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Experimental Material-Digital Art Education by Vague Research Studios

LENA T.H. BERGLIN AND KAJSA G. ERIKSSON

In an increasingly digital society, there is not only a shift from analog to digital, but also a shift to a culture performed through embedded technology. Digital technology alters an object and makes it intelligent and these objects have more to do with information exchange than with form, material, body, and the environment (Manzini, 1986). Instead of taking these challenges into consideration, the expressive and interactive qualities of digital technology simply packs technology into cycles of consumption rather than capturing the complex aesthetic dynamics that digital technologies offer (Dunne, 2008). Conversely, the deconstruction of digital technology, its history of production, and the performative use of it can be a way of developing experimental methods in art, design, and education (Crutzen, 2006). There is a general need of experimentation, beyond the borders of digital technology as it is presented to us in everyday situations and as novelty. Simultaneously, there is a specific need for experimentation with creative and critical perspectives in the digitalization of education, especially in art education. In a European context, there are steering documents presented to support the development of digital education. For example, the EU publication from 2017 Digital Education Policies in Europe and Beyond: Key Design Principles for More Effective Policies presents eight core-guiding principles. Three of them are of interest to the development of material-digital art education. The principles of interest here are to follow a holistic approach targeting systemic change, embracing experimentation, risk-taking and failure, and building up teaching competence (Conrads ←35 | 36→et al., 2017). Within these core principals, we would like to put emphasis on the deconstruction and artistic experimentation of subjects, objects, selves, histories, and cultures. The aim is to experiment with ways of making, writing, and visualizing difference in a performed material-digital scenario as part of self and group representation. Our art-based research explores the potential of performed relations of the digital and the material through sound in a less electrified environment of the outdoors.

In this exploratory investigation, the primary reference to theory and methodology is the physicist and feminist theoretician Karen Barad’s (2007) agential realism and our deep reading of Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of matter and meaning. The theory of agential realism questions a traditional world view where humans are positioned in and surrounded by an environment, and instead puts forth that “practices of knowing are specific material engagements that participate in (re)configuring the world” (Barad, 2007, p. 91). This theory has implications within knowledge production and the traditional division of research subject and research object (Barad, 2007; Snaza & Weaver, 2016; Lenz Taguchi, 2009).