2014 C1 Home-based Learning (HBL)

Welcome to your GP HBL package! This years HBL package will focus on the arts. There are two tasks to complete.
After completing the tasks, please bring your answers to school and be ready to share your answers with the rest of
your class during your next GP lesson.
Starter: The following pieces of artwork were created by Aubrey Beardsley, James McNeill Whistler and Oscar
Wilde who were leading figures in the Aesthetic Movement, an art movement that was popular in the 19th century,
with an emphasis on aesthetic values.
Work of art

Title/Artist
The Peacock Skirt created by Aubrey Beardsley

Whistlers Mother created by James McNeill Whistler

The Picture of Dorian Gray written by Oscar Wilde

The popular slogan of the Aesthetic Movement was art for arts sake, which expresses a philosophy that the intrinsic
value of art, and the only "true" art, is divorced from any didactic, moral or utilitarian function. In todays world, is art
only for arts sake or are there other functions of art? Complete Task 1 to find out more about the other functions of
art.
Task 1: Click on the links below to view/listen to the various art works. Do research to find out more about the
artist(s) behind each work of art and the function it serves. Record what youve found in the table.
Hyperlink
http://www.wallcoo.net/paint/fine-artpaintings/html/wallpaper4.html

Artist
Museo del Prado

Function
To illustrate the fall of human being
from its angelic character

http://www.pablopicasso.org/guernica.jsp

Pablo Picasso

Shows the tragedies of war and the

suffering it inflicts on individuals
Used as a perpetual reminder of the
tragedies of war, an anti-war symbol,
and an embodiment of peace

http://gallery.aboriginalartdirectory.com/aboriginalart/trevor-nickolls/the-end-of-a-dream.php

Trevor Nickolis

http://vimeo.com/13196691

Hip hop artists

Invincible and Finale

http://www.arttherapyblog.com/ptsd/art-therapyhelping-veterans/#.U1KIYldheZQ

Raise awareness about the impacts

of gentrification on the Motor City

Helping ex-soldiers get over the

trauma of war
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Now that you have thought through the functions of art in general, we are going to hear Ben Cameron, an arts
programme director at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation in New York, share his thoughts about one particular
genre of art, the performing arts, and its power.

Task 2:
Ben Cameron The True Power of the Performing Arts
From http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_cameron_tedxyyc.html
1. Click on the link above and watch the Ted Talk by Ben Cameron on The True Power of the
Performing Arts. If you have problems following what he is saying, you can refer to the transcript
of his talk below to help you.
2. After watching the Ted Talk, answer the following questions in the Reflection and Response
exercises. Hand in your responses to your GP tutor at your next GP lesson.
3. Reflection and Response Exercises:
Exercise 1: Understanding the content of the talk:

A. According to Ben Cameron, how has technology impacted the people who work in
the arts industry?
B. How is the arts reformation similar to the religious reformation?
C. Why does Cameron think that the arts would be more important than ever before?
Your responses may be in the form of short sentences.
Exercise 2: Relevance to Singapore
Cameron argues that performing arts play important roles in our lives today. How far is
this true of the arts in Singapore? In your discussion, refer to relevant ideas from the
transcript and support your views with your own knowledge.
Write at least 2 paragraphs in response.

Transcript of the Ted Talk:

I am a cultural omnivore, one whose daily commute is made possible by attachment to an iPod -- an iPod
that contains Wagner and Mozart, pop diva Christina Aguilera, country singer Josh Turner, gangsta rap artist
Kirk Franklin, concerti, symphonies and more and more. I'm a voracious reader, a reader who deals with Ian
McEwan down to Stephanie Meyer. I have read the "Twilight" tetralogy. And one who lives for my home
theater, a home theater where I devour DVDs, video-on-demand and a lot of television. For me, "Law and
Order: SVU," Tine Fey and "30 Rock" and "Judge Judy" -- "The people are real, the cases are real, the
rulings are final." Now, I'm convinced a lot of you probably share my passions, especially my passion for
Judge Judy, and you'd fight anybody who attempted to take her away from us, but I'm a little less convinced
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that you share the central passion of my life, a passion for the live professional performing arts, performing
arts that represent the orchestral repertoire, yes, but jazz as well, modern dance, opera, theater and more and
more and more.
You know, frankly it's a sector that many of us who work in the field worry is being endangered and possibly
dismantled by technology. While we initially heralded the Internet as the fantastic new marketing device that
was going to solve all our problems, we now realize that the Internet is, if anything, too effective in that
regard. Depending on who you read, an arts organization or an artist, who tries to attract the attention of a
potential single ticket buyer, now competes with between three and 5,000 different marketing messages a
typical citizen sees every single day. We now know in fact that technology is our biggest competitor for
leisure time. Five years ago, Gen-X'ers spent 20.7 hours online and TV, the majority on TV. Gen-Y'ers spent
even more -- 23.8 hours, the majority online. And now, a typical university entering student arrives at
college already having spent 20,000 hours online and an additional 10,000 hours playing video games -- a
stark reminder that we operate in a cultural context where video games now outsell music and movie
recordings combined.
Moreover, we're afraid that technology has altered our very assumptions of cultural consumption. Thanks to
the Internet, we believe we can get anything we want whenever we want it, delivered to our own doorstep.
We can shop at three in the morning or eight at night, ordering jeans tailor-made for our unique body-types.
Expectations of personalization and customization that the live performing arts -- which have set curtain
times, set venues, attendant inconveniences of travel, parking and the like -- simply cannot meet. And we're
all acutely aware: what's it going to mean in the future when we ask someone to pay a hundred dollars for a
symphony, opera or ballet ticket, when that cultural consumer is used to downloading on the internet 24
hours a day for 99 cents a song or for free? These are enormous questions for those of us who work in this
terrain. But as particular as they feel to us, we know we're not alone.
All of us are engaged in a seismic, fundamental realignment of culture and communications, a realignment
that is shaking and decimating the newspaper industry, the magazine industry, the book and publishing
industry and more. Saddled in the performing arts as we are, by antiquated union agreements that inhibit and
often prohibit mechanical reproduction and streaming, locked into large facilities that were designed to
ossify the ideal relationship between artist and audience most appropriate to the 19th century and locked into
a business model dependent on high ticket revenues, where we charge exorbitant prices. Many of us shudder
in the wake of the collapse of Tower Records and ask ourselves, "Are we next?" Everyone I talk to in
performing arts resonates to the words of Adrienne Rich, who, in "Dreams of a Common Language," wrote,
"We are out in a country that has no language, no laws. Whatever we do together is pure invention. The
maps they gave us are out of date by years." And for those of you who love the arts, aren't you glad you
invited me here to brighten your day?
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Now, rather than saying that we're on the brink of our own annihilation, I prefer to believe that we are
engaged in a fundamental reformation, a reformation like the religious Reformation of the 16th century. The
arts reformation, like the religious Reformation, is spurred in part by technology, with indeed, the printing
press really leading the charge on the religious Reformation. Both reformations were predicated on fractious
discussion, internal self-doubt and massive realignment of antiquated business models. And at heart, both
reformations, I think were asking the questions: who's entitled to practice? How are they entitled to practice?
And indeed, do we need anyone to intermediate for us in order to have an experience with a spiritual divine?
Chris Anderson, someone I trust you all know, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and author of "The Long
Tail," really was the first -- for me -- to nail a lot of this. He wrote a long time ago, you know, thanks to the
invention of the Internet, web technology, mini-cams and more, the means of artistic production have been
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democratized for the first time in all of human history. In the 1930s, if any of you wanted to make a movie,
you had to work for Warner Brothers or RKO because who could afford a movie set and lighting equipment
and editing equipment and scoring and more? And now who in this room doesn't know a 14 year-old hard at
work on her second, third, or fourth movie? (Laughter) Similarly, the means of artistic distribution have
been democratized for the first time in human history. Again, in the '30s, Warner Brothers, RKO did that for
you. Now, go to YouTube, Facebook; you have worldwide distribution without leaving the privacy of your
own bedroom.
This double impact is occasioning a massive redefinition of the cultural market, a time when anyone is a
potential author. Frankly, what we're seeing now in this environment is a massive time, when the entire
world is changing as we move from a time when audience numbers are plummeting. But the number of arts
participants, people who write poetry, who sing songs, who perform in church choirs, is exploding beyond
our wildest imaginations. This group, others have called the "pro ams," amateur artists doing work at a
professional level. You see them on YouTube, in dance competitions, film festivals and more. They are
radically expanding our notions of the potential of an aesthetic vocabulary, while they are challenging and
undermining the cultural autonomy of our traditional institutions. Ultimately, we now live in a world defined
not by consumption, but by participation.
But I want to be clear, just as the religious Reformation did not spell the end to the formal Church or to the
priesthood; I believe that our artistic institutions will continue to have importance. They currently are the
best opportunities for artists to have lives of economic dignity -- not opulence -- of dignity. And they are the
places where artists who deserve and want to work at a certain scale of resources will find a home. But to
view them as synonymous with the entirety of the arts community is, by far, too short-sighted. And indeed,
while we've tended to polarize the amateur from the professional, the single most exciting development in
the last five to 10 years has been the rise of the professional hybrid artist, the professional artist who works,
not primarily in the concert hall or on the stage; but most frequently around women's rights, or human rights,
or on global warming issues or AIDS relief for more -- not out of economic necessity, but out of a deep,
organic conviction that the work that she or he, is called to do cannot be accomplished in the traditional
hermetic arts environment.
Today's dance world is not defined solely by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet or the National Ballet of Canada,
but by Liz Lerman's Dance Exchange -- a multi-generational, professional dance company, whose dancers
range in age from 18 to 82, and who work with genomic scientists to embody the DNA strand and with
nuclear physicists at CERN. Today's professional theater community is defined, not only the Shaw and
Stratford Festivals, but by the Cornerstone Theater of Los Angeles -- a collective of artists that after 9/11,
brought together 10 different religious communities -- the Bahia, the Catholic, the Muslim, the Jewish, even
the Native American and the gay and lesbian communities of faith, helping them create their own individual
plays and one massive play, where they explored the differences in their faith and found commonality as an
important first step toward cross-community healing. Today's performers, like Rhodessa Jones, work in
women's prisons, helping women prisoners articulate the pain of incarceration, while today's playwrights
and directors work with youth gangs to find alternate channels to violence and more and more and more.
And indeed, I think, rather than being annihilated, the performing arts are posed on the brink of a time when
we will be more important than we have ever been.
You know, we've said for a long time, we are critical to the health of the economic communities in your
town. And absolutely -- I hope you know that every dollar spent on a performing arts ticket in a community
generates five to seven additional dollars for the local economy, dollars spent in restaurants or on parking, at
the fabric stores where we buy fabric for costumes, the piano tuner who tunes the instruments and more. But
the arts are going to be more important to economies as we go forward, especially in industries we can't
even imagine yet, just as they have been central to the iPod and the computer game industries, which few, if
any of us come have foreseen 10 to 15 years ago. Business leadership will depend more and more on
emotional intelligence, the ability to listen deeply, to have empathy, to articulate change, to motivate others
-- the very capacities that the arts cultivate with every encounter.
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Especially now, as we all must confront the fallacy of a market-only orientation, uninformed by social
conscience; we must seize and celebrate the power of the arts to shape our individual and national
characters, and especially characters of the young people, who all too often, are subjected to bombardment
of sensation, rather than digested experience. Ultimately, especially now in this world, where we live in a
context of regressive and onerous immigration laws, in reality TV that thrives on humiliation, and in a
context of analysis, where the thing we hear most repeatedly, day-in, day-out in the United States, in every
train station, every bus station, every plane station is, "Ladies and gentlemen, please report any suspicious
behavior or suspicious individuals to the authorities nearest you," when all of these ways we are encouraged
to view our fellow human being with hostility and fear and contempt and suspicion.
The arts, whatever they do, whenever they call us together, invite us to look at our fellow human being with
generosity and curiosity. God knows, if we ever needed that capacity in human history, we need it now. You
know, we're bound together, not, I think by technology, entertainment and design, but by common cause. We
work to promote healthy vibrant societies, to ameliorate human suffering, to promote a more thoughtful,
substantive, empathic world order.
I salute all of you as activists in that quest and urge you to embrace and hold dear the arts in your work,
whatever your purpose may be. I promise you the hand of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation is stretched
out in friendship for now and years to come. And I thank you for your kindness and your patience in
listening to me this afternoon.
Thank you, and godspeed.