Bianca Ambrosino | Inarte Journal

Bianca Ambrosino

Art Education major

The Ride of a Lifetime: The IMAQUEST Amusement Park Contract

The newest and coolest amusement park called IMAQUEST is looking for a team to hire to design a ride that is impossible to find anywhere else! What ride can you and your team create that will blow IMAQUEST AWAY? How will you get the contract?

The cross curricular art education unit for high school students involves four parts:

1) planning and sketching,

2) building and painting,

3) embellishing, and

4) final presentation.

It was designed to allow students to use the skills they learn in both the visual arts and sciences in a practical way in order to create a thoughtful and well designed piece.

Step 1: Design Your Ride

Rationale

Students will create a pencil drawing that illustrates the concept design of their imagined amusement park ride, while exploring the terms and techniques of 3D shapes, value, depth and texture. To build excitement about the project, the educator shows the work “Dismaland” by street artist Banksy, and the mockumentary, “The Centrifuge Brain Project” BY Till Nowak to students. Both works explore imaginary and impossible amusement rides!

Art Objectives

To cooperate and use critical judgment to build an imaginary ride based on their design.
To communicate the terms and techniques appropriately by using assemblage, material and form association and details.
To use information and technology about circuits, weight, momentum, RPM, and voltage to successfully make their motor work and ride move.
To use problem-solving when selecting materials and troubleshooting in the face of design flaws.
To appreciate and respond to their own art, their peers’ art and artists shown.

Vocabulary

Amusement ride: Fun, exciting machine that carries passengers
Concept Design: Preliminary design and trial of a future project
Design Notes: Brief facts, topics or thoughts about your design
3D shapes: Able to see around your object like in real life
Value: Variation from dark to light
Depth: How objects get smaller when further away and bigger when closer
Texture: The way something looks and feels

Materials

Paper, pencil kit, eraser

Competencies

Visual Arts

To produce individual works in the visual arts
To appreciate works of art, traditional artistic objects, media images, personal productions and those of classmates

Cross Curricular

To use information
To communicate appropriately
To use creativity

Motivation & Response Questions

Questions about own art

How did you use techniques to convey your concept? Did you manage to try all the techniques shown? What improvement do you see in your skills?

Questions about peers art, Banksy and Nowak

What makes the work and rides so unique and impossible? Which rides inspired you the most? Which ride would you definitely run to at an amusement park for? How did the artists and peers convey their ride ideas through their pieces? What techniques did they use?

Step 2: Build Your Ride

Rationale

Students will break into groups of three and pick one of their designs to build. They will use various materials and working motors, while exploring distinctive art techniques of assemblage, material and form association, and detail. As well, they will explore various technologies and scientific terms such as circuits, weight, momentum, RPM and voltage. For more inspiration, the educator shows the work of Michael Demeng, who creates motorized toys using the assemblage technique, and Zimoun, who uses motors in his installations. In addition, students will be shown two prototypes of already-built rides

Art Objectives

To cooperate and use critical judgment to build an imaginary ride based on their concept design
To communicate the terms and techniques appropriately by using assemblage, material and form association and detail
To use information and technology about circuits, weight, momentum, RPM, and voltage to successfully make their motor work and ride move
To use creativity and problem-solving when selecting materials and troubleshooting in the face of design flaws
To appreciate and respond to their own art, their peers’ art and artists shown.

Vocabulary

Art Vocabulary

Assemblage: a sculpture technique where non related objects are put together to make something new
Material/Form association: seeing how materials can be used for a certain purpose by having the right shape and consistency
Detail: paying close attention to on your piece to an area that would catch the viewer’s attention.

Science Vocabulary

Motors: a machine powered by an electrical charge that moves and allows other things to move when attached
Circuits: a closed path where electricity flows. Positive and negatives must be connected
Momentum: the amount of “stuff” that is moving and how fast the “stuff” is moving
RPM: the number of rotations per minute
Voltage: the amount of power

Materials

DC motors, battery packs, batteries, gears, cardboard, popsicle sticks, glue guns, scissors, Styrofoam, pipe cleaners, Ziploc bags and any other material you can find!

Competencies

Visual Arts

To produce individual works in the visual arts
To appreciate works of art, traditional artistic objects, media images, personal production and those of classmates

Cross Curricular

To cooperate with others,
To use creativity,
To solve problems,
To exercise critical thinking,
To use information and technology,
To communicate appropriately.

Motivation & Response Questions

Questions about own art

How will you choose your material? What materials do you think would work best with your design? What are some of the steps you have taken to reach your final product? What were some of the difficulties you had when using the motors? How did you solve these problems?

Questions about peers’ art, Demeng, and Zimoun

How are these works similar or different from your own? What materials or steps did they take that may benefit your design? How is the motor used in the design? Have you discovered alternative techniques to the ones I have shown you? What do you think about these works? Are they exciting, scary, calm etc. Why or why not? Are they exciting, scary, calm, etc.? Why or Why not?

Step 3: Paint your Ride

Rationale

Students will paint and embellish their amusement park rides while exploring the terms and techniques of color meaning, color mixing and revisiting the techniques’ texture and detail using a different medium. For inspiration, the work of Banksy, Nowak, Deng and Zimoun will be revisited to study how they used color and embellishments in their work.

Art Objectives

To cooperatively paint and embellish their amusement ride,
To use critical judgment and creativity when choosing what colors and embellishments would be suitable to the concept of their ride,
To communicate the terms and techniques appropriately by using color mixing and meaning in their work, as well as textures and detail,
To appreciate and respond to their own work, the work of their peers, and the artists’ shown amusement ride

Vocabulary

Color meaning: How colors can suggest different emotions, themes or tones
Clay Color mixing: Mixing and rubbing plasticine together to make a new color like you would with paint
Texture: The way something looks or feels
Detail: Paying close attention to an area that would catch someone’s attention

Materials

Acrylic paint, paint brushes, water containers, beads, plasticine, string, and other

Competencies

Visual Arts

To produce individual works in the visual arts,
To appreciate works of art, traditional artistic objects, media images, their own work and the work of classmates

Cross Curricular

To cooperate with others,
To use creativity,
To exercise critical thinking,
To communicate appropriately.

Motivation & Response Questions

Questions about own art

What colors did you use and why? How do they connect to your ride? What are the colors supposed to make the rider feel? How does this enhance the experience?How does color support your theme or concept?

Questions about peer art and contemporary artists (Demeng, Zimoun and others):

What types of colors have these artists used? Do you think they have used these colors for a specific reason? How do the colors make you feel? How would the work change if the colors were different? Do you prefer one work over the other? Why or why not?

Step 4: Present your ride

For the final activity, each team will be asked to present and pitch their idea to the classroom. The remaining students in the room will take on the role of IMAQUEST adjudicators. At the end, the team who received the most votes from the class wins the contract with IMAQUEST! Students should be as imaginative as they wish in presenting and in their roles as IMAQUEST adjudicators. Playing counts here! This is the only part of the unit where they will have totally open direction! HAVE FUN!