Visual Arts Research Articles

Unveiling the Canvas: Sustainable Integration of AI in Visual Art Education

The rapid advancement of technology is transforming the landscape of art education, fostering a new era of creativity and learning with a focus on sustainability. By optimizing resources and reducing the reliance on physical materials, AI-supported art education enhances sustainability, broadens accessibility, and lowers environmental impacts. Despite some research on the application of smart tools in art education, there remains a gap in robust evidence supporting their effectiveness and long-term impact. This study undertakes an in-depth examination of the intersection of sustainable technologies, pedagogical theories, and assessment methods within visual art education. By reviewing 685 research articles from the past decade, we ultimately filtered them down to 36 completely relevant studies that illuminate the technological advancements in teaching visual art. Our analysis focuses on emerging trends, the theoretical frameworks underpinning learning, hardware platforms, application categories, and dependent variables used to assess the impact on sustainability. Our findings indicate that the use of technology in art education is still in its nascent stages, yet it holds significant potential for sustainable development. These insights are crucial for developers and educators, offering guidance on creating user-friendly, interactive, and sustainable art education programs that enhance student comprehension and engagement beyond the current offerings.

The effects of parent and child participation in visual art activities on the attachment and well-being of young children: A mixed-methods systematic review.

The effects of parent and child participation in visual art activities on the attachment and well-being of young children: A mixed-methods systematic review.

The Role of New Instruments in the Musical Works of Composers/Sound Artists in Indonesia

ABSTRACT Since the 1980s, Indonesian sound artists/composers have been creating new instruments as part of their compositional work. Some of them invented new instruments to expand the tradition, while others used their new instruments to address current political issues in their communities. This phenomenon prompted me to investigate and analyse their works, which led to two conclusions. First, some sound artists/composers create new musical instruments to expand traditions, introduce new contexts and create their desired sound worlds. Second, the new musical instruments they create also act as visual art, serving as symbolic representations of society's problems.

Systematic Visual Documentation of the Mah Meri Tribe's Cultural Practices

The purpose of photography is identical to that of language and writing. Photography's operation must be evaluated in light of various explanatory, interpretative, and theoretical linguistic assertions due to visual art's multifaceted and multifunctional nature. In documentary photography, people, situations, objects, and events are depicted straightforwardly and narratively; This paper first gives a brief overview of the history and facts related to the beliefs and culture of the Mah Meri tribe in Peninsular Malaysia in photo documentary reporting. The primary purpose of this research is to conduct a thorough analysis of cultural traditions and environmentalist ideals. Accordingly, Mah Meri requires systematic and organized visual data, and the collection of qualitative data is essential. In a phased study, ethnomethodological techniques were used to collect periodic primary data. Throughout this systematic documentation procedure, more time was needed to collect in-depth information about personal lifestyles and religious practices. In conclusion, this research contributes to the modern accessibility of digital data sources by achieving an understanding of the Mah Meri tribe through the discovery and deconstruction of traditional beliefs unknown to the public.

Symbolic Interpretations of Mah Meri Visual Art: A Conceptual Approach Using Peirce’s Semiotic Theory

This study examines the visual art heritage of the Mah Meri tribe through a semiotic analysis. Utilizing Charles Sanders Peirce's Semiotic Theory as the foundational framework, the research decodes the symbolism embedded in Mah Meri's artistic expressions. The aim is to understand and document the deep meanings behind these symbols and their impact on the cultural identity and historical narratives of the Mah Meri tribe. An ethnographic approach is employed for data collection, including field observations, photographic and videographic documentation, and qualitative interviews with community members. The findings reveal that Mah Meri's art is rich in symbolic meanings that reflect the tribe's cultural identity and history. The study also highlights the negative effects of modernization on traditional art forms, necessitating urgent preservation efforts. This research makes significant contributions to the field of visual anthropology by emphasizing the importance of semiotic analysis in understanding and preserving indigenous art. It calls for increased efforts in documenting and protecting the visual heritage of the Mah Meri tribe to ensure its transmission to future generations.

Thinking Geomedia Futures: Indigenous Futurisms, Afrofuturisms, and Counter-Mediations of Temporality, Spatiality, and Digitality

For critical scholars, abiding concerns about geomedia futures have included utopian–dystopian formulations of geomedia in popular culture and governance, the deep harms and inequalities that inevitably flow from technocapitalist geomedia regimes, and the urgent need for a plurality of counter-normative ways of theorizing and engaging geomedia. Toward these concerns, I argue here that Indigenous futurism and Afrofuturism hold vital conceptual and analytic insights for thinking and realizing geomedia futures that assemble time, space, and digitality in just and life-sustaining ways. Here, I briefly explore work by geographers, historians, and digital studies scholars that has engaged Indigenous and Black feminist speculative traditions to critique the structural, embodied, and emplaced violence of racial capitalist and settler colonial histories, chronopolitics, and futures. The minoritarian futures expressed and circulated through speculative fiction, visual arts, everyday digital practices, and technocultures by structurally-oppressed groups for whom the future has never been taken for granted hold vital conceptual and analytical insights for thinking geomedia futures beyond the limits of its technocapitalist roots and present structures.

Active Visual Art Therapy and Health Outcomes

Art therapy has a long-standing tradition in patient treatment. As scientific interest in its use has recently grown, a comprehensive assessment of active visual art therapy is crucial to understanding its potential benefits. To assess the association of active visual art therapy with health outcomes across patient groups and comparators. The systematic literature search included the Cochrane Library, Embase, MEDLINE, CINAHL, ERIC, American Psychological Association PsycArticles, American Psychological Association PsycInfo, PSYNDEX, the German Clinical Trials Register, and ClinicalTrials.gov. No filters regarding language were applied. The search covered all dates before March 2021. Data analysis was conducted from April 24 to September 8, 2023. Randomized clinical trials with any type of patient population comparing the intervention with any control not using active visual art therapy were included. Two researchers independently screened the abstracts and full texts. Data extraction followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, and study quality was evaluated using the Cochrane Risk of Bias tool. Data were synthesized using narrative summaries, forest plots, and random effects meta-analyses. In line with the protocol, all outcome measures of the included studies were extracted. The search identified 3104 records, of which 356 outcomes of 69 studies were included, with a total of approximately 4200 participants, aged 4 to 96 years, in the review. The meta-analyses included 50 studies and 217 outcomes of 2766 participants. Treatment indications included mental, neurological, and other somatic disorders, and prevention. Most outcome measures focused on depression, anxiety, self-esteem, social adjustment, and quality of life. Art therapy was associated with an improvement in 18% of the 217 outcomes compared with the controls (1%), while 81% showed no improvement. The standardized mean difference in the change from baseline of the meta-analyses of 0.38 (95% CI, 0.26-0.51) and posttest analysis of 0.19 (95% CI, 0.12-0.26) also indicated an improvement of outcomes associated with art therapy. Overall study quality was low. In this systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials, visual art therapy was associated with therapeutic benefits for some outcomes, although most studies were of low quality. Further good-quality studies are needed to provide additional insights for its best possible integration into routine care.

Visualizing Silenced Histories of School Segregation: Visual Arts, Social Studies, and Drama-Integrated Lessons Using Three-Dimensional Printing

Visualizing Silenced Histories of School Segregation: Visual Arts, Social Studies, and Drama-Integrated Lessons Using Three-Dimensional Printing

“When I go back to painting, I am ‘Alice in Wonderland”: older women coping with age-related crises through visual artmaking

ABSTRACT Background The creative process of visual artmaking provides an opportunity for older women to express themselves and explore their emotions, thoughts, and experiences. This study examined the roles of visual artmaking in older women’s lives in general and in relation to the ongoing challenges of aging. Methods The sample was composed of 21 Israeli women aged 60-90, who indicated that they produced visual artworks on an ongoing basis. The participants’ artworks were collected, and semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted. Results A thematic analysis of the interviews revealed 4 themes: visual artmaking to address the challenges of older women’s lives, artwork as a framework for doing, visual artmaking to support the wellbeing of older women, artwork as channel of communication and stronger ties with family members. Conclusions The findings contribute to a better understanding of the roles of visual art in older women’s lives, especially in times of crisis.

Influence of Personal, Psychofunctional Qualities Students for the Formation of Professional Artistic Skills

Problem and goal. The article presents materials from a study of the problem of the influence of personal, psychofunctional qualities of students on the effectiveness of the formation of professional skills in visual activity. The study of the innate psycho-functional inclinations of perceptual perception on the process of forming students’ imaginative thinking makes it possible to improve the quality of learning and effectively implement the acquired skills to create an artistic image. The development of students’ creative abilities in the process of professional training allows them to develop an interest in independent intellectual activity and improve professional skills in creative activities. The purpose of the article is to study the influence of personal, psychofunctional qualities of students in the “Design” direction on the formation of professional skills in visual arts. Methodology. The study used methods for assessing the creative thinking of students: Personal creative characteristics of F. Williams (1980), E. E. Tunik. Self-organization of activities Mandrikova E. Yu. Assessment of students’ mastery of graphic skills was carried out according to generally accepted criteria for visual activity. The results obtained were processed by methods of mathematical statistics using the software package “Statistica 10.0 for Windows”. Studying the problem of developing the creative potential of the innate, creative inclinations of the individual allows us to solve the problem of developing professional skills in visual arts. The results of the study indicate that the formation of professional skills in visual arts is determined by individual, innate inclinations of creative thinking; imagination, curiosity, the ability to find new solutions and apply complex techniques when performing a drawing. At the same time, determination in combination with self-organization of educational activities is the basis for the effective development of artistic and professional skills. Conclusion. As a result of the study, it was found that the effectiveness of the formation of professional skills in visual arts among students is determined by the innate inclinations of creative thinking: purposefulness, focus on the present, attentive attitude to the technique of representation, in combination with self-organization of educational activities, such as a necessary condition for the effectiveness of mastering professional skills, at the same time, for students with a dominant, passive, sensory-emotional perception of the world around them, orderliness and perseverance, as indicators of self-organization of activity, have a relatively subjective nature of application in the process of visual activity.

In control but uninspired: Displays of artist self‐control undermine perceptions of creativity

AbstractPrevious research highlighted the interpersonal benefits of self‐control in professional contexts: People prefer high self‐control individuals as work or study partners and expect them to perform better than low self‐control individuals. We show that these benefits of self‐control reverse in the artistic domain. Results of one pilot study and five preregistered online experiments (N = 1644) reveal that artists with high (vs. low) self‐control are perceived as less creative. This effect replicates across various artistic domains (visual art, music, poetry, screenwriting), holds for both male and female artists and can be explained by perceptions of lower experiential processing, which is considered indispensable for creativity. However, art created by high (vs. low) self‐control artists is ascribed higher market value due to stronger attributions of productivity. These findings provide novel insights into the social perception of self‐control and contribute to the understudied topic of the downsides of self‐control as well as to the literature on lay theories of creativity.

To Render a Black World

Abstract: This essay takes Kevin Quashie’s formulation of a black world as the summons and seeding of my engagement with Barry Jenkins’s filmic adaptation of James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk to speculate upon how a black world might be rendered in visual, multimedia, and cinematic arts. To do so, I reckon with the inherent dangers of black visuality, and of black publicness, within a carceral landscape saturated by ever more invasive, data-driven biometric technologies of surveillance and penal capture. My critical engagement with Jenkins attends to how his evasive and deconstructive cinematic experiments enact a mode of black poesis in line with Quashie’s formulation of a black world in poetry. In so doing, they undermine the constancy (and presumed transparency) of black visuality, along with its affiliated perils in a racist carceral society. Ultimately, this essay theorizes how black visual arts innovate expressive techniques, within a visual field structured by the antiblack semiotics of epidermalization and spectacularization, to render our world in everyday, living black splendor.

Symbols of Resistance and Transformation in Nigerian Collage Art

This paper explores the dynamic role of collage art in Nigerian cultural and political discourse, focusing on how artists employ various symbols and motifs to navigate and critique post-colonial themes. By analyzing artworks that integrate both traditional and contemporary materials, the study highlights how these pieces reflect and influence perceptions of cultural identity, resistance, transformation, and societal progress. Through detailed examinations of specific artworks, the paper demonstrates how Nigerian collage artists articulate issues of colonial legacy, identity reaffirmation, and socio-political challenges. Furthermore, it discusses the broader cultural impact of these artworks, showing how they foster public dialogue and inspire community actions that address ongoing post-colonial challenges. This study underscores the power of visual art as a medium for social reflection and change, contributing significantly to both academic and cultural discussions about post-colonialism in Nigeria.

Visual Representation of Cross-Cultural Adaptation through Lifestyles in Georgette Chen's Paintings

This study aims to analyse, understand and interpret the visual representation of cross-cultural adaptation and its symbolic information in Georgette Chen's paintings. Based on the conceptual framework model created in this study, the target is deeply studied using relevant concepts combined with the qualitative research case study method. The analysis results show that cross-cultural adaptation in Georgette Chen's paintings is a symbol that expresses the desire for a new identity and nostalgia for the old culture, which also reflects the characteristics of different stages in the process of cross-cultural adaptation. The study concluded that the oeuvre of Georgette Chen provides a profound insight into the intricate process of cross-cultural adaptation, vividly embodied through incorporating various cultural elements. This study contributes to the broader discourse on the intersection of Visual Arts and Cross-Cultural Adaptation. It will benefit artists, researchers, and scholars interested in studying this area.

The Representation of Urban Work in China’s Modern Boneless Paintings

In 1979, China began to implement the policy of "reform and opening up", which has since then embarked on the path of rapid development and modernization. After "reform and opening up" drove economic development, the urbanization process also accelerated, and cultural transformation also drove innovation in the representation of Chinese visual arts. This study aims to investigate, study, and explain how urbanization is reflected in modern Chinese boneless paintings under the background of "reform and opening up". Using qualitative research as research strategy, through observation, interviews and documents as techniques of collecting data, this reseacrh tries to interpret the symbolism, meaning and value of the symbols of urbanization representation in modern Chinese boneless paintings. The research results prove that modern Chinese boneless paintings reflect people's living conditions and various social problems after the "reform and opening up". All these problems come from the social changes that have occurred in China during the process of urbanization, and are expressed through the unique painting language of modern Chinese boneless paintings. On the one hand, these painting languages reflect the progress and changes brought about by "reform and opening up" to modern Chinese painting; on the other hand, they also reflect the concern and deep meaning of modern Chinese boneless paintings for current social phenomena.

The Representation of Urban Modernization in Modern Chinese Paintings

China's "reform and opening up" has driven economic development and promoted urban modernization. At the same time, cultural transformation has brought about changes in the themes of Chinese visual art. This study aims to investigate, study, and explain how urban modernization is represented in modern Chinese paintings in the context of China's modernization development. The researcher used qualitative research methods, analyzed documents, and observed artistic works to try to interpret the symbolic meaning and value of urban modernization representation in modern Chinese paintings. The research results prove that urban modernization in the works reflects the current living conditions and various social problems of urbanites after the "reform and opening up". All these problems come from the social changes that have occurred in China during the process of urban modernization, and are expressed through the unique painting language of modern Chinese painting.

Pharaoh by artificial intelligence, Historical mistakes with a beautiful artistic vision

Pharaoh by artificial intelligence, Historical mistakes with a beautiful artistic vision

The Effects of Visual Arts and Animated Film Therapy in Managing Emotional Fatigue in Preschool Children Hospitalized in the Pediatric Ward of RSUD Poso

Preschool-aged children who experience hospitalization in a pediatric ward often face a variety of emotional challenges, including emotional exhaustion. Hospitalization is a frightening and stressful experience for children, especially when they are separated from their family and peers. Visual art and animation film therapy have been recognized as effective therapeutic methods for addressing children's emotional exhaustion and stress. Visual arts play therapy allows children to express their feelings, overcome anxiety, and build emotional connections with their surroundings. The study aimed to look at the effects of visual art play therapy and animated films on managing emotional exhaustion in hospitalized preschool-age children. The data were collected through observation, interviews, and questionnaires given to parents. The result obtained by the treatment group's mean emotional exhaustion score before the action was 32.20, and after the action was 21.80. Wilcoxon statistical analysis, p-value = 0.001. So, it is concluded that there is a significant decrease in children's emotional exhaustion before and after therapy. The conclusion of this study can help improve the care and well-being of preschool children who experience hospitalization, as well as provide valuable insights for health practitioners and educators in supporting the emotional development of children in challenging medical situations.

A Plein Air Painting Event as a Liminal Experience Building the Artists’ Community

The subject of the article is a plein air painting event, considered as a liminal experience that is widely practiced by traditional artists to create and maintain communities in the local and supra-local art fields. The interest in organizing this kind of meetings among artists, modern art galleries, and art schools is not decreasing, and one can talk about the exceptionally long duration of the phenomenon. This article discusses the experience of participants for whom these joint meetings have a metaphysical dimension. The descriptions and expressions used by the artists have become the inspiration to use Victor W. Turner’s concept in the analysis. That is why this practice is discussed as a liminal experience and a rite of passage, whereas the relations between its participants are understood in terms of a specific type of community that is called by Turner ‘spontaneous communitas’. All the considerations and conclusions included in this text are based on qualitative research conducted among visual artists.

A Machine Walks into an Exhibit: A Technical Analysis of Art Curation

Contemporary art consumption is predominantly online, driven by algorithmic recommendation systems that dictate artwork visibility. Despite not being designed for curation, these algorithms’ machinic ways of seeing play a pivotal role in shaping visual culture, influencing artistic creation, visibility, and associated social and financial benefits. The Algorithmic Pedestal was a gallery, practice-based research project that reported gallerygoers’ perceptions of a human’s curation and curation achieved by Instagram’s algorithm. This paper presents a technical analysis of the same exhibit using computer vision code, offering insights into machines’ perception of visual art. The computer vision code assigned values on various metrics to each image, allowing statistical comparisons to identify differences between the collections of images selected by the human and the algorithmic system. The analysis reveals statistically significant differences between the exhibited images and the broader Metropolitan Museum of Art digital collection. However, the analysis found minimal distinctions between human-curated and Instagram-curated images. This study contributes insights into the perceived value of the curation process, shedding light on how audiences perceive artworks differently from machines using computer vision.