• Just Let's Start and See What Happens
  By Onelia, CSUDH

  

  Onelia was working with children in the community. The unit shapes produced a large 12" by 12" piece that wouldn't fit into jeanne's scanner, so she had to scan in two separate pieces. Somehow the two separate pieces ended up like this on one of the images. We liked it. Collaborative art from which a story can grow:

  Once there were two separate groups of children that played together. No one in either group knew anyone in the other. One day they both went for a game of soccer at the same park. A yellow triangle from one group saw a silver circle, from the other group.

  "Gee, he's different from me," said the yellow triangle."
  "Yeah, but he kind of looks like me," said his friend, the silver rectangle."
  "Yeah, he does. We're different. But in some ways we're kind of alike, too."

  And so they spent the afternoon happily playing soccer together. Different and alike. Nice combination.

  Now, Onelia and the children will tell us much more exciting stories as they consider differences and similarities, and how to merge them in a land of diversity. Maybe the stories will necessitate adding a circle or a square. Easily enough done. Public, collaborative art can grow with our discourse. Perhaps other stories will come from Onelia's work, scanned properly together:

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  Onelia's Triangles

  Note the difference placement makes, and the difference made by deepening the blacks. Notice the difference when the black background is taken away. Tricks like this are easy, and make a big difference in the power of the art work. How would a pink-orange background work? Try it with the little Paint program on a PC. jeanne

• "I'm mostly triangle, but my mother's a rectangle."
  jeanne's first attempt at telling the story of exclusion with triangle unit shapes.

  

  This is another example of just starting out to see what will happen. I started out with triangles. Knowing that I wanted to illustrate difference, I was sure to add a rectangle (the flag), but didn't really have a story in mind. But a story is strongly suggested. One way to pull the story out collaboratively is to write it together face-to-face or on our Internet discussion group on social identity and diversity. Transform-dom: Open Discussion Group on Yahoo

• Fine art example: Manuel Hernández Acevedo of Puerto Rico.

  

  Many unit shapes pop out in this work. Arches, triangles, rectangles, lines. Notice how the telephone poles and wires contrast with the style of the art work. How could you use this to discuss the problem of fitting technology into focal values of a culture? (Philosophy of Technology: The Empirical Turn, by Hans Achterhuis, 2001, Indiana Univ. Press). Focal values, or what's really important, work well with image-making and collaborative development.

• Depicting the Aggressive Onslaught of Technology
  jeanne's first attempt at using the lines of active technology superimposed on an image of primitive tranquility taken from an old Hawaiian photo on Surfing for Life.

  

  Using technology lines more integrally by running them throughout the foreground and in dark, non-contraasting colors de-emphasizes the immediate ugliness imposed upon both the urban and rural environments by technology's infrastructure needs. Orange was used to depict the original primitive tool for catching fish. The subtler blue lines, and the triangles they suggest are nonetheless a disturbing decentering of the image as it once might have been. The halo represents the ambiguity of technology's role as tool or imperial sovereign. The fisherman has the halo here. Technology has made a few attempts though to capture it and rule through it. Where would I put the halo if I were to imagine it belonging to technology? And that calls to mind Foucault's fear of disciplinary power and control. Technology is everywhere. It sees us; but we cannot always see it.

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CONTINUE TO
Section 3: Models and Instructions