Focus on Tech | iAnnotate For Research, Editing, and Assessment

The pivot to online learning in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic has forced faculty and students alike to rethink their engagement with digital technologies that help facilitate virtual learning environments. While I have experimented with many tools, apps, and programs over the years to make things like content delivery, research, editing, and assessment more streamlined and digitally based—many of which I will start posting about in the coming months— the one tool that I have consistently used for many years and have recommended most often to colleagues and students alike is iAnnotate.

What is iAnnotate?

iAnnotate is an integrated and multi-featured mark-up application for iPads and iPhones that allows users to interact with and comment on documents, images, webpages, and even PowerPoint and Excel files in a variety of intuitive and creative ways. As I wrote back in 2012 when I first starting using the app and blogged about it, iAnnotate is the main reason I finally invested in an iPad Pro and Apple pencil, and it has since allowed me to:

1. maintain a more direct and experiential connection to my research, teaching, and administrative documents

2. provide better and more engaged assessment for assignments (text, image, and ePortfolio based) submitted for grading by my students

3. reduce paper and store/organize a multitude of documents and images for use at my fingertips

The app is available on iTunes for $9.99US or $13.99CDN. If you purchase the app for your iPhone, iPad, or iPad Pro you are able to access the purchase across devices.

One added bonus of iAnnotate is that it integrates across multiple platforms, cloud services, and allows users to annotate a wide range of file types.

Which features are the most useful to me?

PENCIL TOOL: Most important to the way I use the app is iAnnote’s integration of the Apple pencil to allow users to write directly in freehand on documents just as you would if you were working with non-digital documents. And no worries, if you don’t have an Apple pencil, you can still use your finger or other stylus. By simply clicking on the pencil tool which appears in an easy to use menu on the right of the screen, you are provided a variety of pencil types (thickness, texture, and saturation) and colours.

With the pencil, I can circle ideas, apply check marks, underline errors, draw arrows, leave short comments, and apply all of the same kinds of written annotations that I would do in freehand on documents I am reading, researching, assessing, or grading.

HIGHLIGHT TOOL: Here, if you are not using the freehand function of the pencil, you can mimic the way you would use a highlighter while reading an article or book, drawing straight lines over text. Once again, either using an Apple pencil, stylus, or your finger, you can draw attention to text or other features on any document you like.

TYPEWRITER AND STAMP TOOL: I use this tool to create a grading template for re-use on the documents I am grading. For example, if I am using a rubric where I am grading for Synthesis, Organization, and Understanding, I can produce a typewritten feedback comment for this assessment and then simply save it as a reusable stamp. I can then use my pencil to apply a grade in freehand. That way too, when I am grading multiple papers, I do not need to type out the same rubric each time. And finally, the stamp function has several dozen pre-formatted images, such as grades A+ to F to apply to papers.

RECORD SOUND CLIPS: Often when I am reading an article or grading an assignment, I have an idea that I cannot write down quickly, or one that I want to think out loud. For this, I use the sound clip function in iAnnotate to record a short voice note. When grading, I often use this function on longer assignments to leave recorded feedback for my students. Over the years, I have received incredibly positive feedback on these voiced notes—students tell me that it humanizes the assessment, along with the evidence of my actual freehand marks and checks on their document. They sense my direct engagement and interest in their work, which is difficult to achieve in a digital feedback environment.

Further Ideas For Faculty:

• For assessment, you can integrate the grading and returning of papers quite seamlessly into your work flow and campus learning platform (Moodle, Canvas, Blackboard etc..) with iAnnotate. Simply batch download your written submissions (for me, usually submitted in Word or PDF format) and/or images (if you are grading art work or related image-based assignments, or screen shots of ePortfolios, for example), and save to a cloud based platform approved by your university like OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.. You can then access the documents on your device, grade them, save them, and return to students as an edited PDF document upload when you enter the grade for the submitted assignment. The best part is that you can also save files to grade off-line with iAnnotate, which is a feature that has saved me on long flights and ferry rides where wifi access to the cloud is spotty.

• For research, you can integrate the use of iAnnotate with your projects by using the various tools to mark-up and add bookmarks and flags throughout your digital articles, books, and other sources (in my case, artworks and other visual materials as well). When you are in a library or archive, you are then able to access large amounts of material on your device and quickly find the things you need. You can also replace your saved PDFs of articles in bibliographic software like EndNote with the ones you have marked up. This feature has saved me so much time when I am trying to locate an important idea in an article, book, or artwork or visual object related to my own research.

Further Ideas For Students:

For studying and research, the act of highlighting and marking up assigned readings and/or researched materials in freehand (along with personal notes and ideas), is an essential practice for successful retention, synthesis, and comprehension of ideas. In almost all of my courses I have students print out documents and do the marking up exercise in-class to show them how powerful that freehand association is, and invariably I recommend this app as one way to achieve a very close outcome.

For artists and those studying art history, the ability to directly mark up and annotate image files and artworks is a powerful learning and study tool. When studying images closely or assessing your own art work (and/or those of your peers in critiques), it is incredibly useful to create specific comments on key elements of an image, something that is difficult to achieve in conventional written form or may be forgotten during a conversation. Being able to circle, voice comment, add/or apply specific freehand feedback overtop jpg files, screen grabs, or other visual material, maps, graphs, etc.. provides a far more intuitive engagement with the visual.   

More Information

While I have focused on the features of the app that I have found useful for my students and my field of study, you can explore the iAnnotate User Guide to discover many different potential applications for every unique teaching and research need. And please do connect with me in the comments if you discover other ways to use iAnnotate in your teaching and research.

Weekly Round Up... And a Few More Things

In the art world, this is normally the time of year when all the big previews, openings, fairs, biennales, and all shiny new things art-related come onto the scene, the special time when art schools around the world hold their BFA and MFA year-end exhibitions. As Facebook reminded me all this week, this time last year I was preparing my field school students for our art tours of London and the Venice Biennale. Art as a way to connect and network, art as a means to travel, art as experienced in person. So it has been especially intriguing to see how the art world has handled the transitioning of these events and rites of passage into the spring/summer 2020 art calendar.

As Covid-19 restrictions have eased in some parts of Europe and Asia this week, my feed has been full of cautious optimism around welcoming audiences back into art galleries and museums. The opening of Frieze New York earlier this month—one of the art world’s most important art fairs—was the first real test of whether a virtual art gathering could yield interest and profits. And it did. As a result, many think pieces now are turning to questions of the art market’s viability in the online environment, along with considering what the increasing engagement with art via the screen might mean to future generations of art connoisseurs. At my own institution, we have followed suit and created an online exhibition to mark our BFA grad show (it is running May 14-29th and you can check it out here), an event that has been met with many mixed emotions from students and faculty alike. Instagram was not so long ago the digital space that most university art programs regarded with deep suspicion, and for some emerging artists, a tool that could bring mixed reception from curators, gallerists, and art institutions. Not one month into the pandemic, Instagram has become, ironically enough, the de facto virtual exhibition space for the art world. This alone is worth following as a development well into the future.

A Few More Things…. Before the Round Up

• Google Arts and Culture in collaboration with the Getty updated their popular app this past week with a new feature called Art Transfer, which allows users to upload photos and filter them into the visual signature of several dozen canonical artists from across art history (including the Kusama installation work that leads this post). Warning, it is very addictive!

• For those of you who binge watched the very campy, dark, and excellent HBO television series Succession, check out its older and (maybe a bit less cool but still compelling) worthy cousin Billions. I am on Season 2 (of 5) and am giving it another chance after hearing all the buzz about the new season that debuted this month. And since we are speaking of excellent TV dramas, this month is the fifth anniversary of Mad Men’s season finale. I hold Mad Men in my top ten best-ever television series, and if you haven’t yet watched it, I am jealous of you (as I would want to be me again watching that series for the first time).

• And this is random, but I cannot say enough about my weighted blanket and how it has helped me relax and get much needed sleep during the pandemic. I have this one from Bearaby, which is washable, cool, and perfect for spring/summer sleeping, but there are many different kinds at all price points, and it will change the way you sleep (I receive nothing for this endorsement!).

Pandemic Journal: Coco Fusco, Lucas Adams, Sara Nović, Gavin Francis, and Amanda Fortini, et al.

nybooks.com

Passing Time

canadianart.ca

"The Work of Art in the Age of the Internet"

hyperallergic.com

‘How This Moment Will Be Misremembered’: Internet Theorist Talks Social Media

artnet.com

The Problem Isn’t Zoom Fatigue — It’s Mourning Life as We Knew It

onezero.medium.com

Art World Coronavirus Tracker

artforum.com

Untitled, Art turns to virtual reality to improve the online fair experience

artnewspaper.com

Five Artists to Follow on Instagram Now

nytimes.com

Where I call bullshit on the way we do the PhD

thesiswhisperer.com

Is the future of the art market online? (PODCAST)

theartnewspaper.com

• Pandemic Journal: Coco Fusco, Lucas Adams, Sara Nović, Gavin Francis, and Amanda Fortini, et al.

• Passing Time

• The Work of Art in the Age of the Internet

• ‘How This Moment Will Be Misremembered’: Internet Theorist Talks Social Media

• The Problem Isn’t Zoom Fatigue — It’s Mourning Life as We Knew It

• Art World Coronavirus Tracker

• Untitled, Art turns to virtual reality to improve the online fair experience

• Five Artists to Follow on Instagram Now

• Where I call bullshit on the way we do the PhD

• Is the future of the art market online? (PODCAST)

Is Pandemic Productivity Truly Possible? Maybe.

I avoided writing this post for over eight weeks, and trust me, I was very tempted to draft one early on during the pandemic. Remembering back now, those first few panicked and disrupted weeks – when professors and students alike were trying to work out how to transition their learning, research, and projects online – all of us were managing the very best way we knew how. In terms of productivity, for many this largely meant moving from moment to moment and figuring out what low-hanging fruit task to do first, and then categorizing and deciding what truly mattered and what could wait. For others, there was a tendency to carry on “as normal” and expect others to do the same, leading to lots of frustration and burn-out.

As the weeks passed, there was also the insidious message creeping into social media and amongst friends about not “wasting time” while in quarantine and self-isolation. Here came what I like to call the “pandemic productivity propagandists”—the hobbyists, the “I’m going to learn Spanish” crowd, the annoying bread bakers, people overscheduling their kids with new learning activities, and those in my circle who thought this would be the perfect time to be creative and manifest an impromptu sabbatical. I’m not entirely innocent here as I have admonished those who couldn’t find ways to keep up with their fitness routine while in quarantine—I ceremoniously bought weights and a rebounder the day after we were sent into self-isolation. The temptation to prove one’s productivity never felt higher.

Bubbling beneath the surface of all this “pandemic productivity” has been the reality that many of us are having a hard time facing a whole host of feelings— myself included. Psychologists have already talked about our collective grief over the dramatic changes taking place in our lives, but there is also the reality that many of us are not used to being bored and undistracted; not used to being out of control and losing the luxury of planning out the upcoming days and months; and no longer finding solace in the same distracting behaviours that were part of our pre-pandemic life. I mean who hasn’t become immediately irritated while watching some random TV show or film where people are cavorting out in public and enjoying life in a way that you are not able to right now.

Our entire relationship with time and productivity is being challenged by the Covid-19 pandemic. How will you adjust? That item on my desk is a TimeCube and helps push me through bouts of procrastination. See Tip #6 below.

So, what to do? We have now reached a turning point where none of this is temporary anymore and things still need to get done. Is pandemic productivity truly possible? Maybe. This is where I have arrived in my thinking as I start to ponder how to advise my students later this summer and into the fall. How to find a way of working and getting things done that honours the unique and unprecedented situation we find ourselves, and allows for a gentler and more mindful approach. Here are some preliminary ideas:

1) Manage energy, not time

This is an idea that has been critical to my health and sanity in recent years, and one I have tried to embrace even more so in recent weeks. It comes down to this: figure out what times of the day you are most energized and enthusiastic, and schedule the tasks that are most important to you — the ones you enjoy and that are at the top of your priority list— to complete with full energy. Many of us now have the luxury of unstructured days to test this out. For example, I am a morning person, and my mind is most agile and alert before noon. This is when I choose to do my writing, research, and other personal projects. It is also when I lift weights and do higher intensity cardio. Later in the afternoon, when my energy is a bit flatter, I tend to do my grading or admin work or more regimented tasks that don’t require the same attention. This is also when I schedule time to read, make calls, or take a nap. And by evening, when I would normally struggle to make a creative argument or analysis, this is when I would maybe answer work emails or clean the house. It is also the time I choose to do yoga, meditation, or go for a night walk or jog. As the day progresses, I work with my natural rhythms and energy flow to schedule tasks. It also helps prevent procrastination and eliminate feelings of guilt around what you should be doing at any given hour.

2) Reduce or eliminate decision fatigue

You’ve probably heard that Apple founder Steve Jobs wore the same outfit every day, or that some athletes have the same meals when training. These are tactics to create more targeted use of your productivity each day by eliminating the fatigue that comes with making decisions. Some of the ways to reduce this drain on your energy include things like: meal planning, scheduling your day first thing each morning and sticking to it, picking out your wardrobe the night before, getting rid of “options” in your home/closet/fridge/pantry/bathroom etc… that you don’t love or use regularly, giving the decision control to someone else and sticking with it, and the overall decluttering of your life of objects (and sometimes people too) that don’t serve you. Reclaim that energy!

3) Stack your habits

This simple but powerful idea, connected to reducing decision fatigue, comes straight out of James Clear’s excellent book Atomic Habits. Clear explains that one way to establish a new habit is to tie it to an existing well-entrenched habit that you do without any real effort or motivation. For example, if you wanted to establish a habit of journaling for 15 minutes a day, or working for half hour on your class assignments, you could tie that habit to your morning coffee, or an activity you do right after brushing your teeth at night. When I first established my home workout routine after the pandemic hit, I knew I had to do it early in the day, and I tied it to making my bed in the morning. Once I complete that task, I put on my workout clothes and get started. Now, it is ritualized, and part of a habit chain that I will carry forward. Give it a try with a habit you are working on—it is a powerful tool.

4) Discover the benefits of boredom

As a child of the 1980s, this one I have on lock, but even I have to admit that it is difficult to convince others of the benefits of boredom. This pandemic, however, is giving us all a crash course. Being able to embrace being unoccupied is a gift, and one that leads, as many studies have proven, to higher states of creativity and insight. Many have experienced gaining some spark of inspiration or a new idea while showering or figuring out a problem on a long walk or during a commute. As Sandii Mann writes in her book The Science of Boredom: Why Boredom is Good, the mind is freed and able to create unique and experimental connections when spared distraction. “Harness your boredom by getting bored," Mann suggests "That means real boredom, which is where you have to let your mind wander. This is the real key. Daydreaming and mind wandering. Don't turn to the internet or try to scroll your boredom away." I recommend finding 15-20 minutes a day to give your mind a complete rest. Call it being bored or a waking meditation— just be bored and see what happens.

5) Create boundaries around your time, and stick to them

Another way to maintain productivity is to put strict controls around when you will begin and end a task, and also how you will choose to spend your time. I learned this important approach during my first year-long sabbatical and wrote about it then. And now that many of us are living much less structured lives, it is critical to set up routines that serve your needs. This means creating boundaries around your time and finding ways to uphold them. If you are asked to attend a Zoom meeting with friends, but it falls at a time you have already scheduled for a workout or homework/job task, respect your boundaries and politely decline. On the other hand, if you schedule an hour for work and it is time to take a break, respect that decision and enjoy the downtime. Boundaries breed great life balance, build your self-confidence and efficacy, and teach people how to treat you.

6) Feel the feeling and do it anyways…. for 10-15 minutes

This is an old productivity hack that comes from the Pomodoro method that I have blogged about many times over the years, but it is essentially a form of interval training. If you are feeling like procrastinating on a task (like writing, responding to emails, or working out), set a timer for 10-15 minutes and do the task anyways, promising yourself that you can stop after that set time. More often than not, you will end up finding something of a flow in the task and want to continue. You can then move to working in intervals of 45-60 minutes with 10-15 minute recovery breaks worked in. On most days, this is precisely what I do. I schedule 2-3 working sessions with breaks built in, and promise myself that I can stop after any particular timed interval if I want to. I rarely do, and that is the beauty of the Pomodoro method. You get stuff done!

7) Do what you actually like

This is a simple directive, but one that I hope more people take to heart. Choose to do things that you enjoy and actually like. It could be as simple as choosing a research topic on something that sparks your desire, and not just one you think will be easy to write up, or one you think your professor is expecting. It can also be as profound as removing/muting people from your social media feeds who bring you down, are unsupportive, or are not really your friends. It is not very often in our lives that we have the space and time to really consider what matters, and what and who brings us happiness. So try using the pandemic as a time to inventory how you are spending your hours, and with whom you share them, and continue to find ways to up the joy factor to help increase your energy and productivity.

Weekly Round Up... And a Few More Things

Easing into May and the ninth week of self-isolation, I am starting to find some acceptance with the new normal my daily routine brings, and this has included discovering different kinds of media channels to stay on top of emerging conversations in the art world, and to explore the state of street art in cities near and far. These two interest areas converged with an Instagram Live that Shepard Fairey hosted on May 4th as he sat down for an interview with the Keith Haring Foundation on the occasion of Haring’s birthday tribute (the full video can be found in my links below).

I loved the Instagram Live format for an artist interview! It is very neat to scroll back through and read the viewer’s comments— mine too are immortalized as you can see above. You can find this archived video at the @keithharingfoundation page.

I have an incredible amount of respect for Fairey and the way he has deftly navigated his move from the streets, to the gallery, to the wider public, and into the commercial arena, and above all, I appreciate his pragmatic and unapologetic belief in the masses to apprehend, appreciate, and be part of the art world. His roots are in punk, skateboard culture, and the later days of graffiti art as they manifested and evolved in New York through the mid to late 1980s. This is precisely where we can locate Fairey’s intersection and resonance with Haring—both artists took their social, political, and often difficult messages and art works directly to the people, bypassing and in many ways thumbing their noses at the art establishment. During the 25 minute interview, Fairey discussed a wide range of topics from Haring’s particular connection to his audience, the role artists can play at a time of national and global emergency, and how his own practice and message has evolved and expanded over the years.

 The Instagram Live format was also incredibly cool for an artist interview—those attending live  interacted with one another through chat, expressed their appreciation for certain well-made points with outpouring of hearts, and got to ask questions and/or leave comments that others can pursue later on. I cannot wait to check out more of these Lives in the future.

A Few More Things…. Before the Round Up

• If you’ve read the Elena Ferrante coming of age Neapolitan Novels (and even if you haven’t, seriously, go and read these novels now!) you will know how beautifully descriptive and evocative the world of these books is. When I first heard the novels were being made into a film and then TV series, I was doubtful anyone could match Ferrante’s narrative, characters, and voice, but somehow the Italian-made (and HBO sponsored series) My Brilliant Friend is beyond EXCELLENT. Each episode is shot like a feature film and every element of the cinematography, acting, and screenplay are carefully measured to capture the conflicting emotions and worlds at play in the books.

• A nice Instagram follow if you are in Vancouver or beyond is mural_hunter. The account has been doing a terrific job of locating and recording images of the street art and murals that are popping up around the Lower Mainland. Fairey talked a bit about the wave of street art we are seeing in the wake of Covid-19, and accounts like this are maintaining amazing archives of the often temporary works.

• And finally, in honour of Mother’s Day and strong women mentoring other women everywhere, I am finally sitting down to watch Little Women once again. The 2019 adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel is one of many films that has been made of the book, but I enjoyed the clever self-referential twists of director Greta Gerwig’s version, and I adore Saoirse Ronan’s acting (if you haven’t seen Brooklyn (2015), add it to your list!)

A Talk About Keith Haring With Shepard Fairey (INSTAGRAM LIVE)

@obeygiant

Alone With Their Muses, Artists in Retreat Wonder if It’s Too Much

nytimes.com

Foodie Culture as We Know It Is Over

theatlantic.com

Power In Modernity New Book (PODCAST)

orgtheory

LA Times Art Critic Christopher Knight Wins the 2020 Pulitzer Prize

artnet.com

The US Cultural Landscape Is Reeling. Further North, Canada’s Art Scene Has Few Complaints

artnet.com

The Art Angle Podcast: How Marina Abramović Became the Center of a Vast Satanic Conspiracy Theory (PODCAST)

artnet.com

Open Courtauld Hour - Episode Two: Art and Wellbeing (VIDEO)

Courtauld Youtube

Introducing Virtual Views MoMA: Sculpture Garden (VIDEO)

MoMA YpuTube

The Central, Yet Invisible, Labor of Motherhood in Art

hyperallergic.com

• A Talk About Keith Haring With Shepard Fairey (INSTAGRAM LIVE)

• Alone With Their Muses, Artists in Retreat Wonder if It’s Too Much

• Foodie Culture as We Know It Is Over

• Power In Modernity New Book (PODCAST)

• LA Times Art Critic Christopher Knight Wins the 2020 Pulitzer Prize

• The US Cultural Landscape Is Reeling. Further North, Canada’s Art Scene Has Few Complaints.

• The Art Angle Podcast: How Marina Abramović Became the Center of a Vast Satanic Conspiracy Theory (PODCAST)

• Open Courtauld Hour - Episode Two: Art and Wellbeing (VIDEO)

• Introducing Virtual Views MoMA: Sculpture Garden (VIDEO)

• The Central, Yet Invisible, Labor of Motherhood in Art

Bonus Assignment | The Price of Everything (Art Doc Film Series)

In the Avant-Guardian Musings "Bonus Assignment" series, I will occasionally post creative prompts for students to explore and expand their understanding around a range of art history and visual culture studies topics. These assignments will be collected under the Resources section of my website, hashtagged #bonusassignment under Search, and available as an Open Education Resource for educators. 

Few things fall inside my wheelhouse better than a well executed documentary film about artists and/or the art world. Art docs satisfy my love of filmic representation and analysis while allowing me to unpack the myriad ways in which art historical subject matter is presented, shaped, and deployed as its own unique form of narrative and visual discourse. Most recently, I’ve been researching and analyzing a whole series of art documentaries for a paper I am working on that will be part of an edited book collection on the broader topic of cinema and art. One of my core arguments is that since at least around the time of the 2007-8 financial crisis, the documentary film format has been strategically deployed by a new generation of non-fiction filmmakers working to reveal, through filmic devices, the notion of problematic aesthetics, disjuncture, and black humour that permeates the contours of the contemporary art world.

Of these select films, The Price of Everything (2018) has become arguably one of the more provocative and popular documentaries that I often screen in my contemporary art hIstory courses. Directed by Nathaniel Kahn, a filmmaker who’s famous father architect Louis Kahn was the subject of another of his excellent art docs My Architect (2003), the film is a searing and no-holds-barred look at the contemporary art world from a number of key perspectives— from artists, art collectors, gallerists, art critics, curators, auctioneers, and art historians to name just a few. The film also provides for provocative discussion and contemplation, at many levels, for emerging artists. Perhaps most importantly, the film tackles the thorny subject of art and money, and the subjective assessment of art’s “value,” a taboo or avoided topic in many art schools (and one that I LOVE).

The bonus assignment is based in part on a set of final exam questions and also draws on discussion prompts that I have created to allow students an engagement with the film before, during, and after viewing. The film is currently available for download through iTunes and HBO.

---

INSTRUCTIONS:

PART A) Before you watch the film, you will choose FOUR individuals to pay closer attention to when watching the film. TWO of the individuals must come from the “Artists” listed below, and TWO from the “Art World Insiders” listed below.

• A) ARTISTS: Choose TWO artists to pay closer attention to when watching the film from among:

Larry Poons, Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter, Marilyn Minter, George Condo, Njideka Akunyili Crosby

For the two artists you pick from the above list, please do a quick and simple online search (use Google Image search to see a range of works) and choose one work of art from each of the artists that catches your eye and that you are drawn to purely for aesthetics or taste. Please do this without looking too closely at context related information (we will look more closely at this once you finish watching the film). I want your first impressions, and this will work better if you do a blind reading.

Record your findings and offer a FORM and CONTENT analysis in 100-150 words for each of the two chosen artworks (in complete sentences using your own words and ideas). Cut and paste the artworks into your final document so that I can see what you chose.

•  B) ART WORLD INSIDERS: Choose TWO art world insiders to pay closer attention to when watching the film from among:

Amy Cappellazzo, Jerry Saltz, Simon de Pury, Stefan Edlis, Holly Peterson, Jeffrey Deitch

For the two art world insiders you pick from the above list, please do a quick Google search to understand what their profession is and how their significance to the art world comes across in their web presence. Record your findings in 100-150 words for each individual, offering a quick analysis of what you think their influence and importance is to art world is (in complete sentences and using your own words and ideas).

PART B) While watching the film, keep the following question constantly in mind:

What ideas or information in the film were new or surprising to you?

Take notes and/or pause the film and record your honest and thoughtful reflections one sheet of paper (handwritten point form notes are perfectly ok for this question). There is no word limit on this, but I expect to see at least 350 words.

PART C) After watching the film, please answer the following FOUR questions:

• QUESTION 1: How does watching this film influence you or potential audiences about “What is art?” or “What makes art valuable?” Have these ideas evolved for you since taking first taking an art history course? If so, how? If not, why not? Please answer in a rich paragraph below (aiming for 200-350 words).

• QUESTION 2: This film is in part about the process of artists making art, and capturing this process on film is notoriously difficult. Yet, this film has won awards based on the filmmaker’s ability to represent aspects of art-making that few people will ever see. Select 1-2 scenes that particularly illuminated this process of successfully showing how art is made, and describe how the filmmaker revealed subtle and non-verbal processes that heighten audience experience. Please answer in a rich paragraph below (aiming for 200-350 words).

• QUESTION 3: Go back to the two artists you were drawn to look at before the film screening. All of the artists quoted in the film have varying opinions on whether they should make art they believe will sell, regardless of whether that is the art they want to make. Describe what the attitude of your two chosen artists was, and reflect on whether what you learned about them changed your opinion about their art practice. Would you want to change the artist you are drawn to learning more about their practice and beliefs? If so, why? If not, what did you learn to reinforce your first blind reading. Please answer in a rich paragraph below (aiming for 200-350 words).

• QUESTION 4: Go back to the two art world insiders you were drawn to look at for this film in Question #1. For each individual, reflect on why you think the filmmaker chose to focus on them for the purposes of the film, and describe what perspective, attitude, and/or statement(s) you strongly agreed with for each one and/or which perspective, attitude, and/or statement(s) you had a strong reaction against? Please answer in a rich paragraph below (aiming for 200-350 words).