Category: Art Practice

Groups of people exploring material innovation

This is a follow up to my recent post on the role of materials in children’s learning through art. If you have not read this already, I recommend checking it out before reading on. 

Here I present four different organisations – a university research centre, a design consultancy, a creative recycle centre and a children’s art studio – who are all exploring materiality in new and experimental ways. I selected these organisations as I am interested in thinking about how materials are being researched and considered in a collective way, among groups of people with diverse interests, skills and expertise.

Bjork Generative System
An image illustrating the generation of one of Bjork’s ‘Rottlace’ masks – a collaboration between the musician and the MIT Media Lab’s Mediating Matter group. Image credit: http://www.creativeapplications.net

MIT Media Lab: Mediating Matter group (USA)

I am a massive fan girl of the MIT Media Lab. For those of you who are not unfamiliar with this university research centre, it is an interdisciplinary lab ‘that encourages the unconventional mixing and matching of seemingly disparate research areas’ (MIT website, 2018). I have always seen the Media Lab as an epicentre for innovative and ground-breaking work across a myriad of disciplines such as art, technology, design and education.

The Lab has numerous research groups, including the Mediated Matter team. This team of scientists and designers explore ‘material ecologies’ – a research area at the intersection of material science, digital fabrication, computational design, biology and design. Their week particularly focuses on how biology and nature can be used to inspire the creation and use of materials. This can then be used to then generate new forms of design and innovative material practices and processes that can then be applied in many different ways from 3D printed death masks to digitally created molten glass that transmits media to Bjork’s Rottlace mask.

Neri Oxman leads the Mediating Matter team. She has a great TED talk on the design at the intersection of technology and biology where she discusses how digital fabrication can come together and interact with the natural world.

The Cooper Hewitt collection contains numerous objects made by the Mediating Matter group. The museum also featured this video on their work as part of their Design Triennial. Please watch this – it beautiful and interesting as hell:

Material Driven (UK)

Material Driven is a platform that brings together artists, designers and architects that are producing new materials or working with pre-existing materials in experimental ways. The organisation aims to highlight ‘innovative materials, their processes of making, and the creators behind them.’ The Material Driven blog features really interesting articles and interviews with creative professionals exploring material fabrication in creative ways. I particularly enjoyed this article on Hannah Elizabeth Jones’ BioMarble material that brings together processes and practices from textiles, recycling and biodegradable matter. Last year Material Driven also put together a travelling material library called ‘Materials in Motion’ that aims to further showcase and share innovative ways creative work with materials.

ReMida Bologna (Italy)

ReMida centres are creative recycle centres that support the idea that waste such as recycled materials and industry cut-offs like plastic, wood and cardboard can be used as creative and artistic resources in communities. There are numerous ReMida centres located around the globe, including this one in Reggio Emilia:

ReMida Bologna is a part of this international network. The centre has an exceptional education programme for children, teachers and adults that allows people from different communities to creatively play and learn through the recycled materials. ReMida Bologna also has a great Instagram account (pictured below) where they post documentation from their various recycled material projects.

Remida 2
ReMida Bologna’s Instagram feed

I love ReMida centres, or any place that promotes creative learning through recycled materials. When I scroll through the Instagram feed of ReMida Bologna I find it so inspiring to see how people are using familiar materials in unfamiliar ways. Like being creative with the combination of materials that are presented together and how they are placed and situated in a space. Loose part materials provide a special way of encouraging new processes of exploring and connecting with the world. All of these things can be used to ignite children’s imagination in new ways, generating interesting entry points for experimentation and learning.

Atelier M (Japan)

Some of the most interesting artists and educators that I ever met are renegade souls doing their own innovative things in their little corner of the world. This is how I would describe Atelier M. The organisation is essentially a children’s atelier, or art studio, located in Naha, Okinawa in Japan. I love their experimental approach to working with materials and children. It feels so fresh and creative. Atelier M also have great YouTube and Instagram pages – check these out. They speak for themselves.

Atelier
Children play in an activity at Atelier M. Image credit: atelier-m.tumblr.com

I hope you find these groups as inspiring as I do. I am sure there are many more organisations out there that are doing amazing work with materials so please comment below!

Have an awesome week.

Louisa xx

Learning through artworks

This post discusses the possibilities of artworks in facilitating learning and alternate ways of imagining the world. I draw upon the work of Maxine Greene and John Dewey to explore the proposition that children’s learning through artworks has the potential to challenge dominant discourses, opening up new ways of thinking and being. There is also a resource list for educators and parents interested in incorporating artworks into children’s learning.

Guggenheim
Amalia Pica’s ‘A ∩ B ∩ C’ (2013). © Amalia Pica. I found this bad boy on the Guggenheim online archive.

“It is not that the artist offers solutions or gives directions. He nudges; he renders us uneasy; he makes us (if we are lucky) see what we would not have seen without him. He moves us to imagine, to look beyond” Maxine Greene (2000, p. 276).

Artworks can be used in many ways for many different reasons in learning contexts. They offer rich possibilities for experiencing and imagining the world from new and multiple perspectives. Visual art as well as the arts more generally, have the ability to make people aware of different ways of thinking and being in the world, working against reductionist and singular ways of thinking.

Maxine Greene (2000) extends upon the word of John Dewey (1916, 1934, 1954) to argue that imagination and the arts play a critical role in the making of democratic communities. She suggests that school curriculum should aim to prioritise the ‘releasing of the imagination’ through providing rich aesthetic experiences for children. These then provide new modalities for children to sense, experience and learn through the world.

However, the mere presence of artworks in a learning environment does not guarantee that a child is encountering or imagining the world in new ways. Greene argues that if school curriculum is to support imagination through the arts, children’s encounters need to be aesthetically varied, rich and reflective. Through this, learning through artworks has the potential to challenge dominant discourses and ways of thinking. This may then encourage children to question their understandings and assumptions about the world, to think critically about what is and what could be.

Below is a list of resources for educators and parents who may be interested in incorporating artworks in children’s learning at home or in the classroom.

Resource list 

Many of the major modern and contemporary art museums have online digital archives for their collections. Here are some links to my favorites:

Online art museum collections

The Museum of Modern Art has made 77,000 works from 25,000 different artists available online. The search engine is easy to use and you can refine your hits using different classifications and time periods.

Tate also have an extensive online collection featuring artworks, exhibitions, videos and artist journals. The digital archive is well referenced and has many tags that are great for getting lost in amazing artwork worm-holes. The search engine is easy to use and has lots of search filter options. Tate’s most famous artworks feature extensive summaries, a copy of the artwork’s display caption as well as the techniques used to produce the artwork, for example Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Fountain’ page. 

Video Channels

  • TateShots  and TateTalks– Tate have also put together two quite an exceptional collection of video and audio recordings. TateTalks features video footage of talks and events held at the art museum. TateShots comprises of artist interviews, performance pieces (I highly recommend watching Earle Brown’s ‘Calder Piece‘), exhibition films and artist studio visits. If I had a dollar for every minute I spent watching TateShots I would be a millionaire. But I work in children’s education and the arts so maybe I shouldn’t put a monetary value on the amount of time I procrastinate.
  • The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark has a constantly growing online collection of videos from different fields such as art, architecture, music, literature and design. I love the Louisiana Channel as it features a lot of Scandinavian and European contemporary artists who I have only discovered through watching these clips.
  • The art auction houses of Southeby’s and Christie’s both have YouTube channels featuring short video clips of artist interviews, studio visits and world auction records.

Online courses

Article

References

Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education. New York, Macmillan.

Dewey, J. (1934). Art as Experience. New York, Minton, Balch.

Dewey, J. (1954). The Public and Its Problems. Chicago, IL: Swallow Press.

Greene, M (2000). ‘Imagining futures: the public school and possibility,’ Journal of Curriculum Studies, vol 32(2). P.267-280.

Experimenting and learning through images

In this post I talk about my photographic art practice and how this has allowed me to produce new relationships between myself, other people and the world. I then discuss the role of visual images in artistic experimentation and how this interconnects with the use of visual imagery in pedagogical documentation or inquiry-led learning practices in early childhood education.

Deep Water
Louisa Penfold, ‘Ophelia (Save yourself).’ C-print.

Experimention and learning through images has been a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember. Since I was first taught photography at school (thank you Georgina Campbell) I have experimented with a myriad of photographic processes including medium format cameras, scanners and digital photography. My photos have focused on the relationship between landscape and the subject matter’s psychological world. Creating and thinking through images has allowed me to experience things and learn in a way that could not be done with words. Learning new artistic skills, techniques and concepts has also been important in opening up new creative possibilities for further exploration. Over the years, this process has led to the emergence of new thought processes, feelings, understandings and artistic skills, generating new starting points for further experimentation.

LPenfold3
Louisa Penfold, ‘In the garden I have done no crime.’ C-print.

I think that my love of image making and my love of children’s education stems from the same place: a relentless enthusiasm to continuously think and learn through the world in new and different ways. Art has been one of the greatest forces for producing deep thinking and feelings in my life. I would love children to have this opportunity too.

feetghmost
Louisa Penfold, ‘Untitled.’ C-print.

Experimentation and learning through visual imagery is also a huge part of pedagogical documentation. When I take a photo or video of a child’s research process in an art museum, I always consider the lighting, the colours, the composition and wait for just the right moment to press the shutter to try and capture a particular energy, emotion or idea. To me, documenting through visual imagery is an aesthetic process. At other times, it does feel more ethnographic or slightly more removed. Recording. Logging. Taking field notes. Archiving pictures to look back on later. I guess that both artistic experimentation and pedagogical documentation are creative and analytical processes.

I often get asked if I use my own art practice with children. I always say yes and no. The inquiry-led process that drives artistic experimentation is a non-negotiable component of any children’s activity I am a part of. At the same time, I am not interested in doing photography workshops with children. I don’t really know why.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Louisa Penfold, ‘The Dancer.’ C-print… My love for Caravaggio knows no limits

I am not exactly sure how my photographic practice and my work with children is connected but I know that it is. I guess they are related in a way that all things that are incredibly important to an individual are connected. I recently read a quote by the artist and poet Etel Adnan that said, “… my writing and my paintings do not have a direct connection in my mind. But I am sure they influence each other in the measure that everything we do is linked to whatever we are, which includes whatever we have done or are doing.” I totally get that.