Art Cognitions
Affect in Art Education: Practicing Art Practicing Ethics
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ingrid Boberg
Art education, occurring within a studio-based programme, provides the impetus for all manner of activities and sociality to occur that make things happen for the emerging creative subject. This paper looks at the way art education fosters aesthetic experiences, affect relations and ethical thinking. This paper focuses on the transmission and reception of affect within art pedagogy, valuing the distinct experiential qualities therein and the corporeal understanding it provides. In observing how things happen within an art school studio context, and through a Deleuzo-Guattarian lens, I argue that the shift from molar thinking to molecular thinking is manifested through art education events. In utilising Spinoza’s (1996) concepts regarding “inadequate ideas” and how they become “more adequate ideas,” I discuss the means by which art students can gain a more ethical understanding of other. Other being; things, acts, and processes unusual to their understanding, as well as human beings expressing different ideas, sensibilities, politics and/or beliefs.
System as Medium
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tara Michelle Winters
In creative arts teaching we talk a lot about ideas but not much about how to get them. This paper includes a teaching case study and project documentation outlining a studio assignment aimed at facilitating the self- generation of art and design ideas/outcomes by way of "systems thinking." The studio project explores a contemporary version of the concept "system as medium" first proposed by Jack Burnham in 1968, tapping into a reported “ongoing obsession with systems and series” (Jessica Helfand). Usefully, part of the vocabulary of a system is that it is self-generating, and this can be very productive. The notion of a system is captivating. A fixed system can offer endless variation. Iteration after iteration can be gleaned once a system is in place. The concept of ‘systems’ is deeply embedded in the context of society and the way we now live. Systems provide a flexible starting point for the generation of idea and form. This ranges from a response to the concept of "system" in more formal, material terms (an example being the use of principles such as repetition, pattern, rhythm and seriality, where outcomes are a manifestation of an invented, systematic base) to one that engages a contemporary systems aesthetic to inspect the social, economic, and technological ‘systems’ that govern our world. The way in which this studio project has been able to successfully respond to the fundamental task of helping students to think generatively and creatively is discussed via examples of student work.
Developing Engaged Thinkers, Ethical Citizens and Entrepreneurial Spirit through Arts-based Learning: Applying the Socially Empowered Learning Framework in Community
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Gregory Burbidge, Emiko Muraki, Brittany Harker Martin
More and more the arts sector is being called upon to evaluate the impact of our work. How can we develop accessible and rigorous evaluative tools that are helpful for artists, arts groups and those that support them? Through a unique collaboration between granting agencies, academics, educators and arts organizations, the Socially Empowered 3E Scale (Martin & Calvert, 2017) was developed. The Socially Empowered 3E Scale includes three subscales drawn from the broader Socially Empowered Learning Framework (Martin & Calvert, 2018) that measure changes in intellectual engagement, ethical mindset and entrepreneurial spirit. The subscales were designed for use by educators and artists to determine the effectiveness of their programs and for grant agencies to evaluate the impact of supporting arts education programs. We present the results from a pilot program of the scale with three arts education providers and discuss the results, challenges and implications for the scale’s more wide-spread adoption amongst arts educators.
