Subterranean Muse

“It’s about the conveyance of something,” Mike Starn said. “We saw the subway system as a conveyance, where connections are made.”

“Tubes and things,” his brother added.

The Starns have been working on the decor and design of the South Ferry Station in Downtown Manhattan for quite some time. Their work, which caught the eye of the project planners, deals with connections and their visual representation. They mix natural imagery with these contemporary, man-made notions and engulf the viewer amidst these "tubes and things."

The branching of the imagery successfully depicts the purpose of the subway, with all travelers' departing from an identical idea, or trunk, and going their separate ways. It captures the individual while maintaining the sense of the whole.

Creativity and Mental Illness

The NYTimes included a story today on the art of Martin Ramirez, a Mexican artist who reportedly was diagnosed with schizophrenia. His self taught technique and style brought fame and appreciation. The piece centers, though, upon the argument of whether he was, in fact, mentally ill. "This weekend, the [American Folk Art Museum] is presenting a panel discussion in which historians and sociologists will explore Ramírez’s life and work, including the circumstances of his diagnosis and whether his work really reflects a mental illness."

This article brings to light an interesting obstacle facing many students with mental diagnoses: is it talent or just the diagnosis?

I teach several students whose special interests manifest in repeatedly drawing a character or image, to the extent that the word "obsessed" is thrown around lightly. One particular student draws KITT from the NBC show Knight Rider with extreme precision. His achievements are known campus-wide, with many complimenting him on his drawing skills. In the art room, however, he struggles on a consistent basis, mainly because there have been few lessons which specifically call for technical drawings of television automobiles. The issue here is most likely psychological, as his inflexibility and the resulting fragile self-confidence freeze his creativity.

On the other hand, I have a different student who enjoys building monsters from paper. He staples them together and tapes them in ragged compositions, which, to most viewers, look terribly messy and haphazard, but to the trained eye, they are some of the most beautiful expressions of form and character I could ever expect from a student.

Both students come from similar origins in their artmaking. They both have specified special interests and both are very concerned about peers' perceptions of them. The difference in these two students appears in people's reception to their work. How many people do you think have told me how talented the first student is compared to the second? The scale is tipped wholly toward the first student, who's drawings resemble what typical viewers expect from fine art: precise detail and realism. In fact, I've received mainly complaints about the second student's work, saying it's too gruesome or bulky or obstuctive.

This is clearly a case where the diagnoses of these students have helped these students, with near-obsessive attention to details and shape and form. However, it's the flexibility in thinking which leads to the more successful work of the second student.

So, I would argue that it is not the diagnosis which makes the artist, but what the artist does with the diagnosis that determines their success.

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The Vulnerable Hidden Curriculum

The Economist recently featured a piece on the psychology of litter, called "Can the Can". In the article, research was described in which people were tested based on their willingness or openness to breaking rules. The hypothesis was that, if a scene was displayed as previously-vandalized (or some manner of law-breaking), the new subjects on the scene would also be more likely to break a rule.

I was intrigued by the findings, in which it seemed that people would take their cues from their surroundings- i.e. if there was a dirty alley way, people would be more likely to litter, whereas a clean alley resulted in people's pocketing their trash. But this social normalization leaves out a key element: mental capacity of unknowing participants. This is in essence a test of the Hidden Curriculum, but there are many who cannot perceive such a system on their own.

It seems that this study makes more evident the need for explicit instruction in the Hidden Curriculum. But what I enjoy is that this showed a malleability in the decision-making of people, which is not always present in those with AS. I could foresee a person with AS staying true to their own values, even in the face of so-called peer pressure situations, like those presented in this study.

The article listed several related studies and articles, which may be reached below.
"Making Neighborhoods Safe"
"Broken Windows"

Moral Machines

It seems the military has embarked on coding our morals. These moral codes will then be programmed into autonomous (or nearly-autonomous) machines which would then act in accordance with their programming.


The article in the NYTimes, by Cornelia Dean, brings to light an interesting branch of inquiry. Mainly, how do we determine these ethical or moral criteria? Whose expertise do we trust in the matter? Which culture's codes do we apply? If we're deploying them in foreign lands, what happens when cultures clash?

The article explains that the developers are merely sparking discussion with their work, but I suspect that is a fluid interpretation. As soon as something is executable, I doubt much opposition would exist, at least in the decision-makers' minds. So what are the repercussions of such a technology?

To me, it illustrates the possible endgame of what we try to do with teaching the Hidden Curriculum in our classrooms. When it is carried to such an extent, where all possible scenarios are discussed and codified, with concrete outcomes and criteria, do we run the risk of destroying the human element of human interaction? Can it become so scripted that the chance for a clash, or spark of creativity or invention, is eradicated?

I've purchased a copy of the book cited in the article, "Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong," by Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen. I plan to read it and revisit these questions. What I'm looking for is the language used in determining right and wrong and the presence of cultural norms/stereotypes. How do these authors perceive a culture clash or moral dilemma?

"Tidying Up Art" by Ursus Wehrli

This TED Talk by Ursus Wehrli brings to light an important challenge of the artroom for students with AS. The "WHY" in art that we can't always define. This presentation has allowed us to view someone else's attempt to answer the WHY of some artworks, particularly a series of obtuse and vague modernist and contemporary artists' pieces.

By injecting a concrete organizational method to the works of Magritte, Miro, Klee, etc., Wehrli has done what I suspect many of my students do on a regular basis. When I ask them to describe what they see going on in a piece, there are many who will merely recite to me a list of items they find in the image. The verb is passive, citing no true action but merely existence.



A while back, I showed this image, by Brian Ulrich, to my students and asked what was going on. Many of my students found little of surprise in the image and simply stated, with no irony, that the man was posing with his LCD projector. The machine was an equal member of the photograph. And it seems a likely candidate for 'tidying up." What we would then get, and this could be helpful to some of my students, would be a chart of relationships from the image. We'd have the man, woman, children and projector. By piecing them apart in rows/columns, the imbalance of the machine-to-people ratio in the image may appear more easily to my students, thus filling them in on the joke.

I posed the question of "Why" to my students when we watched this TED talk, and one answer took me by surprise. An 8th grader softly explained how, for someone who doesn't like this kind or art, they could see it differently and then maybe they'd say they liked the art." I thought he hit the nail on the head! Such insight from an 8th grader! And I want to agree with him: when we're forced to look at something from a different angle, is it not so that we're better able to appreciate it from its original vantage point?

Hidden Curriculum on Linen

Today I saw this Greg Drasler image on my advisor's door. I enjoyed its tie to my work on the Hidden Curriculum. It's such a stark example of how a simple decision (in this case turning an extra 90 degrees) can isolate an individual. It brings to mind my experiences in the classroom when a student stands out for a glaring change from the norm, like asking for gloves or refusing to work in anything but clay or making every project end up looking like the same Pokemon character. It's a glitch at the time, but, like in this image, it's the straying from the norm that cements itself in my memory.

Drasler says of his work, "Knowing a painting as an object and as a site, I can understand them as environments making objects into places. To me it suggests a threshold. The perception of an object as an environment or place, a familiar state of being with both its own inertia and its own drive, thrills and confronts me as a maker, a viewer, and a subject."

Thinking about the hidden curriculum as an environment seems to be an interesting angle. I'll have to mull this one over a bit.

More from the Economic Meltdown front

Steve Lohr's piece in the NYTimes raises the red flag on the human element in financial models. It seems like he is getting to the heart of the collapse, which becomes muddled with human reactions like fear, pride, greed, or even ignorance. This flies in the face of the statistical models, which are rooted, we hope, in logic and objectivity.

As with Alan Greenspan's revelation that he had made a grave error in judgment in analyzing the markets' stability, this disregard (whether we're oblivious or knowingly ignorant) of the human factor has sown seeds of uncertainty and possible chaos. But why the disregard? Certainly it's clear now that people haven't reacted rationally to this crisis, and we're caught in what seems like a downward spiral.

Are we afraid of acknowledging the truth about the situation because it will, in turn, reveal an ugly truth about ourselves? I wouldn't put it past us. We seem to be quite comfortable with self-delusion and irresponsibility. I think about this woman in the bowling alley the other night: she had purchased a lottery ticket out of the machine in the lobby, and she won fifty dollars. She had paid five and the return was fifty. You may be able to guess what happened next... by the end of the next hour she had lost nearly all she'd originally won. She was able to disregard the terrible odds of winning big TWICE in a night and squandered her first win in hopes of a theoretical second win. For her, the second payoff would be the big one and the one worth pursuing. And I see this in our own thinking elsewhere, especially in what I hear of the markets. We trick ourselves with half-truths and faulty logic.

So how does this relate to the classroom and my students? I am confident in making the correlation from, as they say these days, Wall St to Main St. How can one teach the hidden curriculum when the human factor will always throw a wrench in the works? Is it possible to teach that we should always be ready to confront those whose actions are based on illogical risks? Can we even predict these behaviors (if we can predict them, doesn't the risk decrease?)

I'm struck by how muddy the waters are when we talk about human interactions and the hidden curriculum, and I am more aware than ever about the enormity of the subject.

Nonverbal Narrative, pt 1

This Nike spot, directed by David Fincher and shot by Emmanuel Lubezki, will make me drop whatever I'm doing to watch. I find it mesmerizing. But I am struck by the possible opacity in narrative.

The only constants are running and hair length. As this posting is concerned with better understanding the student with AS, I am forced to wonder how this ad is 'read' by someone with such a diagnosis. Is the long hair of Troy Polamalu enough to secure a string of actions? Or could the spot be perceived as a variety of athletic individuals, whose only connection is their being in the same commercial?

I plan to observe my students this coming week to compile some feedback.

What Can Social Pragmatics Learn from the Recent Wall Street Collapse?

A key tenet in the teaching of the Hidden Curriculum has been to illuminate the "truths" of an environment for those who have difficulty in perceiving it. This article by the New York Times columnist, David Brooks, calls into question our own ability to decipher the hidden curriculum. If Alan Greenspan can't figure it out, what hope do we mere mortals have?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/28/opinion/28brooks.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink