The 2012-2013 photo class was designed to be an intensive but gentle experience for new photographers as well as students with some prior interest and experience. The class spent the fall learning how to use DSLR and point and shoot digital cameras as well as thinking about subject matter and how to present one’s work. Students discussed the Latin root of the word document/documentary, docere, which means to show or teach, and looked at examples of projects such as
The Cut and Paste Project
See Potential
City of Champions
Students took digital cameras home to take photographs of their lives and the world around them, and then learned how to use photo editing software to enhance and alter the images.
The class also participated in the participatory performance project The People to Come by submitting photos of patterns in CMW’s neighborhood, and visited the RISD Museum to look at and reflect on the America in View photography exhibit.
After a winter break hiatus, the class reconvened for an intensive week-long project in collaboration with SWAP. Community MusicWorks rented a SWAP storefront for several weeks in February 2012 through an ArtPlace grant and hosted various events in the space. CMW Media Lab students spent several days in the neighborhood with cameras, documenting what they saw. They were joined by young people who live in SWAP housing. Together this group produced a beautiful collection of images professionally printed by iolabs and displayed in the storefront space during CMW events. Also on display were manipulated images of textures from the neighborhood that students documented, hung in constellations around the space.
One student, Malachy Hopkins, brought along an audio recorder when the other students were photographing. He then created a remix audio track of these sounds and Beethoven’s String Quartet in F Major, Opus 135, a piece performed at the storefront by CMW professional musicians.
The final big class project was connected to another ArtPlace partnership, this time between CMW and CommunityWorks RI, a community development corporation in Providence, RI that “creates opportunities within the neighborhoods it serves for people to live in affordable and healthy homes, to improve their lives, and to strengthen their communities.” CMW and CommunityWorks RI produced a concert at Providence’s historic Tirocchi House, also called “The Wedding Cake House.” CMW Fellows performed Beethoven’s String Quartet in F Major, Opus 59, No. 1 amidst an immersive installation created by Zachary Barr, Cathering Murphy, and
Jonsara Ruth of Salty Labs. Media Lab students visited the house with cameras several weeks before the event, and photographed what they saw. At CMW, they spent time with the Opus 59 sheet music, and created visual patterns corresponding to sections of the music, first by hand and then on the computer. These images and students’ photographs were combined into a small book, printed on the off-set press at the AS220 Community Printshop and were hand-bound by volunteers and the students themselves. The books were made available to concert attendees.
Students creating patterns for the books
One of Indira’s pattens
A pre-press page from the book layout
The final book
