TED Community » bill ritchie

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Teaching for the 21st Century, empowering individuals and their families to work for saving Earth's humanlife sustainability.

An idea worth spreading

Provide free online resources for the printmaking experiences from which people might learn transferrable skills.

Talk to me about

Printmaking teaching method onine and blended learning

People don't know that I'm good at

Asset management and legacy transfer

My TED Story

My story is better told by interaction and real production, by balancing virtual and real experiences through daily use of antique technologies and new ones. For example, read one of my books either in paper or as Kindle. Or, the best of all, buy from me a miniature etching press which has onboard data about printmaking and, oh yes, me.

Comments

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• A comment on Conversation: Online Art Education - Shifting away from a view of prehistoric art and seeing the sea change caused by printmaking.

  Aug 26 2012: "Throw"? Throwing an egg would likely break it! "Put" an egg, and all one's eggs, that would be less likely to break them. Eggs in baskets, breaking eggs, etc. makes me think of several things by way of response. "Too make an omelette, one must break some eggs." In other words, to achieve anything, you must break some rules, sometimes. To "think outside the box" in education today means to abandon the old frames of reference, break out of systems that are not apposite to today's problems facing Earth's human life sustainability. Another "egg-sample" is what Henry Ford advised: "Put all your eggs in one basket and WATCH that basket!" Focusing on the fine art of printmaking, as I have done, watching all my resources put into this domain, has allowed me to keep learning new things for fifty years; my colleagues, on the other hand, in the institutional framework, the "basket" of the university, were unable to do so and are quite useless in education today. By comparison, I know I have something worth considering by cutting-edge strategies for learning, such as the course I begin tomorrow - Gamification, a MOOC produced by Coursera. So, my anonymous friend Myf E, I differ in my opinion as to the best way to use one's eggs. Thank for you for the opportunity to reconsider it, but I will WATCH my basket, full of golden eggs, product of 50 years in art and teaching.

• A comment on Conversation: Online Art Education - Shifting away from a view of prehistoric art and seeing the sea change caused by printmaking.

  Aug 19 2012: I am in favor of online art education in part because I watched the Shock of the New when it was broadcast; I thought Hughes was a good teacher, and I watched it "free" insofar I couldn't buy the printed book, it cost more money than I had. I rededicated myself to any kind of non-paper-based education I could get access to. The university A/V department came to my aid. Meanwhile, the university administration and faculty, wholly dedicated to the University Press, effectively censored my lessons because it wasn't suitable for print; peer review meant everything had to be on paper. I almost had to sue them to release the reasons I was censored; it turned out they mininterpreted a graph-they didn't know to read the print on their very own printed material, so lazy and hidebound, print oriented as they were. Now I disiminate my "legacy" all over the whole wide world, and for many people it is "free" as that of Robert Hughes'. Maybe not as sophisticated, high production quality, but it is there. Plus, and you must study my material to understand this, I make the etching presses an art-educated person needs to make prints on paper, the oldest-fashioning way, just the same as Rembrandt did, but on a miniturized, portable and beautiful etching press www.printmakingworld.com is my site. And to bring my legacy full circle, I now imbed my lessons and links to more information (also to those who own my presses) in the hardwood of the press itself. All during the time - about 35 years - I was accomplishing this, I watched so-called educators turning out pages of reasons not to "go virtual" and - on the diseducation side, the deconstruction side of human affairs, innumerable game companies wholeheartedly embraced the electonic media and almost completely dominate the attention and time of our young people. Currerently, even many mature people, who should know better, are spending inordinate amounts of time on games. Sorry for this bombastic entry, but I am so frustrated today.

• A reply on Conversation: Online Art Education - Shifting away from a view of prehistoric art and seeing the sea change caused by printmaking.

  Aug 18 2012: Emeralda Works is a business in name only, and I have premises to work and live in 600 square feet (downsizing to 300 sq. ft. in December) for the former and 950 Square feet for the latter. My past experience with the university and also a co-operative studio involved spaces in the tens-of-thousands of square feet and, as I look back on this, I see that "small is beautiful" is more true than ever. Large spaces without a clear vision for those who occupy them, and a vision in balance with the task, proportional, tend to be derelict now. The name for Emeralda is part of my life-game, the full title of which is "Emeralda: Games for the gifts of life," and I used to think I could share this game with other people, but I haven't been able to communicate it because it is based on asset management and legacy transfer as a core principle. In my country, legacies are being wasted, not transferred or even recycled, I believe. In small part it might be the error in the Golden Rule, which in my opinion relies on what you think other people would have you do unto them. The Platinum Rule, which I try to follow, is "Do unto others as they would have you do unto them." I enjoy your message, Elizabeth Muncy.

• A reply on Conversation: Online Art Education - Shifting away from a view of prehistoric art and seeing the sea change caused by printmaking.

  Aug 17 2012: I apologize for asking abou the theater connection. Printmaking is a performance art, so it has a historic relationship to video games and TV, and those businesses have done a lot of damage to families and the children show it. I like coloring books of course, and I wanted to make them one time; graphic novels, too, I like a great deal. A visual image is powerful, yes, but aural dimensions, as music, are examples of time-based dimensional arts. Theater, opera, ballet, dance - all time based but, in live performance, site dependent and very costly. Add to that the tremendous generation of emissions going into the atmospher. Yet artists who are not educated to the extent that they can join with scientists to work on, and communicate possible solutions, are usually working for the corporations responsible for rolling ahead with yesteday's premises, such as that we will never run out of resources, that global warming is a natural cycle, etc. Music and movies, TV, video games - all are more powerful than a visual image, if the condition of today's world, etc. are an indication. I used to teach in an institution where the visual image reigned supreme, and if you dared to bring up the subject of aural dimensions and the interaction with performance artists and scientists, you were ostracized. That's why I'm attracted to free (truly free in both the sense you don't have to pay tuition and the professor is free to express the results of his or her work).

• A reply on Conversation: Online Art Education - Shifting away from a view of prehistoric art and seeing the sea change caused by printmaking.

  Aug 17 2012: I saw this last night on another computer, and I replied. Yet it didn't appear this AM on this screen. In a word, yes. My favorite proof of this is the Mondragon Cooperatives that formed in Spain in the 1930s I believe. On a personal note, if Beatrice Siliceo is the fine Spanish teacher I saw online, I was impressed; one time I had a plan to teach Spanish to US students in a kid's TV series. I notice an Oakland artist taught a printmaking class at Stanford University, underscoring the political and social power of hand printmaking. But remember, printmaking is the ancestor; video games is the child.

• A reply on Conversation: Online Art Education - Shifting away from a view of prehistoric art and seeing the sea change caused by printmaking.

  Aug 17 2012: Dear Elizabeth - TED did not forward your message, so I didn't know. You talk about the major contributors to what we believe were good things to change society, and I am no Luddite, either; however, there is a catch in that the machine can take over, take command as Siegfried Gideon put it. Galileo was a scientist. Jason et. al. is a mythical character, production of an early Disneyesque piece of theater. I wondered when I Googled you if you are an actress? Not my business, but performance artists are close to my field, which is printmaking, and were I to take on the task of continuing my education/teaching online, I would help close the gap, this "hole" in the understanding of media and why the media, taking command and control of human beings, will further deplete Earth's human life sustainability.

• A comment on Conversation: Online Art Education - Shifting away from a view of prehistoric art and seeing the sea change caused by printmaking.

  Aug 17 2012: Yes, the range of unemployed people covers a wide spectrum of skills, knowledge and attitudes. From this spectrum select those who want to work, not only for employment but to feel usefully employed on the task of educating people who are not given experiences in creative problem solving at the same time they pursue expression and communication of beautiful ideas.
  
  I choose the media arts' ancestor - printmaking - because still today people get a great joy out of making prints by hand even though there is no market for their prints as consumables. They would give away their art, happy more for having a printmaking experience and learning how it is a performance art, something for viewers to watch in process.
  
  The kind of printmaking I favor uses an etching press, and I designe an etching press that is versatile, beautiful, lightweight and requires people with art and craft abilities to manufacture. This is not intended to be a mass-produced consumer item, but geared to cottage industry scales.
  
  All the time i work by myself, I know other people can master what i have mastered if given training and practice; I want to establish the form of teaching companies that do this. So, yes, since the people who have been buying my presses for eight years have disposable income, they are employed or newly retired, and they want the press and they want my knowledge.
  
  So, even though I am in my retirement years (but not retiring) I have walked my talk, putting education before everything else; it is what Americans need now, since the governments have found it impossible to unite for education.

• A reply on Conversation: Online Art Education - Shifting away from a view of prehistoric art and seeing the sea change caused by printmaking.

  Aug 10 2012: I am happy to hear from a New Zealander and British person. I feel the kinship I supposed through the language and also through the economic theory we inherited from Adam Smith and others who framed the enlightenment. If it hadn't been for "mad" King George, we would have even more in common today I believe. Yes, the USA is object-possessed as a consequence of the feudal system of ownership - what you can build a fence around is yours. The native American Indians and the indiginous people (Australians) find this to be a peculiar way to relate to Nature. Mechanization takes command, but we humans may still extricate ourselves from the grip of machines if we are brave enough to try walking our talk. As for the British entertainment industry, yes, we love 'em and I am so embarrassed to be the nation where Lennon was killed, and so many others. We are probably the most dangerous nation in the world. Someone wrote the book, "Why they hate U.S." and he was right. It is education that matters now, we have the hindsight and we need the poetry and art to reach young children everywhere, but especially USA children. I feel so weak in the face of video games that own the minds of the majority of young people; the artists who have teamed up to gain control of the young people and are paid to steer them toward a life of war and imprisonment. As long as I can put time in countering this, and perhaps getting a company of producers together to augment art education online, I will not lose hope and faith there is good here.

• A comment on Conversation: Online Art Education - Shifting away from a view of prehistoric art and seeing the sea change caused by printmaking.

  Aug 10 2012: Your lost book must have been inspired in order that it's "voice" is still sounding through the ages. No doubt it is in a universal language. The present-day technologies have given voice to many things that, before recordings, depended on text and pictures. Music was always a universal language, as the aural dimension of our experience is powerful. It may be more powerful than the visual dimension. I have long believed the blind among us can teach us a lot because they live in the aural dimension and are not distracted or confused by what is to be seen with the eye. Thus I came to conclude that printing is a performance, and because it is a performance it is carried on in the time dimension, which is the dimension shared by all performers and the oral AND aural traditions. We must be aware how mechanizing the procedures, while they have so many good attributes, mechanization may take command if we are unable to balance human interaction and that of machines. We must not transfer our intelligence to the ownership of the machines and, in turn, to irresponsible owners of those machines. The blind people may educate us, I think.

• A comment on Conversation: Online Art Education - Shifting away from a view of prehistoric art and seeing the sea change caused by printmaking.

  Aug 10 2012: I could check Wikipedia, but I think of matrix as being any set form, physical or alphanumeric or in musical notation, that serves unlimited replication of an image, a sound, a human motion, etc. A robot with mechanical or digital controls moves according the gears, springs, etc. that comprise a matrix. A stencil, a rubber stamp, a printing plate, a musical score, a map - all of these might be considered to be matrices because they control actions or results more or less the same through repetition. A human hand placed on a sheet of paper, and with a pencil traces around the fingers, serves as a matrix to draw many hands on many sheets of paper, almost all alike. In the example of cave paintings, there are no drawings of human hands like the drawings of buffalo or penguins. All the images of those humans' hands are the result of using the hand as a matrix; the hand becomes a matrix. Thank you, James Zhang, for helping me elaborate my meaning.