| Shapes, Color, and Classical Music
The folks who produced artsee smartsee left no stone unturned in their design of this DVD which is a radical shift from what some may consider "the norm" with the delivery of a DVD which despite its design being targeted for infants and toddlers, in actuality it has proven it is for all age groups. artsee smartsee is well beyond captivating...it's literally addictive!
How would I best describe it? Well, the eyes have it with the artsee smartsee DVD and its cavalcade of spoken word, classical music, animated geometric shapes and basic colors which children from infancy to toddler age are in recognition of, all combined into one incredible experience! Created by an Emmy winning designer, artsee smartsee contains a 30-minute movie of animated high contrast objects and shapes choreographed and finely timed to a mix of 24 popular classical recordings.
There are three main options from which to choose from on the DVD menu, plus a chapter selection option to select a specific chapter to listen/view. They are "Play Animation", "Animation and Vocabulary", "Vocabulary Lesson", and "Chapter Selection". In the space to follow you will find a brief description of what each option the first three options are about.
The Play Animation provides a combination of classical music, geometric shapes and primary colors. The intro starts with a fast moving classical music piece with black and whites squares progressing into triangles, and so on, forming and disappearing in a vast variety of manners. The movements of the objects are in sync with the music being played, encouraging concurrent coordination of visual and thinking processes.
As each chapter of music, objects, and animations continues its procession to the next chapter to follow, whether infant or adult, the combination of animation and sound is literally mesmerizing.
One of the key underlying features that creates the educational value of the artsee smartsee DVD is the focus on the primary colors, black, white, grey, blue, red, and yellow. Unlike adult eyes which can distinguish between a literally boundless number of different shades of light and color, an infant's eyes can only detect large contrasts between light and dark, or black and white.
Research has found that newborn’s eyes register contrasting color such as white, black and red the best. As they become toddlers, the color range increases with their development. This is the reasoning for the animations starting out with black and white checkered squares and rectangular shapes, slowly progressing into a larger variety of primary colors and shapes. With artsee smartsee's shape animation, infants' perception of unity and form is stimulated dramatically with a progressive development of their object perception skills.
* Johnson, S. P., Cohen, L. B., Marks, K. H., & Johnson, K. L. (In press). Young infants' perception of unity in rotation displays. Infancy.
Animation and Vocabulary | Vocabulary
The next two options on the DVD menu are "Animation and Vocabulary" and "Vocabulary". The only difference is that "Animation and Vocabulary" shows the same animated shape/music chapters, then artsee smartsee transitions into a 12-minute vocabulary section where 50 objects appear and transition from black-and-white shapes to contour line drawings, then to full color. With the "Vocabulary" option alone, an infant, child, or adult experiences only the 12-minute vocabulary section.
With the "Vocabulary" visual and audible experience, as each object or animal is introduced, you hear the identifying name of the object or animal. It appears first as a black and white shape, evolving into a contour line drawing. The image remains in a static form then eventually transitions into the either the actual object/animal, or a detailed and life-like simulation of same. In addition, you now have a background and foundation which creates an illusion of a real-life environment having gone from two-dimensional perception to the inflection of a three-dimensional environment.
The Vocabulary section offers six different l