Our Ka Installation

 The assignment that we had as a class was to create a modern installation to glorify the ideals, soul, and individuality of a person that we thought was important. This assignment aimed to mimic what the ancient Egyptians did thousands of years ago to entertain the "Ka," or soul of important people in their society. We took a long time to come up with a person that represented several ideals and values that we hold important enough to display in the atrium in our school. By choosing Bob Marley, we wanted to emphasize his beliefs about equality of every person, peace, and love that he conveyed through his powerful music. The purpose of the different ancient pieces are each to show how to live a good life, with each of the ideals that Bob Marley taught in his life, in order to have a good death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Marley

http://debate.uvm.edu/dreadlibrary/dorsey.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_concept_of_the_soul

http://www.egyptianmyths.net/ka.htm

Today in class we were all putting the finishing touches on our small group projects. The death mask group had to drill into their death mask that is almost complete. The guitar group painted the guitar as one of their final steps. All that was left to be done was let the guitar dry then it would be ready to be displayed. It was a busy day for the shorthanded canopic jar group as they were down the two members. We had to wrap the heart in paper mache, previously made of newspaper, good job Brian. For one of the another conopic jars we pasted on the people connecting hands symbolizing equality. All of the groups seem to be close to finished. One more class and the instillation should be ready to be displayed 

The Artistic Process

In class today we discussed how we are going to put to entire installation in and around the fountain in the atrium. We found out today the Mr. Bishop has approved our plan of using the fountain. We are using the fountain because it has a spot for everything. Also we found that it would protect all of our art work from being broken more than if we decided to put the installation in the hallway with the SMart bulletin boards.

Also today in class all of the groups started doing the artistic part of their part of the installation. The class talked about how the installation should be cohesive and all work together. We came up with some ideas in order to do that like make the colors not to bright and maybe even colors that would match the fountain the the installation will be in. Some people thought of putting "rasta colors" in our installation to represent Bob Marley but not to bright because we don't want people to jump right to the bad things about him. We talked about how if we were to do "rasta colors" it could not really be on every part of the installation and it had to be very subtle.

My group today started to write out the quotes on paper with stencils. Also as a group we decided that we were going to tea stain the paper and burn the ends of it to make it look older. The death mask group started to make the mask and was crumpling up newspaper and forming it in the shape of the mask. The sculpture group went to the library to print out some black and white pictures on the inkjet printer. The canopic jar group got their vases and have started with there part. The last group is doing someone else that they really wanted to do and that is Banksy. Banksy was a street artist that asks us to question the social norms. Today they worked on creating a stencil which they will use to spray paint an image on a cinder block wall that they will build and install.















         
                This is my group writing out the quotes.


 This is a sketch of our installation.

Deciding on Who to Honor

In our class last week we were debating on who we should make this Ka installation for. We went around and each group came up with some ideas for people, real or fake, that we would like to honor. Some examples were MLK, Morgan Freeman, Bob Marley, and Batman. After the class voted we got the final choice down to either Bob Marley or Batman.
    Each student came out of their shell a little bit while debating the pros and cons of each. Many of us came up to the agreement that if we were to do Bob Marley it could be a very controversial, since many people have an instinct to associate Marijuana with him. Some people said that we could look beyond this and try to focus on the good things he represents such as equality, love, and the fact that he was a musical genius. It took us quite a while to come up with a solution to this problem because some students didn't not want to budge on their oppinions which is very respectable. With the help of our teachers, we came up with a plan that a majority of us will do bob marley while another small group will work on a separate project. Our plan in to honor Bob Marley without showing his face, so that the viewers will not make any assumptions about us for making it. Stay tuned to see our project being worked on. -BD