MEMORY-BOTS, Part Deux

Rooftop's 2008 Davies Symphony Hall Trim-A-Tree was a huge success! Over 500 students hand made their Memory-Bot ornaments. The results were expressive, creative, and so much fun. It was fantastic to see the sparks of inspiration with the ingenious use of the recycled materials by the students. Here is just a small sampling of the results:





The Rooftop community also rallied for an evening tree-trimming party when all 500 ornaments were added to a 16 foot tree. (A special thank you goes out to Rooftop parents who bravely climbed the ladder to reach the tippy top of the towering tree!) A fun evening was had by all, when Rooftop Spirit met holiday spirit! The results were impressive:




Another special thank you to first grader, Xiaokun Sun, who contributed the fantastic Wall-E contour drawing that graced the signage for the tree. (The text of the signage is included below for easy reading):
The Disney/Pixar film, "WALL-E" inspired Rooftop School's 2008 Davies Symphony Hall Trim-A-Tree ornament design. The character of WALL-E, a robot left behind to clean up the polluted Earth, has a Charlie Chaplin like charm that is irresistible.

Though Wall-E speaks just two words (his own name and that of his robotic love interest, EVE) the viewer always knows his thoughts and emotions, thanks to the incredible expressive animation by the artists at Pixar.

The robot ornament design challenged every Rooftop student (grades K-8) to explore the ways that artists create emotion and expression from what are otherwise inanimate or expressionless objects.

In honor of the environmental theme of the film, the materials used to create the robot ornaments are 100% post-consumer / recycled goods.

Rooftop's 2008-09 arts curriculum focus, "Art Is . . . Shaping Memory" guides our faculty, students and parents to explore the ways that artists use a synthesis of words, images, movement and sound to shape memory.

In keeping with Rooftop's "Art Is . . . Shaping Memory" curriculu, the Trim-A-Tree robots function as "Memory Bots." Inside the CD case bases, each student wrote a personal memory for their robot to store for posterity.