I was speaking with a fellow class person last week and she was mentioning that she was wondering how to make a grade three class dominated by males interested in deriving meaning from something space related. In an interesting progression of neuron firing I ended up telling her about this representation of all things Earth like on the Voyageur spacecraft. When these craft were sent into the cosmos they contained information designed to allow other beings who might happen upon them to firstly find us and secondly to understand something about us so that they would understand that we were sentient beings worthy of being contacted.
I checked all of this out when I got home. The link to all the information you would want is found at http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html. What makes this all relevant to this course is that I am beginning to make associations between aspects of the art and aspects of my life which I might not otherwise have made. While I may not yet be making progress in the acquisition of skills, developing the ability to see how the Arts assist in making things sensible is a good start.
The folks at NASA wanted to be able to educate and pass on information about the Earth and mankind to others. They decided (and here is the link) that the best way to do this was through images and sound. While some of the links from the page I note are no longer operational, it is interesting to consider the thinking behind some of the images of the earth and things on it and how they might help someone with no knowledge of the Earth to understand it. Even more interesting are the sounds chosen. Greeting spoken in 55 languages from Akkidian to Wu, images of the Earth, sounds of the Earth from wind and rain to heartbeats and laughter. Think even more closely about the music chosen and what the inclusion of Pygmy girl's initiation songs, "Johnnie B. Goode" by Chuch Barry, "Melancholy Blues" by Louis Armstrong and Beethoven's Fifth say about us as a civilization.
My point, and I think I have a point, is that when the decision was made to represent the Earth in a way that made sense and gave meaning to others, images or the visual arts and sounds and music were regarded as the best way to do this. Kind of makes you think that all of the stuff in our textbook about emotive learning and the Arts as meaning makers might have a strong base to it.
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2 comments:
Wonderful connections! Students could make their own "connection to earth" capsules, either individually or as a group. Like sending a note in a bottle into space...what would you put it in and what would those items/sounds/images say about us? A wonderful idea for an assignment that you could be the foundation of a Fine Arts or LA/communications unit.
Hi Rod
I am making similar connections between what I know and how it is expressed in art as sound, drama and visual images. I am attracted to art that has connections with ecosystems and the forest. That is probably part of what interested me in the first place.. the minature worlds in moss, the smell of the needles, the branches dancing in the wind.
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