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Great Masters
and
their little friends

A project of the class of seriously handicapped children in Unterweißenbach,

Within the project of

Museumonline2000 - Primary School of Unterweißenbach - Ars Electronica Center, Linz

 Leaders of the Project: Hedwig Haneder, Erich Pammer

In the link to the surprising success within Museumonline99 we have tried to develope it this year. Great Masters of Painting should be approached to seriously handicapped children. There is less cognitive knowledge concerned, there is more emphasis on the effort, the magic these masterpieces contain, to transfer to the children. For the reason it is necessary to learn in a community together.

We learned very quickly, that also teachers are handicapped concerning the view of things, getting in touch with these artists of famous paintings. Fear ("can I do that?", "Am I disgracing myself?" "this is going into the web?") and reservation, not existing in the children's world at all showed even more, that you are not handicapped, you get handicapped. Almost this handicap is resting in our minds, without being noticed by us. The medium Internet in connection with the usual technique is suitable to break down some of the barriers.

Our aim of getting in close contact to the great masters together with our handicapped pupils, was a great success. All of them worked with enthusiasm to put  them into reality. The common process of painting, taking photos, the transfer and the looking at the results in the web was an enormous instructive as well as community forming project.

It sounds presumptuous, we have much more learned - and not any second we had the feeling of being superior to the children - than in some of the clever lessons at the academy.

A lot of productiona of the children - of course - are charming than our own.

The greatest challenge is of course a pedagogical. To come to an understanding with the titans of art and doing it with the handicapped children, who are often not even able to speak, some are not able to sit, to learn, to write and count and so on. But this fact of being so different is an enormous chance, the chance of meeting the problem not in a cognitive and rational way, but to look for new ways or possibilities.

This meant, we have to bring in ourselves into the happening and had also to "produce" a work of art.

The next fact that plays a role is that in the end a new kind of museum is developing, and this is happening in a medium that is in a process of developing you don't know the end of. Something is making it more difficult for us:

WE HAVE TO STARTUP WITH ALL TYPES OF SCHOOL (and have to do this europewide) IN ONE CLASS OF RANKING. We are happy to be successfull in spite of that, but in the back of our mind this remains an enormous hurdle. A special group (category) for seriously handicapped children would be desirable.

There are hardly any technical hurdles, our website is designed with MS Frontpage and Macromedia Flash4. The handling is relatively simple.

A part of that has already mentioned above. It is important for us, that ALL the participants (persons involved) learned. It isn't a process of teaching, but the attempt of learning TOGETHER, from children you think they can hardly mediate anything. To break through this prejudice is very important.

A further prejudice which is paralysing us further and further and which we would like to confront with this project.

What kind of meaningful things are you able to do on computers and with handicapped childrens. It's a shame that this prejudice is sitting deep in our hearts (up to the sponsors of centres for handicapped people) and in spite of it we make little steps to break up this impendiments. Not we are handicapped, we get handicapped (not granting us, that the global village would have to be open for all of us)

Artificial work is always afflicted emotionally, existing contacts got deepened, new contacts were initialized (an artist came to our school, a technician of the ARS ELECTRONICA CENTER Linz proved his interest in work, not only in the artificial part of the work.

The configuration and developing were done together, supported by Mr. Eduard Bousrd Bangerl, artist in Pierbach Upper Austria. The final touch concerning webness was given by the Ars Electronica Center, presented by Mr. Helmut Höllerl. Tight cooperations exist with the pupils of the primary school and with the center for special education in Unterweißenbach, which is known for the emphasis on electronic medias all over the country.

Eduard Bousrd Bangerl, artist in Pierbach, Upper Austria

Ars Electronica Center Linz, Helmut Höllerl

Center of special education Unterweißenbach

In the meantime the project was appreciated a lot of times for example also last year within the europeanawide netdays99, our work aimed a lot of prizes.

The least resound you get in your closest area, which is easily to understand, because there doesn't exist a wide spread supply with the web in the rural area. But it would be a great chance for the deregional area, to discover new possibilities on behalf of that, because the web is a medium which starts relevating space and time. In spite of that there are more and more reports in the local press, that the followed way is the right one indeed.

Most of all we are proud of that, that we keep on making good our position in spite of hardest competition., that it is less important to be very clever and intelligent or to visit a very well known school, but that you may convince with diligence and frankness. That is what we do hope again this year.

The project partners were amazed by the process and the effort. As  a leader of the project the tight financial chains attract attention. Every "penny" has to be fought and quarrelled for, this is sometimes making the work very hard. A great deal of the hard- and software has been sponsored. Where - I do ask - is the public enterprise, as here could in fact somebody get sponsored, who has been forgotten by fortune, not being a social sponger, who one likes to get to the front with. But also the silence of person being responsible is very talkative. Thanks to the "Österreichischer Kulturservice" and to Martina Reuter, they never refused help.

"The way is the aim" and the result is making us happy, in spite of these components meeting each other, then we do hope more and more, that other people look at it the same way. Children in an artificial sector, in the electronic sector, respectively combining the two areas and showing new ways would be very important and the spreading of our idea would be the most beautiful feedback.

In some kinds of media there have already been reports (interview in the local radio of Upper Austria with the leader of the project, reports in the "Standard", "Kurier" etc. which are also shown on our website http://www.eduhi.at/schule/spzfreistadt/dies.htm. The Internet itself is the best medium, to spread our ideas.

The ideas can be transferred completely, but it is not our aim to be copied, but still a lot of ideas with seriously handicapped children are waiting in the web for being used.

More and more it proves the truth of the fact, that you ARE not handicapped, but you GET handicapped most of the time. Only this changing of the counsciousness would be a sufficient effort and justifies the expense.

As the web will provide a lot of surprises it is even more important to keep your foot in the open door because "who is late, is getting punished by life". (M. Gorbatschow?)

Erich Pammer

translated by Helene Pammer