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ASPECT assignment

I worked from ASPECT volume 10, Rural. I was initially attracted to the "Bird-Cams" video by Sam Easterson when we saw it in class, and while really enjoying several of the other movies on the dvd I thought of a generative topic that I think could be applied for many artistic as well as general education purposes. 

I thought of the use of perspective in the videos, how tiny cameras were placed on the birds. Some could fly and showed us what it would be like to view the world from soaring above, some were much smaller than us and showed the world as an oversized and alien landscape. The different uses of perspective is something that could help outside-of-the-box thinking in students and artists alike. I looked up several exercises on perspective in writing and art.

The first, an internet article on perspective in writing, did a good job of highlighting the different uses of point of view to illustrate a scene. The article discusses the different voices and types of a narrator and the timing in which the scene is portrayed. Also the article takes in to consideration the current state of emotion/disposition of the character or object from which the point of view is written.

The second website that I found provided an optical illusion approach to the idea of perspective, in order to teach the viewer to closely observe and not always trust the first impression of something. http://www.thirdside.org/3S_Perspective_Taking_Exercise.pdf

From an art teacher's perspective, it could start as simply as trying to enhance a student's ability to replicate a believable field, as taught in this lesson plan. http://www.teachartathome.com/AtmosphericPerspective.html.

Perspective can mean many things. It could be the point of view of a person or, imaginatively, inanimate object. It could be the point of view of the person viewing the art work, which may or may not be biased by their views on the world, as expressed by the optical illusions piece. It could be altered depending on time and space, or background and willingness to look beyond the viewer's inclinations towards seeing the world a certain way. It would be interesting to have students of any age keep a visual diary that illustrates their perspective on the world around them, or if that is too broad, a more specific topic. If new media were to be involved we could borrow Sam Easterson's idea of using cameras and have students film or record digitally their life, abstractly or by using a more narrative perspective.