You might be thinking hmm 🤔 January is late for my first blog post of the year, and you would be right. This project is actually our second humanities project of the year but the first one we have fully completed (horror project post coming soon 🙂 ) and its about “How Can Art Shine a Spotlight on the Dark Sections of our Society?”. This — like most driving questions— seemed like a daunting task at first, but we did it step by step starting with learning some definitions: 

Dystopian: A person who imagines or foresees a state or society where there is great suffering or injustice. Or relating to or denoting an imagined state or society where there is great suffering or injustice.

Concept art: Is a form of visual art used to convey an idea for use in film, video games, animation, comic books, television shows, or other media.

Now, when you think of conceptual art, you might think about how dumb it seems, how purposeless, and random it is. These thoughts would echo my first thoughts until we did the “Just Keep Moving” launch assignment.

In this assignment, we were to create a concept art showing a connection between our Grade 12 year and ourselves. In order to complete this project we were given an assortment of craft supplies and one class. I created the wonderful masterpiece that you can see below. 

 

Artist statement: “My art piece represents how I’m currently feeling this grade 12 year. My art piece shows me pushing forward and taking one step at a time this is because so far this year my goal has just to not be overwhelmed and to just keep moving. I used the binoculars to show how I am trying to focus on the positives of my future goal not the rough path in front of me. I also wanted to show with the umbrella how even though the path is rough sometimes, I am prepared for it. Unfortunately even with the umbrella you can still see how it doesn’t stop everything (shown with the stick in my back) this represents how even though I am prepared I still have some days where I am struggling to not be overwhelmed. Overall my art piece “Just keep moving” shows how I am slowly but surely working towards my goal. “ 

Creating this art piece made me a LITTLE more excited about the idea of creating an art piece to communicate deeper connections. 

Next I researched a conceptual art piece that I found: “Iceberg Melting” By Su Yu. Our goal was to analyze both the immediate ideas as well as the deeper ideas. This meant that we needed to look at how the historical context of when it was created contributed to or affected its meaning. I thought the artist’s choice of the rich lady and the fur coat, lying on the melting iceberg was effective. This detail made the audience feel mad at how oblivious people are in the face of climate change and materialism. Overall, choosing this piece made me realize how relevant conceptual art can be. Art pieces like “iceberg Melting” reflect important ideas and concerns of our generation.

Now it was time to start learning about the dystopian aspect of the project. We were given the option between five dystopian novels and I chose Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. Dystopian books have aways been my favourite, as I love to learn about how people think societies would react when there were no governments to rely on. I chose Fahrenheit 451 because it was something different from my normal end-of-the-world dystopian novels, because instead of a big war or bomb or disease making it dystopian it was the slow death of creativity and knowledge that contributed to the dystopia setting. Through this novel I explored themes such as:

• Government keeps control by directing the narrative. (Mass Media)
• Shedding conformity allows for new perspectives. (Conformity or Individuality)
• Distraction is not the same thing as happiness.
• People are disconnected emotionally from each other due to lifestyle built out of societal norms, and technology.
• The Government ensures that people think and act the same. (Loss of individualism and government control)

I was very proud of the connections I was able to make outside the novel including with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and even with the teenagers of today. For example with both Animal Farm and Fahrenheit 451 shows societies that see individual thought as dangerous and as something to be discouraged. One very interesting realization that I had is that without the last 10 pages of Ray Bradbury’s novel, I would not have known it was written in 1953 because the descriptions and message the author communicated are so closely related to where our world could be heading today. The book describes a society that is so involved with themselves and technology that they no longer care or think about anything. At one point a woman describes how many of her husbands have died and how if the husband she has now dies she will just marry again. Her response demonstrates no remorse or emotional connection to her spouse. The part of the novel that made me sad for this dystopian future was when a character said 

I plunk the children in school nine days out of ten. I put up with them when they come home three days a month; it’s not bad at all. You heave them into the ‘parlour’ and turn the switch. It’s like washing clothes; stuff laundry in and slam the lid.” Mrs. Bowles tittered. “They’d just as soon kick as kiss me. Thank God, I can kick back! (109)

Today our habits affect the future of our society. We see this through our growing screen time and shortening attention spans and lack of personal connections.  Read more about Fahrenheit 451 and the connections I made to today here.

These fun thoughts about technology and our society today leads to my final product, which I titled “A tool, not a Carrot”, by Faith Scheewe.

Our assignment was to bring together our understanding of dystopic themes we are seeing today and communicate them through a conceptual art piece of our own creation. When I hear that I had to create an art piece I almost gave up before I began, but when I heard that it could be whatever we wanted, I grew more hopeful. After a LOT of brainstorming, some help and many times of me just hitting my head against my keyboard I came up with my idea. After reading Fahrenheit 451 and doing my own research that you can see in my annotated bibliography, I knew I wanted to focus on our balance with technology but I just needed a way to catch peoples attention. So … I decided to water my phone 📱.  Here is my blueprint:

My idea centred around how our society is relying more and more on technology and how if we rely solely on technology we literally can not survive; technology can’t fulfil our biological needs and we are biological beings. Technology has become an essential tool, but we must remember that it is a tool. This is why I show the photo of a carrot on my actual phone. Technology can help a person identify food, inform you about the food, even tell you how to make the food but it can’t be food. Similar to our biological needs for food, we have biological needs for connection. Technology can give us someone’s number, or show us their profile photo but it can’t fulfill deep, meaningful human connections.  Research shows a biological need for human interaction that is face to face. You have to actually talk to the person or hug the person to make a connection, just like you need real food to eat. When people see the watering can pouring “water” on the phone they are confused and shocked because why would one water a phone? This confusion and shock provokes people to think about what their phones can’t do and how even though we use the technology for hours everyday, it can’t actually meet our biological needs. Technology can distract us from our biological needs and my art piece draws attention to that and prompts thought about how technology is a tool, not a carrot 🥕! 

The pot holding it all together showcased quotes and articles I found when doing my annotated bibliography. I believe that I did a great job pulling together all my concepts and while the actual creation of the art piece was fun (Thank you grandma for all your modge podge help), my favourite part was the exhibition. 

 

Despite what my grade 9-10 blog posts might say, I’ve actually begun to love talking to people about my ideas and about my work. I enjoy explaining why I made the choices I did as well as showing pride in my creations. During the exhibition, I was intentional about asking people about how well they think they balance their use of technology. For example, one question I asked was what they use their phones for? While project itself, and my conversation related that I wasn’t at all against technology, I did want to make people think about how technology like our phones can not meet our biological needs. Technology is a powerful tool we just need to make sure we know it is a tool, not our lifeline. 

 

I found myself very impressed with how my whole project came together. I included themes from Fahrenheit 451, demonstrated focused and insightful creativity in my art piece, connected my ideas to today’s society, and communicated all that thinking and hard work in an engaging product at exhibition. So remember  even though you are using your device and the internet to read this blog post technology is a tool, not a carrot 🥕!