Negotiating indeterminacy in studio teaching: Using the zones of material and immaterial play to shape pedagogies and practices in art

The processes of studio-based teaching in visual art are often still tied to traditional models of discrete disciplines and largely immersed in skill-based learning. These approaches to training artists are also tied to an individual model of art practice that is clearly defined by the boundaries of those disciplines. This paper will explain how the open studio program at QUT can be broadly understood as an action research model of learning that ‘plays’ with the post-medium, post-studio genealogies and zones of contemporary art. This emphasises developing conceptual, contextual and formal skills as essential for engaging with and practicing in the often-indeterminate spatio-temporal sites of studio teaching. It will explore how this approach looks to Sutton-Smith’s observations on the role of play and Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development in early childhood learning as a way to develop strategies for promoting creative learning environments that are collaborative and self sustainable. Social, cultural, political and philosophical dialogues are examined as they relate to art practice with the aim of forming the shared interests, aims, and ambitions of graduating students into self initiated collectives or ARIs.

Argarmenia

ARGARMENIA consists of a series of real-time gaming environments designed over 3 months both within real and virtual environments that both challenged players’ ability to problem solve, and develop their imaginations whilst learning how to manipulate narrative structures. A post studio art project.

Access and excess in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Much is made of the viscerally disturbing qualities embedded in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre - human bodies are traumatised, mutilated and distorted – and the way these are matched by close and often intense access to the performers involved. Graphic violence focused on the body specifically indicates the film as a key contemporary horror text. Yet, for all this closeness to the performers, it soon becomes clear in undertaking close-analysis of the film that access to them is equally characterised by extreme distance, both spatially and cognitively. The issue of distance is particularly striking, not least because of its ramifications on engagement, which throws up various aesthetic and methodological questions concerning performers’ expressive authenticity. This article considers the lack of access to performance in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, paying particular attention to how this fits in with contemporaneous presentations of performance more generally, as seen in films such as Junior Bonner (Sam Peckinpah, 1972). As part of this investigation I consider the affect of such a severe disruption to access on engagement with, and discussion of, performance. At the heart of this investigation lie methodological considerations of the place of performance analysis in the post-studio period. How can we perceive anything of a character’s interior life, and therefore engage with performers who we fundamentally lack access to? Does such an apparently significant difference in the way performers and their embodiment is treated mean that they can even be thought of as delivering a performance?

Studio di sensibilità e specificità dei markers di acute kidney injury, per la diagnosi precoce delle complicanze nell'immediato decorso post trapianto renale

NGAL è considerato dalla comunità scientifica un marcatore di danno renale sia di tipo ischemico che tossico. In questo studio è stato effettuato un follow-up ad un mese di una popolazione sottoposta a trapianto di rene, sono state analizzate la fase post-operatoria e l’immediato periodo di stabilizzazione del trapianto. E' stato osservato l’andamento di NGAL in relazione alle principali variabili incidenti.

Studio approfondito di processi post-polimerizzazione del poli(glicidil metacrilato)

The reactivty of poly(glycidyl methacrylate), obtained by RAFT controlled radical polymerization, has been investigated with a nucelophilic agent, such as morpholine, in various aprotic polar solvents in order to optimize the reaction (time and nucleophile excess). A strong interaction between polymer and solvent, gained by hydrogen bonds, during the process has proved to be essential in order to lower the reaction time and the nucelophilic agent excess. Dissimilar behaviors have been detected by GPC analysis due to the reactivity of the sulfhydryl formed during the RAFT's aminolysis. The various solvents lead to conditions in which different inter and intra-chain associations occur; the result is the formation of dimers, trimers and tetramers (to a less extent) in the first case, and cyclical structures in the second one. The reactivity of the hydroxy group, formed during the ring opening reaction, has been further investigated in order to link isothiocyanate-functionalized fluorescent marker along the polymeric chain.

Jacobi Cujacij ... Opera omnia in decem tomos distributa quibus continentur tam priora, sive quae ipse superstes edi curavit : quam posteriora, sive quae post obitum ejus edita sunt; jam à Carolo Annibale Fabroto J. C. disposita. Accessere in hac novissima editione ab eruditissimo viro graecorum versio locorum hactenus ab omnibus desiderata ... praeterea dissertatio Emundi Merillii, & interpretatio ab eodem facta variantium ex Cujacio observatarum, quae per totum opus suo quae que loco variante notantur; postremo controversiae Joannis Roberti ejusdemque notae in responsiones à Cujacio nomine Antonii Mercatoris editas; quae majori eruditorum commodo in ipsis observationibus afferuntur, studio & diligentia Liborj Ranii ...

Binder's title: Civiacii opera, tom. XI.

Sancti Aurelii Augustini, Hipponensis Episcopi, Opera Omnia : post Lovaniensium theologorum recensionem castigata denuo ad manuscriptos codices gallicos, vaticanos, belgicos, etc. ; nencnon ad editiones antiquiores et castigatiores, opera et studio monachorum ordinis Sancti Benedicti e congregatione S. Mauri /

Contiene :Tomos 2; 4,1; 4,2; 5,1; 5,2; 6; 7; 8.

Sancti Eusebii Hieronymi Stridonensis presbyteri Operum tomus primus-[undecimus] ... post monachorum ord. S. Bened. e Congreg. S. Mauri recensionem ... castigatus ... illustratus studio ac labore Dominici Vallarsii ... & praecipue March. Scipione Maffeio.

Title vignette; head and tail pieces; ornamented initials.

Opera omnia post Lovaniensium Theologorum Recensionem castigata denuo ad Mss. Codices Gallicanos, Vaticanos, Belgicos, etc. Studio Monachorum Ordinis Sancti Benedicti e Congregatione S. Mauri.

Mode of access: Internet.

Bibliotheca magna rabbinica de scriptoribus & scriptis rabbinicis ordine alphabetico hebraicè & latinè digestis : pars quarta, complectens reliquas post ... duodecim alphabetici literas ..., in qua complures identidem interferuntur dissertationes & digressiones / auctore ... D. Iulio Bartoloccio de Celleno Cong. S. Bernardi Ord. Cisterc... ; post eius obitum absoluta, aucta & in lucem edita a D. Carolo Ioseph Imbonato ... eiusdem Congregationis ... praeter Indices ... additur quadruplex Index uniuersalis ... ; accedit tomus alter nempè bibliotheca latino-hebraica siue de scriptoribus latinis ... additis obseruationibus criticis & philologico-historicis ... opera et studio eiusdem D. Caroli Ioseph Imbonati ...

Mode of access: Internet.

The studio sans frontières : the open-studio as an answer to the challenges of teaching contemporary art

Since at least the 1960s, art has assumed a breadth of form and medium as diverse as social reality itself. Where once it was marginal and transgressive for artists to work across a spectrum of media, today it is common practice. In this ‘post-medium’ age, fidelity to a specific branch of media is a matter of preference, rather than a code of practice policed by gallerists, curators and critics. Despite the openness of contemporary art practice, the teaching of art at most universities remains steadfastly discipline-based. Discipline-based art teaching, while offering the promise of focussed ‘mastery’ of a particular set of technical skills and theoretical concerns, does so at the expense of a deeper and more complex understanding of the possibilities of creative experimentation in the artist’s studio. By maintaining an hermetic approach to medium, it does not prepare students sufficiently for the reality of art making in the twenty-first century. In fact, by pretending that there is a select range of techniques fundamental to the artist’s trade, discipline-based teaching can often appear to be more engaged with the notion of skills preservation than purposeful art training. If art schools are to survive and prosper in an increasingly vocationally-oriented university environment, they need to fully synthesise the professional reality of contemporary art practice into their approach to teaching and learning. This paper discusses the way in which the ‘open’ studio approach to visual art study at QUT endeavours to incorporate the diversity and complexity of contemporary art while preserving the sense of collective purpose that discipline-based teaching fosters. By allowing students to independently develop their own art practices while also applying collaborative models of learning and assessment, the QUT studio program aims to equip students with a strong sense of self-reliance, a broad awareness and appreciation of contemporary art, and a deep understanding of studio-based experimentation unfettered by the boundaries of traditional media: all skills fundamental to the practice of contemporary art.

Undulating matter : a topology of the studio

With specific reference to the writing of Dan Graham and the experiences of creative practice, this paper will elaborate an account of studio practice as a topology - a theory drawn from mathematics in which space is understood not as a static field but in terms of properties of connectedness, movement and differentiation. This paper will trace a brief sequence of topological formulations to draw together the expression of topology as form and its structural dimension as a methodology in the specific context of the author’s studio practice. In so doing, this paper seeks to expand the notion of topology in art beyond its association with Conceptual Art of the 1960s and 70s to propose that topology provides a dynamic theoretical model for apprehending the generative ‘logic’ that gives direction and continuity to the art-making process.

A different kind of studio: Reflecting on the open studio and the artist-teacher

For more than 15 years, QUT’s Visual Arts discipline has employed a teaching model known as the ‘open studio’ in their undergraduate BFA program. Distinct from the other models of studio degrees in Australia, the open studio approach emphasizes individual practice by focusing on experimentation, collaboration and cross-disciplinary activities. However, while this activity proves to be highly relevant to exploring and participating in the ‘post medium’ nature of much contemporary art, the open studio also presents a complex of affecting challenges to the artist-teacher. The open studio, it can be argued, produces a different type of student than traditional, discipline-specific art programs – but it also produces a different kind of artist-teacher. In this paper, the authors will provide a reflection on their own experiences as artists and studio lecturers involved with the two ‘bookends’ of the QUT studio program – first year and third year. Using these separate contexts as case studies, the authors will discuss the transformative qualities of the open studio as it is adapted to the particularities of each cohort and the curricular needs of each year level. In particular, the authors will explore the way the teaching experience has influenced and positively challenged their individual (and paradoxically) discipline-focussed, studio practices. It is generally accepted that the teaching of art needs to be continually reconceptualised in response to the changing conditions of contemporary art, culture and technology. This paper will articulate how the authors have worked at that reconceptualisation within both their teaching and studio practices and so practically demonstrate the complex dialogic processes inherent to the teaching of the visual arts studio.

Visual retrieval of concrete crack properties for automated post-earthquake structural safety evaluation

The safety of post-earthquake structures is evaluated manually through inspecting the visible damage inflicted on structural elements. This process is time-consuming and costly. In order to automate this type of assessment, several crack detection methods have been created. However, they focus on locating crack points. The next step, retrieving useful properties (e.g. crack width, length, and orientation) from the crack points, has not yet been adequately investigated. This paper presents a novel method of retrieving crack properties. In the method, crack points are first located through state-of-the-art crack detection techniques. Then, the skeleton configurations of the points are identified using image thinning. The configurations are integrated into the distance field of crack points calculated through a distance transform. This way, crack width, length, and orientation can be automatically retrieved. The method was implemented using Microsoft Visual Studio and its effectiveness was tested on real crack images collected from Haiti.