PHI THETA KAPPA

How do the arts convey information?

Study Questions

1. How are the arts used as a record of culture and history?
2. Who has traditionally had access to the arts and how has that changed?
3. How are the arts democratized?
4. How do traditional crafts (pottery, quilting, tapestry) transfer information through generations?
5. Technology has provided more people with the means to create art. How has this changed the type of art produced and information communicated?
6. Social networking tools have provided the means for artists to collaborate across time and distance. What implications does this have for the future of art forms?
7. Musicians and authors can now self-produce, self-publish, and selfdistribute their work. How does this affect access to more and varied music and literature?
8. How does live streaming of the Metropolitan Opera’s performances to local theaters convey information about art and culture? In what ways is it different to view a performance via technology, rather than in person?
9. How do online museum collections increase access to information about artists and their works?
10. Controversial artists’ exhibits, such as Robert Mapplethorpe’s “The Perfect Moment,” have caused politicians to call for cutting funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. How does this relate to the democratization of information? When is this censorship and when is this legitimate public/political response?
11. NetFlix, iTunes, on-demand video, and Sirius Radio have replaced the traditional distribution of entertainment arts and made them more accessible, yet we must purchase new equipment for access. Has this made entertainment art more or less accessible?
12. How has the phenomenon of “Famous for Being Famous” altered our concept of celebrity as it relates to the entertainment arts?
13. American Idol has provided a new path to music-artist success. Does this democratize music or diminish it?

Honors in Action

The Democratization of Instrumentation

Investigation of the Honors Study Topic (Research): To what extent is music an important part of a young person’s education? How do music studies affect the way students perform in their other classes? What is the relationship between music studies and excellence in mathematics? How many schools in your community have regular music education classes? Are there programs for students who would like to take music lessons but cannot afford to rent or own instruments?

Leadership Role(s): Once you have completed your research and determined a need, promote the collection of musical instruments and locate and gain necessary permission from your college administrators for collection sites and times. Leaders learn how to recognize those who support them. Design and print t-shirts acknowledging those who gave time and resources. Provide them to the instrument donors. Working with band directors, organize a concert for which students perform using the instruments collected and distributed by your chapter. Attend and invite instrument donors to attend with you.

Leadership Development: Organize a workshop on “Leading by Serving.” Use the selections on Harriet Tubman and becoming a servant leader from Phi Theta Kappa’s Leadership Development Studies: A Humanities Approach to help you enhance your skills as community leaders.

Action: Determine the level of funding and the amount of need for music in your local school system. Create a used-instrument recycling program and provide instruments to aspiring young musicians who cannot otherwise afford them. Many of these instruments will need to be cleaned, repaired, or refurbished. Identify people who are willing to do this work at reduced or no cost. After the instruments have been collected and made ready for distribution, work with school band directors to determine an appropriate method for getting the instruments to the students who most need them.

Collaboration:

• Chapter members
• Middle school and high school students, teachers, and administrators
• Students and faculty on your campus

Reflection: How did learning more about being a servant leader affect your experience working to gather information and instruments to help students in your community afford the tools necessary to study music? How did you turn what you learned into action? How did you grow as scholars and leaders? How can other Phi Theta Kappa chapters replicate your project in their communities?

Supporting the Arts

Investigation of the Honors Study Topic (Research): A study from the University of California at Los Angeles found a direct correlation between students with high arts involvement and performance on standardized achievement tests. In times of economic crisis, to what extent is public funding for the arts cut in your community? If funding for the arts is cut, how does it affect arts education? To what extent are there alternative programs in your community where students can gain valuable information about and training in the arts? What are the model programs in other communities worldwide that may be useful in your own community?

Leadership Role(s): Survey performing arts organizations in your area to determine their need for assistance with maintaining or increasing attendance and public support. Identify one or two organizations your chapter is interested in supporting.

Leadership Development: Conduct a workshop on setting measurable goals, focusing on fundraising and working with your student activities administrators and student government association as well as arts organizations in your community.

Action: Find the annual schedule of the arts organizations you have decided to support, and choose two performances for support and study. Work with the student activities director and student government association on your campus to secure funds for a block of tickets for students to attend the selected performances. Study the performance piece and become familiar with aspects of the work, its creator, its history, and social significance. Use this knowledge to promote the event across your campus. Use your understanding of the work to organize a discussion with fellow students to help them get the most out of their experience. Arrange for performers to meet with your group to discuss the work after the performance. Support the company by volunteering as ambassadors or ushers for the performance or the season.

Collaboration:

• Chapter members
• Students on your campus
• Student activities administrators
• Arts organizations administrators

Reflection: Ask participants to complete pre- and post-performance questionnaires. Work with a statistics professor or institutional researcher to develop this assessment questionnaire. What did members and students on campus experience by studying and attending performances? How and why do the arts help democratize information?

Bibliography

Carson, C. “Theatre and Technology: Battling with the Box” in Digital Creativity (September 1999): 129-134.
The computer is an essential tool in both theatre and theatre research practices. This article explores technologies currently in use as well as what the future might hold. Carson concludes, “The fundamental conclusion is that any move towards reducing the spontaneity of what takes place on stage and the sense of community which takes place in the theatre, thereby creating a more rigid, universalized or solitary experience, seriously threatens the integrity, and also the point, of the live theatre experience.”

Crossley, S. “Metaphorical Conceptions in Hip-Hop Music” in African American Review (Winter 2006): 501-512.
Crossley examines Hip Hop as a musical art form developed in a culture that had limited access to the traditional tools of music making. Its metaphors are often specific to the culture in which it is created.

Kania, A. “Making Tracks: The Ontology of Rock Music” in Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism (Fall 2006): 401-414.
Kania explores similarities and differences between rock music performance and classical music performance and the role of the recording studio in the performances and the ways the music is
experienced by people listening to the recordings.

Schwab, Gabriele. The Mirror and the Killer-Queen: Otherness in Literary Language. 1996.
Contemporary and classic literature offers us gateways to understanding others. In this text, Schwab presents foundations for utilizing literature to understand other cultures and our own through examining what literature can bring to the discussion. Things outwardly repressed in cultures may be understood through its literature, and what may seem normal or routine may take on new meanings as we learn to read more deeply and fully literature from our own and other cultures.

Siegel, W. and Jacobsen, I. “The challenges of interactive dance: An overview and case study” in Computer Music Journal. 22 (4), 29. 1998.
Siegel and Jacobson discuss how the development of a digital dance interface that tracks a dancer’s movements can allow for dancers to collaborate across barriers of time and distance.

Youngs, A. “The Fine Art of Creating Life” in Leonardo (October 2000): 377-380.
Youngs discusses how biological life and works of art are combining to blur the line between life and art as artists begin to create digital works that “engage in the processes of life and biological works that exist as art and actual life.”