Poetry of Peace, Violence, and War Project
In this Project, Students in the tenth grade wrote a poem and/or art piece that relates to peace, violence, or war. These pieces of work were displayed in the AHS all school exhibition May 5th.
Photoshop poster
In the Tenth Grade Poetry project, students had to create a poem using inspiration from any subject they had worked with in the last year. The general subjects we dealt with were peace, violence, and war. Prior to project work time, students learned how to analyze poetry with many devices they gained in class. The diversity in this project was truly amazing due to the various subjects to choose from.
My art piece, a Photoshop poster displaying elements of my poem along with it, was inspired by a reading called “The Hollow Man”. This article discusses how a man will lose himself along with the person they shoot if they kill someone in war. I used this concept in my poem because of how applicable to the project it was. My poster shows elements of parts of my poem in symbols that enhance visualization of the poem.
In class we learned many devices and concepts for analyzing poetry, writing poetry, and much more. One of the more crucial pieces of content for analyzing poetry is poetic devices, things such as imagery, metaphor, tone, etc. These help us to find meanings of poems and define devices used to better understand the poem.
Another poetic concept we learned, Good Poetry, has helped us to identify what good poetry is and enabled us to write it. We basically looked at good poetry and bad poetry and t-charted what was alike and different between them. Everything we have learned in class has surely sculpted us as poets and created a new artistic sense for much of us.
Artist Statement
My poem is mostly inspired by an article called “The Hollow Man” by Michael Norman. This article is a self-written piece about the author going to war in the early years of his life and major differences he felt after the experience of war. The author describes himself as “hollow” or “empty” because of the guilt caused by killing another man in Vietnam. This also caused him to say “I hate the war, I have always hate the war…” because he so dearly hates being hollow. He says directly after he killed the man, he felt himself lose his soul along with the other man. In the beginning of the article, he tells of his pure hatred for war because of how much pain it has caused him. I wrote my poem about this concept of emptiness or vacancy because of how interested in it I was. This hollowness intrigued me because I wanted to show the audience that there are truly mentally detrimental things that can be directly correlated to fighting in war. I represented it in my poem as my main concept through vocabulary such as “vacant” or “empty”.
Another piece of inspiration for my poem I would like to reference is called “The Truth” by Audrey Lee, one of my teacher’s former students. This was both the inspiration for how I laid my poem upon paper and how I will present my poem to the audience. This poem inspired me to incorporate the concept of words moving down the page as stairs would. I wanted to express the soldiers going to war and stepping down closer to losing themselves by committing acts commonly participated in a war setting.
“The Truth” also inspired the same section of my poem in my Photoshop poster. In Audrey Le’s kinetic text, she referenced steps and, at that point, put the text in a moving stair formation across the screen. I used the same concept in my poster and I find this feature very enhancing to my presentation in entirety.
The form my final project is in, Photoshop poster, was my choice because of my experience with the Adobe Photoshop program. I am very capable of creating a refined artistic component in this software because it is within my comfort zone. I chose not to leave my comfort zone because this project is going to be exhibited, so I would like the audience to be pleased with or even amazed at the quality of work present in the whole-school exhibition.
Throughout this project, I have mostly learned what good poetry is, how to interpret poetry for meanings, and skills poets use to write good poetry. These skills have helped me develop my poem to a point where I would classify it as “Good Poetry”. Poetry has definitely helped me to find a type of writing that allows my creativity to flow into it and that is why it has created a new interest for me.
Genocide Project
In the most recent Animas High School exhibition, we have displayed our genocide project in Humanities. This project included custom projects from various students Who chose to report on a 20th century genocide. My Artist statement below explains which genocide I took on and which aspect of it that I studied.
Artist Statement
Ty Macguffie
Armenian Genocide Era Newspapers
The Turks in the Ottoman Empire felt threatened by the Armenians for many reasons years before the genocide. One of these reasons being fear of the Armenians betraying the Ottoman Empire to fight with the Russian Christians against the Muslim Turks. Other reasons were Young Turks, Turkish extremists, wanting a pure Turkish Muslim empire. By early 1915, the government started to massacre Armenian powers and soldiers to weaken defense against the deportations of the Armenian people. The Turkish Government then began to deport the Armenians to extermination camps if they hadn’t already poisoned them or burned their establishments down while they were in them yet. These exterminations were mostly local in the Ottoman Empire but some were massacred out in open ocean and dumped into the water.
This of course was all done in an organized way starting with killing all the soldiers and high Armenian powers. In the First Hand Account by a Turkish Army Officer on the Deportation of the Armenians from Tribezond to Erezum by Sayied Ahmed Moukhtar Baas, the officer explains, “The men kept behind, were taken out of town in batches of 15 and 20, lined up on the edge of ditches prepared beforehand, shot and thrown into the ditches.” The Ottoman Empire promised these people they were going to a safer area and continued to promise that to the children whose families had been taken from them. Some of these reassured children ended up on the beach with multiple stab wounds. Some of the mothers of these children were killed by Shotas, Turkish soldiers sent by their government to kill passing groups of people on trails being deported. Only about 130 people were accused as suspects for this genocidal atrocity. Much fewer were convicted and only three were sentenced to death. Grand Vizier Talaat Pasha was assassinated by an Armenian Revolutionary Federation in Berlin, Germany as an act of revenge for all Armenians for their murdered brethren. This Genocide was greatly denied by Turkish leaders and most of the world was uninformed about the situation. As a partner ship in this project, we decided to study the press’s role in the denial aspect of this genocide and write two newspapers comparing an informed country’s press to the Ottoman Empire’s.
In The Armenian National Institute’s page of background Information specifically Silence and denial section, the author states, “The readiness of people on the whole to believe the position of legitimate governments meant that the suggestion that a genocide had occurred in the far reached of Asia Minor would be made the object of historical revisionism and, soon enough, complete denial.” This is the reason that a newspaper is a great representation of this genocide because of the press’s role in silencing the Armenians after the genocide or justifying the massacres. Whilst researching this genocide, my partner and I noticed the Turkish press seemed to deny this event even happening. This led to us wanting to recreate that blatant denial with a newspaper from the time period of the genocide accompanied by a paper from the United States, a protestant country about the genocide. We believe this helps to inform the audience on both the circumstances and details of the genocide and how this information was presented to people in the time of the genocide. The idea of a newspaper seems like a perfect way to describe and demonstrate the press coverage of the Armenian genocide accurately and show how much was filtered through the Turkish Government. This newspaper concept is certainly ideal to accurately inform the audience on this particular genocide.
Finding a layout and program for building this project has proven difficult in project work time, but we found a simple solution. We chose to use the well known application, Microsoft Word, and make a mini sized, multi-paged newspaper that can be distributed amongst the audience. The articles I wrote are titled with my name at the bottom and the pages were formatted by both my partner and I. The thing I like the most in this finished product is the aspect that it is a common object around any house so it is familiar to the audience and they will know how to use the project without instruction. If I resided within my talents, Photoshop, I believe I wouldn’t have succeeded in leaving my comfort zone and trying something new for I have done a multitude of Photoshop projects. Also, as with any newspaper, there will be photos, and to make those photos to an accurate quality, W must do a bit of Photoshopping. The newspaper is definitely my favorite and the most reasonable way to write historically in the perspective of a reporter from that time period.
Photos of Newspapers
Project Reflection
Genocide Project
Ty Macguffie
1. Looking back on the genocide project, I believe I am most proud of the reactions from the visitors at our exhibition. These reactions were more than I expected being directed at our project and the audience seemed to be pleased with the concept of our project. These people had heard of the genocide in recent news but not known the cause and it felt good to explain to them my knowledge on the subject of causes. Our project probably could have been more refined in the final product, but our verbal knowledge presentation has been able to make up for any empty space in the newspapers.
2. If I had a week more to work on this project, I would improve the way in which we formatted it. I would use a different program to make it more realistic and expand on artistic value of the project. The most probable program would definitely be photoshop due to my experience in it with other projects. Refinement positively plays a large role in making beautiful work.
3. From the Categories on the rubric, I believe I have done best in the connection section. This is due to the connection to a specific aspect of the media’s role in the Armenian Genocide. Newspapers were an important way for people to learn about recent news and the Ottoman Empire had their own version of the stories of the Armenian Genocide. I believe we have presented this filtration with the newspaper perspective.
4. I believe the area in the rubric which was most critical is the focus area. Spectators seemed to have trouble with the message we were trying to convey which was the blatant denial of the genocide from the Turkish government. we could have showed the audience this better by enlarging the titles of the newspapers and make them very contradictory. this is a simple solution to the problem of comprehension and would vastly improve our project.
5. SELF ASSESSMENT RUBRIC SCORING:
Professionalism: B: Our project was very neat and we displayed it in a pleasing manner but it could have been better
Connections: A: Connections were very prevalent in the artist statements and newspapers from the media to the genocide.
Focus: A: Our project definitely had a strong focus on a specific aspect of the genocide. the only reason a community member wouldn’t agree is because they didn’t read the artist statements before they read the articles in the newspaper
Audience engagement: B+: Our project was simply not as engaging as other projects due to it being a couple sheets of paper versus an artistic representation.
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World War One Photoshop Project
Text reads:Join Russia And get your Country's land backENLIST NOW
Propaganda AnalysisJOIN RUSSIA AND GET YOUR COUNTRY’S LAND BACK
As much of the propaganda in WW1, my poster is trying to recruit soldiers, specifically to Russian forces. Propaganda played a very large role in recruiting soldiers to any country’s army or navy by using somewhat functional techniques, meaning some of these techniques used do not always work for the time period they are used. I have attempted using some of these techniques in my poster in trying to ultimately achieve the goal of recruiting a sufficient amount of soldiers. One of these is flag waving, showing patriotism inside the poster or idea to make the audience feel that the idea is patriotic. I used this with the color scheme, the background, and the bear. I am putting patriotic things onto the idea making it seem patriotic and if the viewer supports this idea they will be patriotic.Trying this technique, I realized how much of this is just within the color scheme of the poster. Another of these techniques I used in my poster is transfer. I used this with the Russian flag behind the bear and Czar. This technique transfers the patriotism of the flag to the idea of Fighting in war for Russia and convinces the audience the idea of going into war is patriotic. Another of these techniques I used in this poster was direct order in the phrase written in Russian and outlined. It reads “ENLIST NOW” therefore ordering you and telling you exactly what they want you to do. The last technique I used was testimonial. This technique uses a celebrity or person that people support and it shows him/her endorsing an idea or action making people want to follow that famous person’s ways. I did this with Czar Nicholas II standing behind the bear representing the Russian Armed forces and endorsing the idea of taking their land back. In total I believe I have achieved my initial goal with these techniques and skills with the application of them to a modern program yet actually trying to make it look more like it was from a little less than one hundred years ago.
`My poster is reasonably historically accurate due to the involvement in WW1 that Russia had. The Eastern front was on the border of Russia and Germany. This front started to migrate into Russia’s land and by 1917 , the front was entirely in Russia due to shortage of weapons. There was also only three weapons for every four men in the Russian Army. This caused a fast loss of men on Russia’s side, over 900,000 men died in total on the front. This is a very, very high amount of men for two years, sensing that only about 4,000 men have been pronounced decease in the Iraq War so far. My poster promotes men fighting for Russia to get the land back from the Germans. It is implicitly saying Germany is taking over their land and they need to gain it back again by showing the German flag on the land that the bear is claiming. Russia never did regain this land by fighting, only by The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed with Germany to create peace between the two because Russia was dealing with a second Revolution.
Propaganda is used in many cultures to make anybody in a certain target group of people think or act a certain way in the favor of the creator of that piece. After learning how prevalent propaganda is in every society all around, and learning the different, effective, and most commonly used techniques, I have noticed how much it actually works and affects the people around me that don’t realize the sneaky ways certain things are applied. I have also drawn the conclusion that a large part of propaganda influences you in a positive way (not including advertisements that try to get you to buy products). Propaganda tries to get you to do positive things for your world or community to benefit society in general. If you have a television you have probably seen the Haiti earthquake donation funds or homeless pet commercials. These are showing you what it will be like if you do not help these people or animals, this is a technique called faulty cause and effect. This makes you see the effect and it doesn’t really explain but it still makes you feel obliged to help this cause. This ladies and gentlemen, is propaganda, it is not a bad thing to donate to these organizations and this proves propaganda in this case is a good thing, a very good thing. I have also realized that even the propaganda seen as “Bad” can be debated as bad or good because it is not necessarily bad that those people want to win an election, or if a war is in need of assistance from more men, it just depends on your perspective on those topics. Propaganda is and has been used all over the entire world for many years, and whether it being via posters or on a television, it will always be there to influence the opinions of others.
Reflection Propaganda
Reflection Propaganda
1.) Recently in humanities class at Animas High, we have been studying WW1 and propaganda used in that time period. Each of the students in the class created a poster of their own trying to replicate WW1 propaganda. While building up to this creation we studied and analyzed posters from WW1 and learned different techniques used in propaganda. we also studied WW1 in general looking at the causes and key topics of the war. Our posters are all paired with an analysis which explains which techniques are used and how historically accurate they are. We also explain the effect of propaganda on people around us to a certain point.
2.) Throughout the different sections of this project we have had three stages of critique. First we had a rough draft of our poster that we used for a guide to our Photoshop finals of the projects. after we got our ideas into mind we started Photoshopping our second draft for it to be critiqued by our peers in class. This critique included what the critic thought were strengths, weaknesses and the author was to ask a question of their choice. After feedback was taken into mind the author chose whether to use some feedback or not use it at all. I personally found this very helpful in the process because you were able to know what the audience was going to think or do. one revision I made to my poster was to have translated writing of what the phrase meant because it was in Russian, but because it needs to be authentic, I compromised. Another revision I used was to improve the color scheme and make it more patriotic and Russian for the sake of genuine work. The steps were a little different for our analysis in revisions and drafts. Our rough drafts were peer critiqued and read for feedback. We made a second draft off of this critique which was to be handed to the teacher for feedback. In order to get feedback, the paper could not have any spelling or grammatical errors. Upon receiving this feedback, I corrected and clarified certain sentences to explain in more depth what my poster was trying to make people think or do and why. After this we formatted and printed the final draft and turned it in and put it on our Digital portfolios along with a copy of our posters.
3.) I am very pleased with the final product of my poster and my analysis. I feel I have met my own personal standards and the standards of my instructor. I particularly liked my poster because it was a good, formal, and historically accurate piece of work well done. I think it is very professional and fits the description of WW1 propaganda. Throughout this project, and every project I enjoy working working with Adobe Photoshop© and using digital media throughout a project to get across what I want to and using and learning new techniques to do so. Overall, I feel like this project is a success in what the goal of teaching through this project was.
4.) The main ideas I have taken away from this are very clear and well taught. These include; Propaganda techniques, how propaganda is used in different time periods, how to properly analyze propaganda; Key points in WW1 that effect the war, causes of WW1, battle techniques, The main fronts of WW1, and Allies Vs. Central powers and where neutral powers fit in.
5.) If I could make one revision to this project, it would be to have an essay with the analyzation in a section or paragraph in it, instead of mostly concentrating on the propaganda. I think more content would be absorbed if we concentrated on the aspect of the piece being historically accurate, not how it made people think or what it made them do.
