Jasperrr's Blog

I read the article “Aesthetic Learning About, In, With and Through the Arts: A Curriculum Study” (Lindström, 2012). The article describes a conceptual framework for aesthetic learning, in which the delineation between convergent and divergent goals resonates with my pedagogic practices.

In the “Four ways of learning” section (p. 168), the article describes convergent goals as achieving something in pre-defined frameworks, and divergent goals as combining knowledge to construct something new. In the pedagogic practice of creative computing, converged and diverged learnings are equally important. A solid understanding of theories in pre-defined frameworks (e.g., computing and computer science) is a requirement. On the other hand, it is also important to have practical experience in diverged contexts. In a common setting of a creative computing classroom, information is disseminated during the lectures, and students actively test out their perceived information in practical sessions. 

The divergent aspect also resonates with the constructivism learning theory (Narayan et al., 2013) that I am recently looking at, which describes applying current understandings, noting relevant elements in new experiences, and iterating knowledge.

I reflected on my teaching when I read about the four categories of learning “with”, “about”, “in”, and “through” art (p. 170). I typically focus on the “in” aspect – students experiment with techniques and materials (often digital materials such as data, models, and codes) with the goal of creating a digital artefact. And sometimes explore the “through” aspect – we reflect on what we can learn about the algorithmic and engineering aspects from applying them to the creation of art. I experimented with the “about” aspects in one of the case study, in which I framed a lecture on the algorithmic technique of “circuit bending” with the concept of appropriation in the arts. Through this experience I found how these four pillars are interweaved together as in Table 1 (p. 169) – starting with knowledge about principles, styles, and artists (“about”) to a diverged exploration space for experiments (“in”), then converge to “with” and “through” to think about what knowledge can be distilled and learnt. 

Reference

• Narayan, R., Rodriguez, C., Araujo, J., Shaqlaih, A., Moss, G., 2013. Constructivism—Constructivist learning theory., in: The Handbook of Educational Theories. IAP Information Age Publishing, Charlotte, NC, US, pp. 169–183.
• Lindström, L., 2012. Aesthetic Learning About, In, With and Through the Arts: A Curriculum Study. International Journal of Art & Design Education 31, 166–179. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1476-8070.2012.01737.x

In the paper “An a/r/tographic métissage: Storying the self as pedagogic practice”, Osler et al. (2019) presented the practice of narratives and storying the self, as a pedagogic practice to embrace the multifaceted perspectives and subjectivity in artistic practices.

After presenting the four pieces of narratives, the paper weaving together these piece and constructs the fifth narrative, “as a means of critically examining and elevating personal narrative”. Therefore, when I was reading this paper, I decided to write down notes of my thoughts and reflection, if appropriate, as the sixth narratives (See the screenshot below for a few samples).

I see this storying the self approach as a wonderful opportunity to document my learning process in the context of the field/subject I teach – artificial intelligence and machine learning (AIML) for media and arts. Over the past decade, AIML for media and arts has become a field in which new methods, new practices, new norms are proposed, experimented, and implemented every months, weeks, or even days. As a new researcher/lecturer in this field, learning and adapting to these changes often benefit my practices. 

Materialising, appropriating, and sensing making around new technological advances (Dix, 2007) has been a longstanding technique. Often during this process, my colleagues and I pull out the threadscape. For instance, we derive teaching materials (such as examples of works discussed in class), theoretical frameworks (such as taxonomies of approaches), and practical infrastructure (such as the coding repositories for each units). And eventually deliver these contents in a way to encourage students in the course to explore in this intersection of technologies and arts.

In this intersection, I often struggle to keep up with changes. I think narrating my own process of learning and adapting can be a fruitful approach to “weaving the threadscape” in this fast pace and sometimes disequilibrium domain. And if time is allowed, keeping blog posts of narratives, or documentation the development of materials, are definitely sometime I would like to experiment with in future teaching works.

References

• Dix, A., 2007. Designing for Appropriation. Presented at the Proceedings of HCI 2007 The 21st British HCI Group Annual Conference University of Lancaster, UK, BCS Learning & Development. https://doi.org/10.14236/ewic/HCI2007.53
• Osler, T., Guillard, I., Garcia-Fialdini, A., Côté, S., 2019. An a/r/tographic métissage: Storying the self as pedagogic practice. Journal of Writing in Creative Practice. https://doi.org/10.1386/jwcp.12.1-2.109_1