August 27 · 1:00pm - 4:30pm

Meeting: Art-Science – Curricular Models and Best Practices

Edward Shanken
Jennifer Kanary Nikolov(a)
Jill Scott
Paul Thomas

The Leonardo Education and Art Forum (LEAF) promotes the advancement of artistic research and academic scholarship at the intersections of art, science, and technology. Serving practitioners, scholars, and students who are members of the Leonardo community, we provide a forum for collaboration and exchange with other scholarly communities, including CAA, SIGGRAPH, SLSA, and ISEA. Chaired by Shanken, our workshop at ISEA2010 will address difficulties typically encountered while undertaking art-science research, teaching, and when meshing curricula from diverse fields. Following a twenty-minute introduction to various aspects of this theme, attendees will participate in one of the ninety-minute working-group discussions led by Nikolov(a), Scott, and Thomas, international experts in the field. Our aim is to identify and share ways to surmount some of the difficulties commonly encountered in interdisciplinary art/science research and curricula with the aim of publishing a guide to effective models and best practices.

Issues addressed may include:

• How can the knowledge base and skills of different disciplines be integrated in the classroom?
• How can the credibility of references and key arguments in another field be judged?
• How can appropriate collaborators outside one’s field be identified?
• How can interdisciplinary curricula be evaluated and gain accreditation?
• What are some best practices for interdisciplinary research practice and curriculum?

Nikolov(a) notes that in recent years art education programmes have shifted into the realm of knowledge economies in which certain art practice’s are regarded as a creative form of knowledge production. The more we learn about the social and economical values of such knowledge productions the more Masters and Ph.D. artistic research programmes seem to appear all over the world. In order to address their pertinent research questions the researcher artists that enter such programmes often find themselves in complex trans-disciplinary structures for which collaborative and organisational skills are imperative. Too often a lack of these skills gets in the way of successful research practices. This sets a challenge for bachelor education curricula. How to prepare artists and scientists for future collaborations? How to develop a curriculum that facilitates these Master and Ph.D. programmes of artistic research? By bringing talented students from the University of Amsterdam and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie together in the experimental honours programme Art and Research we allow for early insights and hands on experience with the values and pitfalls of art-science collaborations. In this presentation I will address case studies that show the need for more focus on artistic research educational structures on the Bachelor level.

Scott points out that by now there are established Ph.D. programs that specialize in offering more established artists and designers from all disciplines the opportunity to focus on specific media and art research topics for their careers. For example, the Z-node (University of the Arts, ZHdK in Zurich) part of the international “Planetary Collegium,” has established protocols for undertaking work that joins theory and practice, helping students make the transitions to scholarly reflection and robust research. The curriculum is supported by group communication and correlated research topics, composite sessions, and international conferences at which other Collegium nodes convene. This structure enables researchers to explore transdisciplinary and transcultural theory about communication, collaboration, social science, natural science, cultural difference and environmental sustainability. Scott’s workshop will discuss how curriculum can relate art and design practices to applied scientific research, especially in the areas of psychology, biology, neuroscience, physics and artificial intelligence. The discussion will consider how to accomplish this goal, which demands: 1) exploring and defining new cultural and environmental epistemologies between design, art, science and technology; 2) searching for original hybrid combinations of media and art practices and scientific theories that are engaged with critical social and ethical discourses; and 3) theorizing the future impacts of art and technology on both western and eastern cultures.

Thomas observes that a profound shift is occurring in our understanding of postmodern media culture. Since the turn of the millennium the emphasis on mediation as technology and as aesthetic idiom, as opportunity for creative initiatives and for critique, has become increasingly normative and doctrinaire. The focus is on implementing research strategies within the fine arts that challenge past disciplinary orthodoxies and epistemological constraints, in a quest for more productive and synergistic intellectual and practical methodologies between art, science and humanity. The focus will be on exploring capacity for critical engagement, socio-cultural reflection, situated academic critique and plastic processes. To explore ideas that will provide a basis for generating different and potentially more expansive understandings of complex transdisciplinary issues, taking account of multiple perspectives and contingencies. Institutional modeling of alternative curriculum approaches post new media is intended to demonstrate the academic viability, scope and rigor of transdisciplinarity.

Edward Shanken is author of Art and Electronic Media (Phaidon, 2009) and editor of Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness (U Cal P, 2003). He served as Chair of LEAF from 2004-8 and is currently LEAF International Liaison

Paul Thomas is an artist working with nanotechnology and Associate Professor, College of Fine Art, University of New South Wales. Founder of Collaborative Research in Art, Science and Humanity (CRASH) within the School of Design and Art at Curtin University and BEAP, the Biennial of Electronic Arts, Perth.

Jill Scott is Professor for Research in the Institute Cultural Studies in Art, Media and Design at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZhdK) in Zürich and Co-Director of the Artists-in-Labs Program. She is also Vice Director of the Z-Node Ph.D. program at the University of Plymouth.

Jennifer Kanary Nikolov(a) is Lecturer in the Art and Research Honours program of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the University of Amsterdam, and a Ph.D. candidate at M-Node, Planetary Collegium, University of Plymouth, UK.

http://www.isea2010ruhr.org/conference/friday-27-august-2010-dortmund/p47-leonardo-education-and-art-forum-leaf-meeting-art-science-curricular-models ]]> http://mass.nomad.net.au/isea2010-ruhr-leonardo-education-and-art-forum-leaf-meeting-art-science-%e2%80%93-curricular-models-and-best-practices/feed/ http://mass.nomad.net.au/arttech-the-lab-call-for-proposals/ http://mass.nomad.net.au/arttech-the-lab-call-for-proposals/#comments Sat, 17 Jul 2010 05:23:12 +0000 pault http://mass.nomad.net.au/arttech-the-lab-call-for-proposals/ art.tech @ the Lab Call for Proposals

art.tech is a three week festival of art, performance, sound, workshops, demos and lectures focusing on cutting-edge artistic experiments created with, related to, and about technology. This year we are especially interested in, though by no means limiting selections to, entries involving the theme of biotechnology.

We are seeking proposals for all kinds of ideas, including:
• Workshops
• Demos
• Art installations
• Sound installations
• Performances
• Talks
• Interactive experiences
• Games

We are open to work in all media including: video, installation, painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, sound/audio, performance, social practice projects and interventions, games, web-based projects and hybrid forms. Site specific, virtual and offsite project proposals are welcome. Installations can be permanent or temporary. Workshops & demos encouraged.

Deadline for entries: Received by 5PM, Saturday, July 31, 2010.
Notification of acceptance: by the end of August 2010.
Exhibition and performances run: September 17 – October 9, 2010

“New Imaging: transdisciplinary strategies for art beyond the new media”.

Takes place on 5 - 6  November at Artspace, 43/51 Cowper Wharf Rd, Sydney, NSW 2011.

Deadline for Abstracts:  June 25,  2010

A profound shift is occurring in our understanding of postmodern media culture. Since the turn of the millennium the emphasis on mediation as technology and as aesthetic idiom, as opportunity for creative initiatives and for critique, has become increasingly normative and doctrinaire. Mediation and the new media arts have in fact become the new medium of critical and pedagogical discourse: like water is for fish, like culture is for cultural studies, mediation is a concept that is taken for granted now because it is itself the medium in which we think and act, in which we swim. We need a concept that is amphibian, and that can leave its medium. The concept we propose is a remediated apprehension of the image: an active image and activity of imaging beyond the boundaries of disciplinary definition, but also altering the relations of intermedia aesthetics and interdisciplinary pedagogy. This concept will need to incorporate a vibrant materialism of the image’s sensory and cognitive strata and an evanescent immaterialism of its affective qualities. Rather than locate our conference in the space of negotiation between disciplines or media (the “inter-“), we propose the opposition, transit and surpassing of the interdisciplinary by a “transdisciplinary aesthetics”, and its conceptual and physical practice of a “transdisciplinary imaging.”

The aim of the conference is to bring together artists, scholars, scientists historians and curators.

The conference will explore areas related to: Painting, Drawing, Film, Video, Photography, Computer visualization, Real-time imaging, Intelligent systems, Image Science.

Participants are asked to address at least one the following areas in their abstract:?-

• remediated image

• hypermediacy and  the iconic character of the image

• politics of the image and/or image making in a transdisciplinary context

• life sciences and bioart in relation to the living image

• distributed and networked image

• table top scale to nano

• machines and computer vision

• perspectival image

• image as speculative research and critque

• illusion, process and immediacy

• aesthetics and the proliferation of imaging

Proposals

You are invited to submit an abstract for an individual paper relevant to a conference theme as described above. The deadline for abstracts is June 25, 2010. Abstracts for individual papers should be no longer than 250 words. Please provide full contact details with your abstract.

Refereeing of papers will be done by members of an expert review panel (to Australian DEST refereed conference paper standards). All selected peer reviewed papers will be published in the online conference proceedings.

Please submit by email to conference organizer Julian Stadon transimageconf@gmail.com

Conference chairs:

Associate Professor Su Baker and Associate Professor Paul Thomas

Conference Committee

Brad BUCKLEY :: Brogan BUNT :: Ted COLLESS :: Ernest EDMONDS :: Petra GEMEINBOECK:: Julian GODDARD :: Ross HARLEY :: Martyn JOLLY :: Daniel MAFE :: David THOMAS

Timeline

March 31  call for abstracts; June 30  deadline for call; July 31  peer reviewed abstracts notified; November  5  -  6  Final papers for conference 3000 words; January 6  Final Papers for refereeing; ?1  March  refereed papers returned to be published.

Conference Partners

College of Fine Art, University of New South Wales;  University of Melbourne, Faculty of the VCA and Music; Artspace

Conference Sponsors

Australian National University, Curtin University, Queensland University of Technology, RMIT University, University of Sydney, Sydney College of the Arts, University of Technology Sydney, University of Wollongong.

The study’s aim to provide baseline data as to how media/electronic art curriculum has developed within the university sector has been realized. The networked study assists in the contextualization of emerging technologically mediated arts practice curriculum into the future, while developing further definitions of the sector for universities to manage the development of this area of study.

http://www.altc.edu.au/resource-scoping-national-new-media-electronic-arts-cut-2009

Call for papers:

‘Digital technologies and educational integrity’

A special issue of the online refereed journal IJEI

Edited by Chris Moore and Ruth Walker

University of Wollongong

This special issue of the International Journal for Educational Integrity (IJEI) seeks articles that address the impact of digital technologies on educational integrity. Many different terms have emerged in an attempt to capture the shifting terrain of media use and users in various networked environments: ’social’, ‘participatory’, ‘user-generated’ or simply ‘new’ media. Common to the online interactive spaces of Web2.0 is the challenge of technologies and practices that are capable of changing the way we teach, learn, and share knowledge. How can we best engage and support students and colleagues coming to terms with the dynamics of these technologies and the development of new literacies?

We are particularly interested in innovative research from scholars in cultural and media studies and/or the scholarship of teaching and learning, and welcome interest from other disciplinary researchers, who might consider a broad range of questions about digital technologies that critically unpack the conversation about academic integrity and go beyond a preoccupation with plagiarism and research ethics. Critical voices of concern, examples of best practice and consideration of the perceived impact of digital technology on institutional boundaries are keenly sought as is research exploring the collaborative approaches to social and participatory media that challenge conceptions about authorial identity and scholarly writing practices. Research examining the development of new literacies that celebrate the appropriation, adaptation and transformation of source material would fit well within the scope of this special issue. We also welcome reviews of relevant books or publica tions.

Abstracts (max 500 words) due date: 31st March 2010 Full papers (3-6000 words) due date: 1st July 2010 Book reviews (1000 words) due date: 1st September 2010 Special issue release date: December 2010

Please send all enquiries and abstracts to the editors at ruth_walker@uow.edu.au.

Submission style guide:

http://www.unisa.edu.au/EducationalIntegrity/Journal_submission_guidelines.htm

About the editors:

Chris Moore is a father, gamer and lecturer in Digital Communications, Games and Media Studies at the University of Wollongong. Currently researching Australian gamers and their cultural, economic and social contributions, this focus has emerged from analysis of the complementary and alternative regimes of intellectual property generation and management, including the Open Source movement and digital games modification sub-cultures and online learning practices.

Ruth Walker teaches a range of academic writing programs in the Faculties of Creative Arts and Law at the University of Wollongong. Her research interests take a cultural and media studies approach to academic integrity, particularly regarding the impact of media technologies on critical writing practices. She is currently the deputy chair of the Asia Pacific Forum for Educational Integrity (APFEI).

http://forum.lefnet.org/

Introduction

The primary goal of this presentation is to introduce the Leonardo Education Forum’s (LEF) aims, international activities and the contributors with a view to involve experts as well as the public to engage in a discussion in anticipation of future interaction.

LEF is an active community of over 100 members, growing annually. We have close to thirty international representatives in so many countries.

more>>

Federation Theatre
Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne
Wednesday, 26th November, 2009

The LEF workshop was conducted as part of the Re:live Media Art History 09 conference held in Melbourne, Australia, from the 26th to the 29th November 2009.  The 2009 Forum was focused around three strategic themes:

1) The role of research in media art, science and technology

2) The role of curricula: Mapping the terrain.

3) The role of institutions: Institutional/Organisational capacities and benchmarks.

Three working groups discussed these items separately after focused, introductory presentations by Oliver Grau, Ross Harley and Ian Clothier respectively.   Summaries of the outcomes of these working groups, as well as the presentations, have been tabled separately.  The following summary was complied by Darren Tofts and constitutes a series of concentrations of key themes, priorities and ideas developed during the day, rather than a summary of resolutions and outcomes.  These will be addressed in the specific group summaries.

A common theme of the “need for a network” emerged in preliminary remarks by both Nina Czegledy and Oliver Grau.  This theme emerged in response to the shared feeling of a loss of momentum and consolidated international engagement with respect to media art and media art histories.  The idea of a network presumed the development of key goals with respect to an educational forum, a research platform for discussion as well as vision and leadership.  In this respect Paul Thomas’ and Jeremy Blank’s reports on the status of the Australian-focussed NOMAD (National Organisation of Media Arts) and MASS (Media Arts Scoping Study) projects represented important, exemplary initiatives to be benchmarked internationally.

Oliver Grau asserted that it is not self-evident that media art “needs histories and archives”.  This cautionary point was made with respect to his concern that despite that fact that media art is the “art of our time”, it still struggles to be exhibited in mainstream art institutions.  The concern shared by all members of the Forum was that media art had not yet arrived on to the international scene as a vital and conspicuous branch of contemporary art.  Oliver argued that we “still need” to integrate media arts into culture.  This was reinforced by Ross Harley who characterized media art as a cultural “outsider”.

This led to the question of the space of media art; where is it to be situated/where is it best situated? Ian Clothier adopted a vectoral approach to thinking about its situatedness, describing it as “within, between and beyond the art institution”.  Ian talked of the need to specialize art institutions for the presentation of art (on the model of the initial vision of the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne; however as Darren Tofts had commented, ACMI had increasingly moved away from prioritizing media art work as part of its curatorial mission.  When such work is exhibited, it is usually situated as a sub-branch of the moving image).

The idea of a network of media art historians, academics, practitioners, curators and dedicated funding bodies emerged as the strongest theme of the Forum.  This idea hinged on the condition of networks being of necessity decentred, as well as the caution that they must not be disconnected.  Darren proffered the motto of “decentred but not disconnected” as a motif for future thinking on the idea of an international network galvanized around media art.

Some of the factors and constituencies essential to such a network were identified in the three plenary papers by Oliver, Ross and Ian: the integration of research, University curricula and other forms of expert and popular knowledge, the role of dedicated publishing, criticism and review, exhibition and curatorial policy.  The importance of institutional support, governance and mentoring was discussed, but the question as to which ones were appropriate and necessary was seen to be open-ended.  One key question emerged from Ian’s presentation: are there as yet unfamiliar, unexpected or emerging institutions to be considered?  The emphasis on galvanizing these key factors was underlined by Ross in his presentation.  Darren made the point in his summation of the day that what Ross had identified as the “meshing of research, educational and institutional imperatives” is exactly what Julianne Pierce had described in a 2001 issue of Artlink devoted to the evolution of media art as an “active circuit”. [1]  This, too, became a working motif for the Forum for the way forward.

Darren Toft

[1] Julianne Pierce, “An active circuit”, Artlink, 21, 3, September 2001, p.14. The other thing of interest with respect to Pierce’s observation is that her commentary was looking back at a previous issue of Artlink published in 1987 devoted to art and technology. For Pierce, this historical perspective was crucial in thinking about the “current Australian art and technology scene” (14).

Dr Darren Tofts
Professor of Media & Communications
Faculty of Life & Social Sciences
AS423
http://darrentofts.net/
92148441
Mail H31
Swinburne University of Technology
John Street, Hawthorn, 3122
Victoria, Australia

Conference refereed proceedings

Conference chairs: Dr Paul Thomas, Professor Sean Cubitt

> Leonardo Education  and Art Forum co chair Victoria Vesna and Leonardo Executive Editor Roger Malina are interested in examples of courses and curricula that are in the art-science field  such as courses on art and biology, art and mathematics, art and chemistry, art and environmental sciences etc.

New Media Based Art and Educational Organisations, Groups, Conferences, Labs:

ACE

ANAT

Ars Electronica

Art De Com

Art Education 2.0

Art Science

Art, Science, and Technology

Artec Lab

Artists in Labs

Arts Lab

Artsactive,net