The Art of a Vandal

This is my first action project for my Argument course. The purpose of this project was to design your own course and write a declaration to support your reason for proposing this course. I learned a lot this unit but one of the main things I learned was how to write premises and conclusions and how an formal argument is formatted. I am proud of my class mostly because I was pressured to do a different class but in the end I decided to follow my passion and do a class about something I actually care about and see in my everyday life and participate in myself. Please enjoy my declaration for my graffiti class below.

I am declaring a new independent study course at my high school for the next year. There are several reasons for me to propose this class but my main reason is because I want people to experience my passion and experience the life of being a graffiti artist. I want people to experience this because it is a misunderstood art form and even though you are breaking the law it does teach you values such as respect, loyalty, family etc. Students at GCE are taught the 4 values which are gratitude, autonomy, accountability, purpose. My course will teach us these values but in a unique way. Graffiti artist will often look at graffiti on their way somewhere and basically take it all in and notice all the details which is the same thing as gratitude. As a graffiti artist you will have to take responsibility for your style and will often have to go on "mission" by yourself and do most of the work by yourself (unless you have a crew) which is basically autonomy and accountability together. If you do graffiti there is always a purpose behind your reasoning for doing it, It may be different for everyone but they all have their own purpose.

In my opinion the purpose of school as a minor is to take advantage of your education and make the best out of it and actually learn something that you will use in your future job or even life ahead of that. I also feel that school teaches you more than just the basics, for example, it teaches you how to socialize and how to communicate with people professionally. One thing my school has taught me is how to do interviews and also how to be professional and talk proper. basically I feel that school only has a purpose if you take advantage of the opportunities and actually care.

As a GCE student it's my right to express myself and basically make learning interesting for me, tell others what i would like to see incorporated in the classes and also tell the teachers how I would like to learn and what i would like to see more of, I also have the right to tell anyone what i need to make my education the best that it can be. The school encourages me to take control of my learning, be creative with solutions to problems and also they give us enough freedom to make the projects ours and make them unique and do them how we want to. Therefore, I am declaring an independent study for a course titled: The Art of a Vandal. In this class, students will work to answer the guiding question: What makes graffiti the most purest form of art?

"The Art of a Vandal" would be offered to any high school grade level at GCE's campus with many outside meetings. This class will most likely take place in the summer because it is an ideal season to travel around the city and do a lot of walking. This class will almost entirely take place off campus but some days will be spent inside studying the history of graffiti and practicing the style of graffiti. This class will be taught by Hiu (a teacher at GCE) And by myself mainly because Hiu is the art teacher at GCE and me because I know a lot about the art form and I also do graffiti so I can give inside experience to the lifestyle of being a graffiti artist. In this course students will study the unwritten rules of graffiti which are: do not do graffiti on peoples houses, churches, civilian cars and many other rules about styles and respect. This course will also teach you the history of graffiti and different styles and where they originated. You will also learn about different neighborhoods of Chicago and how graffiti plays a big part of the community. Lastly you will learn about crews and also the different "tools" you can use and how to use them. Some of the resources that we can use to benefit us in this class are: Modest skate shop to buy the supplies from such as spray paint and markers. Another resource is Remz a Chicago graffiti artist. Blick will come in handy when we learn about letters because we can buy markers from there and also we can get paint and practice our pieces. Another resource would be "Sofles" because he is a sponsored graffiti artist and he can teach us about style. we could travel to Labagh woods to look at all the old graffiti and new graffiti to learn about style. We could also travel to the "k-mart walls" which is a discrete spot next to a K-mart in Albany park and it is almost 2 blocks of pure graffiti filled walls which will teach them a bit of the unwritten rules and also about style and color combos.

At the end of this course students will have hopefully learned more about their Chicago and the different style Chicago has made and also how graffiti plays a big part in the liveliness of Chicago. They will learn this by studying the history of Chicago graffiti and also by creating their own piece of graffiti art by the end of the class. For one of their action projects they will be assigned a spot and they will have to write a plan including: the best season to paint this spot, the best time, the best colors to use to make the piece pop, the style of the piece and why and they would be given a cardboard model of their spot and would be asked to draw out their piece.

Here is my formal argument for my independent study course:
P1: GCE embraces non-traditional learning
P2: GCE teaches the 4 values of gratitude, autonomy, accountability, purpose
P3: Graffiti is a misunderstood and often hated art form
P4: Studying the history of graffiti teaches the same values, in addition to: discipline/ rules
C: Graffiti should be a course offered at GCE to any grade level

Pinhole Camera

This course was all about light and sound and how those two things affect our daily lives. in this unit we studied light and how affects us and also how a camera is almost exactly like our eyes. In this unit we made a camera out of found materials and had to develop a picture using that camera using light and photo paper. In this unit i learned how to make a pinhole camera and how we can make a photo out of a pinhole camera and a little bit of light exposure. I also learned how a camera is so much like a human eye and how they function the same way to create images. The one thing that I am proud of is my photography because I like how it turned out. I really liked the shapes I used and how it all worked together to make a nice picture

BKJ, pinhole cam (2015)

Light rays from the sun travel through a lens made out of a square of aluminum and a small hole poked in it with a pin. The light ray then continue to travel until it hit the back of the box where the photo-sensitive paper is placed. The photo-sensitive paper reacts to the light bouncing off of the objects and then creates a picture, so that when you place it in the developing chemicals it will produce an image of whatever was placed in front of the pinhole.

This process illustrates that light is a particle because i bounces off of an object and then is sent through the pinhole and transfers to the photo-sensitive paper. I also behaves like a wave because when two light rays come in contact they simply pass through each other. If it was a particle it would bounce off of each other but it does not. Refraction is when a light ray transfers from one surface to another and the direction of the light is changes slightly and slowed down. My camera does not show refraction because the light does not change surfaces it just passes through the lens.

it's about 11.5 inches across from my lens to the photo paper. My object is about 11.25 inches tall. It's about 5 inches from my pinhole to the bottom of the camera, so if i created similar triangles my equation would be 5 / 11.5 = 11.25 / Y, where Y is the distance between the back of my camera and the front of my object.

BKJ Similar Triangles (2015)

When taking the picture we were told to set up our objects and then open the shutter. My shutter was open for about 4 minutes. After that 4 minutes i then closed my shutter and brought the camera to the dark room, where i then opened my camera and took out the photo paper and ran it through all the chemicals until it developed a picture. Unfortunately my picture did not turn out as expected but we did get to make a photo gram which is basically where you put photo paper under glass and then put objects on top and expose it to light and whatever parts of the paper did get hit with light will turn black and the parts that didn't will stay white. I hope you enjoy my photo and my photo gram below.

BKJ, Photo (2015)

BKJ, Photo Gram (2015)