Ferreira, and John M. Henderson point to skilled Olympic sprinters who were faster than competitors even before they were trained. They found the popular idea of a certain amount of deliberate practice only explained 26% of the variation in the skill of expert chess players and novices; 21% of variation in musical skill, and 18% of the variation in skill in sports. Genes could explain up to half the variations between experts and less skilled performers. Innate talent makes a big difference.

     In response to these differences, some have suggested engaging students in more project-based opportunities, where they can put their individual interests and talents to work creating products and services that satisfy particular needs. Through interactions with other cultures, students also can broaden their interests and discover they are good at foreign languages or new styles of painting, music, or dance (See the blog post, "Introduce Disadvantaged Kids to the World.")

     Recognizing the different abilities of students leads to the idea of evaluating students differently in ways that do not involve standardized tests. Software might be used to: 1) monitor day-to-day answers students give in math and reading assessments and in video games that test higher order thinking, 2) provide feedback, and 3) allow students to make corrections and proceed at their own paces.

     Findings that social and emotional qualities account for at least half of a student's long-term chances of success also suggest the value of learning to interact with each other during periods of undirected free play (See the earlier blog post, "Learning Can Be Fun,") and using something like the Gallup student poll to help each student understand how important his or her maturity is.

     Finally, standardized tests given on a few days during a student's education are no substitute for portfolios that look at multiple factors, such as a student's projects, group presentations, teacher-created assessments, and technology proficiency. Nor can an occasional standardized test measure the graduation rates, demographic information, and future student employment that indicate how well a school is accommodating various student abilities.

Communicate without Words

It started with iconic computer symbols and emoticon faces made out of punctuation marks, like :-). Then, Japanese emoji (e for picture; moji for character) were used to communicate on social networks, write books, and create digital dictionaries. Now, artist Yung Jake has used emojis from emoji.ink to "draw" portraits of celebrities.

      According to trendwatching.com, Mauritius-based app company, Oju Africa, has created 56 African emojis for Android users that also can be used with apps, such as WhatsApp and Twitter. For cat lovers, free cat emojis are said to be available from free.motitags.com. One caution, sometimes viruses are in free emojis.

     Even before computers, however, people around world have been communicating with music. (See the earlier blog post, "Music of the Sphere.") In any language, the slightest musical mistake sounds awful. Across borders, music has been shown to have the ability to identify children who are in danger of falling behind in key language and math skills. Neuroscientists and neuropsychologists, such as Ani Patel and Nadine Gaab, have found that the mental demands required to play a musical instrument condition the brain to perform well in other areas: language comprehension, memory, attention, precision, switching between tasks, emotional maturity, and persistence. Maybe all diplomats should be required to study music, which seems to enhance the brain's networks for performing other tasks, like listening to each other in any language.

I Made This Myself

"Don't you love it when a plan comes together?" That saying John "Hannibal" Smith used to use on the "A Team" television show expresses the feeling I got when I read about the MakerMovement that encourages children to build what they imagine and crowdfunding by a Kickstarter, RocketHub, or Kiva. Since there is a way for anyone to find investors, anyone in the world who has an idea for a new app, 3D printer creation, programmable device, or, what one visionary has proposed, an automated factory on the moon, now has an opportunity to raise the money needed to make an innovation a reality.


     In an interview conducted by station KQED (kqed.org) in Northern California, Dale Dougherty, CEO of MakerMedia and editor of MAKE magazine, told how he began promoting hands-on learning at a Maker Faire in 2006 and later at MakerCon conferences. He is devoted to the idea that tinkering with the tools and materials for making things can be fun.

     Project Zero, a research study developed by Harvard's Graduate School of Education and tested by classroom teachers in Oakland, California, aims to inspire students to be curious about the designs that make things and nature work. When students looked at a pencil and a snail, they began to ask questions, not only about how they worked, but also what kind of designs could help them do a better job. Some youngsters even suggested ways to make life better for the snail. And there was a crossover to discover the new words needed to describe a design process and to defend ideas of how things are made.

     Since schools can't do everything, there is a greater role for parents, childcare, Boys and Girls Clubs, 4H, community centers, church youth groups, and scouting programs. They can provide the things kids need to help them create, perform, and learn: blocks, LEGOs, Tinker Toys, Erector Sets, computers, 3D printers, pottery wheels, found objects, cameras, watercolors, easels, musical instruments, a stage, and garden plots. It's rather expensive, but, for $16.95 per month, tinker.kiwicrate,com/inside-a-crate will send students, 9 to 16+, a hands-on STEM (science, engineering, technology) inspired maker project.

    Making all kinds of materials available to students helps them discover new possibilities. That's reason enough to provide a place to cook, bake, sew, make jewelry, and knit. Inspired by puffy sourdough and flatter pizza dough an artist combined them and twisted, carved, and painted them into what became an octopus sculpture. A businessman inspired children to create sculptures out of the shredded documents he dumped into a pail of water.

     According to experiments at Hanyang Cyber University in South Korea, involving the body in learning also helps improve memory needed in any subject. When hands manipulate objects, for example, the brain has more cues to remember what was learned. When my mother was a math consultant for the Chicago Public School System, the first thing she did when she visited a school was observe what manipulative devices were in use. If she saw few or none, her next step was to try to find the supply room or closet where they were kept, because she knew that after the Russians sent up Sputnik, the federal government funded purchases of many such devices to aid learning math. I remember seeing one of my favorites, a scale that allowed kids to balance numbers on one side with those on the other. A big "5", for example, would equal a little "2" and "3" on the other side.

      Earlier blog posts have related ideas. See "Transform Spaces into Creative Places," "Back to the Land," "Tin Can Art," and "Global Drawing Power."

Music of the Sphere

Music, as I write about it here, is not the "music of the spheres" used in the Medieval sense that the Sun, Moon, and planets emitted a harmony of inaudible hums,  but it is the music of our earthly sphere that transcends national boundaries.

     The Gangnam Style of South Korea's PSY and the earlier popularity of the Spanish Macarena testify to music's universal appeal. How often we see Mexico's Mariachi bands in movies and music videos! TIME magazine (January 28, 2013) noted that U.S. musician, Sixto Rodriguez, recently learned that his recordings were as popular in South Africa as those of Bob Dylan and the Beatles. Canadians, Justin Bieber and Carly Rae Jepsen, have no doubt they are popular in the United States.

     Listening to Mozart may or may not help children mature or develop a higher IQ, but music definitely can transport young listeners to different cultures. New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art store (store.metmuseum.org) sells a "Global Glowball" that enables children six months and older to light up and play a regional song when they touch one of 39 areas on the globe. Babies also can shake their rattles to the Latin rhythms of the samba, cha cha, rumba, salsa, and bossa nova, and they can fall asleep listening to a lullaby passed down from immigrant ancestors. Later, they can learn to play an instrument according to the method developed by Japanese musician, Shinichi Suzuki, polka around the house, and play musical chairs to Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite" or the South African township rhythms on Paul Simon's "Graceland."

     Just as we did, children can learn to identify orchestra instruments by listening to a recording or live performance of "Peter and the Wolf" by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. Kids also can listen to 10 classic children's songs on their own wind-up Fisher-Price Record Player, recommended for children 18 months and older and available at YoungExplorers.com. Nowadays, they even might to learn to play instruments from other countries. For a Jamtown bag of fair trade world music instruments the whole family can play, go to multiculturalkids.com. Or check out the list of pan flutes sold by boliviamall.com, the global music gift basket of a hand drum, flute, tambourine and ju-ju seed shaker from SERRV (serrv.org/1-800.422.5915) or the rainsticks, maracas, and didgeridoos at musiciansfriend.com.

     Children also can play music on homemade instruments, like those spoons that can bang out rhythms on pots and pans and combs that serve as harmonicas when covered with tissue paper. In the news 9/20/2013 was the variety of bottles someone in Copenhagen uses to play Mozart. TIME magazine (May 27, 2013) mentioned that astronaut Don Pettit had made a didgeridoo out of an International Space Station vacuum cleaner hose. TIME also reminded us that globalization may be only the first stop in the universe, since Chris Hadfield, from the International Space Station, serenaded Earth with David Bowie's "Space Oddity."

    Music can bring people together around the world. After years when the Taliban banned music in Afghanistan, concert goers in Washington, D.C. and New York City recently had an opportunity to hear boys and girls playing traditional and other instruments together in the 48-member Afghan Youth Orchestra. When traveling around the world, be on the lookout for museums that are devoted to musical instruments. I was surprised to read that there is A World of Accordions Museum in Superior, Wisconsin, that not only features accordions from Europe, Japan, and Africa but also houses the piano, organ, guitar, and accordion method books by Willard "Bill" Palmer that have been translated into 17 languages. You can read more about this interesting museum at museum.accordionworld.org.

     When my daughter was young, I remember reading that a good ear for music indicates a child may find it easy to pick up languages. In case there is something to that, you might want to go to the blog post, "How Do You Say?" to pick up some ideas for introducing youngsters to foreign languages.