Adolescents

Adolescents
silhouette of building facade
Ben Rubin
American, born 1964
And That's The Way It Is
2012
PDF icon a_rubin.pdf

 

 

 

Subject: Patterns in newspaper headlines
Activity: Collage
Materials: Paper, scissors, glue, Internet access, and computer printer
Vocabulary: Collage, pattern

Introduction: 

Ben Rubin is an artist who often creates artworks that isolate text from its original source. His previous works have presented text from Internet chat rooms (Listening Post, 2004) or from current and past issues of the New York Times (Moveable Type, 2007).

This piece combines text from current news broadcasts with older segments by Walter Cronkite for the CBS Evening News. Rubin’s software scans the text for patterns in speech and grammar and selects pieces to project, creating a conversation between past and present.

Questions: 

Can you tell which headlines are from today and which are from the Cronkite archives? How do you know?

What patterns do you see in the headlines projected?

Activity: 

Take a look at the headlines of a newspaper from today. Then look at the headlines from a thirty- to fifty-year-old newspaper. What patterns do you see? What has changed and what has stayed the same? Create a collage from the headlines highlighting the patterns you see.

Source for newspaper archives: http://texashistory.unt.edu/explore/collections/TDNP/browse/

BTW: 

Ben Rubin studied semiotics (the study of signs or symbols) and computer science in college. 

Vocabulary: 

Collage—A work of art created by pasting various materials onto a surface
Pattern —A collection of recurring events or objects
Semiotics —The study of signs and symbols