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Mobile Digital Art – FiftyThree and Guggenheim bring Digital Art to Classrooms

Creativity isn’t second nature only to a lucky few; we’re all born creative but, over our formative years, it’s slowly trained out of us. This is no doubt why, when asking a second grade class who thinks of themselves as creative, 95% of students will raise their hands. Fast forward to fifth grade and only 50% will, and by high school only 5% of students identify as creative (via).

FiftyThree want to help eradicate this trend, which is why they have teamed up with the Guggenheim Museum to do just that. For the past 44 years, the Guggenheim has sent teaching artists into New York City’s public schools through a wonderful program called Learning Through Art (LTA). By studying not only art, but the artistic process, students are taught to think more creatively. The year-long program targets 4th, 5th, and 6th graders, a developmentally pivotal age when kids typically decide whether they’re “creative” or not.

Understanding technology’s ability to accelerate learning, the Guggenheim introduced FiftyThree’s app Paper and iPad into the LTA program. Under the expert tutelage of teaching artist Jeff Hopkins, students from the 6th grade class at P.S. 86 used Paper alongside traditional art tools. Especially cool is that the resulting work is now on display at the Guggenheim Museum! The exhibition ends June 17th, so be sure to check it out if you’re in the area.

To commemorate this special program, the talented filmmaking duo Michael Tyburski and Eddy Vallante created this short film in collaboration with our team. Enjoy!

Joanne Carter, creator of the world’s most popular mobile photography and art website— TheAppWhisperer.com— TheAppWhisperer platform has been a pivotal cyberspace for mobile artists of all abilities to learn about, to explore, to celebrate and to share mobile artworks. Joanne’s compassion, inclusivity, and humility are hallmarks in all that she does, and is particularly evident in the platform she has built. In her words, “We all have the potential to remove ourselves from the centre of any circle and to expand a sphere of compassion outward; to include everyone interested in mobile art, ensuring every artist is within reach”, she has said. Promotion of mobile artists and the art form as a primary medium in today’s art world, has become her life’s focus. She has presented lectures bolstering mobile artists and their art from as far away as the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea to closer to her home in the UK at Focus on Imaging. Her experience as a jurist for mobile art competitions includes: Portugal, Canada, US, S Korea, UK and Italy. And her travels pioneering the breadth of mobile art includes key events in: Frankfurt, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Paris, Brazil, London. Pioneering the world’s first mobile art online gallery - TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com has extended her reach even further, shipping from London, UK to clients in the US, Europe and The Far East to a global group of collectors looking for exclusive art to hang in their homes and offices. The online gallery specialises in prints for discerning collectors of unique, previously unseen signed limited edition art. Her journey towards becoming The App Whisperer, includes (but is not limited to) working for a paparazzi photo agency for several years and as a deputy editor for a photo print magazine. Her own freelance photographic journalistic work is also widely acclaimed. She has been published extensively both within the UK and the US in national and international titles. These include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Popular Photography & Imaging, dpreview, NikonPro, Which? and more recently with the BBC as a Contributor, Columnist at Vogue Italia and Contributing Editor at LensCulture. Her professional photography has also been widely exhibited throughout Europe, including Italy, Portugal and the UK. She is currently writing several books, all related to mobile art and is always open to requests for new commissions for either writing or photography projects or a combination of both. Please contact her at: joanne@theappwhisperer.com