2001 Annual Grant Issue
Benjamin Olshin: Barra Technology Grant
Historical Technology Arts - An Interdisciplinary Teaching Project
My inspiration to apply for the Barra Foundation Distance Learning Grant came from a unique teaching experience I had a number of years ago. I was a professor of fine arts and design at a Ming Chuan University, a large institution in the middle of Taipei in Taiwan. I had taught there for two years already, and was beginning my third year. Courses I had taught included painting, drawing, and model-making. In my teaching there, the language barrier was always an issue, although the students understood my English, and I understood a fair bit of Chinese by that time.
The situation was made easier by the fact that the classes were studio-based: I gave the assignment, which was then translated into Chinese by the class leader (a student chosen by fellow classmates). The class leader was always a student who was both popular and good in English! The students would work on their projects, and I was able to communicate with them primarily by demonstration (how to render with pencil, how to build up a watercolor wash, and so on).
But then the dean of the design department asked me to teach art history. I explained to him that this would be very difficult because of the language issue. It wasn't just that my Chinese was not good enough to explain the complex history of Western art - it was that the whole tradition was quite alien to the Taiwanese. Many Taiwanese have studied art and art history overseas, but young college students there have studied almost exclusively in the rich art tradition of Chinese culture. So essentially I would have to start from "ground zero." I suggested that one of the Taiwanese teachers who had gone to graduate school abroad would be a better choice. But my dean was a very difficult man, and he insisted that for Western art history, it had to be a Western teacher.
I had sat in on my art history classes at Penn with my brother when he was an architecture student many years ago. I knew what a passive exercise an art history class could be, with endless slides and lectures, which would be an even greater torture for a non-native speaker of English. I resolved to try something different, vaguely pondering an "interactive" way of teaching art history, making it more like the studio courses which worked so well across linguistic and cultural barriers.
I decided to focus on the Renaissance, and in particular Leonardo da Vinci, who was well-known even to young Chinese students. I had the students do some basic reading, but the primary focus of the course was visual: I gave each student an extensive packet of drawings from Leonardo's folios. They were then required to work from these drawings, building the devices that Leonardo drew: these included his flying machine, military engines, and so on. In this way, they learned to really "read" the drawings, to truly understand what Leonardo devised, and to analyze whether these devices and inventions could actually have worked or not.
Here at Germantown Academy, a very similar situation came up last year, when Bruce Elliot suggested that I teach a traditional, college-style art history course. Mind you, I think that this is still an excellent idea, but my first response was to try something along the lines of what I had done in Taiwan. I thought it would be interesting to try it with a slightly younger audience (high school versus college) and with a smaller format (my classes in Taiwan were typically some 30-40 students). I also wanted to integrate some contemporary technology into the teaching of this course. Bruce expressed interest in the idea, and gave me some suggestions.
Throughout the summer, I collected materials, designed questions and projects, and planned the syllabus. Then I built a website for the course, focusing on an interactive syllabus, where students could get their readings as well as guidelines for each project. My goal in using websites was to invest the student with more access to the course materials. By having everything online (syllabus, readings, and assignments), students can view the coursework at any time, and print out their assignments as needed. They can also look ahead to future projects. The online syllabus also allows to for quick changes, if there are special assembly days and so on. I have also found that the online syllabus and course materials interest parents a great deal. A number have remarked that they were following the course along with their child, and were themselves interested in the assignments. The syllabus course materials are available at the course website:
The overall syllabus is divided into two semesters: ancient technology (primarily Greek and Roman) and Renaissance technology (Leonardo da Vinci and other period "artist-engineers"). The first week of the course is devoted to the question of technology itself: What is technology? How do we define progress? What technologies did the ancients have? Why did they have some technologies (such as aqueducts) and not others (such as steam engines)? The students are presented with some technological mysteries as well, such as the "Stones of Baalbek:" huge pieces of rock - some weighing over a million pounds - that were quarried and assembled in remote antiquity.
Then the students begin projects. Roughly every two weeks they are given a new project, to build a model of an ancient machine or device working only from an original drawing or textual description. In this way, the students learn about technology and history directly, experiencing these fields through the creative process. In making models and facsimiles of ancient machines, the students are compelled to examine much more carefully the original design of the device, be it a Roman grinding mill or Leonardo da Vinci's armored vehicle. For their final project, the students are presented with another technological mystery, where they must decipher a series of cryptic drawings found in Leonardo da Vinci's folios. Original materials that the students must analyze include Leonardo drawings, a text from Vitruvius, medieval illustrations of mechanical devices, and armor and early weapons.
The ultimate aims of the course are to teach history experientially rather than didactically, to allow students to develop analytical skills, and to engender an understanding of the value of manual work. I hope that this course will continue to grow and develop, and come to include other cultures and technologies (such as ancient Chinese inventions).
