Visual arts learning with iPads

In this chapter Knight & Dooley discuss arts learning and issues of educational authenticity via children’s engagement with iPads (O’Mara & Laidlaw 2011; Shifflet, Toledo & Mattoon 2012). The chapter begins by considering common perceptions about art and how these popular beliefs and conditions affect and influence how children’s art is defined and valorized. The art produced by children using iPads is then discussed through key observations and reflections, and the chapter concludes with some recommendations when selecting apps for making art.

Your Loss is Our Gain

2 x 2.5 metre text based wall painting with a hidden automatic air freshener timed to spray every 60 seconds. The work formed part of a group exhibition that dealt with Humour,Politics and Art. It was part of a series of ongoing works made under the pseudonym Eve Roleston. Roleston is part of a trio of pseudonyms I use, the others being Ernesto Love, and Ernest Olove, to explore the research potential of the fictocritical in a visual arts practice.This forms part of an ongoing body of practice-led research undertaken in my PhD dealing with reconfiguring the relationship between art and politics.

The Ash Burner

Growing up with his father in a small coastal town, all Ted knows about his mother is that she died when he was a boy. His father has brought them halfway across the world to start anew, but her absence defines and haunts their lives. When Ted meets Anthony and Claire, an intense friendship begins, carrying them to Sydney and university. They introduce him to poetry and art, and he feels a sense of belonging at last. But as the trio’s friendship deepens over the years, Ted must learn to negotiate the boundaries of love, and come to terms with a legacy of secrets and silence. Written with extraordinary grace and sensitivity, The Ash Burner explores beauty and desire, grief and loss, and the search for one’s true self.

100 futures now : designing sustainable futures

This presentation tells the story of an initiative in middle schooling at Kelvin Grove State College that begins in the Art studios, but reaches out to other disciplines and approaches, and to community and industry partners. It is inspired by the potential of 'future thinking' to become a compelling focus in contemporary art and design. Ethically it espouses a simple premise": every student in our classrooms now has a stake in creating livable, democratic and creative futures. Every student has the potential to be an active force in making that future. "100 Futures Now" is a project that envisages creative and imaginative students working in collaboration with artists and designers to visualize amazing futures and communicate their vision through art and design. "100 Futures Now" is one in a series of innovative curriculum initiatives at Kelvin Grove State College designed to build sustainable practice in arts education with the support of partners in industry and universities and with resident artists and designers. The model blends elements of art and design methodology to focus on the critical and creative thinking skills prioritised in ACARA and 21st century curriculum. The organisers are developing a sustainable model for working with resident artists that goes beyond a single arts intervention or extension/enrichment experience. In this model artists and designers are collaborators in the design of learning experiences that support future programs. This model also looks to transfer the benefits of residencies to the wider school community (in this case to middle schooling curriculum) and to teachers in other curriculum areas, and not exclusively to the immediate target group. In "100 Futures Now", story-making is the engine that powers the creative process. For this reason the program uses a series of imaginative scenarios, including those of speculative fiction and science, as departure points for inquiry, and applies the methodologies of arts and design practice to explore and express student story telling and story making. The story-making responses of student teams will naturally be expressed multimodally through visual art, design artifacts, installation, performance and digital works. The project’s focus on narratives and its modes of communication (performance/installation) are inspired by the work of experimental contemporary design practices and the speculative scenarios of U.K. based designers Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. Thanks to the support of an Arts Queensland Artist-in -Residence grant in 2014, resident artists and designers who work with a diversity of ideas and approaches ranging over science, bio-ethics, biodiversity, behavior and ethics, ambient sound, urbanism, food, and wearable design, will work with middle school students as catalysts for deeper thinking and creative action. All these rich fields for future speculation will become triggers for team inquiry into the deeper connections between the past, the present, and future challenges such as climate, waste, energy, sustainability and resilience. These imagined futures will form the platform for a critical, sustainability/design futures approach that will involve questioning assumptions and empowering students as agents rather than consumers of change.

Great expectations : a project by Boxcopy for Federation Square, Next Wave Festival 2008

Part of the Next Wave MEMBRANE Project, Great Expectations draws attention to the parallels between our expectations of art and new technology to make the world a better place. The theme of the 2008 Next Wave Festival, ‘Closer Together’, refers to the way society is ― for the better or for the worse ― becoming increasingly connected by media and communication technologies. Sceptical of the acclaimed social achievements of new technologies, Boxcopy: Contemporary Art Space, a Brisbane-based artist-run initiative, explores the futility of human activities, including art production and consumption, with a collection of works created by young and emerging Brisbane artists. Works for this project include: Early machines such as the Commodore 64 were tape-based, and hence had their games distributed on ordinary cassettes (2009) by Tim Kerr & Extra Features (2008) by Tim Woodward; Spine (2008), Joseph Briekers; Whiteout (2008), Channon Goodwin; Explosive Revelations (2008), Daniel McKewen.

Scripting the journey

"The architect Christopher Alexander once said that design is but “a residue of the all important process.” This cluster views the creative process through the scrim of drafts, sketches, mock-ups, rough cuts, and prototypes—the secondary output of art and design. Curated by Kari Kraus Co-curated by Amalia Levi"

Uneducated : play becomes artwork, artwork becomes play

Over the past twenty years the contemporary art world has seen a significant shift in the modes and structures of connection between work and its audiences. This shift is termed by Irit Rogoff, amongst others, as an ‘educational turn’. The turn has been described as the eruption of discussions and investigations, inside and outside of institutions, that interrupt the presumed power hierarchies and bureaucratised systems of both art and education. This essay was written to accompany artist/curator Kym Maxwell's exhibition project, 'Uneducated', exploring these ideas. It was held at the Counihan Gallery in Melbourne, 2014.

Beyond equivalency: Repositioning artistic research within the Australian university sector

Presented in concept at the ACUADS 2008 conference, this paper reports on a research study conducted for PhD into how artistic researchers have been accommodated in the Australian university research management system, and the impacts experienced by artistic researchers through this location. It draws upon a wide range of data to provide the first analysis of this topic reported across all artistic disciplines in Australia in relation to university experiences and updates the Strand Report in 1998 in relation to government policy. Data sources include a correlation of literature from arts disciplines with that of higher education management and government policies; survey responses from of heads of academic units containing artistic researchers in over 40% of Australian universities; interviews with 27 artistic researchers in three case study universities; and interviews with longstanding expert commentators on artistic research and Deputy Vice Chancellors responsible for research. The study suggests that while limited progress has been made towards the acceptance of artistic research as an equivalent and legitimate research endeavour, significant structural, cultural and practical challenges remain which are undermining relationships between universities and their artistic staff and engendering behavioural changes within artistic practitioners that can affect the nature and quality of artistic work that is produced. Reflecting the voices of artistic researchers across the broad visual and performing arts disciplinary spectrum from early to senior career academics, it explores ways forward for universities, and artistic researchers themselves, to secure greater equity and recognition for artistic research.

The Artful Interpretation of Science through Picture Books

Science picture books offer pleasurable and educational reading experiences. These texts open up opportunities for cross-curriculum teaching and learning and a means for developing students’ visual literacy skills, aesthetic appreciation, and higher level thinking skills. Picture books demonstrate how one mode or semiotic system (visual and verbal) mediates the other, often complementing, extending, and filling-in the gaps between words and images. Students’ meaning making is further extended when they can understand the subtleties and effects (and affects) of the visual elements of art and design, and the different styles of writing and language use.

Echology: Making sense of data - reflections on resilient ecologies of partnership [Abstract]

The Echology: Making Sense of Data initiative seeks to break new ground in arts practice by asking artists to innovate with respect to a) the possible forms of data representation in public art and b) the artist's role in engaging publics on environmental sustainability in new urban developments. Initiated by ANAT and Carbon Arts in 2011, Echology has seen three artists selected by National competition in 2012 for Lend Lease sites across Australia. In 2013 commissioning of one of these works, the Mussel Choir by Natalie Jeremijenko, began in Melbourne's Victoria Harbour development. This emerging practice of data - driven and environmentally engaged public artwork presents multiple challenges to established systems of public arts production and management, at the same time as offering up new avenues for artists to forge new modes of collaboration. The experience of Echology and in particular, the Mussel Choir is examined here to reveal opportunities for expansion of this practice through identification of the factors that lead to a resilient 'ecology of part nership' between stakeholders that include science and technology researchers, education providers, city administrators, and urban developers.

The Scent of Ancestral Memory

Poetry expresses the physical and spiritual worlds that other kinds of writing cannot. Travelling open our minds and frees our spirit. Creative writings and meditations on life, spirit, grace and relationships, art and nature weave their way through these lyrical poems. Some poems are suitable for study in the Australian Curriculum.

She’s done alright for a girl : strategies for teaching women artists

While evidence suggests that up to 65% of visual arts graduates in Australia are women, women artists are still dramatically under-represented in most sectors of the industry, from institutional exhibitions through to commercial gallery representation. Gender awareness in art school education was a prominent aspect of second wave feminist activism in this country, however the outcomes for women artists, particularly as their careers proceed, often remain discouraging. Over approximately the past ten years, the Visual Arts discipline at Queensland University of Technology has integrated a range of gender awareness strategies into its teaching program across both studio practice and history/theory areas, with relatively strong outcomes amongst female graduates, both as artists and arts workers. Employing practitioner reflection and praxis-based research, this paper takes stock of the approaches that have been trialled over this period and reflects on the combination of both explicit and implicit strategies employed, as well as student responses to them.

Shifting intimacies

Our world is literally and figuratively turning to ‘dust’. This work acknowledges decay and renewal and the transitional, cyclical natures of interrelated ecologies. It also suggests advanced levels of degradation potentially beyond reparation. Dust exists both on and beneath the border of our unaided vision. Dust particles are predominantly forms of disintegrating solids that often become the substance or catalyst of future forms. Like many tiny forms, dust is an often unnoticed residue with ‘planet-size consequences’. (Hanna Holmes 2001) The image depicts an ethereal, backlit body, continually circling and morphing, apparently floating, suggesting endless cycles of birth, life and death and inviting differing states of meditation, exploration, stillness and play. This never ending video work is taken from a large-scale interactive/media artwork created during a six-month research residency in England at the Institute of Contemporary Art London and at Vincent Dance Theatre Sheffield in 2006. It was originally presented on a raised floor screen made of pure white sand at the ICA in London (see). The project involved developing new interaction, engagement and image making strategies for media arts practice, drawing on the application of both kinetic and proprioceptive dance/performance knowledges. The work was further informed by ecological network theory that assesses the systemic implications of private and public actions within bounded systems. The creative methodology was primarily practice-led which fomented the particular qualities of imagery, generated through cross-fertilising embodied knowledge of Dance and Media Arts. This was achieved through extensive workshopping undertaken in theatres, working ‘on the floor’ live, with dancers, props, sound and projection. And eventually of course, all this dust must settle. (Holmes 2001, from Dust Jacket) Holmes, H. 2001, The Secret Life of Dust: From the Cosmos to the Kitchen Counter, the Big Consequences of Little Things, p.3