Where grades 9-11 conceive of, design, and make gidgets, gadgets, and gizmos.
By modeling what we experience in the world we can create anything!--Runge to the 9th Graders.
Through perseverance, even seemingly insurmountable design and construction challenges can be overcome.--Runge to the students.
...where we're going to start by drawing basic shapes by hand, and then we'll make paper ones as a means to start building. We'll look at other artists, like paper engineer Rob Ives, who designs paper mechanisms.
Then we'll draw Appalachian stuff, like cantilever barns (There is definitely a field study in our future, where we'll find a barn and do an accurate survey, like the one that is at Cades Cove!).
Here is a drawing that I did with the software that you'll learn to use for your design efforts in our class. The software renders in 3D space like CAD software will.
Then we'll focus on some kind of Cherokee objects to make a survey of and then reproduce, with the idea that you will create objects that express an aspect of your life.
And this will take us from the visual to the aural, where I'll introduce Song Lines of Australia and other ephemeral "writing" systems passed from person to person, just like our folk music. We'll look at a song line used here in the Appalachians, Foller de Drinkin' Gou'd (Follow the Drinking Gourd), and we'll create a "Song Line".
As a means to accompany your songs, we'll build instruments! Starting with hollow body ones--dulcimers--and working to solid body, electronic instruments.
And this is just the beginning of our journey together!
