Technology Amplifies The Arts

Young artists and their teachers reach for high-tech tools

By Maggie Hill

Maggie Hill is a writer based in New York City.

The curriculum of the Ashley River Creative Arts School in Charleston, S.C., is a collage fusing drama, ballet, jazz, xylophone, Suzuki violin, drawing, illustrating, and clay-modeling on the one hand and students' daily progress in reading, writing, and arithmetic on the other.

Nearly every classroom door opens to reveal impressive artistic efforts, many of them aided by technology: In a typical week, first-graders are using powerful Apple Quadra computers to write and illustrate stories and dramas. And fourth-graders are creating multimedia presentations on Africa--blending photographic images, text, sound, and animated graphics, then using their creations to teach their classmates what they know.

For those who question the educational wisdom of an arts-soaked approach, Ashley River offers a rejoinder: Students' scores on standardized tests consistently land the school in the top 10 percent in the state.

"There's no way a child could not do well in this setting," says Principal Rose Maree Myers. "Arts education meets all needs. We want children to think on the knowledge level, but we want them to think on all six levels on a daily basis." (The six levels refer to Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences.)

The Ashley River School has a head start on implementing the national standards for arts education, released in March 1994 by the Consortium of National Arts Education Associations. The standards list goals for all students to achieve in dance, music, theater, and the visual arts.

"With the creation of the standards, these four art forms have come together for the first time in history," says Ellyn Berk, an arts education consultant who served on one of the standards committees.

The standards attempt to reclaim for the arts a strong presence in the public schools, after what some experts describe as a 20-year pendulum swing away from the arts and toward mathematics and science. (The standards stop short, however, of creating a curriculum for the arts; instead, they are voluntary guidelines for what every student should know and be able to do in the arts.)

The goals are for everyone--and not just for the 10 percent who will seek college majors in the various arts disciplines. The idea is that every student needs the general skills, connections to culture, and ways of thinking that the arts instill. Schools need the arts, too, the experts say, as powerful ways to help students think and judge independently and creatively. In turn, the students' gains in reasoning, imagination, and dexterity equip them to do well in other disciplines--including math and science. For example, according to the standards, the intellectual methods of the arts are precisely those used to transform scientific disciplines and discoveries into everyday technology.

But the standards' renewed endorsement of the arts as a cornerstone of a complete education leaves a nagging question: How can we get the arts into the schools? Here's where technology can give a boost to school arts education programs.

"Technology can be an extraordinary tool in the arts," Berk says, adding that the developers of the arts standards did take technology into account. "You can't talk about the future of the arts unless you talk about technology."

Indeed, in every discipline, the standards mention use of technology as one of the goals. But never does the standards publication explain how technology should be harnessed.

Most likely, educators will take their cues from the professional communities of artists, where some ingenious applications of technology are happening right now. Choreographers, for example, are using the computer's ability to generate animated images as an aid in planning, communicating, and reflecting on the movements of dancers. Musicians have found the computer to be an invaluable compositional tool that lets them experiment with melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic relationships. And visual artists, making use of the computer's ability to synthesize multisensory information and events, are creating interactive artworks that respond to the demands of each viewer.

"The arts have always leapfrogged with technology," says George Wurzbach, national projects director for the Songwriters' Guild of America. "In the process of creating art, new ways of using it are developed. After all, a piano was once considered high technology."

A creative tool

Even in states where support for arts education is most enthusiastic and aggressive--South Carolina, Florida, Minnesota, and New York, among others--technology lags behind.

"We want kids to work in the arts. We have lots of wonderful support for the arts," says David Bach, executive director for the Minnesota Alliance for Arts Education. "Unfortunately, some of it is haphazard and patchwork," he says; a lot depends on "where you live."

Principal Myers, at the Ashley River School, opted for technology instead of classroom aides when the school opened in 1984. "I felt it was a much better investment than assistance," she says. "It's a creative tool, and you can diversify it with the students. Sure, we use it with drill, too. But as the programs have developed, we have encouraged all the teachers and students to use it in a much more powerful way." Among its tools, the school counts computers, printers, scanners, laser discs, video recorders, televisions, and cameras.

Miami's Ray Azcuy, director of the visual arts in Dade County, Fla., is pushing for greater access to technology in his schools. "We have great arts education, but we're behind in technology," says Azcuy. "[Still,] we're getting there."

Azcuy's district is getting help from a project called Arts for a Complete Education (ACE), funded by the Florida Department of Education and the College of Fine Arts at the University of Florida. Among its myriad arts advocacy projects, ACE has developed an arts curriculum for technology. A 200-page document addresses each artistic discipline, outlining applications for hypermedia, interactive multimedia, laser discs, networking, and distance learning.

"Schools in Florida run the gamut from having virtually nothing to full immersion in arts education," says ACE's Fred Hebert. "Technology is definitely the wave of the future, and we don't want to be left outside."

But tightened budgets and bulging curriculum mandates have left many art educators seemingly powerless to explore the convergence between technology and arts education. According to consultant Ellyn Berk, that's the bad news.

"Teachers need to have their available tools expanded," Berk says. "There's exciting stuff out there that's not being used. It's expensive, people are resistant, and there's always the problem of ongoing major capital expense involving technology. And it takes extensive staff development to make it happen. Still, when it's being done, it's extraordinary."

The four areas of the arts as outlined in the national standards are visual arts, music, dance, and theater. Here are a few snapshots of how some schools are bridging the arts and technology gap.

Shaping the visual arts

Many art classrooms have taken advantage of technology to let students take vicarious tours of art museums around the world or visit artists at work in their studios. Students are also using technology as a medium for creative expression and visual communication, and in the process, they're creating exciting learning experiences.

The tools of the student-artist still include pencils, charcoal, pastels, crayons, markers, water-based paints, brushes, clay, and the like. Now, the computer adds speed and ease of use to making art.

At South Miami Senior High School's magnet program in communications, students use the computer as a virtual sketchbook. Of the 250 students in the program, almost all gravitate toward using the computer, in tandem with learning "good, solid fundamentals of design," says lead teacher Jerry Eisner. "Our students learn to draw and 'do' art on the computer," Eisner says. "We use the computer as a tool, and it's as basic as having art supplies on hand to do watercolors or acrylics."

The students are given visual problems to solve in various design and communication motifs, including electronic drawing and painting, image-processing, computer-aided design, computer animation, and kinetic sculpture. The thrust of the program, according to Eisner, is to "put children out there who think creatively and are visual problem solvers." To that end, teams of teachers develop problems for students to solve that focus on the process, not the product.

Eisner attributes the program's success (most of the students attend top-ranking arts colleges after high school, many of them on scholarship) to a solid curriculum built around fundamental design skills and to a professional staff. "We searched far and wide for a really good staff, and we've got [one]. The technology means nothing without that," he says.

Eisner credits technology with helping to speed up the process of learning, rather than being the end result of the learning. "The nice thing about technology is that it's made the process faster," he says. "At one time, it took four people about three days to do a 30-second animation. Now it takes one person three or four hours."

Is this all glitz and no substance? No chance, says Eisner. "Computers are becoming more and more sophisticated, and what happens is that the whole look of art is changing. If you think it's easy to create art using a computer, just try doing something. Start with a basic design concept. I guarantee you'll end up with soup instead of substance. You have to learn how to use it."

Timothy Binkley, an artist who is also director of computer education at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, agrees. "The technology itself is making communication more visual," Binkley says. "It's pulling [in] artists to give it shape. Computers are going to do only what we want them to do.

"Of course," says Binkley, who is a pioneer in the field of interactive art projects, "it will go further and beyond our wildest dreams, but it will be at our behest. It still takes what it takes to make a great piece of art. To that extent, it's no change in art at all."

In the Northport, N.Y., school district, all students in kindergarten through grade 12 are "guaranteed an art experience," says Peter Falotico, district director of art and computers. In a school system with 14 full-time art teachers, that's not just talk. "All of our students take courses in art, using both traditional and electronic tools," says Falotico. "We do animation, graphics, and digital photography as well as the pure art forms. Every teacher is required to conduct a sequence in [his or her] discipline using technology. We have a traditional, robust art program that uses every available tool."

In one sculpture class, students do three-dimensional renderings of a piece on a computer before they begin to sculpt. Other students process and develop art using digital photography. They make animated art in both the animation laboratory and the traditional art class. And Northport students submit high-tech art--as well as traditional forms--to earn the Regents in Art diploma offered in the district; the honor is based on cumulative grades, a showing of 10 artworks, and written and practical exams. "We are steeped in the Greek tradition of classical education, and that means reading, writing, and the arts," says Falotico. "Math is the brother and sister here, not the star."

A different tune

Technology in music education is a tool for instruction and an aid in the creation and performance of music. Music education has employed new technologies for decades, but never before have they been more effective and versatile across the whole range of music topics.

In Minnesota, Anoka High School music students use a musical accompaniment program that gives them access to a whole range of orchestral sounds for solo practice sessions. A microphone clipped to the bell of a traditional musical instrument allows the musical accompaniment to adjust to the student's tempo, without changing the musical pitch.

"This is not simply music by rote," says Mike Hiatt, chairman of the music department. "It changes the way students approach their music. When they play solo with a traditional accompanist, students tend to follow along. With this system, they become more leader-conscious and rhythmically solid."

And with music notation software, student composers can see the music they write transcribed instantly into musical notes. According to Hiatt, this opens up a whole new avenue of music literacy for students. "Kids become a bona fide part of the music, and you can see their perceptions change. They take more chances; they're willing to take on music they normally wouldn't try," he says.

Integrating music theory, history, and appreciation into performance classes--instead of having separate classes for each element--adds purpose and a conceptual framework to the student performances, Hiatt says. "Our students are fascinated by new types of sounds," says Hiatt. "By using technology, we're able to broaden the palette of students' music appreciation. We are bringing new colors to kids' ears."

Anoka's music department also has developed a creative technology management program, a method of recording and assessing the school's 1,100 music and band students based on grades and teachers' verbal evaluations. (The department adapted an existing piece of database management software, creating a series of outcome-based written and verbal assessments.)

Butch Johnson's elementary music students at the Katherine Curren School, in Hopkins, Minn., already have high expectations of what music technology can offer them. One of his fourth-grade students recently brought in a piece of music she wrote and said she needed it in printed notation form that night to show her piano teacher. "I was amazed at her matter-of-fact acceptance that this can be done," says Johnson.

Johnson takes all of the school's 400 students on an electronic tour of Minnesota's cultural institutions using a simple presentation program he put together. He took text and scanned photographs from various public information packets, added music, sound, and video, and he and his students were off on a virtual day-trip around Minnesota. "My students think it's cool. When we get to a door of a museum, for instance, they say, 'Let's go inside!' as if it's the most natural thing in the world," he says.

The students are also turning into fairly proficient jazz aficionados, thanks to Johnson's "clip-and-snip" jazz lessons incorporating CD-ROM, encyclopedia sounds, and QuickTime movies--again, assembled from a number of different primary resources.

Johnson uses the six computers in his classroom to give students access to these learning experiences. But when it comes time for performance, he lets one of the students run the MIDI keyboard at his desk while he is free to roam the classroom, directing the action. (MIDI allows musical signals to be transformed from a keyboard to the language of a computer.)

At the Horrey County Schools in Conway, S.C., students learn music with a keyboard and a computer. Fine arts coordinator Burt Owen says he found Yamaha's Music in Education program to be an efficient way to teach kids to read music "even in 20-minute periods." The program, which Owen runs on a Macintosh computer using HyperCard and a MIDI interface connected to 15 keyboards, is a standard curriculum for grades three through eight with prepackaged lessons.

"It works for us," says Owen. "A key component is the remote control. A teacher can present a successful learning experience by hitting the remote control to access the CD-quality sound in the programs. Kids are so used to listening to music with great sound, the old listening style just doesn't cut it. Now they listen to Santana and immediately follow it by listening to selections from the Boston Philharmonic."

Dance and theater

Compared to other art forms, theater and dance education are newcomers at incorporating the latest technology. Virtually none exists at the K-12 level beyond equipment used for the technical aspects of production. But experiments at the college level should soon start filtering into the public schools.

Doris Ressl Manary, assistant professor of dance at the University of Duluth, in Minnesota, has her college students use a choreography software program, which gives them the ability to create dances with animated figures. "It gives me total control," says Ressl Manary, of the technology. "Whatever I want it to do, it will do. It can do some things the human body can do and some things it can't do."

And Ressl Manary brings the technology from the classroom right into the performance--by projecting the animated figures onto a screen to reflect or contrast with the live dancer's movements.

"There are a lot of opportunities for people to explore with this type of technology," Ressl Manary adds. "It's a creative environment, not a competitive one. That's my goal in bringing it into the schools."

At New York's acclaimed Brooklyn Academy of Music, an annual November arts festival, called the Next Wave, showcases experimentation between art and technology. In presenting large-scale performances that blend artistic disciplines, the festival features artists who use various media in unique ways.

"Technology changes performance to accommodate the craft to the medium," says Joseph Mellilo, executive producer of the Next Wave festival. "I see [technology] incorporated into performance now more than ever. It complements or challenges the storytelling of the artist. This type of storytelling will continue to advance. Performance artists have a curiosity about the medium. This curiosity is at the core of this type of aesthetic."

The National Educational Theater Association's Kent Seidel, one of the writers of the national arts standards, believes "it's getting more and more difficult to address drama without technology." As technology becomes more "flexible and reliable," Seidel sees it expanding the performance atmosphere of live theater, giving the stage a range of scene changes as variable and immediate as in films. He also envisions more multimedia-based performances, with 3-D images interacting with both performers and audience.

"The field of theater is starting to be a lot more accepting of drama as it's now being manifested in different ways than just live theater," Seidel says. "We are taking a leap. We're poised on the verge of getting into electronic media and virtual reality. That's really where it's going."

The artistic community is only beginning to explore the ways new technologies can amplify, enhance, and indulge the stirrings of an imaginative mind. Technology will be an increasingly powerful ally as young artists, students, teachers, and arts professionals continue to experiment and interpret the connections in the world around them.