Evaluating an Artifact Assignment | Psychology

Humans are art making creatures. From the evocative hunting depictions of our ancient ancestors to modern dance, humans have reacted to their environment by painting, singing, dancing, writing, and recording the things they encounter. In this week’s assignment, you will be asked to select an artifact to analyze. Make sure that you choose something that really resonates with you, but also make sure that you would not mind sharing it with the members of the class. Understand that this is an academic workspace, and select an image, poem, or song that you would be comfortable sending to the entire class. You are free to select any object that is shareable electronically with your classmates.

Photo credit: Microsoft Corporation. (Producer). MP900309017 [photo of brushes and art supplies]. Retrieved February 6, 2014 from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/results.aspx?qu=art&ex=1%20-%20ai:MP900309017|#ai:MP900309017

Evaluating a work of art requires some distance from the piece. You will be asked to analyze the artifact that you select and to describe why the piece was selected. Please choose something that you would not mind others critiquing. For example, if you select a painting that your sister painted, you might not want to have someone write that they didn’t like the subject or style. Make sure that you are comfortable with the piece being viewed and analyzed by other members of the class.

In this Assignment you will identify and analyze an artifact of your choice. The resources used in the Week 2 Notes and Readings are just a few of the options for types of media you might select as meaningful to you.

To prepare for the Assignment:

Read the Reading Images and Texts document in this week’s Learning Resources.
Select an artifact, something that is important to you or resonates with you in some way. Make certain you have a way to share the artifact electronically. You can save the website/link to the artifact if you found it online or take a photo or scan the artifact.
Use the Artifact Analysis Worksheet to evaluate your artifact.
Use the Academic Writing Expectations (AWE) Checklist to guide your writing for each question on the worksheet. Even when you are filling in a worksheet, you should be considering the AWE guidelines.