Knowledge Builders (Asynchronous)
Ta(l)king Place: Material Evidence of Place Amongst New Terrain View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Annette Nykiel, Monika Lukowska, Sarah Robinson, Jane Whelan
Artists reflect on their exhibition Talking Place: Emerging Connections, Gallery 25, Edith Cowan University, August 2020; a third iteration of a collaborative research project by four artists Monika Lukowska, Sarah Robinson, Annette Nykiel and Jane Whelan exploring the ecology of Perth’s wetlands in the broader realms of place, technology and contemporary art practice. This project began in 2017, within the thresholds of Lake Walyungup, Western Australia, a seemingly empty space amid growing urban communities with a deep history embedded in stromatolite remains and Noongar traditions. Discursive responses articulate the artists’ experiences, conveying the complexities of a place and emerging as a multidisciplinary exhibition involving printmaking, drawing, slow-making, and digital technology. Our endeavour is to explore, to connect, and to extend imaginatively and collaboratively with the materiality of ideas pondering: what new terrain might emerge from asking questions and creating problems while creatively investigating place. Through engagement in the field, exchange and conversation, the artists unravelled layers, hidden narratives, and spatial dimensions emphasising the complex nature of wetlands and their significance in the local and global context. Links have emerged connecting the initial site with other local, national and international wetlands through themes that consider what it means to be in this world; including both connection and disruption, and thinking and sensing through the ideas of phenomenologists Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Edward Casey, anthropologist Tim Ingold, and design anthropologist Sarah Pink. We have detected our own alternative views of the environment and updated our view in this conversation about ways of knowing.
Finding the Awe in Ordinary: New Ways of Seeing and Practising Creative Writing View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Denise Beckton
Our sense of self is informed by culturally defined experiences – that is, the people, objects, and circumstances we associate with particular events. Some are significant and enduring, and influence our current and future perceptions of life, in a positive and/or negative way. Other, more commonplace, interactions are easily forgotten. Over time and space, our appreciation of and fondness for these everyday circumstances inevitably wanes, and this diminishing curiosity for the unexceptional has implications for creative practitioners who are invested in constructing narratives that associate a sense of heterotopia and awe with the every-day. Achieving this writerly attribute is a common challenge for authors and an issue that transposes genre. Memoirists, for example, must recount distant events and significant objects with fresh eyes, while speculative writers are often required to refashion realistic plotlines and known ‘things’ through a heterotopic lens. Similarly, writers of YA fiction interpret and describe events through the eyes of teenagers who are transitioning from child to adult – an emotionally and physically demanding developmental stage. This paper examines the ways in which practitioners might reimagine everyday objects and their interaction with them by offering writing strategies and schemas that inform creative practice, foreground selected texts, and offer a newly imbued sense of wonder through the reinterpretation of ordinary ‘things’.
The Influence of the Continuous Training of Teachers in Art Education: Observation and Analysis of the Transformational Effect of Two Nursery and Primary Schools View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ester Forné Castaño
Within the variety of areas of knowledge that constitute its stages of preschool and primary education, art education constitutes a very effective option to fully promote all the sensitive, expressive, creative, and reflective capacities of students and in turn respond to their needs for knowing and recognizing everything around them. In this order of ideas, the teacher as an agent promoting the transformation of his/her educative institution throughout significant learning experiences has the possibility of influencing children to discover this world through art in their daily work. That said many times after achieving this objective they face the obstacle of having little training on the various technical and conceptual advances that have occurred in artistic expression in recent years, which limits his possibilities to incentivize the capacities. Faced with this situation, continuous training programs in arts education for teachers regarding the new literacies are an effective support option. The present research is oriented to analyze the conceptual, pedagogical, and didactic contributions that produce this type of training processes provided to teachers belonging to infant and primary education faculties in processes of transformation. From the study of two specific cases: the academic experience experienced by early childhood and primary education teachers from the Joan Miró of Canovelles Schools and the Ferrer i Guàrdia of Granollers led and executed by CESIRE, Center for Specific Pedagogical Resources in Support of Innovation and Educational Research of the Department of Education of the Government of Catalonia.
Museums and Dilemmas of Choice in Young People’s Creative Education and Career Pathways: Insights from a London Museum Case Study View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Amalia Sabiescu
The role of museums in informing young people’s creative education and career choices is increasingly recognised. While numerous museums now have dedicated young people’s programmes that include creative education and careers support, there is a gap in knowledge about the profiles, information needs and challenges faced by young people while they attempt to choose, train for and access creative careers. This paper draws on a three-year study on two flagship events offered by the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Young People’s Programme: three editions of a creative careers fair and two editions of a creative education five-day course for young people not in education, employment or training. The study consulted more than 260 young people who attended one of the two events, by means of interviews, questionnaires, focus groups and analysis of creative outputs. Based on this rich dataset, the study found that young people’s information needs differ according to two aspects: decision-making about a creative career and associated education pathways; and creative career stage. On this basis, the paper offers a detailed segmentation of young people that features socio-demographics, career interests and the type of information and support they need to choose, train for and access creative careers. The findings can be taken up by cultural institutions to inform the design of their programmes that address young people, creative education, and creative careers support.
Advocacy for Design Pedagogy Reform: Proactive Change View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Carla Corroto, Deborah Scott
With this study, we are investigating a dialectic between traditional design education and inclusivity. We consider design education “traditional” when pedagogy is primarily aimed at individual students completing instructor-determined assignments, while segregated in studios on campuses, away from their families, friends, and students in other disciplines. Isolating students as they learn conflicts with their integration more fully on campus and in society. And therein lies the rub. Today, the academy seems to value and encourage student enrollment from under-represented minority groups. However, these students are expected to assimilate to traditional design education culture, rather than institutions and instructors expanding practices to be inclusive of diverse values, attitudes, and beliefs. Current required shifts in modes of teaching- specifically hybrid and online design studios- further amplify this tension. We argue that design educators need to recognize and then implement ever-more social, - indeed sociable - processes that invite disparate constituencies. Following an imperative to collaborate that extends well beyond the domain of professional hierarchies, interactions, and working in design teams, we advocate challenging the isolation of designers in studios. Change extends to broader contextual domains discoverable in how we communicate, collaborate, and recognize inherent agency. We advocate for studio cultures that reflect diverse social structures, that recognize a politic of design that plays through tensions between historical roles and contemporary expectations.
Virtual Is the New Real: Experimental Performances in the Virtual Era of the COVID-19 Pandemic View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ioannis Sidiropoulos
Artistic creation knows no boundaries, and the artist knows no limits. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic paused the world while causing unprecedented circumstances for humanity. Arts always survives through its immediate adaptability and the support through the communities. This paper presents two emerging collaborative artistic projects through their methodology, delivery and presentations, which changed how lockdown, curfew, and travel restrictions can rule the way we create, perform, and present art. Experimental and multidisciplinary artists responded to the new pandemic restrictions with a mobile application and a live-streamed performance, incorporating dance-theatre improvisation, VR drawing, music, new and interactive media, technology, & motion capture in Australian and Greek locations. ‘Drawn to Sound AR App’ presents recorded 360 degrees performances and 3D drawing in different Melbourne locations during the first lockdown period, enabling outdoor artistic experiences from home through a mobile device. The live-streamed performance ‘Interlaced’ connects two continents, three artists, and four fields during the second lockdown period, combining improvised performance with virtual reality drawing, both responding to the same music stimulus in a shared virtual space. These collaborative projects involve one actor/performer, one visual artist, one musician, and one software developer. The projects were funded by the City of Melbourne COVID-19 Quick Response Arts Grant, the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Fine Arts and Music Experimental Collaborations Grant, the Centre for Projection Art, and a Small Project Grant by Yarra City Council. The works presented online through Google Play & Apple stores, live-streamed events, Melbourne Fringe Festival, A Strange Space Festival.
Is All Visual Art Arts-based Research? : Examining Research Methodologies and Contemporary Art Practices View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ann Rowson Love, Deborah Randolph
In this paper, we explore a question that we were asked at a recent national art education conference in the US. During the session, which focused on the parallels between art museum-based research methodologies and contemporary artists working processes, we discussed arts-based research. An attendee raised the question, "Is all visual art arts-based research?" A great question and one that led us to inquire further. In this study, we explore the question through two methodologies--arts-based research and phenomenology to explore the intersections between artistic process and social research. As an entry point, we introduce a methodology matching game we created to provide a broad overview of approaches in research and artistic practice before focusing our discussion on arts-based and phenomenological approaches through the work of two international contemporary artists and researchers including a team from Australia.
Understanding Artistry through Arts-based Methods View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Danielle Eden, Robyn Gibson
This paper reports on a study to investigate the increase of arts-based and practice-based research methodologies by performing arts educators pursuing graduate study at a performing arts higher education provider. The interest in these methodologies appears to directly relate to the experience of the arts educator, who is reflecting on their theory and practice as an experienced artist. In the focus group, these educators have more than 15 years professional industry experience as a musician, performer or artist and are seeking to further understand their creative process and their artistry. Arts –based in particular can provide the opportunity for the artist to combine all the elements of their practice. The opportunity to explore their creative practice allows for important self-reflection and provides pathways for further understanding of their artistic process. An initial survey with a small group of educators/graduate students was conducted. A case study approach followed consisting of a focus interview with one of the respondents, which provided further reflections on utilising an Arts-based approach for a masters level thesis. The findings suggest that an arts-based approach provides opportunities for the voices of the participants in the research project “to be heard” allowing for an authentic narrative representation.
