[ISEA2011] Paper: Vince Dziekan – Studio Pedagogy For Situated Learning In The Culturescape

Abstract

The paper will present educational insights gained from developing studio pedagogy for situated learning in relation to emerging creative technologies. The Culturescape study abroad program – which has been conducted annually since 2009 – has been designed with a focus on exposing tertiary-level art & design students to the potentials for communication experiences that come into existence through combining site-specific, location-based practices with digital image-making and creative technology. Undertaken as an intensive and immersive studio over a five-week residency period at the Monash University Centre in Prato, Italy, participants are given the unique opportunity to develop individual and collaborative projects that respond creatively to their experiences of place, space and community. According to Lave and Wenger (1991), situated learning acknowledges how the process of knowledge co-constructed or creation occurs in context and is embedded within a particular social or physical environment. Through the integration of fieldwork in and around Tuscany, complemented by seminar critiques and studios, students were encouraged to explore their studio practices through designing creative content for emerging location-based practices, including a particular focus on “geo-cinema” – which according to artist Pete Gomes (2004) is “the new cinema of commuting, variable and embbeded in motion, locations, and fluidity”. The text and its accompanying presentation will thoroughly document course structure, creative outcomes of both directed and selected self-initiated coursework and reflectively evaluate the course’s pedagogical aspects and student experience.

Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press.
Pete Gomes (2004), Being On Location: The beginnings of ‘Geo-Cinema’ and ‘Place Code’.   mutantfilm.com/node/45

  • Dr. Vince Dziekan is Associate Dean Research in the Faculty of Art & Design at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. In addition, he is affiliated with the Foundation for Art & Creative Technology (FACT) in Liverpool, UK as a FACT Associate and most recently was appointed Digital Media Curator of The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA). His research focuses on the impact of digital technologies on curatorial design and the implications of virtuality on exhibition-based practices. This interdisciplinary investigation has been articulated recently in Virtuality and the Art of Exhibition (forthcoming publication, Intellect Books, UK). He has published in relation to related topics in various peer-reviewed journals and presented at numerous refereed conferences, both nationally and internationally.  He has received invitations to participate in the Tate’s online forum program (Liquid Architectures, 2006), symposia hosted by the National Gallery of Victoria (Sites of Communication. 2007), ISEA (2006, 2008) and delivered a keynote presentation at NODEM 06 Digital Interpretation in Art and Science Museums and Heritage Sites in Oslo, Norway.He has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions in Australia and his independent curatorial practice is represented by exhibitions such as Archival Permanence: Time and Timelessness in 100 Years of Australian PhotographyThe Synthetic Image: Digital Technologies and the ImageSmall Worlds: A Romance and Remote. In August 2008, he will be exhibiting his demonstration exhibition, The Ammonite Order, Or Objectiles for an (Un) Natural History at Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast, Northern Ireland as part of the ISEA2009 juried exhibition. In 2011, he will be co-curating  The World Is Everything That Is The Case –  the Australian representation in ISEA2011, Istanbul, Turkey. He is research leader of the Photography & Video Research Cluster at Monash Art & Design, Adjunct Programme Advisor for FACT ATELIER (FACT, Liverpool) and member of the international advisory committee of ReWire 2011 (MediaArtHistories conference, Liverpool) and the Virtual NGV steering committee (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne). He has been involved in collaborative research in association with Z-Node (ZHdK, Zurich University of the Arts), Media Arts Scoping Study (MASS) and the Omnium Research Group (University of New South Wales, Sydney). During 2008, he was a Visiting Research Fellow with the Slade School of Fine Art (University College London). In 2009, he was awarded a British Council Design Researcher Award.

Full text (PDF) p. 743-749