Assignment Task
Overview
Document your process of creatively playing with and experimenting with onematerial.
Instruction
Throughout Sessions 1-3 we have used the text Encounters with Materials in Early Childhood to guide our material inquiries and help us understand materials from a conceptual viewpoint.
This task is a material inquiry. The goal of the task is to explore one material and document your process. The submission will consist of a series of images and writing showing the process and your thinking while doing it. This work must be informed by the set reading.
Artistics language
- Read the introductory chapter and the material inquiry chapters 2-5 of Pacini-Ketchabaw Encounters with Materials.
- Look at the Material Inquiry document in Session 1.
Choose one material and the chapter on it in the Encounters with Materials book. - Closely read the chapter for the material you have chosen, making notes and reflecting as you read.
- Select one other reading from the unit (either from eReserve or from within sessions 1-3) to suppor discussion of your artistic pr how it relates to communicat expression.
Material
a. Get your hands on the material.
b. Clay use actual clay, not playdough, not modelling clay. Use something as close to ‘earth’ as you can.
c. Paint any kind of paint is fine, even paint made from materials around your kitchen or home. Charcoal – you can buy artist’s charcoal, or use charcoal from a fire
d. Paper – explore the different kinds of paper available, there are more than you’d think!
Inquiry
a. Play with the material See what it can do. Use the Material Inquiry Document (from Session 1) to guide your thinking and provoke your exploration. Try to approach the material without an outcome or product in mind.
b. Use the ideas from the readings and let them influence what you do and think.
c. Document your playing and thinking as you go. You can take photographs or video. Draw. Write. Record. Collect rich documentation of your inquiry- both the physical exploration and your thoughts.
d. Consider personal, social and philosophical perspectives about the material and your experience of it and how you can communicate with and through the material.
Final documentation
1. Refine your documentation. Include th parts of your play and exploration and what you are doing thinking and feeling to ideas in the readings Make clear links referenced correctly with in text ciatation to the readings.