Collaborative Art Research Articles

Art, science and inclusion: multisensory Sciart of immunology for blind, low-vision and diverse-needs audiences.

Art is a powerful tool for conveying scientific discovery. Despite the perceived gap between art and science, as highlighted by CP Snow and others, examples of art communicating science can be found in the ancient world, the Renaissance and contemporary data visualization, demonstrating an enduring and historic connection. However, much of science relies on visual elements, excluding those with blindness, low vision and diverse needs, resulting in their low representation in STEM discourse. This paper introduces a novel science and art collaboration in the form of an exhibition program exploring the concepts of Immunology and Biomedicine to blind and vision-impaired audiences, capitalizing on the lived experience of a legally blind artist. Employing multisensory design, art and co-creation methodologies, it transcends traditional vision-based science communication, showcasing the potential for multisensory art to bridge the gap at the intersection of science and inclusion.

Interdisciplinary approaches between physics and art using the example of optical experiments and artistic light installations

The disciplines of physics and art are often seen as antithetical in social and educational contexts. However, in recent years, STEAM education has promoted the collaboration of art and STEM. Linking the subjects together offers a wide range of learning opportunities. For example, the design of (video) light installations can develop both artistic and physical skills. Such a teaching approach allows to address different types of interests within the same lesson. In this article, two basic ways of meaningfully combining artistic and physical topics are presented: ‘STEAM design’ and ‘STEAM explanation’. The approaches are described using the example of teaching optics at secondary school level, but in principle they can be applied to other grade levels or physical subjects.

Lubaina Himid

Dr Omar Kholeif maps out the life and practice of the path-breaking British-artist, Lubaina Himid RA CBE (born, Zanzibar 1954) through a considered engagement of her multivalent creative output—in visual art, writing, and exhibition-making. A leading figure in the British Black Arts Movement, Himid is renowned for her narrative paintings, which interrogate historical representations of Black people’s creativity—from the eighteenth century to the present day. Painted canvasses, cut-out figures, drawers, and found carts find home in exhibitions that reveal the artist’s engagement with opera, performance, and architecture. Kholeif notes that Himid’s expressions have heralded a distinct re-formulation of Black visuality, achieved through a re-imagining of Black life—framed through the lens of the present. In “Do You Want an Easy Life?” Kholeif pays special attention to the artist’s collaborative art making and argues that through these forays that Himid is concerned with “making space” for what official record and history often elides. Kholeif argues that Himid’s artistic realm is constructed through a form of “female worlding” that presages an intertextual palette for art and its history—one which demands crucial revision.

Developing relational resilience in the midst of conflict

AbstractThis article presents an approach to encounter group interventions in the midst of protracted, entrenched conflict, that has relational resilience as its focus. Through a constructionist grounded theory analysis, interviews with 31 alumni of the Artsbridge program from 2008 through 2019, former staff, and parents of alumni, were analyzed in order to explore how they understand their experience of the Artsbridge program and the impact it has had on their lives. This analysis of interviews led to the primary theme of relational resilience. The Artsbridge model of relational resilience will be introduced. While many programs exist that work with youth in conflict, the Artsbridge program is unique in its use of Transformative Reflecting Dialogue, artistic modalities, and collaborative art. Through decades of violence and separation, Israeli and Palestinian narratives have become negatively interdependent and mutually exclusive. Artsbridge methodology encourages the development of more inclusive narratives and an appreciation of and tolerance for complexity. The research discussed in this article suggests that encouraging the development of relational resilience may lead to more constructive and sustainable outcomes when working within communities continuing to live in the midst of intractable conflict.

Excellent Case of Building A "School-land" Co-construction and Sharing Pattern Network of School Aesthetic Education and Regional Culture

With the development of computer science, some of the excellence artworks of Henan Provence are very popular through network dissemination. To achieve the transformation of Henan cultural brand from "parts" to "whole" and from "internet celebrity" to "long-lasting", it is necessary to establish an active inheritance mechanism network for Henan regional cultural resources and enhance the endogenous and innovative capabilities of traditional regional culture. The modern school aesthetic education system that runs through all stages has a natural advantage in incubating regional cultural communities. However, in reality, the aesthetic and spiritual attributes shared by school aesthetic education and regional culture have not been sufficiently valued, and the connection between the two lacks active policy design and mechanism innovation. Through Literature, field research and interviewing professors, artists and persons in charge of regional culture, the Department of Public Art Education at Zhengzhou University of Aeronautics has recognized the value of integrating school aesthetic education with regional culture in terms of cultivating students and building a rich cultural life. Leveraging their connections with social artist groups and individuals online and offline, who have conducted research on the ecological conditions of Zhengzhou's art districts, intangible cultural heritage, and the current status and issues of various school aesthetic education programs in the province through various ways. The working mechanisms and platforms have been establishment online and offline. The establishment of a pattern of co-construction and sharing of art education and regional culture network in the school is essentially a practical and methodological issue. Some plans have been made for the future. Research has found that for school aesthetic education, curriculum, teaching staff, and internal and external collaborative mechanisms are key points for the reform and development of aesthetic education. Schools aesthetic education curriculum system should integrate regional culture from multiple dimensions with network. A collaborative art education framework should be formed which integrates social and cultural resources at the regional level.

Inclusive Education through the Lens of Diversity: A Case Study in an Arts School with a Focus on Chinese Students

The purpose of this research is to determine the influence of a collaborative art project between a museum and a public school on the process of inclusion and involvement of Chinese children and their families. This qualitative study is based on 9 months of observation of Art-Based Project (ABP) activities in the school and the museum, as well as interviews with parents, museum technicians, and instructors. The findings imply that the assimilation paradigm causes family separation among immigrants, which may be one reason for the high dropout rate in this population. As a result, the first technique for including immigrant children is to assist their parents. The Tandem Project, which employs the arts education model developed by the school and the museum: ABP, and the Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) included in this art project have a positive impact on Chinese children's language ability, participation in school activities, furthermore, children's inclusion and family involvement has been improved.

Learning to navigate in the unknown: attuning to affordances in artist visits in schools

ABSTRACT Artist visits have become a common means of delivering arts education in schools; however, teacher education insufficiently prepares student teachers to use the benefits of art projects for teaching and learning. In this conceptual paper, I contribute to an understanding of what capacities are necessary for future teachers to engage in artist visits. I shed light on the fundamental capacity to recognise the affordances that arise in the sociomaterial environment produced through artist visits. By elucidating how affordances are perceived, I illustrate how teacher education can design educational encounters that enable student teachers to attune and attend to affordances through embodied experiences with the ‘unknown’. This approach involves a shift from generic knowledge and skills to ways of being, a shift that is valuable not only for teacher – artist collaborations but also for interprofessional collaboration and professional practice in general.

Dorsal Practices—Towards a Back-Oriented Being-in-the-World

Dorsal Practices is a process-based, interdisciplinary artistic collaboration between choreographer Katrina Brown and writer–artist Emma Cocker. This research enquiry explores the notion of dorsality and the cultivation of a back-oriented awareness in relation to how we as sentient bodies orientate to the self, others (human, more-than-human), and interconnected world. Since 2021, Dorsal Practices has unfolded through the interrelation of three fields of experimental, embodied research practice: movement-based practices, conversation practices, and experimental reading practices. Dorsal Practices explores how the tilt or inclination towards dorsal (dis)orientation might enable new modes of thinking–perceiving and being–with, and more connected, sustainable ways of living and aliveness based on the reciprocal, entangled relationship between self/environment. We ask: How does the cultivation of a back-oriented awareness and attitude shape and inform our embodied, affective, and relational experience of being-in-the-world? Rather than a mode of withdrawal, of turning one’s back, how might a back-leaning orientation support an open, receptive ethics of relation? Central to this enquiry is an attempt to explore how different linguistic practices might be developed in fidelity to the embodied experiences of dorsality: how the experiences of listening, languaging, even thinking, might be shaped differently through this embodied tilt of awareness and attention towards the back.

Youth theatre and the climate crisis in Australia: the role of ‘unmediatised liveness’ in performing recovery, resistance, and survival

ABSTRACT This paper presents the provocation that ‘unmediatised liveness', or experiences not filtered through digital technology, is vital to performances that promote recovery, resistance, and survival among young people in response to the climate crisis. Our provocation draws from interviews conducted with youth theatre and performance practitioners in Australia whose work addresses the climate crisis holistically across disaster preparedness, first response, disaster recovery, and climate activism. We argue that while mediatised interactions remain a critical element of contemporary youth culture and performance, unmediatised co-presence, artistic collaboration, community action, and activism are crucial in the high-stakes context of Australia’s climate crisis.

Transdisciplinary and arts-centred approaches to stewardship and sustainability of urban nature

This paper explores case studies of how artists working with scientists and land managers affiliated with the Urban Field Station Collaborative Arts Program (UFS Arts) are fostering new relations of care with urban nature and thereby informing landscape decisions. The ‘wicked’ problems related to sustainability demand novel, holistic approaches to transformation that engage multiple ways of knowing. We present 4 examples from UFS Arts by triangulating data across programmatic documentation, evaluation, and ethnographic materials from 2016-present. Matthew López-Jensen’s Tree Love and Nikki Lindt’s Underground Sound Project sensitise us to the capacities of trees and forests through image and sound. Mary Mattingly’s Swale is a floating food forest that enacts new forms of community stewardship. The exhibition Who Takes Care of New York? maps the stories and practices of civic environmental groups. Three themes in these works suggest opportunities for transformation throughout the knowledge production cycle: posing novel questions, engaging multiple methodologies, and communicating ideas with the public. Through these transdisciplinary works, we learn things we could not have learned via traditional disciplinary or interdisciplinary work and assert that stewardship offers a pathway towards sustainability transforming management practices and landscape decisions by reshaping our relationships to community and the land.

Primitive way country come look inside

Abstract A disabled poet with Rett syndrome and a disabled performing artist with type 1 diabetes document their 12-month artistic collaboration to illuminate ground-time: the nonverbal, expressive dynamics of embodied communication. Five “communication moments” between the artists (documented in writing, video, and photo) are described. Potentials and limitations of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) technologies, specifically Tobii Dynavox eye-tracking technology and Communicator 5, are discussed. Additionally, the authors question the clinical diagnostic category of “intellectual disability” on the grounds of disability justice, decolonial science, and philosophy. Communication-assistive technology platform developers are challenged to consider relational embodiment as the foundation of communication in design decisions regarding platform function. Technologies should facilitate improvisation and nonlinear expression—verbal and nonverbal— while maintaining freedom of nondisclosure. The right to opacity in communication is also discussed.

Migrant women becoming ‘stronger together’ through the arts: Creating Ground

In this article we introduce Creating Ground, a not-for-profit organisation that works with women from migrant backgrounds to promote intersectional anti-racist cross-cultural awareness, learning and sharing across different communities in South East London through collaborative arts and educational projects. We reflect on our use of participatory arts, social action and training to bring migrant women together, improve wellbeing and create change for these women at a personal and a community level. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown periods we were forced to move much of our activities and support online. We share how being together in such a difficult time helped us to become stronger together and decide to take action to change intersecting unjust situations that the women encountered in their everyday lives. The women shared common experiences around the negative impact of the hostile environment, and we used this policy as a starting point to decide to tell our stories through the arts (specifically using metaphors in film-making and participatory theatre), and to campaign. We present the campaigns we are working on: poor condition of temporary accommodation for families, and we discuss how our use of creative arts and participatory methods allow us to have agency and power to become leaders, create change and tell our stories from our perspectives. Being a migrant is only a small part of our intersectional identities. We are much more. We are so many things and among everything we are leaders, change makers and stronger together.

Painting and Socializing COVID-19 Dreams

Abstract: A catastrophic worldwide trauma occurred with the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, which caused changes in the content of dreams worldwide. In response to this, the science art collaboration DreamsID (Dreams Interpreted and Drawn; Dreams Illustrated and Discussed) held dream salons online, from March to July 2020, to explore the effects of the pandemic on the dreams of healthcare professionals and keyworkers. In each salon a worldwide audience discussed the dream of a key worker, and the dream was painted simultaneously so as to return the dream to a visual form. Three of these dreams are described here. Each is shown to reflect metaphorically the adverse circumstances of the pandemic. The painting of each dream is reproduced, with feedback from each dreamer about this process. This article shows how, through discussion with others, the socialization of the dream results in an artistic intervention and a collaborative act of creativity. It concludes that the dream salon, as a forum, combines the dream and rational waking life of the dreamer, one of the key aims of Surrealism.

Playing well with others: lessons from theatre for the health professions about collaboration, creativity and community

Despite collaboration among different professions being recognized as fundamentally important to contemporary and future healthcare practice, the concept is woefully undertheorized. This has implications for how health professions educators might best introduce students to interprofessional collaboration and support their transition into interprofessional, collaborative workplaces. To address this, we engage in a conceptual analysis of published collaborative, interprofessional practices and conceptual understandings in theatre, as a highly collaborative art form and industry, to advance thinking in the health professions, specifically to inform interprofessional education. Our analysis advances a conceptualization of collaboration that takes place within a work culture of creativity and community, that includes four modes of collaboration, or the ways theatre practitioners collaborate, by: (1) paying attention to and traversing roles and hierarchies; (2) engaging in reciprocal listening and challenging of others; (3) developing trust and communication, and; (4) navigating uncertainty, risk and failure. We conclude by inviting those working in the health professions to consider what might be gleaned from our conceptualization, where the embodied and human-centred aspects of working together are attended to alongside structural and organizational aspects.

Artists’ books as a qualitative research methodology in multidisciplinary contexts

This practitioner piece outlines a novel method for practice-based research centred on the production of artists’ books. There is growing evidence for the benefits of artists publishing as an alternative route to disseminating academic research (see Bodman, ‘Towards a community of artists’ books’, 2019; Taylor, ‘The artist’s book as collaborative art practice’, 2017; Vieth, ‘The artist’s book challenges academic convention’, 2006). However, there is only limited research to help understand how the unique qualities of the artist’s book as a medium – and the processes and methods used in its creation – can be positioned to scaffold a process of mediating knowledge and hierarchies of practices. The insights from the study have significant benefits beyond art and design where they can be useful in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) contexts, especially where this involves diverse multidisciplinary groups and specialist/non-specialist participants. The research focused on designing a practice-based method which positions the artist’s book edition as a visual verbatim facsimile. The project’s initiating concept and conceptual anchor centred on the etymology of the prefix ‘re’. As a facsimile, each iterative edition revisits, reuses and reassembles, making visible the traces of individual interpretations and interventions as well as the technologies and materials deployed in the process of collaboration. As shown through the study, the method proposed offers an inclusive collaborative process where progressively more complex relationships are formed and synthesized through subsequent editions. A series of four iterative editions were developed through the study, each following a cyclical method involving three phases: (1) transcription and documentation; (2) constellation and translation; and (3) publication.

Choreographing Social Memories: Healing and Collective Imagining in Eiko Otake and Wen Hui’s Artistic Collaboration

This article explores the first-time choreographic collaboration between Eiko Otake, a renowned Japanese dance artist, and Wen Hui, a celebrated Chinese choreographer and filmmaker, which took place in mainland China in January of 2020. The outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan compelled Otake to return to the US prematurely, and the subsequent global pandemic led the two artists to continue working together through the computer screen. Constructed from daily footage of Wen and Otake moving together, conversing about their personal histories and choreographic works, and visiting the Nanjing Massacre Memorial, the resulting documentary film No Rule Is Our Rule (2023, 74 min) offers a poignant portrayal of their creative process, which places utmost importance on honesty and openness. Through an in-depth analysis of their artistic exploration presented through the film, the article examines how their collaborative endeavor which prioritizes corporeal interaction and unfiltered dialogues can be conceived as a form of mediated social choreography. I argue that their embodied methodology, grounded in the interweaving of personal and social memories, points to the potential for collective healing from the tension and trauma in Sino-Japanese history and promotes collective imagining through intercultural dialogues.

Claude Chamber

Proto-photographic and proto-cinematic technologies are an unending source of inspiration for a visual artist. We want to consider the case of an eighteenth-century optical device, the Claude mirror, as a starting point for an artistic collaboration.
 The Claude mirror is a small black convex mirror named after the painter Claude Lorrain and used by late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century painters and travellers for viewing landscapes. The dark mirror surface produces an image with a limited tonal range, allowing the viewer to look at the environment as if it were a painting. A famous Thomas Gainsborough drawing shows a man seated on a bank with a sketchbook on his lap and holding an oval mirror propped against a tree branch (Gainsborough, 1750-55).
 In spring 2019, in a flash of joint inspiration, we conceived a method of combining aspects of our artistic processes: Salla’s moving image and Laura’s printmaking practice. For 18 months, we captured photographic time-lapse sequences of everyday views from the backyards of our studios, residencies, and homes as reflections on the surface of copper plates installed in the environment (Myllylä and Vainikka, 2021). In the resulting installation, titled Claude Chamber, we projected the video sequences on the gallery space, reflected via the same mirror surfaces, and the projected images became distorted and spatial.
 We were intrigued by this optical device, in which characteristics of photography and printmaking meet. One can think of a Claude glass as a predecessor of the camera viewfinder, an early photographic gesture. It can also be viewed as a printing plate, a matrix reflecting a view. In a traditional printing plate, the image is attached or fastens itself onto the surface of the plate; in our installation, the image is transient and moving.

Creating a Role for Light: A Lighting Design Teaching Method Based on Stanislavsky

ABSTRACT The creative role of stage lighting is increasingly appreciated in contemporary theatre practice. However, aesthetic sensibility seems harder to teach than technology. This essay focuses on lighting design students and a learning journey inspired by Konstantin Stanislavsky. According to Scott Palmer, “[Stanislavsky’s] use of light at the Moscow Art Theatre made a fundamental contribution to the evolution of his acting method.” The connection between Stanislavsky’s work with light and the methods used by pioneers in the field of lighting design including Adolphe Appia, Edward Gordon Craig, Stanley McCandless, and Jean Rosenthal is examined. Beyond purely practical considerations, such as visibility and smooth transitions between the scenes, this essay sheds light on how Stanislavsky’s method can be used to help young aspiring lighting designers conceive the dramaturgical role of light. A proposal for a teaching approach is presented, using Stanislavsky’s basic techniques as an example. From the analysis of the text and the given circumstances to the magic “if,” which takes the actor into the world of the play, Stanislavsky’s approach can easily be applied to the creative process of a contemporary lighting designer. The interpretation of Stanislavsky’s work from a lighting designer’s perspective also leads to useful conclusions about the art of collaboration in the performing arts.

에르메스 아트 컬래버레이션 쇼윈도 디스플레이 표현 특성 연구

The purpose of this study is to explore the constituent elements and expressive characteristics of the luxury fashion brand Hermès' show window display in collaboration with artists using theoretical exploration and case analysis methods. The research primarily analyzes globally representative Hermès window display cases in major cities after 2021, revealing differences in artistic collaboration and visual representation between Eastern and Western markets. The results show that collaborations in the Eastern market tend to reflect regional cultural characteristics, while the Western market focuses more on internationalized artistic collaborations. Despite stylistic differences, both emphasize the presentation of scarcity, uniqueness, and aesthetics. Additionally, the study finds that the Eastern market places a stronger emphasis on the symbolic and interactive aspects of Hermès' artistic collaboration window displays. This research not only unveils new trends in luxury brand art marketing strategies but also provides an important perspective for understanding and predicting future market developments.

Reflexivity in Aesthetic Situation Management

Abstract The article deals with reflexivity in the context of the aesthetic situation from two perspectives: self-management and management of the components in the aesthetic situation. All considerations are based on the theory of the aesthetic situation (Gołaszewska, 1984), transcribed into the management field (Szostak, 2023a) with the use of a metaphor of an organisation as a work of art (Szostak & Sułkowski, 2020). Emphasis on reflexivity in specific components of the aesthetic situation – especially the creator and the recipient perspectives – brings a new light into the process of self-awareness and prediction of potential consequences of activities before their appearance. The following issues are addressed by exploring the intersection between reflexivity and aesthetic situation management: aesthetic decision-making, reception process, cultural and social contexts, transcending aesthetic boundaries, artistic collaboration, ethical considerations, self-critique, and historical context.