trevordayschool

From this perspective, paint is technology, as are pencils and cameras. What's exciting about art-making today is the vast array of technologies available for artists to help communicate with a larger audience. By using computer programming as a tool for making browser- based interactive work, we have a powerful opportunity to make our work accessible to billions of potential users. Teaching students to see programming as a material for art—which involves learning how to write and read code—is an empowering form of literacy in today's computer- saturated culture. ree years ago, the Chair of the Visual Arts Department, Michele LiCalsi, had the vision of incorporating programming into Trevor's art curriculum. With enthusiastic approval from the Academic Leadership Team, LiCalsi approached the artist and art educator, Alyssa Gorelick, to lead the charge as the first Digital Art and Coding Teacher. Technology has long been fascinating to Ms. Gorelick, especially as it relates to photography. "Before digital technology became a tool for art-making, analog photography was seen as a new technology that opened doors for great proliferation and dissemination of images, as well as portraying actual material existence. I was so fascinated by the process of making photographs as art objects that I deepened e history of art-making reflects the history of technology—from the tools used to carve into rock to the advances of computer programming to create online works. 2 0 T R E V O R D AY S C H O O L ■ S P R I N G 2 0 1 7 – 2 0 1 8 my understanding of photography at CalArts, where I earned an MFA in Photography and Media. I found that working more materially and dimensionally was exciting, so I incorporated techniques from painting and sculpture into my photography, as well as effects using digital technology. Years later, my art-making vocabulary naturally expanded to include programming." Ms. Gorelick happily got to work expanding her breadth of knowledge and developing the courses. rough professional development and collaboration with new mentors, Danny Fenjves (founder of Upperline School of Code in downtown Manhattan) and Eli Kariv (co- founder of e Coding Space), Ms. Gorelick mastered the programming languages of focus—P5.js and Scratch—and developed a new Middle School curriculum that uniquely combines programming and digital art. In Digital Art for 7th and 8th graders—one of the three interdisciplanary courses offered in the 2017–18 school year—students were tasked with creating a unique font as one of their projects. ey explored a range of examples of typography and discussed how letter style affects meaning. Using separate Photoshop layers, students then embarked on letter creation. Following this typography work, they used their font as building blocks to construct an image. Some students chose to work figuratively—constructing faces and bodies out of their letters—while others made symmetrical designs. e project allowed students to create in a mindset in which letters' familiar forms lost meaning and could be used as their pure form. e aim of the 7th-grade Scratch course was for students to create unique and self-expressive characters and code in order to rework the rules of classic games. Techniques from art and design were used to show students how to create original characters and imagery (rather than using the existing "library" of imagery that is built into Scratch). Student projects ranged from animating the letters in their name while incorporating color, movement, music, and interactivity, to designing games that deal with complex concepts, such as the gravity of a falling object increasing over time. T R E V O R T R A N S L AT E S : middle school digital art and coding by Alyssa Gorelick as told to Morgan Porzio My aim is to create a space for all styles of learners so that they may tap into their creativity and feel comfortable expressing themselves.

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