Transdisciplinary Inquiries
Walking into Transdisciplinary Inquires on Wednesday I really had little idea of what to expect. I was kinda expecting it to be a continuation of either Intro to Creative Tech or Integrative Practices, and to be honest, because it was a compulsory class I hadn’t put much research into finding out what it was about. I’d read the blurb when confirming my papers months ago, and then promptly forgot everything about it until walking into class yesterday.
It actually looks really interesting and like it’ll be helpful towards my projects. Last year we were introduced to the concept of asking meaningful questions which would give useful answers to us, and that idea was again brought up in this class, in one case how being part of BCT was about asking the right questions to help our work and progress. I also found the distinctions between the different statements (Intent, Conceptual, Contextual, and Reflective) interesting and I’ll explore those later in my proposals and other projects.
After leaving the class, I realised that while I felt I had a greater idea of what I’d be taught over the semester, I actually was a little foggy on what the project was, other than it being a research project. I’ve had a scan of the brief and I’ll keep turning ideas over in the back of my mind until I have one (or more) that I latch onto.
I also read (The first chapter of) “Interacting: Art, Research and the Creative Practitioner,” and I actually found parts of it really interesting. It brought to light how art and art installations were evolving, and how these days it’s almost expected to be able to manipulate an art-piece. The passive viewer is being turned into an active participant, and both the artist and the viewer creates the art, which I thought is a really nice way to describe it. A greater range of emotions can be invoked by an art-piece now, when you can interact with it, than before. You might dislike a painting, but it’s more difficult to get frustrated with it than it is with an art-piece that is not behaving like you want it to, and also, there’s more likely to be satisfaction with an interactable art-piece when you manipulate it into looking or behaving how you would like it to.
Another really interesting point brought up was that with interaction comes responsibility. The audience have stepped in and changed something, and if that leads to a negative outcome it’s more likely to feel like their fault. The work can be more powerful that way.
One of the last things that I found interesting was a quote, that many artists are silent as “This makes it easier for artists to pass on the job of defining and defending what they do to critics, aestheticians, and historians.” (Sullivan, 2010) I know I’m definitely guilty of this, but I also deliberately like to keep quite about my meaning for my work sometimes until I’ve heard what other people think of it. I’ve always liked how an art-piece can mean something different for each person that sees it, and I like to see the differences between opinions. If the meaning for them is different from the meaning for me, it doesn’t mean they’re wrong, it just means that my art-piece has taken on additional life and has evolved without me.
References:
Linda Candy and Ernest Edmonds (2011) Interacting: Art, Research and the Creative Practitioner Retrieved from: http://research.it.uts.edu.au/creative/linda/CCSBook/Jan%2021%20web%20pdfs/Main%20Introduction.pdf
Sullivan (2010)