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ERIC Number: EJ1060358
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015-Mar
Pages: 6
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0004-3125
EISSN: N/A
Engaging a Prosumer: Preservice Teachers Interrogate Popular Toys through Stop-Motion Animation
Ivashkevich, Olga
Art Education, v68 n2 p42-47 Mar 2015
Today's global digital culture not only engages young people in daily consumption of visual images, texts, and artifacts, but also provides them with the tools to actively participate in the production of imagery and narratives. Whether they post a picture on Facebook, create a blog, or make a YouTube video with their peers, they engage in what Henry Jenkins et al. (2009) termed a "participatory culture" in which the distinction between consumption and production is largely blurred. Notably, this participatory digital culture is dominated by reusing, remixing, remaking, and responding to already existing popular images, artifacts, and narratives and direct or indirect collaborations with other digital users, rather than creating unique content. This poses a significant challenge to the traditional Romantic notion of creativity as an individual originality, by highlighting the importance of cultural appropriation and collaboration in the process of artistic production. Because "prosumption" is a popular creative method that young people employ in their daily lives as digital users (Duncum, 2011; Jenkins, 2006; Jenkins, Purushotma, Weigel, Clinton, & Robinson, 2009), bringing it into the art curriculum can be engaging and relevant to students of all ages. While building collaborative, peer-to-peer "affinity spaces" (Jenkins et al., 2009, p. 9) that exist online can prove difficult in a regular school environment, where students may not have shared interests and/or access to popular sites such as YouTube and Facebook, focusing on the conceptual, aesthetic, and technical aspects of digital appropriation of popular images and artifacts can be very productive. In the author's new media class for preservice art teachers, she invited students to remake a popular toy of their choice by producing a short stop-motion animation film. Their act of remaking a toy involved its playful interrogation by creating an alternative animation script that would change this toy's dominant meaning (that is, generated by its production company). Creative interrogation strategies developed by students in the process of making their animation films included recontextualization, narrative disruption, and parody.
National Art Education Association. 1916 Association Drive, Reston, VA 20191. Tel: 703-860-8000; Fax: 703-860-2960; Web site: http://www.arteducators.org
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: Teachers
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A