Keynotes
Conference keynotes
Philip J Barnard, Cognition and Brian Sciences Unit, Cambridge University & Research Advisor at R-Research, Wayne McGregor, Random Dance, Sadler's Wells, London.
John Carson, Head of School of Art, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, USA
Hannah Higginson, Fashioning an Ethical Industry
Philip Barnard
Augmenting Creativity: bridging between choreography and cognitive science as a case study
Philip Barnard is a program leader at the Medical Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge. Over the course of his career, he has carried out research on how memory, attention, language, body states and emotion work together in the normal healthy, human mind. He is committed to seeing the types of basic cognitive theory developed in scientific laboratories put to good use in the real world. His theoretical model of the architecture of the human mind has been applied to the problems of designing "easy to use" everyday technologies and computer interfaces. He has applied the same theory to help understand and treat emotional disorders like depression, as well using it to account for the way in which human mental and emotional skills have developed over the long-term course of evolution. Dance shares with these other areas of interest an intricate blending of intellectual, communicative, physical and emotional skills. Since 2003, Philip has been collaborating with Wayne McGregor | Random Dance on interdisciplinary research projects with the aim of developing productive synergies between choreographic processes and our knowledge of cognitive neuroscience.
The X Factor: Extending Territories for Art.
I am interested in art that accepts no boundaries, art that constantly seeks new audiences, art that challenges conventional thinking and art that explores new creative possibilities and territories. With this in mind, I will share thoughts and experiences based on my 35 year journey as an art student, artist, curator and educator; starting with my shock and disillusionment at the departmental factionalism I found when I started as an art student in Belfast in the early seventies.
In the early eighties, I moved to California, for post-graduate study at California Institute of the Arts, where the post studio program did not require people to categorize their work, or to define themselves as painters, sculptors, printmakers or filmmakers. All media were available, in an institution, which comprised of 5 separate schools of Art, Design, Dance, Music and Film, where students could take classes in any of the Schools and interdisciplinary work was actively encouraged. This expansive approach to art education had a profound influence on me. All areas of my artistic and educational practice have subsequently been informed by an ongoing desire, not just to break down boundaries, but to work across them.
From 1985 to 1991, I worked for Artangel, an organization which existed to place temporary artworks in public locations. This necessarily involved artists working with various collaborators, on unpredictable art interventions in all kinds of public locations and contexts.
At Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design from 1991 to 1999, I ran Placements and External Projects, requiring all Fine Art students to complete projects which involved working with, or within, situations outside of the studio and beyond the college boundaries. My office was an information centre and I was an advisor and fixer, and a connector between the School of Art and the rest of the world.
In 1999 I became Course Director of the BFA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, a course which had 5 areas; Painting, Print and Photomedia, Sculpture, Film/Video and Critical Fine Art Practice. I rationalized these 5 areas into three pathways (2D, 3D, 4D) in an attempt to break down departmentalized thinking. The intention was to allow students to work across disciplines, as well as within specializations, in order to provide greater breadth, as well as depth.
In my own work I have produced drawings, prints, photographs, installations, performances, video, audio, television and radio broadcasts and collaborated with musicians, composers, film-makers, architects, and police departments.
Many artists today operate across a range of disciplines. It is perfectly conceivable for one individual to produce work as a sculptor, performer, installation artist, video maker and musician. Such artists are not generally studio bound, but working in a broader social sphere. To do this they invariably need to collaborate in interdisciplinary ways. With increasingly sophisticated tools, more rapid communication systems and information availability, the exploration of new ideas or unfamiliar territory often needs guidance and specific expertise. In working with others with different perspectives and knowledge, exciting and unexpected ideas can emerge from information exchange, dialogue and production processes. Collaborators from different disciplines can shake you out of your comfort zone, challenge your presumptions and introduce you to new areas of thought and potential.
In this new millennial world, where digital and computational capabilities are revolutionizing artistic practice, the current generation of students have learned to interface with the world in a whole different way, with the computer, and the mobile phone, as their main creative and communicative tools. Carnegie Mellon University School of Art embraces new technologies and encourages interdisciplinary practice. Art students can interact and collaborate with peers from other University departments. The School of Art is part of a College of Fine Arts, which also contains Schools of Architecture, Drama, Design and Music. Like my alma mater CalArts, this scenario offers exciting interdisciplinary possibilities; with curricular, and extra curricular projects, which are not just interdisciplinary, but which are trans-disciplinary, cross-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary. Carnegie Mellon art students have worked creatively with colleagues from social sciences, design, drama, music, architecture, robotics, computer science and human computer interaction.
In the pipeline, or on the way to the launch pad, is a collaborative project where art students and faculty are working on the Google Lunar Challenge, with colleagues from architecture, music, engineering, robotics, rocketry and astronautics - in an attempt to put art on the moon in December 2011.
Carnegie Mellon, School of Art website
Hannah Higginson
We need creative minds to find visionary solutions to the sustainability challenges we currently face.
Fashioning an Ethical Industry is an innovative education project, which works with FE and HE fashion courses across the UK to integrate ethical issues into curricula so that fashion students - next generation of industry players - will have the knowledge and the skills to transform the existing fashion model. The approach of the project is rooted in the teaching principles and practices of sustainability education; participation, mutual learning and a deep implied sense of inter-disciplinarianism[1]. The project runs student workshops, organises tutor training events, provide teaching resources and partners with tutors to embed social responsibility issues in their courses. The variation in courses at higher education has made a one size fits all approach to curriculum development impossible leading to a diversity of methodology. The project has supported tutors to integrate issues into courses in a systematic, long term way, involving designers, buyers and marketing roles leading to more than twenty universities and colleges now reporting teaching these issues to some degree.
Whilst the Fashioning an Ethical Industry project has focused on working with fashion courses the issue of social responsibility is relevant across many disciplines. There is going to be increasing demand for graduates from business studies, to computer science, to product design to have an awareness of the environment in which their products are made and how their sourcing decisions can affect conditions down supply chains. The approach and resources developed through the project to support with the integration of sustainability into the curricula have relevance across all programmes of study.
[1] Ali Khan, S (1995) 'Taking Responsibility: Promoting Sustainable Practice Through Higher Education Curricula', Pluto Press, London.