PLO 2: Artistic Expression

Display an appreciation of and participation in creative, performing, and visual artistic pursuits in order to develop an aesthetic awareness and a sense of artistic and intellectual property to include a public performance, exhibition, publication, or broadcast.

The artifact I am using for this PLO is Artifact 2, which can be found in the Artifacts section of this portfolio. It is a video I created with a group of my peers during the Fall 2021 semester for CAL 2970. In the video we explored Chaparral Hall on campus. The video is meant to highlight the many offices and services available in CSUSB’s Chaparral Hall. While much of this assignment was an exercise in teamwork and communication, we decided to flex our artistic muscles and created an animated video.

I chose this artifact to use as proof of satisfaction for this particular PLO because of the artistic stylization we used in creating the video and because of the method in which we disseminated it to the public. We were not just making a video for the purpose of receiving a grade in CAL 2970, we were learning how to create something with the intent of publishing and broadcasting for the benefit of others; in essence, we were completing an assignment while also providing a service to the school.

This PLO is in place so students can develop and nurture their creative side. It asks students to show an appreciation for and participate in creative, performing, and visual artistic pursuits. By engaging in these pursuits, students will develop an aesthetic awareness, a sense of artistic and intellectual property, all of which include a public performance, exhibition, publication, or broadcast. I believe this artifact meets all of those criteria and shows that during my time at CSUSB, I used my imaginative side to approach certain assignments with an artistic flair. We initially looked at making a PowerPoint presentation for the assignment associated with this artifact, like many of our peers, but wanted to try something a bit more creative (in our opinion). Ultimately, we decided to do an animated video.

When we decided to complete this assignment via an animated video, it became clear we would need to provide a voice for those characters. We wrote lines of dialogue that met the criteria for the assignment, then recorded ourselves voicing those lines of dialogue. We wanted our animated characters to walk around Chaparral Hall, like we did throughout our research, so while we were doing said research, we took photographs of the relevant offices and buildings. Once all of that was completed, we needed to make the actual video. I did the animations and editing, and while I could have easily animated each of my group members myself, I did not want to take creative control of how my group members viewed themselves, therefore each of my group members was given the opportunity to design the animated version of themselves. I put the video together, adding in the photographs as the backdrop for each scene, doing the animations, adding in the recorded dialogue and making the mouths move with the dialogue, and the editing. Once the video was completed, the video was posted publicly on YouTube, then submitted to our digital portfolios, and the class for grading. The method in which this artifact was created lends to artistic and intellectual property. I paid for an animation tool that gave us the rights to both use and publicly post the artistic style used, and we created entirely original dialogue unique to this video. The video is posted to a public domain, YouTube, so each participants works and performance in this artifact is a public performance. Furthermore, because it was posted to a public domain, it is a published work available to anyone, and it was broadcasted for the CAL 2970 class.

These early PLO artifact and narrative connections are providing me with an insight into how seemingly unrelated assignments hold relevance to the skills I am building throughout my college career. At the time I did this assignment in CAL 2970, I struggled to grasp the relevance beyond an opportunity to practice teamwork and collaboration. That said, I am learning that even if I feel that way throughout the completion of an assignment, there is no doubt a reason it was assigned. With this particular assignment, I can now see how it can connect to multiple PLO’s, so its relevance to a particular subject matter becomes less important. Instead, I can look at the artifact through a more macroscopic view and see how it connects the various threads of skills I am honing toward a future in education.

This viewpoint is something I can carry with me and utilize as an educator. Take the arts in education as an example; arts are often one of the first things to go when a school or district makes budget cuts. Unfortunately, we place far more emphasis and importance into fields like math and science. This PLO showed me how a completely unrelated subject can be used to fulfill an artistic endeavor. I can use artistic expression and allowing students to flex their imagination and creative muscles, into fields other than the arts. It has shown me how I can potentially build lessons that include performance and exhibition into those valued subjects, thus giving students an opportunity to participate and practice creative, performing, and visually artistic endeavors.