What stories do you
have to tell? What
has happened in
your life that has
made a difference
to you?
CO
Tiffanie Davis
NTEMPORARY
What are your defining
moments? What role
can the computer play
in telling your story?
These are questions that I asked my
computer arts students to answer
in Stories, a unit based on the PBS
Art: 21 series. Art: 21 Art in the
Twenty-First Century is a PBS documentary series about contemporary
visual art in America and the artists
who make it.
The artists profiled in Stories tell
tales—autobiographical, fictional,
satirical, or fantastical—through
architecture, literature, mythology,
fairytales, and history. These artists
provoke us to think about our own
stories, the characters and cari- Using elements of traditional
catures, the morals and messages storytelling and traditional art,
that define our real and imagined incorporated with today’s technol-
lives.—PBS Art: 21 ogy, creates a unique form of artistic
Throughout history, storytelling communication that students can
has evolved from verbal, to pictorial, easily use.
to the forming of letters and words. Technology has evolved in
how each generation
tells their stories. For
example, consider the
impact of the printing press, Morse
code, and the telephone. In more
recent times, storytelling has gone
from radio, to television, to cell
phones, and now to the computer
and Internet.
Traditionally, when
students think about
stories, they think
about books and reading. But, when they
are introduced to art-
ists like Kara Walker and Trenton
Doyle Hancock, students read a new
chapter on how stories can be told
through art.
What role can the
computer play in
telling your story?
