Astonishing apples: visualising the novel

This paper explores the developing relationship between fictional and visual representations. The impact of visual art on the novel as mimetic is an issue that writers have engaged with and written about from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, often raising the question of the art/life dialectic and how it has evolved through the novel’s exploration of ideas. From painting, photography, cinema, television and newer digital visual cultures writers have sought to involve themselves in a critical examination of the impact of changes in these forms on other art form and on wider society. How do these visual forms affect what it means to be an artist, a writer, a human being? The paper takes the work of Paul Cezanne as a starting point in the history of representation. Writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke, theorists such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and other artists like Picasso, have been influenced by, or responded to, Cezanne’s work and to Cezanne’s writings on art and his letters to his great childhood friend, the novelist Emile Zola. By discussing the creative practice of writing a novel this paper will examine questions of how the novel can, and should, respond to the impact of visual culture’s seeming dominance over other art forms. It also explores what impact new forms of visual culture have had upon the mimetic and formal aspects of the novel and how the novel works as representational, especially in relation to representations of human consciousness. [From the Author]

Social networks and cooperative learning in a MOOC

MOOCs are changing the educational landscape and gaining a lot of attention in scientific literature. However, the pedagogical design of these proposals has been called into question. It is precisely MOOCs’ social aspect, i.e. the interaction between course participants and the support for learning processes that has become one of the main topics of interest. This article presents the results of a research project carried out at the University of the Basque Country, which focused in cooperative learning and the intensive use of social networks in a MOOC. Significant data was compiled through Likert-type surveys, revealing that the use of both external and internal social networks in a massive open online course is a factor that is evaluated positively by students. We argue that the use of social networks as a learning strategy in a MOOC has an influence on academic performance and on the students' success rate. Furthermore, the participants’ age also has a bearing on the social networks they use, and we have found that the younger members tend to work with external networks such as Twitter or personal blogs, whereas the older students are more inclined to use forums from the Chamilo or Ning platforms.

Som da Maré: Um Projeto Participativo de Arte Sonora

In May 2014, the participative Project Som da Maré brings together the creative energy of a group of inhabitants from a cluster of favelas in Maré (Rio de Janeiro)* through the sonic arts. The work recalls everyday experiences, memories, stories and places. These memories elicit narratives that leave traces in space while contributing to the workings of local cultural.

The result of four months of workshops and fieldwork forms the basis of two cultural interventions: an exhibition in Museu da Maré** and guided soundwalks in the city of Rio de Janeiro. These interventions present realities, histories and ambitions of everyday life in the Maré favelas through immersive sound installation, documentary photography, text and objects.

Som da Maré brings together various groups of participants who together have developed themes, materials and strategies for the articulation of elements of everyday life in Maré. Participants include secondary level students under the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ) “Young Talent” scholarships and their families, post-graduate students at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), PhD students from the Sonic Arts Research Centre (Queen’s University Belfast) and members of the Cia Marginal, a theatre company based in Maré. The project also counts with the participation of academics from music, ethnomusicology, visual art and architecture at the UFRJ and a partnership with the Museu da Maré. Over thirty people have come together to make this project possible.

Bright Molecules for Sensing, Computing and Imaging: A Tale of Two Once-troubled Cities

The circumstances in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and in Belfast, Northern Ireland, which led to a) the generalization of luminescent PET (photoinduced electron transfer) sensing/switching as a design tool, b) the construction of a market-leading blood electrolyte analyzer and c) the invention of molecular logic-based computation as an experimental field, are delineated. Efforts to extend the philosophy of these approaches into issues of small object identification, nanometric mapping, animal visual perception and visual art are also outlined.

Landscapes of the invisible: sounds, cosmologies and poetics of space

In this PhD by Publication I revisit and contextualize art works and essays I have collaboratively created under the name Flow Motion between 2004-13, in order to generate new insights on the contributions they have made to diverse and emerging fields of contemporary arts practice/research, including digital, virtual, sonic and interdisciplinary art. The works discussed comprise the digital multimedia installation and sound art performance Astro Black Morphologies/Astro Dub Morphologies (2004-5), the sound installation and performance Invisible (2006-7), the web art archive and performance presentation project promised lands (2008-10), and two related texts, Astro Black Morphologies: Music and Science Lovers (2004) and Music and Migration (2013). I show how these works map new thematic constellations around questions of space and diaspora, music and cosmology, invisibility and spectrality, the body and perception. I also show how the works generate new connections between and across contemporary avant-garde, experimental and popular music, and visual art and cinema traditions. I describe the methodological design, approaches and processes through which the works were produced, with an emphasis on transversality, deconstruction and contemporary black music forms as key tools in my collaborative artistic and textual practice. I discuss how, through the development of methods of data translation and transformation, and distinctive visual approaches for the re-elaboration of archival material, the works produced multiple readings of scientific narratives, digital X-ray data derived from astronomical research on black holes and dark energy, and musical, photographic and textual material related to historical and contemporary accounts of migration. I also elaborate on the relation between difference and repetition, the concepts of multiplicity and translation, and the processes of collective creation which characterize my/Flow Motion’s work. The art works and essays I engage with in this commentary produce an idea of contemporary art as the result of a fluid, open and mutating assemblage of diverse and hybrid methods and mediums, and as an embodiment of a cross-cultural, transversal and transdisciplinary knowledge shaped by research, process, creative dialogues, collaborative practice and collective signature.

Vers un cinéma immatériel : réminiscences du cinématographique dans l’œuvre d'Olafur Eliasson

Il est désormais commun de reconnaître que le cinéma, aujourd’hui, s’émancipe de son dispositif médiatique traditionnel, adoptant maintes formes liées aux champs culturels qui l’accueillent : jeux vidéo, web, médias portatifs, etc. Toutefois, c’est peut-être le champ des arts visuels et médiatiques contemporains qui lui aura fait adopter, depuis la fin des années soixante, les formes les plus désincarnées, allant parfois jusqu’à le rendre méconnaissable. À cet effet, certaines œuvres sculpturales et installatives contemporaines uniquement composées de lumière et de vapeur semblent, par leurs moyens propres, bel et bien reprendre, tout en les mettant à l’épreuve, quelques caractéristiques du médium cinématographique. Basé sur ce constat, le présent mémoire vise à analyser, sur le plan esthétique, cette filiation potentielle entre le média-cinéma et ces œuvres au caractère immatériel. Pour ce faire, notre propos sera divisé en trois chapitres s’intéressant respectivement : 1) à l’éclatement médiatique du cinéma et à sa requalification vue par les théories intermédiales, 2) au processus d’évidement du cinéma – à la perte de ses images et de ses matériaux – dans les pratiques en arts visuels depuis une cinquantaine d’années, et 3) au corpus de l’artiste danois Olafur Eliasson, et plus spécialement à son œuvre Din Blinde Passager (2010), qui est intimement liée à notre problématique. Notre réflexion sera finalement, au long de ce parcours, principalement guidée par les approches esthétiques et philosophiques de Georges Didi-Huberman et de Jacques Rançière.

Application de la notion d'intention artistique dans l'enseignement des arts plastiques dans les écoles primaires au Québec

La présente recherche porte sur l’existence d’un décalage entre la création artistique dans l’art contemporain et l’enseignement des arts plastiques au primaire au Québec. Plus précisément, après avoir observée l’importance de l’intention artistique dans les mécanismes de création des artistes en art contemporain, cette recherche étudie la place que les enseignants spécialisés en arts plastiques lui accordent dans leur enseignement. En partant de la question de recherche, « Au Québec, les enseignants spécialisés en arts plastiques au primaire entretiennent-ils ou non le décalage entre la création artistique contemporaine et l’enseignement des arts, en prenant ou non en compte le développement d’intention artistique chez les élèves lorsque ceux-ci réalisent des créations personnelles dans les cours d’arts plastiques? », ce mémoire est constitué de plusieurs ensembles d’analyses. La distinction des principaux paradigmes artistiques dans cette recherche définit des attributs pour comprendre respectivement leurs impacts sur l’enseignement des arts et pour saisir les différentes représentations que les enseignants spécialisés en arts plastiques au primaire ont de la création artistique, et plus particulièrement dans le paradigme artistique contemporain. Cette distinction permet de confronter deux représentations de la dynamique de création : celle présente dans la notion de processus de création et celle présente dans la notion d’intention artistique. Ainsi, les entretiens semi-dirigés de douze enseignants spécialistes en arts plastiques dans des écoles primaires au Québec renforcent l’existence du décalage, mais aussi nous renseigne sur la faiblesse des acteurs à définir les enjeux actuels de la création artistique. De plus, cette recherche démontre une absence dans le Programme de formation de l’école québécoise (PFEQ) des mécanismes de pensée de la création observée dans le paradigme artistique contemporain.

L’affect de dégoût dans une perspective transmédiale : le cas de The walking dead

Lorsque l’on s’intéresse au dégoût comme forme d’affect, on remarque que son application abonde au niveau des études cinématographiques et des arts visuels. Par contre, peu de chercheurs se sont intéressés à son analyse à travers les médias dont l’institutionnalisation académique est plus récente, comme la bande dessinée, la télésérie et le jeu vidéo. Ce mémoire a pour objectif d’étendre la pratique des études du dégoût comme affect sur ces médias, en s’attardant sur l’analyse de certaines composantes de la franchise transmédiatique The Walking Dead. De plus, comme ce corpus est marqué par une transmédialité qui dépasse les simples récurrences narratives, ce mémoire veut également produire un modèle d’analyse capable de déceler les structures génératives du dégoût qui tendent à migrer ou être partagées entre les médias de la franchise. Ce modèle sera conçu dans un premier temps par l’établissement d’un dialogue entre les études de l’affect appliquées au cinéma et aux arts visuels et les études sur l’intermédialité. La fonctionnalité de ce modèle sera ensuite testée à travers son application sur la bande dessinée, la télésérie et l’un des jeux vidéo de la franchise The Walking Dead.

Arte pública: fundamentos do discurso público da Arte

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Experiência em arte-educação: importâncias, relações e sentidos

Pós-graduação em Artes - IA

Antonio Dias: imagens, palavras e diagramas

Pós-graduação em Artes - IA

Artemídia: processos e procedimentos no ateliê-laboratório do artista-cineasta

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Reflexões visuais...Um portofolio do artista

Pós-graduação em Artes - IA

Pseudonegligência, dominância manual e habilidades motoras em alunos das artes em comparação com alunos de outros cursos

Uma linha de pesquisa freqüente sobre a lateralização cerebral em artistas tem investigado o comportamento daqueles que sofrem de diversos síndromes neuropatológicas, afetando o hemisfério esquerdo ou direito. Em contraste, Bertrand (2001), observando que alguns poucos estudos reportaram um aumento na prevalência de canhotismo e ambidestrismo entre artistas, indicou a necessidade para a realização de pesquisas sistemáticas sobre as características laterais em artistas normais. Na ausência de tais estudos, e devido à dificuldade de obter dados de artistas profissionais, este projeto foi planejado com o fim de investigar em detalhe, assimetrias laterais na dominância manual, habilidade motora e atenção visuoespacial em alunos das artes e os de outros cursos (o grupo de controle). Estes alunos foram recrutados do Departamento de Artes da Universidade Federal de Maranhão e de um centro público de arte em São Luis. A amostra foi composta de 50 alunos de controle (24 destros e 26 canhotos), e 51 alunos das artes (27 destros e 24 canhotos). Dados foram obtidos para dominância manual, ocular e podálica, e para o desempenho em duas medidas de proficiência motora: batidas digitais e o Teste de Pinos na Forma de Chaves (o Grooved Pegboard). Além disso, uma versão do Teste Visual de Bisecçionar Linhas (TVBL) foi aplicado com o objetivo de comparar o grau de pseudonegligência dentro e entre alunos das artes e os de controle. Procurou-se averiguar se em relação aos alunos de controle, aqueles das artes mostrariam um grau reduzido de assimetria intermanual na dominância manual e nas habilidades motoras, bem como um nível maior de exatidão no TVBL. No que tange a presença de tais diferenças na performance, nossas predições foram apoiadas. Os alunos das artes, em particular, os canhotos, foram menos consistentes e mais ambidestros do que os alunos dos outros cursos. Eles também exibiram um nível menor de desempenho entre as mãos nos dois testes motores. Além do mais, enquanto que o grau de pseudonegligência foi elevado nos alunos de controle, as respostas dos alunos das artes foram mais exatas, resultando em um nível reduzido de erro em torno do ponto zero verídico. Em concordância com pesquisas prévias com músicos, em geral, os alunos das artes apresentaram um nível de atenção visuoespacial mais equilibrado, e estas diferenças foram relacionadas às exigências cognitivas implícitas no treino nas artes visuais.