How can the subjective viewpoint of an individual contribute to knowledge in the arts? On what basis can the merit of a work of art be judged?
Is there any point in discussing the arts – should we not simply experience them?
‘The Arts’ is a collective term that encompasses the creative productions of humans and encompasses the visual arts, the performing arts, and the literary arts. The arts explore the experience and reality of being human and art as an essential element of culture.
The ARTS could be thought of as creating a bridge between personal knowledge and shared knowledge. Many of them are collaborative. They use emotion as a currency to generate significance at a personal level but reason provides a restrictive framework necessary for the creation of meaning: artworks have their own inner logic. Some (many in more recent history) regard the arts as having an extra-artistic cognitive function, that they have a message about our human place in the world which might have social or political implications. There is a widespread belief that the arts have a higher purpose to educate by encouraging introspection and sometimes making us humans think about how we live our lives; and how we can visualize (and CREATE) our future.
I believe TOK and VA classes go hand in hand. The deep inquiring questions you ask in TOK class are so relevant to the process of creating artworks Personally, I use TOK questions often in my VA classes – I like to post questions around the classroom, and then use them as discussion points when we are discussing artworks. It helps my students think of ART in the bigger picture.
TOK Resource’s site is so useful! By just browsing through, the Glass Brain project caught my attention. I shared it with my students, and the Self Reflected work of Dr. Greg Dunn and Dr. Brian Edwards, with their Reflective Microetching technique, which requires the meticulous application of gold leaf, informed a series of my student’s artworks.
The slideshow below is a compiled list of TOK topics with question prompts and discussion starters that encompass a few directions you can consider going within your TOK or VA class.
