Like many colleges across the country, we have been doing remote teaching for almost 4 weeks now. Adjusting to this process has been challenging at times and it’s meant rescheduling and reshuffling some things that we had planned for this second half of the semester, including our Mystery Project and our Visiting Artist day and project.
We have traditionally jump started the second half of the semester with an all-department project we call The Mystery Project. Although we typically challenge students with this project the Monday morning after we’re back from Spring Break, they don’t know what the project is going to be (thus the “mystery” aspect of the project). In the past, we introduce the project to the students at 8:00am and they have 3-4 hours to complete it. Then, once they're done, the pieces are hung up in the studio flex space for everyone to see. With nearly 100 students in the department, it’s really fun to see the variety of solutions for the same prompt. We’ve had some wonderful projects in the past, which are generated by the full-time faculty and/or in collaboration with individuals from the community. This spring it was Assistant Professor Il Sung Na’s turn to come up with the premise of the Mystery Project.
Covid-19 and the coronavirus pandemic have drastically changed the way we do things every day. It has permeated our conversations and our way of life. Considering the way it has impacted education and the fact that we are not in class together this second term of the semester, Il Sung was interested in seeing what kind of imagery the students would create in response to Covid-19. Here’s the brief that was given to our students:
On February 11, 2020 the World Health Organization announced an official name for the disease that is causing the 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak, first identified in Wuhan China and has now been detected in almost every location internationally, including the United States.
In COVID-19, ‘CO’ stands for ‘corona’, ‘VI’ for ‘virus’, and ‘D’ for disease. COVID-19 is a new disease that has not previously been seen in humans. So what is COVID-19, how does it spread, what are symptoms, how do we prevent it, what treatments do we have, and what do you do if you are sick?
Depict how Covid-19 impacts our daily lives / Create a visual story about Covid-19.
Students were also encouraged to research and read articles about Covid-19. Unlike our past Mystery Project timeframe of 3-4 hours, students were given a little over a week to create their final pieces.
There was some amazing work created for this project (!) and although it’s not all pictured here, we have created a special page that contains work that the faculty selected to be featured here (see link above). Additionally, the five pieces shown below are the Top 5 pieces selected by the faculty for their creativity, risk-taking, idea development and commitment. Congratulations to these students and to all of our students who participated in this project for your dedication to your work.
Asha Reeder (‘20)
Lainey Winge (‘20)
Robin Lewallen (‘20)
Seth Peters (‘21)
Jessi Macko (‘21)