Yulia Yakovlenko, researcher of the Center of Museum Pedagogic and the Children''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''s art oft the State Russian Museum, (812) 313-43-97

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Internet as a mean of presentation of the political, scientific, cultural and art projects attracts children’s attention. Fascinating their imagination with new possibilities, freedom of activities and choice, it wakes up their creativity, which is not realized in a real life. In the area without any limits and borders they can develop themselves at once in a different ways. For example, not only as young artists, sculptors, and architects, but even as creators of global Worlds and new civilizations. They take the role of “creators” of this virtual reality. Playing this game and having such entertainment, getting new information, realizing themselves and perfecting communicative abilities become important for them. Using the Internet they are able to get a link all around the World, while they are staying in the center of events, art actions and reflecting lively all that happens around them. Taking part in this active dialogue with new technologies gives a new perception of the reality, historical and social processes, and artistic creativity.
Possibilities of children to use computer technologies (different audio effects, 3D – modeling, and holograms) allow using their new visual experience in education. Art museum, working in the direction of developing and perfecting its educational functions is interested in prosecution the new means, which let young viewers take part in the interactive dialogue with museum exhibits, help them to get the knowledge of the Russian art in the interesting game, and raise the creative reaction to the works of art.
In spite of school children’s access to Internet it stays unaccepted for young viewers. A huge stream of non-systematic and unaccepted information penetrates the virtual space. Art resources are considered to be as a little part of all active sites. Children’s need of a new source of getting knowledge and realization is very important. Today there is not a special children’s site, where a child would study at home the basis of art, have a virtual tour to the studio of artist and sculptor, take part in competition for the best drawing, and at last see his own creation among the masterpieces of the famous artists. That is why the Interactive Children’s Museum of the Russian Center of Museum pedagogics and Children’s creativity of the State Russian museum take the role of realizing this possibilities and creating the new “environmental” space for children of different ages and mental health, where they would feel free and protected, develop their vision and analytic abilities. The new media technologies help to create the interactive zone, where children would reflect outward phenomenon of the life and museum, like the opening of the exhibition of classical art, meeting with a museum exhibit, or a contemporary artist at the exposition.
Features of children’s perception require a professional methodical approach for presentation of the art and didactic materials, creation the structure, which would be connected with psychological problems of contemporary issues and social adaptation of children. The joint work of teachers, art critics, artists and psychologists, which helps to supply necessary conduction of work and interaction, is very important in this context. It can save the children with physical and mental problems from the unnecessary stresses.
The children’s creativity is a huge area for interpretations, where the Interactive Children’s museum realizes the conceptual project “Children on the Territory of Adult’s Art”. The aim of this project is in the work with the art trends of the Russian school of painting as a subject of studying and depicting, and also in raising the question of attitude to the art works in the State Russian museum’s collection. The development of this project will be done in many directions. The main principal is using the area of reality, where the dominating role is played by the major exposition of the Russian museum, and a virtual World with the interactive structure of the Children’s museum as well.
A museum forms the notion of the Russian art as unique phenomena of the World art, characterized by the chronological consequence of art schools, trends and methods. Research workers of the art create methodically newer languages, describing adult’s works of art. Children, staying in a museum at an unknown area of adult’s art, are free from stereotype perception. They take the rules of the game, visually dealing with the exhibit, which gives them the sense of happiness and excitement, sadness and trouble. The children choose the favorite picture and sculpture, which is offered by the teacher to be depicted. Depiction practice in this context is considered to be an important stage in the artistic and psychological development of a child. The child remembers the first impression of the observed work of art, and the feeling he had at that moment. Through the process of drawing the child tries to achieve outer similarity with the original, but he shows the intensity of his own mental health without understanding it.
At the second stage of education the children with the help of the teacher learn to percept the art by means of knowledge of the language of the art, which can be got from the didactic exposition of the Children’s museum. Here it becomes possible to get new experience of space, color and shape. The main exposition shows the distance between the visitor and the exhibit, and tactile taboo brings up the feeling of beauty among children, but the Children’s museum supplies all the conditions for children to use all the kinds of sense perception. A special “Tactile Fund” of plaster casts and different raw materials allow to make children’s feelings more varied. Owing to multimedia technologies it becomes possible to include audio-visual technique, electronic monitors, sensor systems, and special light equipment. These means make it possible to hold the meeting, connecting a user and an artist in the studio. The virtual tour “An artist’s studio” leads a child into a creative process, helping to owe the technique approaches of the art skill. All the art studies in the Center are supplied with Internet-chambers, which is necessary to hold direct broadcastings, conferences, seminars for exchanging of experience with colleagues from other countries, and to record demonstration lessons with the children of different ages and social groups on digital systems.
Registration and systematization of the Fund of Children’s creativity (according to chronology, age, approaches of teaching) came to life owing to making of the common electronic catalogue of all children’s works with the digital photo documents and information about authors. Creating of such base makes it easy to work with the information for preparing exhibitions of children’s creativity or publishing children’s books. The collaborators of the museum have a task to make the documents and to registrar the works of children’s creativity, which has never existed before. Works, created by children, get the digital preparation and color-correction, and they are exhibited also in a virtual space as an exhibition or a part of an art project, which sometimes is impossible to realize in the real space.
The third stage of the project is realized on CD-ROM and on-line virtual exhibition “My Favorite Museum” with the Center of the new informational technologies “The Virtual World of the State Russian Museum”, which is under creation now. The virtual exhibition of the children’s creativity «My Favorite Museum» continues to reflect the works of the adult’s art in the Internet. It is a work with multimedia, using of digital objects, texts, and different kinetic objects. New possibilities allow presenting children’s creativity in the context of the collection of the Russian museum, when a child picture outside of the Children’s Fund and a real museum has a function of a conductor. A user gets an experience of learning of a museum exhibit, comparing it to a child’s picture and activating his own imagination and previous museum visual experience. A real size, a scale, and a skillful technical creating of a masterpiece can’t be seen on the plain screen of the computer. In a virtual space it is possible to put a child’s picture near to the paintings of Brullov and Repin, and only a choice of a user will determine the actual feature of any work at this moment. From the other side, children’s creativity as a spontaneous action, whose author is unknown sometimes, doesn’t pretend of becoming a «masterpiece». It hasn’t the pathos of «originality» and «quality», becoming a «masterpiece», it is going to achieve the opposite limit and to become a phenomenon of the daily practice.
Thus, using of the latest means of information and communication has the result, when the children’s creativity becomes accessible and famous, influencing the perception of little and adult viewers of art.
A classical and contemporary work from the collection of the Russian museum, becoming the object of the children’s perception and art practice, gets a new interpretation. Сhildren’s pictures, simulating the adult’s practice, realize the strategy of immersion, contribution and life on a new territory.
An interactive link supplies the contact between children’s and adult’s world and art. As a result the children’s reaction makes a psychological action also on adult viewers, liberating them from a stereotype mentality and showing the needs in communicating with a real work of art at the exposition of the museum.