Just a quick announcement – currently the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation ICRA 2013, organised by the Institute for Anthropomatics at KIT, takes place in Karlsruhe, Germany. On May 10 a full day workshop on Art and Robotics: Freud’s Unheimlich and the Uncanny Valley will be held at the Kongresszentrum. See here for the programme, the list of speakers can be accessed here.

The Web stream of the main conference be accessed here.

photos/source via ICRA Website at ira13.org and http://uncannyvalley_icra2013.sssup.it/index.html

The research project MediaArt@Edu at KIT’s Institute of Vocational Education and General Education will be hosting the Hands-On workshop “moves make music” with the artist Onyx Ashanti over 27 to 28 February at KIT.

The workshop was developed in the framework of the BMBF research project InformAttraktiv of the “Digitale Media in Education” research group at the University of Bremen. It is part of the study profile on “artificial intelligence, cognition and robotics”, one of 3 study profiles in computer science in Bremen.

See here for Onyx Ashanti’s performance on the TED conference.

For further information please see here

Here is some information about Onyx Ashanti published on TED:

“Why you should listen to him:

Onyx Ashanti is a musician, geek, open-source advocate, Maker, collaborator … and we come back around again to musician. The intrumentation he has created fuses technique and technology into a full-body musical system, playable with hands, arms, mouth and body. As he says:

I am what can only be described as a cyborg musician. in other words, the music i create live, can not be replicated without technology. My music is called “Beatjazz.” It is a mix of sound design, live looping and jazz improvisation. My instrument of choice over the years has been a Yamaha Wind MIDI controller, but now the limitations have started to stunt the growth of this new form, so i designed an instrument that can take it into future.

He is now working on the next iteration of his instrument, codenamed Tron, and built around a helmet-mounted controller.”

It has been silent here for a while, which has to do with the ongoing research and teaching activities related to new projects such as the research project „MediaArt@Edu“ (ACRONYM), which looks at artistic approaches to support media literacy of young people in vocational preparation and vocational orientation programs.
It aims to develop new concepts to enhance digital media skills of young people. The project is co-ordinated by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology’s Institute of Vocational and General Education and realised in collaboration with the Center for Art and Media ZKM’s department of Museum Communication, the German Federal Agency of Employment Karlsruhe as well as the Hardtstiftung e.V. Karlsruhe, a youth welfare service for young women.

The project is funded for 3 years under the German research programme entitled „strengthening media skills for sustainable media education in vocational qualification” of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).
It aims to scrutinize artistic approaches and new mentoring and portfolio concepts to be applied in media technology education with young participants of vocational preparation and vocational orientation programs. In vocational preparation measures outside of vocational schools, young people are prepared for work or to take up a formal vocational training place. They are placed in a transit situation, hoping to get employed in the future.
However, in the project, a new concept to support digital media literacy of young people is developed, tested and evaluated. It brings together concepts of art, technology and vocational education as well as a specific mentoring model including portfolio research books to improve processes of self-reflexion of the learners.

In the project students of pedagogy, vocational education, engineering pedagogy as well as art and technology education accompany the young participants of vocational preparation programs. We intend to realize an education-through-art approach to technology by means of introducing artistic processes with digital media as well as didactic concepts of art education to vocational preparation. By improving media literacy of the young participants, the project aims to motivate them imagining and shaping pathways towards their own vocational biography and a perspective of future employment.

For further information, the (German) Web site can be accessed at http://www.ibp.kit.edu/berufspaedagogik/media-art-edu.php
English information will be available soon as well.

Call for Papers

The Culture of Digital Education: Innovation in Art, Design, Science
and Technology Practices – Leonardo Electronic Almanac

Senior Editors for this volume: Lanfranco Aceti, Nina Czegledy and Oliver Grau
Editor: Wendy Coones
Junior Editor: Manuelle Freire

In an era of fast technological growth and transforming art forms there is an increasing need for educational flexibility by academic
institutions. It is essential to keep in mind that the profile of higher education in the 21st century is going to be very different to
what it used to be.
What is our role in this changing environment and how do we proceed? Deliberations on the prevalent trends and the future of education indicate that “innovation” combined with breakthrough partnerships are considered keys to the future.
The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA) is inviting proposals from academics, critical theorists and artists for this special issue investigating the changes and innovation in the new culture of digital education. Relevant areas of interest addressed by the issue’s contributors could include, but are by no means limited to:

• Education, art, science and technology
• Education and social media
• Innovation at the intersection of interdisciplinary teaching and learning practices
• Crisis in the digital classroom?
• e-learning: give me that video link of your recorded lecture and let me be!
• Learning and teaching in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary practices
• Ownership and copyrights of learning materials
• Economic crisis and classroom crisis: rethinking the economy of learning
• Brain Gain/Brain Drain: who gains and looses in the contemporary classroom
• Emerging countries, emerging universities and emerging interdisciplinary practices
• Hacktivist class: the class as research center
• Hybrid educational models
• Tactical Media and its progeny
• Histories of classroom methodologies and contemporary innovative approaches

For further information please go to: http://www.leoalmanac.org/the-culture-of-digital-education-lea-call-for-papers/

Abstract deadline November 1, 2012

via Roger Malina /LEF

This year’s Leonardo@Ars Electronica 2010 symposium focuses on the dual issues of interdisciplinary research in art, design, science and technology as well as relevant models of PhD degree studies. It is organized as a public event for media and art educators, teachers and researchers to take place on September 6 at the University of Art and Industrial Design, Hauptplatz 8, 4020 Linz, A&B rooms (see here for venue). The symposium is coordinated by Nina Czegledy, Leonardo/ISAST and Dr. Daniela Reimann, KIT, in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Angelika Plank, University of Art and Industrial Design, Linz and in conjunction with Ars Electronica. Please find below the preliminary program:

10.00
Welcome. Prof. Dr. Angelika Plank, Head Departments of Art Education and interim of Media Design /Teacher Training Program, University of Art and Industrial Design, Linz

10.15
Greetings: Representative of the Federal Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture

10.30
Welcome: Nina Czegledy on behalf of Leonardo/ISAST

10.40
Introduction: Educational research and new models of knowledge transfer.
Nina Czegledy, KMDI University of Toronto, Concordia University Montreal

11.00 DI Christopher Lindinger, Ars Electronica Futurelab, Visiting Professor Media Design/Teacher Training Program, University of Art and Industrial Design, Linz Future Elevation

11.30 Dr. Daniela Reimann, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology KIT, Institute of Vocational and General Education, KIT-focus “Humans and Technology”, researcher, and consultant of the Media Design/Teacher Training Program, University of Art and Industrial Design Linz:
Crossing the borders of arts, science and technology in education

12:00 Prof. Dr. Jillian Scott, Head Head, Karmen Franinovic, The Zürich Node of
Plymouth University in the Institute of Cultural Studies, Zürich University of the Arts
– www.z-node.net

12.30 Lunch Break

13.30 Dr. Lanfranco Aceti, Associate Professor, Contemporary Art & Digital Culture Sabanci University, Istanbul, Artistic Director and Lead Curator ISEA2011, Istanbul:
Transmediation of content and people across disciplines: The challenges of hybrid teaching and Hybrid Students.

14.00 Karen Lancel, artist and educator, HKU Utrecht, Academy Minerva, Groningen
currently developing a policy paper on practice based PhD studies. New parameters
for an online practice based phd.Case study: TELE TRUST

14.30 Michael John Gorman, Founding Director of Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin:
The Art-Science Interface and the public face of the research university: Lessons from the first two years of Science Gallery at Trinity College Dublin”

15.00 Open discussion.

15.30 Closing Remarks

16.30 end of session

Symposium Abstract
An increasing need is manifested to develop new curricula informing innovative qualifications, new job profiles in the field of media design research and education, that is design inspired research, and design strategies including a research approach.
Working towards a sustainable convergence between educational research in design, science and technology remains a burning issue. The introduction of new forms of art practice and design at the intersection of media, arts, science and technology requires the introduction and application of distinguished qualification for educators. Yet in several European countries PhD degrees are not yet available in media arts and interdisciplinary studies.

What kind of new art genres are being developed by artists’ creative use of mixed media technologies, visual culture and communities and what is their impact on education? How is design research and education being embedded in the new modular curricula structures? What are the most effective elements of curricula to educate artists as well as art teachers for the future? Media design today is not only a means for research, but also an overall approach towards research shaping new possibilities opening up through design, design research (Laurel, 2004) as well as learning through (game) design (Kafai, 1994). The artistic aspects of interaction have been gradually explored and implemented within the framework of Interface Culture by Sommerer and Mignonneau (2008). An emerging tendency towards research orientation can be also observed as a broader trend in the field of arts and design. Interactive media art is blurring disciplines and has been reflected as a means to trigger and inspire creative processes in education (Reimann, 2006). The tool of design as social intervention is also becoming a hot topic for scholarly research as well as applied studies.

The changing media and art education institutions require an interactive debate on the conditions and evaluation criteria for developing new models for institutional networks and qualifications that allow implementing the media arts across curricula structures. Thus the symposium investigates through international presenters and open discussion the increasingly important issues of interdisciplinary research and higher teaching qualifications, including the initial art and design teacher training programs.

Aims and objectives:
To inspire an open discussion by educators and the public on burning issues towards developing an international dialogue.

For updates please access the Ars Electronica Web site here or the Web site of the Media Design Teacher Training @ the University of Art and Industrial Design for program details.

Please find the Web site of Ars 2010 here at:

For my sins I often am asked to review papers for conferences, books and journals. I think this is fair as a contribution to an emerging community of practice but i can’t say I enjoy the process. I find it very hard to decide what should be the standard and am worried that I am being fair to authors who have obviously invested a lot of time and effort into their research and writing. I struggle even more if the author is writing in a second or third language. How important is the standard of the English? And how much should style count towards the review?

One thing that does annoy me is the throwing around of unreferenced assertions. All these example are taken from papers I have reviewed recently:

“Many researchers say…… ”

“It is unquestionable that…..”

“Most students are…….”

“We have rapidly come to a point where….”

“There is a perception that….”

I like papers with attitude. And papers jammed full of references at the end of every sentence are extremely hard to read. Even so, I think that assertions of this kind need some evidence to back them up. Furthermore what does ‘most’ or ‘many’ mean.

In that respect I like the approach of the Welsh agency, Estyn. The purpose of Estyn is to inspect quality and standards in education and training in Wales. Estyn’s reports follow its guidance for the writing and editing of reports, which is available on the Estyn website (www.estyn.gov.uk). Estyn also publish a table, reproduced below, in the introduction to their reports, showing the terms that Estyn uses and a broad idea of their meaning. Whilst such an approach may seem pedantic, it greatly helps in understanding what they are saying .

Deschooling society introduced by Illich (1926-2002) who also taught at the University of Bremen, is a big issue in the current debate on reforming education and changing educational institutions (cp. Graham Attwell’s numerous posts on re-thinking schools and education on Pontydysgu.org). However, as we can see the concept of deschooling is not only discussed by pedagogues or in the framework of hacking and redesigning education, but has also become an issue in the arts, art education and curating:

“This two-day conference brings together international artists, curators, and writers to discuss and debate the changing relationship between art and education. Speakers have been invited to present critical ideas on collective and participatory practice, pedagogical experiments and how such art can be understood and discussed.

Deschooling Society takes its title from Ivan Illich’s seminal 1971 book, one of the most influential radical critiques of the education system in Western countries. Issues at the heart of that critique have been increasingly debated within the art world in recent years, and the subject of education has attracted renewed attention from artists, curators, academics, and collectives. Pedagogical models are currently being explored, re-imagined, and deployed by practitioners from around the world in highly diverse projects comprising laboratories, discursive platforms, temporary schools, participatory workshops, and libraries. Simultaneously, progressive globalization has led to a revaluing of the collective knowledge and agency of local communities.

The conference is a collaborative event marking the start of a Hayward Gallery research project culminating in the transformation of the gallery space into an alternative art school during Summer 2012. It also addresses the urgent issues that have arisen from the Centre for Possible Studies, part of an ongoing Serpentine Gallery project in the Edgware Road neighbourhood, and is the second part of the Serpentine’s collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art, New York, following the conference Transpedagogy: Contemporary Art and the Vehicles of Education at MoMA in May 2009.

Speakers include: Christopher Robbins (keynote), Martha Rosler (keynote), ARTSCHOOL/UK, Lars Bang Larsen, Dave Beech, Claire Bishop, Tania Bruguera, Marcelo Expósito, Harrell Fletcher, Jeanne Van Heeswijk, Pablo Helguera, Hannah Hurtzig, Suzanne Lacy, Pedro Lasch, Carmen Moersch, Nils Norman, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Paul O’Neill, Marion von Osten, Adrian Rifkin, Irit Rogoff, Ralph Rugoff, Terry Smith, Lisa Tickner, Gediminas Urbonas, Mick Wilson.

Panel session topics include:
– From Discursive Practices to the Pedagogical Turn
– Insertions, Alterations, and Rearrangements within Existing Institutional Frameworks
– Protest in Art School: Rituals of Power and Rebellion Since the Sixties
– Performative and Participatory Models for Exchange
– Presentations of artists projects and alternative art schools”

Click here for further information and check Hayward Gallery and Serpentine Gallery here.

text via e-flux, photo via www.southbankcentre.co.uk

Since I am interested in creativity, innovation, and education through the arts, my research looks at coupling arts, sciences, engineering and technology in trans-disciplinary education. ART&SCIENCE is an approach discussed in the LEONARDO community in terms of new curricula as well as new study programs in practice at university level.
The Artists-in-Labs-project initiated by Jill Scott brings together artists and scientists and aims to verify “the need for the arts and the sciences to work together in order to develop more creative and conceptual approaches to innovation and presentation.” (Scott, 2006).

However, in the context of arts&science and technology, I ran across the below conference entitled “ART AND TECHNOSCIENCE – Practices in transformation”. It is a conference organized by the Academy of Fine Arts in Finland, in collaboration with the Finnish Bioart Society and Pixelache festival, to take place over 24-25.3.2010 in Helsinki:

“The beginning of the 21st century is characterized by an overwhelming awareness of environmental issues. Facing the threat of global warming, the findings of scientific research have become a subject of intensive political debate. The ethical questions traditionally discussed in the green-wing marginals have become mainstream, as science has become a coffee-table topic.

The field of art that interacts with the practices of science and its technologies is commonly referred to as ART&SCIENCE. During the past decades, this hybrid field has become more or less established, with landmark works, major institutions and written histories. However, with the new wave of environmentalism, a further wave of artists working with methods and questions related to scientific research has also emerged.

The conference seeks to contextualize the practices of ART&SCIENCE both in the contemporary political atmosphere and the history of contemporary art.

The first day of the two-day conference focuses on the practices in transformation as a result of research-orientation and cross-disciplinarity, characteristic to the field of ART&SCIENCE.

The second day of the conference looks at the technologies of encounter between human and non-human worlds. The aim is to address the ethical discourse taking place in art practices which look at the interaction between humans and non-humans.

Speakers include Roy Ascott (artist, researcher, UK), Jill Scott (artist, researcher, AUS/CH), Andy Gracie (artist, UK/ESP), Ingeborg Reichle (art historian, DE), Adam Zaretsky (artist, US), Tuija Kokkonen (theatre director, FI), Terike Haapoja (artist, FI), Pau Alsina (researcher, ESP), Ulla Taipale (curator, FI/ESP), Anu Osva (artist, FI), Erich Berger (artist, coordinator ArsBioarctica, AUT/FI), Leena Valkeapää (artist, FI), Laura Beloff (artist, researcher, FI), Manu Tamminen (microbiologist, FI), Eija Juurola (forest researcher, FI), Raitis Smits (artist, curator, LV), Jan Kaila (artist, professor, FI), Antti Sajantila (professor, medical doctor, FI), Minna Långström (artist, FI), among others.”

Contact:
Erich Berger
Coordinator ArsBioarctica
eb [at] randomseed [dot] org
+358-50-4338898

http://kilpiscope.net

Terike Haapoja
Artist, Phd researcher
mail [at] terikehaapoja [dot] net
+358-50-4058341

http://kuva.fi

via sprectre

A couple of weeks ago I went to see Nitin Sawnhey talking about his career. I must say, to my embarrassment, I knew nothing about this artist before that day, but I was quite pleased to come away from this event with a little bit more understanding about his music and influences, and, especially, about […]

I would like to introduce you to Sandrine Han who holds the International Art Education Association (InAEA) in SL, a non-profit organization located in the virtual world of Second Life (SL) and on the Web.
She just developed the InAEA’s constitution and statement documents. Sandrine is a doctoral candidate at Northern Illinois University. Her dissertation is about distance learning and visual culture in 3D visualized virtual worlds. Her SL name is Kristy Handrick in Second Life. We had the pleasure to meet her with the students in InAEA’s representation in Second Life.

The International Art Education Association (InAEA) is a non-profit organization located in the virtual world of Second Life and on the Web. The goal of InAEA is to build bridges among art educators around the world and promote the importance of art education. InAEA is a free membership organization. Everyone around the world who loves art, education, and art education is welcome to join. All members are encouraged to devote their knowledge to the association, attend the monthly meeting, and post related articles on the InAEA website.
InAEA has held monthly meetings since October 2007. The InAEA meeting time was change to every Month the First Tuesday, at 7AM SL time.

For more information, please visit the InAEA Web site at: http://www.inaea.org/ or access InAEA in SL, or join the Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=166051974787#/group.php?gid=165766354265