Online Lightning Talks
Re-theorising and Envisioning Text as Image: A Concept in Practice-based Research in Painting
Virtual Lightning Talk Emmanuel Ikemefula Irokanulo
This study examines texts and images and the poetic connection between the two, by explicating how text gives life to image and image subsequently informs and inspires text. It also sets out to examine how art practice creates knowledge and induces philosophy. The study is inspired by Paul Gauguin’s theory on the inclusion of shadow in painting. This study aims at creating paintings through observation of images derived from shadows. Shadows are here reconstructed in painting as independent images and not as appendages to any phenomenal object. The study explores the texts of Kantian and Heideggerian philosophy to create paintings given Onyinyo local mythological theory life within a contemplative space. The literature review shows that shadow had been in existence before the researcher engaged in this study but, the nature of inquiry differs from previous ones in traditional painting practice. Participatory technique was adapted as research method and phenomenological theories and philosophy formed the focus of this study, which assesses art, especially how painting can inform theory and theory as well informs painting practice. The research establishes that the practice of painting and knowledge are inseparable and that painting is a visual narrative that could be read through careful contemplation and that painting could lead a critical argument for the topicality of the visual arts.
Art in Society: The Role of Cultural Planning Methodology in Contemporary Society
Virtual Lightning Talk Liz Gardiner, Katarzyna Kosmala, Tomas Dahlberg
Recent thinking and research has helped to broaden the base from The Arts to embrace place making, regeneration and city planning (Landry, 2000). This paper asks what Cultural Planning methodology can offer in contemporary society. Can urban regeneration, place making and socio-economic development incorporate cultural resources in ways that are more than tokenistic, but actually capture and celebrate the “DNA” of the place? In the 20th century UK, Arts and Culture were often seen as separate from other aspects of urbanism. There were polarised positions that either insisted on “art for arts’ sake” or treated the arts and artists instrumentally; perceived as useful for tackling issues and problems in socio-economic disadvantage areas. Post-industrial cities continue to suffer from this perpetuated disconnect between culture and urban regeneration, leading to homogenization of urban design and the proliferation of “non-places” made of housing and retail developments that could be seen as being located anywhere. This paper explores the potential of cultural planning as an applied methodology in three post-industrial urban settings (Govan, Gothenburg and Gdansk) as an access to understanding how meaning can be generated and disseminated from the cultural sphere pursuit of building alternative futures.
Arts Integration within the Gifted Curriculum
Virtual Lightning Talk Jennifer Bartee
This session will investigate the positive role arts education can hold within gifted curricula, helping to establish its importance within mainstream curriculum reform. Specific attention will be paid to the unique ways arts classes can teach creative thought and affective expression. Champions of arts education look to the works of Elliot Eisner to encourage the teaching of multiple forms of representation (Eisner, 1994) and to Howard Gardner to support students with multiple forms of intelligence (Gardner, 1983). Advocates of gifted education look to Renzulli’s Three-Ring Model and the equal weight placed on creativity, task commitment, and above average ability (Davis & Rimm, 2004), as well as Dabrowski’s recognition of aesthetic sensitivity within individuals who possess sensual over excitability, to support their students. However, little research has specifically explored the common ground between arts education and gifted education. Gifted curricula tend to focus on the advancement of students’ abilities in math, science, and language arts. Gifted students often need to find positive ways to channel the complex emotions they experience due to their high intellectual aptitude. Research needs to investigate the role arts education should play within gifted curricula.
Movements and Repetition in Victor Vasarely's Paintings with That of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5
Virtual Lightning Talk Golara Tavakolian, Mohammad Reza Sharifzadeh
The purpose is to make it more conceivable and further tangible for a Persian receiver. It is discernible that the geometrically entwined structure of inscriptions in Vasarely’s art formed with respect to calculation and connections with mathematical proportions. Such illustration of dimensions entails an organized expansion and divergence. Similarly in symphony number 5 there are symbols of motion, opposition and toil going from the first movement in C minor to joy and glory concealed in the Final movement in C major which is the peak of the whole symphony. It is also longer and dynamically more intense than the first movement and throughout the flow of the musical composition from one movement to another again there seem to be a mathematical divergence and expansion. To such degree it is possible to compare this symphony with movements and genres of visual art such as op art and uniquely that of Vasarely’s. The long term goal of the research includes discovering similitude points between Symphony No.5 and Vasarely’s paintings along with reflecting repetition and motion in both music and painting. This article attempts to answer the question of whether the aesthetic signs or the realm in in vasarely’s work are in a way at the same level or influenced by Beethoven’s 5th symphony? Hereupon, advantaging from an analytic-descriptive method the study will proceed towards finding a few of the likeness points in such examples observing both referential and fieldwork information-gathering.
Art of Haute Cuisine: Understanding the Chef as an Artist
Virtual Lightning Talk Annamaria Paolino
Traditionally, art refers to the fine and performing arts and does not explicitly or implicitly include food. However, society is reconceptualising this view and implying that the culinary arts can be performed by an artist (chef) and experienced by an audience (diner). A haute cuisine experience is a performance on a gastronomic stage and when seen in this light, it fits well within the definition of "art." It is a capricious art that does not last long in a physical form however; like all great artworks, it has the potential to last a lifetime in the memories it creates. The focus of this research was to gain the chefs perception into this social discourse. Interviews were conducted with innovative and award winning chefs from Australia, Europe and the United Kingdom to gain an insight into how chefs perceive they do, whether they consider "food as art," and the process they go through when creating their art. The research findings highlight that like all artists, chefs are inspired by a variety of things however, two groups of chefs have emerged from the data; the "artists," and the "craftsmen." This research uncovers the chefs understanding of their perceived artistic status in society.
Evaluating Multi-Content Learning through Art
Virtual Lightning Talk Jan Hogan, Gilbert Duenas
Art speaks to the classroom teacher. Experienced educators can know a lot about their students through classroom art projects. Art skills such as knowledge of color theory, understanding famous artists, and spatial awareness can be assessed, but evaluation shouldn’t stop here. Student’s listening skills, social skills, certain math skills, social studies skills can also be assessed via the same piece of art. First, drawing exercises to make students comfortable and move them beyond the “I can’t draw syndrome” or fear of drawing that may be present. Second, an exercise in drawing familiar objects by turning them upside down. This allows students to view their subject as a series of lines rather than an object they are familiar with. Third, isolate colors in a photograph to train students’ eyes to see shade, tint, and tone as indicators of depth or distance. This project can be incorporated in any teacher preparation program as a hands-on learning experience that engages the participant’s use of imagination to artistically portray in an abstract manner what they see and feel. Whether a child in an early learning center, a youth in an elementary school or adult in a college setting, the use of distinct art forms can be an empowering tool to elevate the voices and interpretations of children and adults' views of historical and present day events. Application of this project can be utilized to promote academic skills such as critical thinking, conversations, and research in support of a relevant learning outcome.
Dilemmas between Creativity and Skills: Visual Arts Teaching in Early Childhood
Virtual Lightning Talk Suzannie Leung
Early childhood education in Hong Kong faced its millennial reform and this reform called for a change in the policy and curriculum. The curriculum revamp aimed at promoting children’s creativity and life-long learning capacity. Therefore, arts become one of the genres in the integrated curriculum. Nevertheless, the practices in the local kindergartens in Hong Kong seemed to have barriers in meeting the government’s standard after the curriculum revamp due to conventional values of academic achievement from the public and parents. In theory, we expected children created their artworks by expressing their voices creatively through visual arts. In practice, children created their crafts by following teachers’ instructions. Obviously, there is a belief-and-practice gap in teaching visual arts for young children in Hong Kong. As a matter of fact, this study aims at investigating teachers’ beliefs and practices in teaching visual arts in Hong Kong. In this study, 29 teachers were interviewed individually through semi-structured interviews. Totally 409 minutes of data were collected. The interviews were transcribed, coded and analyzed by using thematic network analysis. The findings indicated a belief-and-practice gap of kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong towards visual arts in early childhood education. Teachers agreed with the notion of creativity but they found difficulties in striking the balance between creativity and artistic skills. This study reflected not only on the importance of subject knowledge in teaching visual arts to young children, but also how teacher education in visual arts in the future should be conducted.
Setting Free: Julien de Casabianca's Project "Outings" and Its Aesthetical and Social Conseqences
Virtual Lightning Talk Alicja Rybkowska
The artist chooses less known paintings from local museums, prints the human figures depicted on them as large scale stickers, and places them on buildings in deprived areas. In the project fine arts become street art and street art takes its inspiration from fine arts. The artist himself describes it as a way of examining how people react to the pictures in their environment and interact with them. This interaction may result in a destruction of ephemeric art works but also in a creation of new patterns of using the common spaces and, as a consequence, strengthening local identity. I am going to discuss the engaging, participative aspect of the project and its input in bringing people together and promoting grass roots democracy. Basing on this discussion, I will draw perspectives for using different forms of art as an instrument of stimulating people's creative potential in their social life.
Emerging Aesthetic Experience: New Forms of Cognitive Sensitivity in Interactive Art
Virtual Lightning Talk Claudia Mosqueda, Rafael Bueno Rodríguez
The interactive work of art of the 21st century seeks to produce in active viewers an emerging aesthetic experience. This emerging aesthetic experience reconfigures all the sensory, olfactory, tactile, emotional, visual, neuronal experience that occurs in the body as an integral unit to generate new sensitive and perceptual syntheses. This interaction is processed at the individual level by the body that experiences it, but also globally because it is a framework of stimuli, simultaneous and emerging actions. This process of cognition is what Varela defines as: the global is at the same time the cause and consequence of local actions that occur all the time in my body. From the above, we propose as the purpose of this text that: interactive works of art offer emerging aesthetic experiences where the body is the main protagonist, because from it, the local and global process of cognition is given. The methodological structure of this work is as follows: to define the aesthetic experience in aesthetic terms, to describe the notion of emergency as a cognitive learning experience, that from the theoretical perspective of Chilean thinker Francisco Varela, emergence is a form Of cognition, as a co-determination between local elements and the global cognitive subject, and to explain how the emerging aesthetic experience in Interactive Art works is understood from specific examples. With this, we try to explain how the artistic experience of the 21st century responds to novel processes of cognition as the ultimate stage of experience.
Mathematics, Art, and Technology: The Use of Art to Improve Learning
Virtual Lightning Talk Euro Marques Júnior, Emília M. R. Marques, Aguinaldo Robinson De Souza
We developed the project with the objective of raising the interest of high school students and the general public through Mathematics, motivated by the social demand for improvement in the quality of teaching. We believe that the growth of student interest and its ability to understand applications with complex numbers in various areas will cooperate with the teaching and learning process. Thus, we develop the teaching of numbers and complex functions associated with Art and Technology through interrelated activities: exhibitions of images created with computer graphics by educational software F (C) Complex Functions; explanatory lectures about the software and the process of creating the figures (Colored Domains); workshops in computer labs for software learning; production of study material and development of this mathematical content and production of new images; preparation of dissemination material and knowledge repository (e-books, articles); use of e-learning in the development of activities for teachers and high school students; etc.
