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It’s April and, given the strange times we are living through, many slightly confused 2nd year students are asking me questions about the visual arts upload process.
Here are some of their questions and my answers:
1 What if I am only able to submit one or two of the three course visual arts course components?
As long as you submit at least one component in your course, a final grade will be awarded. The IB has internal procedures to ensure that fair and accurate missing marks and final grades are awarded.
2 I can’t get the photos of resolved work that I would have used for criterion F of the Comparative Study
For HL Criterion F “Making connections,” visual evidence of your “in progress” artmaking may be used if you cannot access resolved studio works or if these are incomplete.
3 I’m at home with no art supplies but I do have Photoshop installed on my computer. Can I make my last exhibition artwork using Photoshop?
Yes, you can complete artwork using digital tools. If you do this, state it in the Medium section of the e-Coursework upload and in the Exhibition text for that artwork. (This is an artistic choice and there should be no pressure on you to use digital artmaking if you aren’t confident or don’t want to.
4 My school is closed. How can I still have an exhibition of my work? Can I put work up in my garage or my garden?
The space where an exhibition is presented does not influence the marking. If you are unable to set up a formal exhibition due to an adverse circumstance you can still photograph the resolved artworks selected for exhibition together as a collection.
5 Should I tell the IB why the work is displayed in my garden?
Yes – add information about any “alternative solutions” that you had to put in place for your exhibition in their curatorial rationale.
6 What about if the exhibition is virtual/digital?
Virtual exhibitions are permitted but remember that IB does not accept links to external sites for the submission of an assessment task. A video or screencast file is not an accepted format for exhibition photographs.
7 Do I still upload two exhibition photos?
Upload a digital collage of the artworks to fulfil the requirements of the two exhibition photographs. If you are doing this try to give a sense of the scale of the pieces so that the moderator understands the differences in size and scale between larger and smaller artworks. Don’t just show them all looking like they are the same size!
8 I’ve got some pretty big file sizes, one of my photos is 20MB, another 16MB. Is that OK?
No. You are going to have to reduce some of your files. The IB has made all the file sizes uniform across the Diploma. Images are 5MB each (not whole body of work). Video files are 500MB each. Documents are 50MB.
