MULTIMASK MASKS2GLOBE: Maskmaking in Classroom Settings: Behind the Mask

Sunday, January 6, 2008

Behind the Mask

The English Department, Villa Maria College of Christchurch, designed a mask-making workshop option for Integrated Studies Week end of term 2007. Specific learning outcomes were:

Create a monologue "From behind the mask" that explores the inner life of an animal seen at Willowbank Wildlife Reserve

Create a visual representation of an animal in the form of a facial mask using natural materials

Present both mask and monologue in a dramatic presentation before an audience

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The Changing Face of Masks - Across Curriculum Links

Art (visual, wearable, performing arts) & Design
Mask making is a tool for teaching visual literacy, a critical but often neglected communication skill - the ability to collect, interpret, negotiate and make meaningful, the information presented in the form of an image. Learn how to ‘read’ pictures

Dance & Physical Education
Mask making is a tool for learning about a different experience of space - storytelling in motion expresses ideas and emotions

Drama & English
Mask making is a tool for creating, adapting and sustaining different roles. Learn how to portray favourite characters in literature and film, poetry and plays

Economics & Enterprise
Mask making is a tool for learning the creative thinking skills that are transferable to industry. Learn how to generate new and original ideas through spirit of enquiry

Geography
Mask making is a tool for teaching the patterns and processes that shape human interaction with various environments. Learn about masks as story or journey ‘maps’ – cultural, developmental, economic, health, historical, political, demographic, religious, social, tourist and urban landscapes

History
Mask making is a tool for finding out about our past. Find out what masks tell us about the uniqueness of each region’s history and cultural identity (and how those ideas change over the passage of time)

Mathematics (yes, maths masks do exist!)
Masks can be used as a tool for teaching numeracy ie 3-dimensional thinking skills.
Learn about algebra - the mathematical field that studies structure, relation and quantity - using masks to explore mirror and rotational symmetry

Music
Mask making is a tool for teaching musical appreciation. Learn how musical ideas and sounds shape characterization and storyline eg Phantom of the Opera and Cirque du Soleil minstrel music. Improvise material to match sound by adding hand-made percussion instruments into masked performance

Science
Mask making is also a system of acquiring knowledge (Latin scientia), learning systematic observational skills and recording data. Investigate masks in medicine eg the Plague Doctor mask of the Bubonic plague pandemic (14-17th centuries). Alternatively, study Metamorphosis (ie the life cycle of the butterfly) and make butterfly masks.

Self Science
Masks - as symbolic self portraits – help students gain a better understanding of themselves. Making and wearing their masks helps students build feeling and thinking skills at the same time. Offering multiple options and alternatives to students teaches them how to make wise choices. They also develop a wider range of communication skills eg visual, mime

Social & Cultural Studies
Mask making is a tool for teaching social skills through collaboration, inclusion and humanism (dignity and worth of all peoples). Mask making is a tool for exploring issues of identity and citizenship

Technology
Mask making is a tool for adapting existing materials to fit new forms.

Seeing the World Through Paper Eyes

Our vision of ‘seeing the world through paper eyes’ originates from a journal article appearing in The National Geographic magazine, March 1957 issue - yes, over fifty years ago - when staff journalist Newman Bumstead (sounds like a cartoon character!) wrote about Philadelphia artist, Mr. D. Roy Miller (Volume CXI No.3 p365).

For years Miller went about collecting drawings and paintings by children around the world. By exhibiting these works and by promoting international exchanges of art through his Children’s United World Art Foundation, Miller hoped to encourage global understanding.

Miller believed in the uncomplicated vision of children and their ability “to light the world” as he expressed it, by using a language that crosses barriers - the universal language of visual art. Long before the Internet existed Miller collected young people’s art from Iceland, Norway, Italy, Greece, Afghanistan, India, Cambodia, Japan, Australia, and Southern Rhodesia, contacting the ministers of education of all these nations by snail mail.

Eventually, the legendary “Pied Piper of Children’s Art” had collected 12,000 paintings from more than a hundred lands, the work of children of all colours and creeds. Miller noticed there was a“oneness" in these paintings…can you feel it?” He asked.

We thought it a good idea to start collecting 21st century MASK ART from the global classroom, using Multimask as the blank canvas (instead of a flat sheet of paper). Multimask invites young people the world over, to come face to face through the medium of visual storytelling. Everyone has a story to tell....

UNIQUE FACES of CULTURE

Conducting a Google IMAGE SEARCH of regional masks will reveal much about the history and cultural identity of each region, for example:

New Zealand - Moko (Maori face tattoo), body art and wearable art 'masks'
Polynesia - Maoi stone face sculptures (Easter Is) and Makemake (Polynesian God)
Oceania - carved wooden masks, scuba masks
Africa - carved wooden masks
Australia - Aboriginal serpent (spiral) mask
China - Opera masks, anti-pollution masks
Japan - Noh theatre masks
Russia - Golden Mask (performing arts festival)
India - Shakti/Shiva masks
North America - Native American Indian mask art
South America - ancient American Inca & Aztec masks
England - Green Man masks plus colonial acquisitions from around the world
Italy - Venetian & Renaissance art masks
Germany - Faschnat aka Karnival, gas masks
Swiss - Basel carnival masks, infection control masks
Egypt - gold Tutankhamun masks
Iran - veil
Iraq - hoodlum mask (black headwear)

What do Masks tell you about where the value lies in each particular society?

MAKING SENSE of the FUNUSUAL

What do the mask's funny facials mean?
Eyes – popping eyeballs and jutting brow are there to suggest new ways of looking, seeing and thinking from a fusion of perspectives.
Nose – big noses suggest a limitless spirit of enquiry. Dramatic hooked nose-pieces (bird beak-like) signal the ability to go beyond our time and experience, challenging the ideas we have been taught. Noses never do as they are told!
Ears – swollen cauliflower ears on masks suggest the freedom to question the soundest of truths (as does ‘raspberry’ blowing).
Cheekbones – grossed out cheekbones suggest “cheekiness”, the freedom to be disrespectful, holding up to critique and satire the so-called ‘normal’.
Mouth – out-poked tongues and sneering rubbery lips suggest the freedom to be irreverent, challenging authority by speaking out.

CURRICULUM LEADERS: mask comprehension in the classroom

Mask Comprehension
As researchers
Learners gain an awareness, appreciation and understanding of the great diversity of uses for masks in cultures around the world.
Learners understand masks as social 'stories' as they investigate the contexts in which masks are made, used and valued in ancient and modern times.

As makers
Learners design and create masks using a 3D preformed face base [Multimask] and exhibit craftsmanship in applying art materials and found objects.
Learners demonstrate creativity and completion by hands-on experience, open-ended imagination and choice of finishing details.
Learners come to understand the sense behind the comic characterisations of masks - distortions, exaggerations, ridiculous and asymmetrical elements - and how these elements communicate feeling tone and convey emotions/ideas.

As viewers
Learners also develop visual literacy in the representation and 'reading' of the visual world.
Learners develop critical thinking skills as they analyse and question the parameters of masks and their role in shaping identities.
Learners develop broad inquiring attitudes by participating and being articulate in the visual.

As wearers
Learners also develop emotional literacy as they explore and reflect on their experiences of creating and wearing masks.

Learners become increasingly literate as they source and develop ideas, and participate in the practical hands-on and perceptual processes of creating and responding to mask characters they have made.

MULTIMASK MASKS2GLOBE: Maskmaking in Classroom Settings

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Sunday, January 6, 2008

Behind the Mask

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The Changing Face of Masks - Across Curriculum Links

Seeing the World Through Paper Eyes

UNIQUE FACES of CULTURE

MAKING SENSE of the FUNUSUAL

PERMISSION-BASED DESIGN

CURRICULUM LEADERS: mask comprehension in the classroom