Upheavals in social media and communications are overturning education, at the same time, a group... more Upheavals in social media and communications are overturning education, at the same time, a group of art education graduates and their artist lecturers are using creative research to disrupt this turn by visualising the practice of Digital Sabbath. The Digital Sabbath practice aimed to explore the feasibility of switching off from technology and the impact of this practice on the participants, and those around them. The Digital Sabbath and Digital Distraction exhibition results from a creative arts research project involving graduate art teachers and art education lecturers who communicate well visually. The project followed the experiences of nine participants (including the researchers) as they gave up access to digital technologies for a day a week over a three-month period, a practice known as Digital Sabbath (DS). The participants’ narratives (artefacts, journals and interviews) formed the stimulus for visualisations of the Digital Sabbath experience after a pre-intervention survey. Each researcher developed a series of works with participants, documenting the nature of their experiences and affective responses to the process. The researchers are creating a large collaborative piece that documents general themes from the project experience. The artworks produced for this research aim to communicate the findings of the research with a broader audience, and to incite discussion around our use of technology and its effect on our lives. For many participants, the practice was incredibly difficult and small interactions with technology were often discussed as ‘necessary’. Most participants discussed their use of technology, and in particular social media, as an addiction
This paper is about an argument to open a discussion. It positions me in the context of contempor... more This paper is about an argument to open a discussion. It positions me in the context of contemporary Australian ‘Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people’s attachments to land in all their complexity’ (Head, 2000, Nash, 2002). A possible meeting place (Carter, 2013) with ‘[u]nsettling effects and partial understandings . . . more in the spirit of postcolonialism than security and old certainties’ (Nash, 2002)
alking Place: Unfolding Conversations is a collaborative exhibition between Tracy Hill, Monika Lu... more alking Place: Unfolding Conversations is a collaborative exhibition between Tracy Hill, Monika Lukowska, Annette Nykiel, Sarah Robinson, and Jane Whelan that explores the significance of wetlands with particular focus on Lake Walyungup; a shallow, ephemeral salt-lake in the Rockingham area known by the local Noongar people as ‘the place where people talk’. Lake Walyungup is a seemingly forgotten, empty space in the midst of a growing urban community which offers shelter to migratory birds and wildlife. It has a deep history embedded in thrombolite remains, links with the Noongar community and various historical uses by the passing groups of settlers and armed forces. The exhibition interweaves traditional techniques including drawing, bricolage, lithography, etching, and dry point with the digital technologies of drone videos, 3D prints, and Lidar survey scanning in a synthesis of techniques that expand the boundaries of contemporary print. Through multidisciplinary works and collab...
Field working slow making features creative works by artists who are renowned for working with co... more Field working slow making features creative works by artists who are renowned for working with collections of materials (text, image, objects and raw materials) gathered specifically from field-based experiences in non-urban spaces (bush). Their slow making and place making evolves from personal relationships with the WA bush (remote regions and communities, native forests, spinifex country, mine sites and stations) and on processing bush-derived materials and experiences for inquiry
alking Place: Unfolding Conversations is a collaborative exhibition between Tracy Hill, Monika Lu... more alking Place: Unfolding Conversations is a collaborative exhibition between Tracy Hill, Monika Lukowska, Annette Nykiel, Sarah Robinson, and Jane Whelan that explores the significance of wetlands with particular focus on Lake Walyungup; a shallow, ephemeral salt-lake in the Rockingham area known by the local Noongar people as ‘the place where people talk’. Lake Walyungup is a seemingly forgotten, empty space in the midst of a growing urban community which offers shelter to migratory birds and wildlife. It has a deep history embedded in thrombolite remains, links with the Noongar community and various historical uses by the passing groups of settlers and armed forces. The exhibition interweaves traditional techniques including drawing, bricolage, lithography, etching, and dry point with the digital technologies of drone videos, 3D prints, and Lidar survey scanning in a synthesis of techniques that expand the boundaries of contemporary print. Through multidisciplinary works and collab...
This practice-led PhD research investigated alternate forms of articulation to relate stories of ... more This practice-led PhD research investigated alternate forms of articulation to relate stories of place-making, as narrative or object, and added threads to the complex meshwork and herstory of the Country. The research was conducted in ‘The Country’, of the north-eastern Goldfields and Yalgorup Lakes in Western Australia. These two non-urban sites provided unique experiences of the bush, local people’s stories and understandings of time. The research investigated the implications of non-urban spaces as studios in relation to the concepts of place, time and narrative. This research was, in part, experiential and drew on an absorbed embodied awareness of notions of the Country (a place). This was embedded in an ethical onto-epistemology, through the process of piecing together bricolages of seemingly unrelated fragments of methods, conceptual frameworks and materials in simple and complex ways. In making and thinking, gleaned, recycled and repurposed bits and pieces were gathered and ...
The Earth is in the midst of a recent acceleration in the rate of species extinction and the unra... more The Earth is in the midst of a recent acceleration in the rate of species extinction and the unravelling of ecological communities. The authors think with the emerging field of Extinction Studies to explore educational approaches to ecological endangerment and extinction. Using a notion of visiting as ‘curious practice’, we story encounters between the authors, young children and the endangered Noorook Yalgorup-Lake Clifton thrombolites and their ecological community in south-western Australia. These visits were not intended to teach about extinction or the thrombolites. Rather, our aim was to generate pedagogical insights through approaching the threatened thrombolites and their environment with curiosity, openness and attentiveness, and framed by perspectives that trouble human exceptionalism and Western dualisms. Guided by Haraway’s notion of ‘staying with the trouble’, we argue this approach to encountering extinction generates insights into learning and living with ecological c...
Tectonics: bringing together artistic practices united by lithic thinking beyond human scales, 2021
A variety of artists today are working with geoaesthetics and/or long-term scales of thinking tha... more A variety of artists today are working with geoaesthetics and/or long-term scales of thinking that relate to geological processes or geological timescales. Volcanism, earthquakes, weathering and/or the stages of change in plate tectonic processes are dealt with directly, or as analogical and metaphorical terrains for wider issues. The artists recognise the large-scale processes that may go backwards or forwards in time at scales that are more-than-human. Tectonic thinking looks at social, ecological, political, and human issues through the lens of ‘deep time’, particularly recognising forces causing change at different scales: from the local and structural to the significant or considerable. It reverses the polarity of human-centred reasoning. Diverse approaches and media are included in the online exhibition. Some creative works explore exchanges of energies or radiation; others work with geo-materiality. Responses include speculations, performance, video, sculpture and site specific works.
Upheavals in social media and communications are overturning education, at the same time, a group... more Upheavals in social media and communications are overturning education, at the same time, a group of art education graduates and their artist lecturers are using creative research to disrupt this turn by visualising the practice of Digital Sabbath. The Digital Sabbath practice aimed to explore the feasibility of switching off from technology and the impact of this practice on the participants, and those around them. The Digital Sabbath and Digital Distraction exhibition results from a creative arts research project involving graduate art teachers and art education lecturers who communicate well visually. The project followed the experiences of nine participants (including the researchers) as they gave up access to digital technologies for a day a week over a three-month period, a practice known as Digital Sabbath (DS). The participants’ narratives (artefacts, journals and interviews) formed the stimulus for visualisations of the Digital Sabbath experience after a pre-intervention survey. Each researcher developed a series of works with participants, documenting the nature of their experiences and affective responses to the process. The researchers are creating a large collaborative piece that documents general themes from the project experience. The artworks produced for this research aim to communicate the findings of the research with a broader audience, and to incite discussion around our use of technology and its effect on our lives. For many participants, the practice was incredibly difficult and small interactions with technology were often discussed as ‘necessary’. Most participants discussed their use of technology, and in particular social media, as an addiction
This paper is about an argument to open a discussion. It positions me in the context of contempor... more This paper is about an argument to open a discussion. It positions me in the context of contemporary Australian ‘Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people’s attachments to land in all their complexity’ (Head, 2000, Nash, 2002). A possible meeting place (Carter, 2013) with ‘[u]nsettling effects and partial understandings . . . more in the spirit of postcolonialism than security and old certainties’ (Nash, 2002)
alking Place: Unfolding Conversations is a collaborative exhibition between Tracy Hill, Monika Lu... more alking Place: Unfolding Conversations is a collaborative exhibition between Tracy Hill, Monika Lukowska, Annette Nykiel, Sarah Robinson, and Jane Whelan that explores the significance of wetlands with particular focus on Lake Walyungup; a shallow, ephemeral salt-lake in the Rockingham area known by the local Noongar people as ‘the place where people talk’. Lake Walyungup is a seemingly forgotten, empty space in the midst of a growing urban community which offers shelter to migratory birds and wildlife. It has a deep history embedded in thrombolite remains, links with the Noongar community and various historical uses by the passing groups of settlers and armed forces. The exhibition interweaves traditional techniques including drawing, bricolage, lithography, etching, and dry point with the digital technologies of drone videos, 3D prints, and Lidar survey scanning in a synthesis of techniques that expand the boundaries of contemporary print. Through multidisciplinary works and collab...
Field working slow making features creative works by artists who are renowned for working with co... more Field working slow making features creative works by artists who are renowned for working with collections of materials (text, image, objects and raw materials) gathered specifically from field-based experiences in non-urban spaces (bush). Their slow making and place making evolves from personal relationships with the WA bush (remote regions and communities, native forests, spinifex country, mine sites and stations) and on processing bush-derived materials and experiences for inquiry
alking Place: Unfolding Conversations is a collaborative exhibition between Tracy Hill, Monika Lu... more alking Place: Unfolding Conversations is a collaborative exhibition between Tracy Hill, Monika Lukowska, Annette Nykiel, Sarah Robinson, and Jane Whelan that explores the significance of wetlands with particular focus on Lake Walyungup; a shallow, ephemeral salt-lake in the Rockingham area known by the local Noongar people as ‘the place where people talk’. Lake Walyungup is a seemingly forgotten, empty space in the midst of a growing urban community which offers shelter to migratory birds and wildlife. It has a deep history embedded in thrombolite remains, links with the Noongar community and various historical uses by the passing groups of settlers and armed forces. The exhibition interweaves traditional techniques including drawing, bricolage, lithography, etching, and dry point with the digital technologies of drone videos, 3D prints, and Lidar survey scanning in a synthesis of techniques that expand the boundaries of contemporary print. Through multidisciplinary works and collab...
This practice-led PhD research investigated alternate forms of articulation to relate stories of ... more This practice-led PhD research investigated alternate forms of articulation to relate stories of place-making, as narrative or object, and added threads to the complex meshwork and herstory of the Country. The research was conducted in ‘The Country’, of the north-eastern Goldfields and Yalgorup Lakes in Western Australia. These two non-urban sites provided unique experiences of the bush, local people’s stories and understandings of time. The research investigated the implications of non-urban spaces as studios in relation to the concepts of place, time and narrative. This research was, in part, experiential and drew on an absorbed embodied awareness of notions of the Country (a place). This was embedded in an ethical onto-epistemology, through the process of piecing together bricolages of seemingly unrelated fragments of methods, conceptual frameworks and materials in simple and complex ways. In making and thinking, gleaned, recycled and repurposed bits and pieces were gathered and ...
The Earth is in the midst of a recent acceleration in the rate of species extinction and the unra... more The Earth is in the midst of a recent acceleration in the rate of species extinction and the unravelling of ecological communities. The authors think with the emerging field of Extinction Studies to explore educational approaches to ecological endangerment and extinction. Using a notion of visiting as ‘curious practice’, we story encounters between the authors, young children and the endangered Noorook Yalgorup-Lake Clifton thrombolites and their ecological community in south-western Australia. These visits were not intended to teach about extinction or the thrombolites. Rather, our aim was to generate pedagogical insights through approaching the threatened thrombolites and their environment with curiosity, openness and attentiveness, and framed by perspectives that trouble human exceptionalism and Western dualisms. Guided by Haraway’s notion of ‘staying with the trouble’, we argue this approach to encountering extinction generates insights into learning and living with ecological c...
Tectonics: bringing together artistic practices united by lithic thinking beyond human scales, 2021
A variety of artists today are working with geoaesthetics and/or long-term scales of thinking tha... more A variety of artists today are working with geoaesthetics and/or long-term scales of thinking that relate to geological processes or geological timescales. Volcanism, earthquakes, weathering and/or the stages of change in plate tectonic processes are dealt with directly, or as analogical and metaphorical terrains for wider issues. The artists recognise the large-scale processes that may go backwards or forwards in time at scales that are more-than-human. Tectonic thinking looks at social, ecological, political, and human issues through the lens of ‘deep time’, particularly recognising forces causing change at different scales: from the local and structural to the significant or considerable. It reverses the polarity of human-centred reasoning. Diverse approaches and media are included in the online exhibition. Some creative works explore exchanges of energies or radiation; others work with geo-materiality. Responses include speculations, performance, video, sculpture and site specific works.
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