Research projects and publications

The paper describes a pedagogical model developed at LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore for use within the local Arts and Arts Education sector. A need was discovered in Singapore for a holistic pedagogical model that could be used to teach practicing artists who spend considerable time teaching in public and private schools, yet maintain their Arts practice. The model addresses multiple art forms simultaneously through practices that are tailored for a heterogeneous educational setting yet encompasses a unified perspective. New knowledge is created with students from a heterogeneous setting when they share creative theories from within their own arts discipline. Responding to the common core of the program from various backgrounds provides an opportunity for collaborative, crossdisciplinary, and interdisciplinary work. This new knowledge is shared knowledge, and is created as the students continue to move the boundaries of their scholarly study to include theory and practice from other arts disciplines. Case examples from the program at LASALLE College of the Arts as well examples from the field of arts education in Singapore will be presented to show how both commonalities as well as differences in pedagogical practice are used in the model to foster collaboration, cross-arts communication, and to create new methodology within research and practice.

Citation:
Watkins, Kie. "Heterogeneous Pedagogy: A Model for Tertiary Teaching and Learning across Arts Disciplines." Journal of Beijing Dance Academy, vol. 26, no. 03, 2017, pp. 111-115.

This paper takes as a point of departure, Rosalind Krauss' essay 'The Photographic Conditions of Surrealism', in which she describes the relationship between photography's indexical function and its position as the example par excellence of Surrealist artistic practice. In the same way, this paper examines changing attitudes in Thailand towards photography's artistic status and presumed indexicality as paradigmatic examples of a transformation from the modern to the contemporary. Photography's crucial role in this shift is located in key alterations to the medium's functions and perceptions of its artistic legitimacy. On the one hand, the acceptance of photography as an art form reflects developments in imbricated networks of legitimation, occurring with the rise of international education and exhibition opportunities in the post-Cold War period. On the other hand, the conditions of photography itself, or rather its ontology, produce a conceptualisation of the contemporary as manifested in a desire for proximity with difference. In examining works by a number of contemporary Thai artists, I argue that photography's visualisation of the 'optical unconscious' allows one to fulfil this desire for contemporaneity, while also pointing to the limits of representation as a means of asserting coevality.

Citation:
Veal, Clare Elisabeth. "The Photographic Conditions of Contemporary Thai Art." Journal of Taipei Fine Arts Museum, vol. 34, no. 11, 2017.

In this paper, we discuss the potential of ordinary objects acting as human computer interfaces with an Inertial Measurement Unit, the Twiz, to capture a body’s orientation and acceleration. The motivation behind this research is to develop a toolkit that enables end users to quickly prototype custom interfaces for artistic expressions through movement. Through an iterative design process, we have enhanced existing technical implementations such as wireless data transfer, battery lifespan, two-way communication and data analysis including machine-learning techniques. We conducted object-making sessions and developed software prototypes for audio and visual feedback. We explored a range of experiments related to visual arts, dance, and music by attaching the Twiz to different types of objects to allow users to carry out impromptu interactions. As a result of this process we have gained a better understand of an object’s expressive potential whilst capturing and analyzing its movement.    

Citation:
Schlegel, Andreas, and Cedric Honnet. “Digital Oxymorons: From Ordinary to Expressive Objects Using Tiny Wireless IMUs.” 4th International Conference on Movement Computing, 28-30 June 2017, New York, edited by Kiona Niehaus, Association for Computing Machineries, 2017, doi: 10.1145/3077981.3078040.

There is no history of poetry without love poetry, and there is no history of media without pornography. After his first collection of poems received a starred review from Quill & Quire, Darryl Whetter turned his attention from evolution in the natural world to the co-evolution of love, sex and media. Urging readers to "fill the tiny / unmade bed of the search box," these alluring poems build on radically changing communication technologies to explore a new sexuality that does (and does not) dare to tweet its name. Here, finally, is the language of digital love.

Citation:
Whetter, Darryl. Search Box Bed. Palimpsest Press, 2017.