Digital Visual Culture
The most provocative and promising places in which to think are often the anomalous places of learning: peculiar, irregular, abnormal, that is those difficult to classify pedagogical phenomena. What are the pedagogical pivot points? What is the role of the aesthetic experience in opening other registers or forms of learning experience? This requires complex relational thinking, a way to acknowledge that to be alive and too inhabit the body is to be continuously and radically in relation with the world, with others, and with our actions, not just the technology.
Selfieomonia: The Visual Self as Social Currency
Abstract: Pew Research Center in the United States found that in 2013 91% of teenagers posted photos of themselves online — up from 79% in 2006. Images tagged as #selfie began appearing on the photo-sharing website Flickr® as early as 2004, but with the introduction of smartphones in 2010 allowing the user to facing the camera phone prepared the selfie to go viral as a global phenomenon. A selfie is a type of self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a hand-held digital camera or camera phone. The online Oxford Dictionary (2013) defines a selfie as a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.
A selfie is one of those images take by aiming the camera at yourself … If a selfie makes you smile, captures the essence of a fleeting moment or records a meaningful time and place in your life, then it’s a keeper. ” (Krause, 2005, pg. 148)
Selfies are often associated with social networking and photo sharing services such as Flickr® Facebook®, Instagram®, and Snapchat® where they are commonly circulated.
Tillander (in progress 2014) Selfieomonia: The Visual Self as Social Currency.
Technologies in Arts Education
Abstract: Arts education is the body of pedagogical theory, practice, and institutions that inform, encode, and teach the arts and its creative expression. Arts education reflects its context embedded within society and culture, including the use of various technologies. These technologies are a complex combination of discursive, material, social, and sensory performances. These performances influence pedagogy through their encoding of artistic, sociocultural habits and practices. The arts consist of dance, music, theater, and the visual arts.
Tillander, M. (in press, 2015). Technologies in Arts Education. In J. Michael Spector (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Educational Technology. Sage.
Digital Media Art Conversations/Translations (SEF Grant)
Abstract: Digital media is having a huge impact on art education–moving us into knowledge-based work and expanding the ways we come to know. Technology’s pervasiveness and visual infusion into everyday work and leisure spaces is heightening the issues of new media within art education practices. These issues encompass broad and deep platforms such as media communication technologies’ effects on perception, interpretation, interaction, and significance in contemporary society. When considering technology innovation and its use, it becomes essential for art education to put away the safe notion of just a tool. Although there has been research on new media technologies within art education, the rapid change of digital technology requires a continual study of its evolution. The preparation of existing art educators (k-12) for the Net Generation student in the 21st century classroom needs to recognize the impact of technology change in both instruction and cultural implications. There is often little support for art educators to use technology in creative and innovative ways to deepen student learning. This project is therefore significant in that it offers an opportunity a) to integrate technology content in the service of learning, b) to engage digital technology content to capture and expand what students know and are able to integrate in their learning, and c) for me to initiate a new project as a continuation of my dissertation research.
New Media Art Conversations is an ongoing research project that investigates new media artists’ conversations and innovative artworks as a way to bridge the world of new media art within K-12 art and technology education practice. This research engages new media artists in video interview conversations about new media art, and the connection to fine art as well as contemporary culture. Interviews include Katerie Gladdys (Univ. Florida); Jack Stenner (Univ. Florida); and Joo Yeon Woo (Univ. Colorado). Using a set of questions as prompts these interviews are the primary source for the content and seeding of the online resource. A translation of new media art ideas from these interviews and research will enable me to build a framework for the online interface of curricular innovations. The online resource will include a rich demonstration of thinking and learning, while offering a repository that explores innovative new media art conversations that can be tailored into discussions within educators preparing art educators for the K-12 art education classroom.
New Media Conversation 2008 Scholarship Enhancement Fund, College of Fine Art, University of Florida. ($2,500) (www.newmediapedagogy.org)
Mass Mingling, Social Media and Catalytic Agency. Grant
Abstract: This Collaborative residency project builds upon and extends the collaborative working artistic processes of Iterative Convergence an interactive installation. The creative collaborative process for us is a unique relational exchange of transcultural/diverse/cross cultural knowledge, skills, and aesthetics that interrupts and interfaces difference, location, and boundaries of our artistic practice. In continuing our visual research from the previous collaboration, we will pursue at VCCA a project that will represent blurring the boundary between online and offline communication. In particular we will visualize one of the most significant phenomena, mass-mingling, that have occurred in the last few years in social networks. Collaborative Team: Joo Yeon Woo and Michelle Tillander
2011 Mass Mingling, Social Media and Catalytic Agency. Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Residency, Amherst, Virginia. Three Weeks, ($2800)
Body as Medium in a Mediatized Culture (NWSA Grant)
Abstract: This project engages high school students with contemporary discussions of how the body can be used to make performance, installation art and other art works. Students will gain an understanding of the historical context of performance art, experimental performance and performativity in a variety of art media. Through hands-on art making and explorations of these ideas, students will have a unique opportunity to expand their personal art making practice.
This project engages high school students with contemporary discussions of how the body can be used to make performance, installation art and other art works. Students will gain an understanding of the historical context of performance art, experimental performance and performativity in a variety of art media. Through hands-on art making and explorations of these ideas, students will have a unique opportunity to expand their personal art making practice. Collaborative Team: Michelle Tillander and Sheila Bishop
Tillander, M. and Bishop, S. (2009). Body as Medium Workshop. Sponsored by the University of Florida and New World School of the Arts (NWSA), ($1500)