doi.org/10.15178/va.2018.142.109-123
RESEARCH
THE INTEGRATION OF ARTS THROUGH A DIDACTIC PROPOSAL IN SECONDARY EDUCATION: MUSIC, PLASTIC ARTS AND BODY EXPRESSION
LA INTEGRACIÓN DE LAS ARTES A TRAVÉS DE UNA PROPUESTA DIDÁCTICA EN EDUCACIÓN SECUNDARIA OBLIGATORIA: MÚSICA, PLÁSTICA Y EXPRESIÓN CORPORAL
A INTEGRAÇÃO DAS ARTES ATRAVÉS DE UMA PROPOSTA DIDÁTICA EM EDUCAÇÃO SECUNDÁRIA OBRIGATÓRIA: MÚSICA, PLÁSTICA E EXPRESSÃO CORPORAL
Ana María Botella Nicolás1 PhD in Education from the University of Valencia. She graduated in Geography and History, specializing in musicology and she is a music education teacher from the University of Oviedo. Professional degree in the specialization of piano. In 2001, she obtained by opposition a place in the faculty of music of high school in Alicante (currently on leave). She has presented various communications in seminars and conferences on teaching music and other publications. She is a hired professor, doctor at the Department of Teaching of Musical, Plastic and Corporal Expression at the Faculty of Teaching of the University of Valencia. She is part of the Academic Coordination Committee of the Master’s Degree in Teacher / secondary school of the UVEG and the Research Master’s Degree in specific teaching. Since February 2015, she directs the music classroom. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5324-7152. ResearchID: N-1375-2014
José Rafael Adell Valero2 Doctor of Music. Higher Professor of Tuba at the Conservatory of Music in Valencia and BSc in Biological Sciences from the University of Valencia. His professional career is teaching in which he has been since 2000 as a high school teacher in both specialties at School 2 Center. He has also worked since 2012 at the university level in the Grades of Primary Education and Early Childhood Education at La Florida Center (Catarroja). https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2888-8641
1University of Valencia. Spain
2Florida University. Spain
ABSTRACT
The present article develops an experimental proposal for the integration of the arts: music, plastic arts and corporal expression within the framework of Compulsory Secondary Education. It is about proposing an interdisciplinary experience that can be carried to the reality of the Secondary classroom and that allows the development of artistic creativity and sensitivity, based on contemporary art. The main objective is to generate and build a methodological framework (interdisciplinarity, project work and cooperation) on which active experiences and innovative techniques can be developed, the interest of which fosters an approach to culture. In this context, the realization of the pedagogical process is put before the result that will be obtained through experience. The essence of the project lies in the integration of different arts to achieve a common purpose, thus allowing better adaptation to the objectives and contents of the official curriculum. This proposal is possible to be developed in the classroom and allows better understanding of the artistic phenomenon: by not treating it as an isle towards other disciplines and giving it a reachable meaning it’s possible to appeal to a wider arc of personalities, while recognizing a multi-facetal vision of the sense of arts.
KEYWORDS: Didactics, Music, Body expression, Plastic Arts, ESO, Arts, Methodology
RESUMEN
El presente artículo desarrolla una propuesta experimental para la integración de las artes: música, plástica y expresión corporal en el marco de la Educación Secundaria Obligatoria. Se trata de plantear una experiencia interdisciplinar que se pueda llevar a la realidad del aula de Secundaria y que permita desarrollar la creatividad y la sensibilidad artísticas, tomando como base el arte contemporáneo. El principal objetivo consiste en generar y construir un armazón metodológico (interdisciplinariedad, trabajo por proyectos y cooperación) sobre el que se puedan desarrollar experiencias activas y técnicas novedosas cuyo interés fomente la aproximación a la cultura. En este contexto, se antepone la realización del proceso pedagógico, al resultado que se obtendrá por medio de la experiencia. La esencia del proyecto radica en la integración de las diferentes artes para conseguir un propósito común, permitiendo así una mejor adecuación a los objetivos y contenidos del currículum oficial. Esta propuesta es posible desarrollarla en el aula y permite una mejor comprensión del fenómeno artístico: al no tratarlo como una isla con respecto a otras disciplinas y dotarlo de un significado es posible llegar a un arco más amplio de personalidades atendiendo, al mismo tiempo, una visión no unívoca del sentido del arte.
PALABRAS CLAVE: Didáctica, Música, Expresión corporal, Plástica, ESO, Artes , Metodología
RESUME
O presente artigo desenvolve uma proposta experimental para a integração das artes: música, plástica e expressão corporal no marco da Educação Secundária Obrigatória. Se trata de propor uma experiência interdisciplinar que possa levar a realidade da aula da secundaria e que permita desenvolver a criatividade e a sensibilidade artística, tomando como base a arte contemporânea. O principal objetivo consiste em gerar e construir uma armação metodológica (interdisciplinaridade, trabalho por projetos e cooperação) sobre o que é possível desenvolver experiências ativas e técnicas inovadoras cujo interesse fomente a aproximação à cultura. Neste contexto, se antepõe a realização do processo pedagógico, ao resultado que se obterá por meio da experiência. A essência do projeto radica na integração das diferentes artes para conseguir um proposito comum, permitindo assim uma melhor adequação aos objetivos e conteúdo do curriculum oficial. Esta proposta é possível desenvolvê-la em aula e permite uma melhor compressão do fenômeno artístico.
PALAVRAS CHAVE: Didática, Música, Expressão Corporal, Plástica, ESO, Artes, Metodologia
Received: 15/10/2017
Accepted: 16/11/2017
Published: 15/03/2018
Correspondence: Ana María Botella Nicolás. ana.maria.botella@uv.es
José Rafael Adell Valero. radell@florida-uni.es
How to cite the article
Botella Nicolás, A Mª., Adell Valero J. R. (2018). The integration of arts through a didactic proposal in secondary education: music, plastic art and body expression. [La integración de las artes a través de una propuesta didáctica en educación secundaria obligatoria: música, plástica y expresión corporal].
Vivat Academia. Revista de Comunicación, nº 142, 109-123
doi http://doi.org/10.15178/va.2018.142.109-123
Recuperado de http://www.vivatacademia.net/index.php/vivat/article/view/1062
1. INTRODUCTION
After many years of reforms and educational updates, it is still complex to teach the artistic subjects at the different levels of Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO), with an adequate structure and form of realization. As indicated by Martínez (2006, p.182) “Spanish society needs to live educational reforms with hope, as the necessary adaptation of the system to the times we live in.”
The ministerial proposals are quite clear, but their content aims to cover so many aspects that it would take many more courses and hours to carry them out; in addition, artistic subjects, painting, sculpture, drawing, audiovisual, music, body language ... cannot be limited to or be contained in a few simple exercises to which we must add the creativity the learning of which, in itself, would suffice to fill an exceptional time that is not available. If it is also intended, according to the objectives of the ministry, “to develop and consolidate students’ study and work habits; to prepare them for their incorporation to higher studies and for their labor insertion and to train them to exercise their rights and obligations in life as citizens (Royal Decree 1105/2014, page 176) the difficulty that this entails becomes evident.
Anyway, it all starts with the teacher and if he is creative, it will be much easier to program, design and conduct the activities, without the fear that, during its realization, a climate of enthusiasm will be created that apparently destabilizes the order of the class. When there is a purpose that is above conventions, we must accept that there is also a diversity and an experience that need to be expressed, otherwise, the actions will not be related to objectives that help to develop the personality, that encourage the magic of the ludic or subjective experimentation, which are so important in integral education. “What is taught probably matters less than the spirit with which it is imparted and received” (Schafer, 2008, p.18). But, returning to the problem of programs and official aspirations, it is observed that, instead of starting from a selection according to the time available, all the contents and objectives that have been and will be important in any circumstance are intended to be listed and the teacher is left to choose among them those who the teacher believes to be essential for him, or at least those who have more affinity with his personality at the time of imparting them. As Viñao (2006, p.54) points out, “reformers usually lack a global, systemic view of what they are trying to modify and improve, as well as of the interconnection and relationships that exist between different problems.” A great responsibility that could be profitable if individualized teaching could be carried out, according to the interests and abilities of the students. Unfortunately, the classrooms are overcrowded and the only thing that can be done with enough seriousness is to work establishing groups and looking for common interests.
At present, there are many other problems in learning the arts. Since the end of the 19th century, the figure of the self-taught has been imposed and today, many artists pride themselves on not having gone through any form of directed teaching. This means that the principles that should govern artistic studies in any form of education, either elementary or higher, are continually being questioned. On the other hand, because creativity is at the bottom of all activities, you cannot put limits on what you plan to do because there are many ways to access the principles that govern the contents of official programs. The problem is that these principles exist and we have to know them, at least if we want History to be another element to be considered in education. That is why it is so difficult to find that point in which the teacher knows what objectives he wants to achieve with his experimental proposals and when they should be allowed to materialize affirming, simultaneously, the construction of a personality in harmony with oneself, with others, with nature, with the environment, and with the Art, integrating the individual potentialities in a kind of learning that could be group-based and that was subordinated to the student and not vice versa:
The individual is a social being immersed in diverse networks that do not have culture as a direct agglutinating motive, even if it is present and mediates in all of them (...) the human being is a cultural being and they manifest that condition in everything they do and in all that they are, but that is not why we have to consider the image of culture to be the essential referent of their individual identity or the reason for the complex social network that surrounds them and in which they are involved (Gimeno, 2001, p. 140).
From these parameters, learning should be based on proposing broad and structured forms that allow personal expansion and that also imply, for each one in particular, the task of having fun learning and doing it in an interesting and productive way for one’s development. “Education is more than teaching subjects. Learning is more than passing” (Gimeno, 2005, p. 137). It should encourage work in cooperative groups and also use some methods such as Projects that may be of great interest in artistic subjects. On other occasions, the effectiveness of the Cooperative Method by Projects has already been demonstrated, but in this specific case, it is possible to adapt this method to an integration of the artistic forms, enriching it and increasing its effectiveness.
As is to be expected, a profound revision of artistic education is needed. In the Faculties of Teaching, guidelines must be set to guide the subsequent performances in Infant and Primary Education, but in Compulsory Secondary Education, the proposals remain, due to all what has been said, conflicting. And yet, it is at this point, when students are immersed in a process of biological, personal and social change, when it is necessary to intensify the artistic performances with more adequate approaches to said changes. To this problem, another important issue is added: if we take into account that the teachers in charge of the subjects of Music, Plastic Arts and Body Expression have had shortcomings in their pedagogical orientation during their university studies, we will conclude that only the experience that is acquired over time makes it possible for the aforementioned subjects to be taught with a minimum of coherence. Certainly it is required to have taken a course to gain access to teaching (CAP, Practicum), but this fact is insufficient. Therefore, until the experience is achieved, in general, teachers have to dedicate themselves to repeating schemes they know from previous years until they gain confidence in themselves, to take risks and make new and original proposals.
Fortunately, there is also a faculty that wants to fulfill their mission, striving to integrate the artistic experience into the school program. Every day, people who strive extraordinarily to build the personality of the students from ludic, creative, imaginative, active and cooperative activities are incorporated into the teaching profession. It would be necessary to be thankful for their effort and to count their dedication with a longer time than the one spent by other teachers more inclined to be fully engaged in the educational update of the students. However, unfortunately, there are also other teachers who are engaged in playful, decontextualized activities as an obstacle race in which one had to intensify originality at all costs, presenting the activity as a continuous game in which the objectives and the contents of the program are conspicuous by their absence. In this case, the action becomes irresponsible in the absence of objective premeditation or coherent programming. Either by excess or by default, it is difficult to be in the faithful balance. In any case, and without underestimating these ludic aspects, the teacher must always have a specific intention that contains clear objectives regarding what is intended to be transmitted as knowledge: the form, the texture, the color, the volume... in the case of painting or modeling; the sound, the time, the rhythm ... with respect to music; and so on in the different forms of artistic expression.
Since the twentieth century, there has been a spectacular phenomenon that affects the integration of the arts, in their different expressive forms, which implies a new approach in their way of interrelating them. In this alternative, the different artistic expressions, in many cases, can be fused to produce works of great complexity, but at the same time, opening up educational pathways of great efficacy in this age group. In this context, arts help each other and allow students to access different ways of understanding the same thing, enriching and widening the field of vision, without constrictive parceling. The current pedagogical systems can take advantage of this fusion that produces extraordinary and beneficial effects in the acquisition of knowledge.
In order to know what the qualities of this educational artistic integration are, it is necessary to experience them. Of course, research-action produces much more considerable waste of energy in the teaching staff than the traditional teaching produced, but the results also multiply the learning possibilities and the satisfaction of students, who can assume competences this way and integrate rich and diverse experiences.
Undertaking a project involves an effort that must be made if it is considered necessary to rethink the teaching system, to update it and to see if there are possibilities of improving it. On the other hand, it is important to specify the experiences and check if the hypotheses can be improved after doing this confrontational and structuring exercise (Botella & Adell, 2016). Thus, the purpose, although it is still ambitious, is a sign of the evolution that has taken place and that should appear in the school curriculum, adapting it to the characteristics of the students.
The problem is how to do it; how to carry out the experience. In the first place, it is necessary to have a faculty that are willing to expand their knowledge about the different artistic movements, to know some of their most relevant personalities and to know, at all times, what they intend and what they will achieve with the experiences they propose. Dismissing these linguistic foundations implies not cooperating sufficiently in the discernment and assumption of artistic forms and therefore in the historical vacuum that originates. Of course, many times they will have to be interpreted from intuition, but this does not prevent them from being taken into account and transmitted with greater or lesser intensity according to the ages of the students. Besides expressing, you have to know and make culture.
2. SOME THEORETICAL ASPECTS TO CONSIDER
From nursery school to university, methodological didactics can be enriched through a proposal that is truly interdisciplinary and that has the integration of different artistic expressions as an argument, as has already been said.
At any time and place in the civilized world, there has been synchronicity with respect to the different styles or movements that have presided over the actions and culture of human beings. How could it be otherwise, this synchrony has affected the historical-artistic periods, giving them a unity that, save for the personal and local characteristics, have made unique enrichment possible. At present, the situation of global village has contributed in this sense to create an interrelation between the diverse artistic forms that, if formerly appeared parceled, now can be inscribed in a context of interdisciplinarity, establishing connections among them: architecture, painting, sculpture , music ... nowadays they can be an articulated and significant set internationally.
The integration of the arts in this original and novel situation has affected even the pedagogical systems since it is being demonstrated that artistic interdisciplinarity helps to develop educational processes that involve several procedural, cultural and expressive objectives. To this end, it has been thought that an experience could be developed in which it would be possible to integrate several artistic languages such as music, body language, painting, modeling or other artistic forms that can act in an integrated manner, considerably enriching the awareness of students This way, we would attend to a form of interdisciplinarity in which each party would join the others in a highly desirable synergistic process.
Undoubtedly, these approaches are close to the idea of Herbert Read (1973) in which he proposed that art should be at the basis of all educational processes. But, even if it is not so, that is, as he put it, in reality, it would be a matter of making a practice in which the artistic globality was the backbone of sensitive experiences.
Working in watertight compartments is much less effective than interrelating some matters with others. Given that the learning process is multifactorial, in order to observe the behavior of a given methodology, it is necessary to isolate, as far as possible, the study variable(s). This way, one of the objectives that appear in the spirit of the law and that says: “Appreciate the artistic creation and understand the language of the different artistic manifestations, using different means of expression and representation” (Royal Decree 1105/2014), p 177) would be fulfilled.
Education manifests itself as an authentic source of original possibilities that can maintain the attention, enthusiasm and interest of teachers and students. It is true that programming this type of activity can be quite exhausting, but in compensation, the advantages by far outweigh the disadvantages. Nothing is more satisfactory than a job that involves our entire personality. And undoubtedly, if you believe in what you do, the gratification that you get to produce is excellent.
As for the specific theoretical aspects, there are many relevant authors who tell us about the integration or, in any case, about the unity of the arts. From this point, its inclusion in an educational project that aims to articulate artistic experiences with the same axis can be considered an authentic vault key, being a kind of guide on which to build an experience as sensitively, creatively and productively as possible.
In a theoretical and speculative plane, we quote the words of some authors that help to understand the phenomenon of artistic integration. For example: “(...) it can be affirmed that certain acquisitions and exchange pass from one form of language to another, but always undergoing a necessary translation, an adaptation of the model used, in their extrapolation to the new field / artistic context” (de la Calle , 2001, pp. 20-21). Other authors go into great detail about the same idea:
The mutual relations between all the arts - painting, sculpture, architecture, music, poetry, theater, fiction, dance, cinema and any others that can be admitted - have become a subject of venerable antiquity in aesthetics ... Lately, it has become acceptable again to affirm that all the arts are really an “Art”, with its capital A; that, for example, the apparent differences between painting and poetry are superficial and are due solely to differences in their materials. One artist paints with pigments and the other with words; or rather, one speaks in rhyme and the other in images, and so on. Dance is the language of the gesture, theater is “really” a dithyramb, that is, a choral dance; architecture is (of course) frozen music ... everyone agrees that the various arts are just other aspects of the same human adventure, and almost all recent books of aesthetics begin by declaring that the current distinctions between the arts are a lamentable consequence of our tendency to divide the contents of our lives into compartments (Langer, 1969, p 42).
Beguiristain, (2001, p.76) goes even further by referring, specifically, to the concrete relationship between the plastic and musical aspects:
It is evident that language is not the only possible way of objectifying ideas, hence the idea that one can express thought and/or feeling through graphic forms or colors, in the case of inherent possibilities that allow us analogies with the forms of musical composition. So Schönberg or F. Schmit-Breitenbach believed, who says: “the flow of the lines, in the harmony of the colors, is similar to songs without text, so they entail greater exigency to the capacity of assimilation and comprehension of the contemplator”.
And Kandinsky, (1989, p.38) also refers to this topic when he says:
The comparison among the media in the different arts and the inspiration of one art in another is only successful if the inspiration is not external but of principle. That is, an art must learn from the other how it uses its own means and then, in turn, use its own means in the same way; that is, according to the principle that is exclusively its own. In this learning, the artist must not forget that each medium has a suitable use and that it is about finding that use (...). By deepening their own means, each art marks its limits towards the other arts; the comparison unites them again in a common inner endeavor. Thus it is discovered that each art possesses its forces, which cannot be substituted by those of another art. And so the forces of the different arts come together. From this union, the art that is already sensed beforehand today will be born over time: true monumental art.
It is evident that, in the case that is being addressed, complexity is greater than when only specific aspects are worked on, since various procedural materials and different responses to the artistic act will interact. At the end of the day, and according to another of the objectives of the official program proposed by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports:
It is about developing the entrepreneurial spirit and self-confidence, participation, critical sense, personal initiative and the ability to learn to learn, plan, make decisions and assume responsibilities. (...) The purpose of Compulsory Secondary Education is to ensure that students acquire the basic elements of culture, especially in its humanistic, artistic, scientific and technological aspects (Royal Decree 1105/2014, page 177).
3. EXEMPLIFICATION AND APPROACH OF AN INTERDISCIPLINARY ARTISTIC EXPERIENCE
Given the difficulty involved in carrying out an experience of this kind, suggestions are proposed to facilitate its development in a real context. This way, we will try to integrate creative, procedural, sensitive and vital relationships related to each other and with a related theme that unifies them: rhythm. This theme is one of the contents of the program that is found in all artistic forms. In addition, the rhythmic aspects appear in all the official programs in the artistic subjects from childhood to university education.
Let us talk about the rhythm in Music, painting, modeling and body expression and try to interrelate them starting from Music since, of all subjects, it is the one that can make the rhythmic aspects more evident. Therefore, we must choose a musical theme written in a score and instruments that, in this case, will preferably be objects of daily use, that is, non-conventional instruments that are used for other purposes in daily life. The objective is to prioritize those elements that constitute sound and rhythm, working with percussion instruments being very important to focus the attention of the students.
It is essential to plan the experience beforehand and schedule times and actions. “ The specific area of creation (where risking everything does not risk anything at all) is the ideal framework to create, experiment, start a process, stop it, study it, go back to start again; it is, in short, the pure and free play of intelligence “(Michavila, 1975, p.105).
In order that all students participate in the experimental process, work will be organized by groups so that each one, besides being responsible for their part, can incorporate their contributions to the work of others. Therefore, it will be necessary to start from a project in which all are involved, to achieve results that would not be feasible by acting individually. If you can integrate the different means of expression, the result will be considerably enriched. Group work favors cooperation, socialization and other human aspects that are the foundation of a democratic society.
The cultural aspect carried out as a motivation will begin by listening to some examples of composer-performers, who have based their works on percussion and also adapted them in school auditions to students of different educational levels. The Grup Amores de percussió, is very significant and has made many representations of its works for that purpose: Bump , A colps ... etc , are auditions of about 3 minutes that introduce students into the percussed rhythm, which they will also do in the realization of this musical activity. Therefore, it is an exemplification that should be heard several times until students understand the rhythmic structure of the composition.
In order that the class does not get out of control, the spaces must be divided and assigned, to each group that forms, an own space in which the experiences are developed over time. Of course, it would be necessary to make a sequence that would make it possible to know the different materials and works to be interpreted so that students can experience the different artistic expressions in each of the parties that will participate in the experience.
We recommend using simple scores so that reading them is not an overly complex problem that discourages those less experienced in this task. For example, a score that has turned out to be very good in practice has been the rhythmic air by Silvia León. As for the instruments that will serve to interpret it, although they can be of very diverse origin such as: fans, balloons, newspaper ... in this case the use of fans is adequate to achieve brilliant and satisfactory effects. In addition, the work was written for this purpose.
The choice of this instrument was due to the fact that it is very important to take advantage of any material capable of producing sound when struck, dragged or rubbed, in order to obtain original effects, different from those produced by traditional musical instruments. This ensures that the sound itself is a surprise that, while disconcerting the students, predisposes to research its fundamental characteristics: acute, grave, etc... This may seem an extravagance or a desire to provoke stupefaction in the viewer, is related to a productive innovation and instrumental elements that, when coordinated, meet the desired objectives.
The chosen work has been written for five voices. Therefore, groups will form to whom a certain voice will be assigned, which will be studied regardless of the others until everything comes in common. While the result will be performed by percussing the fan in various ways, the first part of the work will consist of performing a rhythmic approach through body percussion. This allows access to the decryption and understanding of the score. It is obvious that when students are organized, they are not only responsible for controlling their part (their voice) but also for knowing the other voices well in order to articulate them and play together.
When students have rhythmically understood the contents of the score, the fan is incorporated. Now students not only have to understand the rhythmic aspects but must gain in knowledge and study of the different sounds that can be obtained with it, and the adequacy of the score to the possibilities of interpretation: open it, close it, shake it, hit different parts of the body with it... Finally, movements and gestures will be articulated through the body, accompanying the existing sound rhythm, so that body language joins like performance that will enrich the visual effect. The sound result will be recorded, to be later used as the basis for the following plastic experiences.
So as to guide the following subjects, all students, individually provided with a horizontal paper and a pencil, will try to establish the rhythmic sequences linearly, in order to indicate the progress of the work and its most notable changes in the form of a rhythmic musicgram. This exercise will form the basis for pictorial realization.
In short in and for this specific case, a reference (the score) that can be modified based on the needs of the project continues; the work is musically worked, ie learning to play together by hearing to each other, to create a comprehensible whole and thus the work behind any musical performance in a group is also seen.
Regarding painting, it also needs an introduction related to knowledge, taking into account some moments of modern art in which the rhythmic aspects, structure and graphics are accented. As a reference, one can take a work by Motherwell, which can be Elegy to the Spanish Republic for its structural and rotund features, and another by Jean Dubuffet another, such as Earth and sky the abstract calligraphies of which enrich the gestural speech.
Although one can start from these or other painters as a starting point, one should not to be limited to reproduce them as a copy, one must give students expressive freedom and opportunity for experimentation. Individually, in pairs or in groups, they will seek the following materials: a support that will cover the wall like a mural (it can be continuous paper), various materials and instruments to manipulate and place the paint on the support, such as plastic paint cans, brushes, rags, plastic plates to distribute the pigments and anything that motivates students such as different elements usable as stampings on the background painting, thus enriching the plastic texture.
After students have experimented with the technique, in some sketches, the longitudinal mural space is divided into as many parts as groups. It is desirable that, before starting the performance, students experiment with the expressive elements of their choice of selected painters, so that, when accessing the mural, they are sufficiently trained in solving the structure of graphics and rhythm.
Each group will also take over the allocated space, considering that it will also be necessary to choose a predominant color, making sure that, when relating it to the others, the effect remains articulated somehow. This way, one looks at the color ranges and contrast. Therefore, tone color and variety will be chosen depending on the intensity of sound that can go from red for the strongest to yellow for the weakest. Of course, we should work with primary colors and take advantage of the circumstance to get the secondary ones through mixtures thereof. The relationship between empty and full is also a fundamental rhythmic aspect that should be noted to students before starting.
The effect sought is that the overall vision acquires a character of unity within diversity, so you have to establish a certain connection between the boundaries of each piece of the mural. As music will determine the expressive aspects of the work, one should try to have them relate to each other over time, so their duration must agree to the temporary extension of both. Thus the described pictorial aspects be interpreted without the result being a copy of the plastics authors whatsoever; but they will be those who will determine the formal, chromatic and rhythmic construction in its spatial location relative to sound. However, each session must constantly reach consensus on materials and ways to extend the pigment on the background, which will result in the creation of an original composition in terms of shapes, colors and graphics. Students live both the experience of the creative process itself, aided by parameters that will be useful as guidance and as plastic reference.
In the case of modeling the action, it is a bit more complex since it is difficult to adapt the compact matter to the rhythmic needs. But it is not, if each group of students is provided with a plate of soft clay in which incisions will be progressively made, some more superficial and others deeper, which would make it possible to accentuate rhythmic aspects by contrast on any of the different areas of the surface. In addition, the set could be enriched with the addition of some pieces of clay, ribbons, beads, random shapes that would be superimposed on the base, giving it greater wealth. As an example, they may be some works in fired and even colored clay by Arcadio Blasco. Silence, in the same manner as in painting, could leave some significant space empty. You can also texture the surface by sweeping it with a kind of brushes and enrich its planarity with fritters or pieces of clay added to give a three dimensional effect dimension to the whole surface. Although, in this case, freedom may not be as evident as in painting, the result will also be very interesting if great attention is paid to the textural and relief-related aspects.
Body language will be worked on this project transversely, because the gestures, movements and expressions of the body must be aware and, therefore, they will have been worked by becoming aware of the body in every action that takes place, both through percussion and through the movements and gestures that are made to paint on the support in the same way as (Adell & Rueda, 2014). Music needs to be interpreted in the manner of a playful and expressive dance, in which the positions and movements in accordance with sound and with paint are accentuated. In addition, this kind of dance will be made by having the mural as a background and, in the same way as the painted forms, they may coincide in some way with the contortions, leaps, figures, mime ... that will be the key to the rhythmic schemes. At times, students will make a kind of parade in front of the mural, while in others, they will huddle, especially in times of increased loudness.
In conducting this exercise, you can introduce choreographic elements that also affect the attire of the dancers. A simple piece of white cloth can be used as a sheet from which the arms, the head and partially the legs will emerge, which will further be painted with any element that somehow is related to the graphics, color and the plastic rhythm, since everything must be integrated. It should be borne in mind that, if music and painting cannot move except virtually, especially painting which is fixed to the support, in this case, some compositional elements can give similar moving images. In this case, the human body would be the one that, without the need for additional materials, should suit the rhythmic patterns improvising figures, which could also be of great beauty. Obviously, if materials such as cloth, gauze, feathers, fans, wallpaper were available... the result could be a spontaneous ballet that would no doubt be interesting and compelling. Masks and fantastic elements giving a new dimension to body movement could also be designed. Letting the body move at the impulse of musical rhythm can produce formidable plastic integrations.
As they experiment with their own body, the movements will become more expressive in terms of positions and stops or pauses, like silences between musical or pictorial sentences. Surely the result will be a kind of ballet that will perform the musical rhythm articulated with the plastic one.
If you can imagine the possibilities that arise when programming this inclusion of the arts, you will understand that the results obtained can be very good.
4. SUMMARY AND FINAL THOUGHTS
The creation process has been prioritized, putting it before the results that will be gotten in it. Clearly, the transformation educational development produces depends more on the interrelationship performed in various rehearsals, meetings and assumed consensus than on a possible public exposure of the final result.
Finally, we can conclude that: they will have lived an experience in which the important lessons of this interdisciplinary work will be the experience of interpretation and creation as well as the assessment of the process versus the outcome. Ultimately, it is to generate and build a methodological framework (interdisciplinarity, project work and cooperation) on which new and interesting experiences or techniques can be developed. Of course, the complexity of performing an action as the one described will have to be simplified considerably and adapted to the objectives and characteristics of other ages that can benefit from the experience.
The effort to interpret works of art can be very exciting for them as well as their transcription in other artistic contexts. But there is no doubt that, this way, the theoretical aspects will be better explained and understood. The aridity of a rigid theory, devoid of active exemplification, is neither attractive nor productive in the long run, since it is forgotten without leaving any constructive trace. In this case, based on the information on various artists and artistic genres, one is able to penetrate into the art of specific times, to be sensitized to them and to interpret them to discover their rhythmic, sensitive and structural problems and finally to establish communication from one’s effort to access agreements that encourage socializing aspects of respect and enthusiasm.
The evaluation will consider involvement in the group, coordination, personal contribution and efforts to take on meaningful results.
It is impossible in this limited space to describe the details of the experience, but it can be highly positive. Surely, if carried out as described or with the alterations the teacher considers, it will undoubtedly create methodological expectations in students, which will keep them motivated throughout the process.
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