This collection of annotated bibliographies represents articles and readings that I found especially influential for this course. The first is from the book, Method Meets Art (Leavy, 2015) and is an introduction to Art Based Research (ABR). I found this methodology fascinating and have been able to put some of this into practice this semester in my research project. The other references are studies that furthered my inquiry into the perceived need for permissions in digital art.
Leavy, P. (2015). Method Meets Art, Second Edition : Arts-Based Research Practice: Vol. 2nd ed. The Guilford Press.
ABR is an easily digestible and often collaborative research methodology that has the ability to allow the researcher to take the unique position of engaging inquiries with creativity, imagination and caring. Patricia Leavy, quoting from Finley’s (2008) research, summed up ABR as an engaged, moral, and at times political activity “uniquely positioned as a methodology for radical, ethical, and revolutionary research that is futuristic, socially responsible, and useful in addressing social inequities” (Leavy, 2015, p.29).
Under the umbrella of ABR are practices such as Artography, Scholartisty and AREB (Art-Based Educational Research). Unlike scientific research methods that employ a researcher completely separate from the subject(s), ABR Employs the terms A/R/T-ography and a/r/t: a metaphor for artist/researcher/teacher merging “knowing, doing, and making” (Pinar, 2004, p. 9). This approach often puts the researcher directly as part of the actual research and takes focus off of the subject/product of the art creation and focuses on the processes in making the art/performance. In ABR the participants in the research are considered collaborators of the research. This methodology allows for unique inquiries that can be revealed in the process of creating such as:
How is meaning created, organized and presented?
What emotional, spiritual, healing, or social qualities are in effect that can be used to study the process and the participants?
Purposes and values of ABR particularly in art education
ABR is meant to be pragmatic and useful
ABR can be publicly accessible, collaborative and draws on the emotional, evocative and resistive to jar people into seeing, thinking, and/or feeling differently. (Leavy, 2015 pg. 29)
Can be of particular usefulness in addressing social justice issues and the public at large
Is infinitely flexible in nature allowing for emergence and improvisation
Since it employs the artist/researcher/teacher model, the researcher will be bringing their own relationships with the art and their viewpoints into the process
Does ABR raise questions concerning ontology: the nature of being and truth?
ABR can be strongly opposed by traditional research methods.
Will the research be scrutinized by the public or academic community? (Leavy, 2015)
Does ABR require the participants to be skilled at the craft of art-making?
Process is key to the understanding and results may or may not be successful
Often times the resulting art may be aesthetically pleasing even though produced by amateurs
Instead of: Is it good art? one could say: What is it good for?
Is ABR able to answer my research questions in a useful way?
Given the variable and fluid nature of ABR, the results of your research be distilled down to usable data collection.
Frequently Used Methods of ABR: Living Inquiry, Arts as Inquiry
Narrative and Fiction-based inquiry- Draws on the written word and works of literature
Poetic Inquiry-Use of poetry to interpret and understand
Musical Inquiry-draws on participatory methods using music
Dance as Inquiry-Unique in it is central to the human body and its movement
Visual Arts-Images as Inquiry-Use of photography, collage, painting, drawing as inquiry
Sakr, M., Connelly, V., & Wild, M. (2018). Imitative or Iconoclastic? How Young Children use Ready‐Made Images in Digital Art. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 37(1), 41–52. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/10.1111/jade.12104
This study explores how creativity is affected in the use of ready-made images (such as graphics students can “stamp” on or repeat multiple times easily) in digital creative software environments. The researchers note that multiple studies have been conducted on both sides of the argument. From their analysis, some state that it inhibits creativity (McLennan 2010; Szyba 1999), while others conclude that it enables remix capability in the child (Lankshear & Knobel 2006) (Sakr, Connelly, Wild 2018). This study looked to examine how the child incorporates these graphics into their creations using a semiotic lense.
Children and students will bring their own experiences to an artwork. Through episodes of children’s digital artmaking showed a range of ‘child agendas’ at work including making aesthetic choices, experimentation, initiating conversation, storytelling and as part of coherent representation (Sakr, Connelly, Wild 2018).
The study showed that educators should be aware of and respond to the different ways in which students are working and creating. In the viewpoint of permissions, these artworks would look completely different if the child was in the belief that, either by direct information or inference, that use of certain items was not allowed. Thus, permissions and allowances are necessary for students to feel comfortably creative.
Note: lego blocks are predetermined shapes
Black, J. (2009). Necessity is the Mother of Invention: Changing Power Dynamics Between Teachers and Students in Wired Art Classrooms. Canadian Review of Art Education: Research & Issues, 36(1), 99–117.
This article talks about the changing balance involved in adopting digital technologies into the classroom. Black concludes that teachers and students need to work and focus on an embracement of a learner centered approach, developing student problem solving, creative and critical thinking skills, and the employment of co-learning, collaboration, and teacher-student partnerships. Furthermore, these partnerships are strengthened by the acceptance of a new power sharing between students and teachers (Black, 2009).
This is important research in relation to digital creativity and empowering student artists in the digital classroom. Striking a balance of power and giving students the permissions to utilize digital tools in creative activity and benefit from of them is necessary to allow creative freedom. Given the 2020 Pandemic and drastic shift to remote learning, a new set of studies will undoubtedly be unleashed to explore this extreme shift to the student in a vastly unbalanced form.
Whalen, M. (2009). What’s Wrong With This Picture? An Examination of Art Historians’ Attitudes About Electronic Publishing Opportunities and the Consequences of Their Continuing Love Affair with Print. Art Documentation: Bulletin of the Art Libraries Society of North America, 28(2), 13–22. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/10.1086/adx.28.2.27949518
This Mellon-funded study explores the long-standing relationship between art, art historians and a reluctance towards digital media. It argues that these holdouts jeopardize the long-term efficacy of the field. In essence arguing legal rights and practices with image production and reproduction in regards to galleries and museums, this article highlights the opposition to progress in the digital field. Securities must be established and upheld, but they may look different.
Digital technologies raise questions and concerns among art historians about whether electronic publishing is good for art history and whether it is good for them professionally (Whalen, 2009).
Sweeny, R. (2020). “Investigate the misusage of technology as a gesture of freedom”: Glitch Dysfunction in New Media Art and Art Education. Visual Arts Research, 46(2), N.PAG.
In this article, Sweeny seeks to reveal artistic tactics: the provocative, playful, and probing ways that new media art deals with various forms of dysfunction. Art educators at many levels can learn much about how digital technologies can be used to make art by studying how digital technologies fail (Sweeny, 2020). In a way that digital media is extremely capable of providing failure and frustration, that can be utilized for art creation.
As a digital arts teacher, I have experienced firsthand, as Sweeny describes the ability of networks, digital media and computers to come together to create (what he calls new media art) but they also amplify the frustration and devastation that can occur when such networks fail (Sweeny, 2020). He goes on to suggest that even that failure can be harnessed and manipulated in new ways to discuss power, control and efficiency (Sweeny, 2020).
To quote his conclusion:
To embrace failure, to acknowledge moments of overload, or to listen for noise in contemporary communication networks might result in a new media art education—one that acknowledges the poor image, the in-between, and the glitch as it also reflects the unique qualities of our digital, dysfunctional times. (Sweeny, 2020).
Marner, A., & Örtegren, H. (2014). Education through digital art about art. International Journal of Education through Art, 10(1), 41–54. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/10.1386/eta.10.1.41_1
This article explores the “mash-up” versatility of digital media, although the term is not used in the article...opting instead for “digital paraphrases and blended production.” Providing a useful way to move students into familiarity with software and indulge creative expression.
Different ways of working with pictures digitally exposes multimodal ways
for pupils to appropriating picture-making for their own purposes (Marner, 2014).
The teachers mentioned the special circumstances that give room for pupils
to explore new possibilities to make pictures without needing to have manual
technical skills. They also noted that pupils who do have these skills often
also use the traditional methods to a large degree (Marner, 2014).