Here are some more pictures from my adventure to Bathuns' Gully.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Monday, May 5, 2008
Blogging
Does the digital make other art forms obsolete?
What are the concerns of professional photographers and media makers in terms of how the Net may indeed threaten the integrity of their art forms. If I digest the issues discussed correctly, the primary concerns are with the quality and copyrights to media productions distributed on the Net. Methinks the longstanding tension between blogging and journalism since the emergence of blogosphere plays up similar issues albeit in slightly different light. Here we are talking about the rice bowls of professional journalists and news corporations being threatened by blogging upstarts. Is blogging a reflection of a popular demand among the traditionally passive consumers who are now demanding a voice in the production of materials that they would consume? In many ways, the Net has only intensifed this shift towards prosuming. I’ll say the growing popularity of Reality TV shows such as Big Brother, the Idol series which sprang off ‘copies’
What are the concerns of professional photographers and media makers in terms of how the Net may indeed threaten the integrity of their art forms. If I digest the issues discussed correctly, the primary concerns are with the quality and copyrights to media productions distributed on the Net. Methinks the longstanding tension between blogging and journalism since the emergence of blogosphere plays up similar issues albeit in slightly different light. Here we are talking about the rice bowls of professional journalists and news corporations being threatened by blogging upstarts. Is blogging a reflection of a popular demand among the traditionally passive consumers who are now demanding a voice in the production of materials that they would consume? In many ways, the Net has only intensifed this shift towards prosuming. I’ll say the growing popularity of Reality TV shows such as Big Brother, the Idol series which sprang off ‘copies’
As individuals and producers of creative content, be it in visual or textual formats, we can choose to be either hapless victims or active participants shaping this inevitable tide of events. -
relationship between blogging and journalism, the big question now is not as much as how blogging has threatened journalism, but how journalists can tap on the opportunities now made visible and available by bloggers.
Jack Burnham
Han Haake
-Software as "an attempt to produce aesthetic sensations without the intervening 'object;' in fact, to exacerbate the conflict or sense of aesthetic tension by placing works in mundane, non-art formats.
-The computer's most profound aesthetic implication is that we are being forced to dismiss the classical view of art and reality which insists that man stand outside of reality in order to observe it, and, in art, requires the presence of the picture frame and the sculpture pedestal.
-The notion that art can be separated from its everyday environment is a cultural fixation [in other words, a mythic structure] as is the ideal of objectivity in science. It may be that the computer will negate the need for such an illusion by fusing both observer and observed, "inside" and "outside." It has already been observed that the everyday world is rapidly assuming identity with the condition of art.
- The metaphorical premise of Software permitted Burnham to explore convergences between his notion of the mythic structure of art, emerging information technology, and the increasing conceptualism characteristic of much experimental art in the late 1960's.
-Components were conjoined in works that emulated the sort of two-way communication he experienced with computer programs and which he advocated in art. The catalog emphasized the importance of creating a context in which "the public can personally respond to programmatic situations structured by artists," and explicitly stated that the show "makes no distinctions between art and non-art."
-Nicholas Negroponte and the Architecture Machine Group (precursor to the MIT Media Lab, which Negroponte now directs) submitted "Seek," a computer-controlled robotic environment that, at least in theory, cybernetically reconfigured itself in response to the behavior of the gerbils that inhabited it. I interpret Seek as an early example of "intelligent architecture," a growing concern of the design community internationally. By synthesizing cybernetics, aesthetics, phenomenology, and semiotics, Software emphasized the process of audience interaction with "control and communication techniques," encouraging the "public" to "personally respond" and ascribe meaning to experience. In so doing, Software questioned the intrinsic significance of objects and implied that meaning emerges from perception in what Burnham (quoting Barthes) later identified as "syntagmatic" and "systematic" contexts.
Myron Krueger
Videoplace is an early example of augmented reality art, done by an artist whose interests lay mostly in VR. The installation features computer projection that interacts with the viewer's physical shadow. Myron Krueger is one of the original pioneers of virtual reality and interactive art. Beginning in 1969, Krueger developed the prototypes for what would eventually be called Virtual Reality. These "responsive environments" responded to the movement and gesture of the viewer through an elaborate system of sensing floors, graphic tables, and video cameras. Audience members could directly interact with the video projections of others interacted with a shared environment. Krueger also pioneered the development of unencumbered, full-body participation in computer-created telecommunication experiences and coined the term "Artificial Reality" in 1973 to describe the ultimate expression of this concept. [Jeremy Turner of CTheory]
Originally trained as a computer scientist, Myron Krueger, under the influence of John Cage's experiments in indeterminacy and audience participation, pioneered human-computer interaction in the context of physical environments. Beginning in 1969, he collaborated with artist and engineer colleagues to create artworks that responded to the movement and gesture of the viewer through an elaborate system of sensing floors, graphic tables, and video cameras... At the heart of Krueger's contribution to interactive computer art was the notion of the artist as a "composer" of intelligent, real-time computer-mediated spaces, or "responsive environments," as he called them. Krueger "composed" environments, such as Videoplace from 1970, in which the computer responded to the gestures of the audience by interpreting, and even anticipating, their actions. Audience members could "touch" each other's video-generated silhouettes, as well as manipulate the odd, playful assortment of graphical objects and animated organisms that appeared on the screen, imbued with the presence of artificial life. [from ArtMuseum.net]
Aesthetic Paradigms of Media Art
Art beyond art
The definition of ‹art beyond art› amounts to a negation of an understanding of art that is based on accumulative and historically linear findings. Interest focuses no longer on the autonomy of a work of art, a subject much discussed during modernism (and already wholly assimilated into contemporary art), but on art’s emancipation from art itself. This shift implies that the modernist tendency to take issue with the arguments of a discourse within the discourse itself has been overcome. It also signifies the demand for a ‹reconstruction of the area› on new foundations which place in question several of its basic theoretical generalizations and many of its methods.
The argument of the essays can be summarized as follows: explanations delivered by art are constitutively neither reductionist nor transcendental; the function of art consists in expanding realities, knowledge and experiences; this process can take its course dialogically or consensually (through seduction), or by means of canonization (through control or coercion). Further paradigm shifts specifically relevant to media art will be examined below.
Interdisciplinarity
Media art—in its diverse forms ranging from audiovisual installations to interactive systems, from hypermedia to artificial reality, from the net to cyberspace—reinforces the idea of ‹interdisciplinarity,› which reaches much further than the aforementioned considerations about the relationship of art and technology. In the context of interdisciplinarity, the intermeshing of art, technologies, and science refers to the process that brings about convergence, interference, appropriation, overlapping and interpenetration; a process successively leading to the generation of referential networks and reciprocal— non-hierarchic—influences.
Ubiquity and dematerialization
After the exodus of art from conventional presentation spaces such as museums or galleries and the conquest of public places, streets, towns, landscapes (e.g. Land Art, Performance, Happening), the fact that spatiotemporal expansion and the wider use of
materials arrived at a deeper significance of ubiquity (the possibility of being present at all place at once or simultaneously), dematerialization (independence of the physical-material existence of the object) and participation (the use of interactive network resources) is without doubt brought about by the deployment of so-called new media—such as the telecommunications system.
All of the telecommunications projects developed from the 1970s onward, such as those of satellite art, were basically attempts to transform the medium into a meta-medium permitting art spatial and temporal ubiquity. That was what gave Nam June Paik, for example, the idea that a work could be created in several different places at once, as outlined in the score in 1961. Paik’s efforts to accomplish meta-communication led to his most important contributions to satellite art, such as in 1977 «Nine Minutes Live,» his direct satellite telecast of performances in Europe and the USA for the opening of the Documenta 6 in Kassel, and in 1984 «Good Morning Mr. Orwell,» organized jointly by the Centre Pompidou and the broadcaster WNET-TV, with whichPaik succeeded in realizing a live satellite program that was participative as well as simultaneous. According to Paik, satellite art was destined to become the most important non-material work in post-industrial society.
The formation of international projects in the 1970s was a crucial stimulus for art in conjunction with telecommunication as well as for the notion of ubiquity. The Brazilian Waldemar Cordeiro,a pioneer of Computer Art, in 1971 identified the inadequacy of communications media as a form of information transmission and the inefficiency of information as language, thought, and action as being the causes of the crisis of contemporary art. Cordeiro asserted in his Manifest Arteônica that art whose main emphasis lies on the material object restricts audience access to the work and therefore meets the cultural standards of modern society neither qualitatively nor quantitatively. Cordeiro’s deliberations in regard to global networking and free, telecommunication-enabled audience access to a work of art anticipated the notion of ubiquity, participation, and net art.
Jim Campbell
Light, 1988-91
Custom electronics.
-Interaction through both digital and analogue means
-Undermines the notion of the 'live' image.
-What are the aesthetic implications of the live image?
For a sense of how the practice of art is changing at the dawn of the 21st century, you need look no further than Jim Campbell. A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics, Campbell has virtually no formal training as an artist. His art apprenticeship, if you can call it that, consisted of repairing video equipment and, later, designing integrated circuits for video here in Silicon Valley. The non-intuitive notion of Heisenberg's principle is that the universe is probabilistic. This means that not only are you unable to measure the position of the electron accurately, but that it does not exist accurately. That, I agree, is totally counter-intuitive. But at a time when many artists who want to create technologically based art seek a partner who knows the electronics and will leave the creativity to them, Campbell is a whole different thing -- a technocrat who discovered early on that he has an artist's soul. At the moment, Campbell's non-art-school vision of art is on exhibit on both coasts. In addition to having a solo show that just opened at the Hosfelt Gallery in San Francisco, he is one of a relative handful of artists from the Bay Area with work in the prestigious Whitney Biennial 2002 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. ''Up until about six years ago, I didn't even call myself an artist,'' says Campbell, 46, who still puts in one day a week at his job for Sage Inc., a company in Silicon Valley, designing integrated circuits. ''I always knew I wanted to do something with art. In the beginning it had to do with balance, the need to do something that was more poetic and less mathematical. I don't like to categorize myself.''
Shadow (For Heisenberg), 1993-94
Custom electronics, video camera, glass cube with LCD material, statue
Custom electronics, video camera, glass cube with LCD material, statue
Shadow (for Heisenberg) is an interactive installation that involves the viewer's desire to see an object contained within a glass cube. If the viewer moves towards the object the image of the object fades from view and is replaced by the shadow of the object. This work incorporates a new technology that allows a piece of glass to go from transparent to translucent. The work also incorporates a video camera on the ceiling. The image from the camera on the ceiling is manipulated and displayed on the wall behind the pedestal to make apparent the relationship between position and perception. This work is loosely based on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle from Quantum Physics which states that one can never observe an object in its purest form because the process of observation has an impact on the object. The more accurately one trys to observe or measure an object, the more that object will be affected by the observation.
Memory/Recollection, 1990
Black and white video camera, five CRT's, 286 computer, custom electronics
Black and white video camera, five CRT's, 286 computer, custom electronics
Memory/Recollection is an interactive video installation in which a series of captured live frozen images are displayed on a series of monitors. The images fade from the first monitor to the last monitor so that the last monitor has the oldest image on it. The piece stores images for up to 2 years and at times displays these older images from 10 minutes, a week or six months ago. i.e. The piece keeps track of and is defined by its own history.
Francesca Woodman
Francesca Woodman's photography had a strong impact on me when I first started taking photography seriously; her work along with others (Man Ray, Duane Michel’s, Ralph Meatyard, Moholy-nagy, Jerry Uelsmann, and Dali) definitely inspired me to experiment with movement, blurring, and manipulation within the medium. Woodman blurs fantasy with reality in a way which has always inspired me to find the unusual in everyday life. I want to create scenes for the audience to be a part of; something which the viewer knows must exist but has the same unusual eerie feel of standing in a dark room looking at an installation piece. 
Woodman constructs her scenes by superimposing various levels of the real rather than breaking down reality to study the image's constructive mechanisms. In a similar way, at the end of the 70s Cindy Sherman appeared on the scene with a series of photographic "Film Stills" that manifest the influences of the film culture and a linear approach to the image. Each picture was a "slice of life," walking the line between fiction and reality. Each picture provided the viewer with a precise image of a woman acting out our clichés concerning traditional female roles. But in spite of the common ground shared by these two photographers, Woodman never seemed interested in the cultural model of today's woman: there is no objective investigation in her work, only a personal kind of research. Basically, while Cindy Sherman offered — in image after image — a fragmentary vision of women, Francesca Woodman gave us a cumulative one, images that take on the woman's different models. Woodman was photographer and model, subject and object, at the same time. She utilized the female body to develop her own self-knowledge and not some representative but generic model of the world. The images of the body that this young American was experimenting with suggest a diffuse intimacy while tending to dissuade a voyeuristic approach. Unlike most of the images we are faced with on a daily basis, where the body is treated like a commodity to be used and consumed, or an icon to adore at safe distance, Francesca Woodman employs her body to initiate a dialog with herself. She places her body in familiar settings, though at the limits of our experience, presenting it as a symbol of receptivity, a meeting place between herself and the rest of the world, a communicative model in which information about her experience is presented and reflected upon. She uses her own body as a model to investigate her own vision and not another's vision of her body. Woodman projects images and symbols, hopes and fears onto the female body. She uses it like a gesticulative vector not fully known to her, communicating to the viewer the novelty of her encounter.
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Artist Research
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
-the shadow work of Lozano-Hemmer has greatly influenced the progression of my project, I love the way he actively challenges the audience to participate with art in a public space, which is something I would like to explore in my final work. I want to create an interactive installation.
Body Movies
A spectacle of light and shadow transformed part of the waterfront as Wellington plays host to one the world's largest interactive artworks. Unveiled for the duration of the NZ International Arts Festival outside Te Papa on Cable Street, from 22 February until 16 March 2008.
Transforming a space of around 1,000 square metres, Body Movies is a free public art installation featuring 1,000 photo portraits of people taken on the streets in and around Wellington, as well as using a bank of photographs from Rotterdam and Hong Kong. As darkness falls the photo images will be cast by a powerful projector onto the side of Te Papa and then completely washed out by white bright light from 10,000-watt lamps placed at ground level. As soon as people walk in the area, their shadows are projected and the photo portraits are revealed within them in a variety of scenes. People can match, animate or embody a portrait by walking around and changing the scale of their shadow engaging “in a game of mimicry and representation” says the artist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.
A fusion of technology and public art, Body Movies is the brainchild of award- winning Mexican-Canadian artist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer that he describes as a relational architectural installation. It is inspired by Samuel van Hoogstraten’s 1675 engraving The Shadow Dance. Lozano-Hemmer has employed the same image distortion effect, and updated it with 21st-century technology, actively challenging the community to participate with art in a public space. “Every time we show this piece, the behaviours are totally different, ranging from playful parading to erotic performances to aggressive stances. On average, about half the participants try to match the portraits by enlarging or reducing their shadows, while the other half is more interested in playing with each other's shadow,” says Lozano-Hemmer, who won the Prix Ars Electronica Award for Distinction in Interactive Art for this work. “In Rotterdam, where the work premiered, participants started using props after a few days. Breakdancers appeared. People brought their pets. A man in a wheelchair projected his shadow 22 metres high and he seemed to derive a lot of pleasure from crushing everybody around him.” A camera-based tracking system monitors the placement of the shadows, and when all shadows match the location of the portraits in a given scene, the controlled computer changes the scene to a new set of portraits. A small .wav sound is heard to give feedback to the people in the space when they have matched the portrait.
Spencer Finch
-Darkness and light. Blindness and insight. Nature and Science. These are the dichotomies described by Charles LaBelle which arise in Finch’s work. His work is inspiring for me because of these, I am interested in creating some kind of balance within the technology I wish to use in my installation.
Sensing that our observations must be tied to experience if we are to get at the truth of something, Finch is compelled continually to expand the scope of his projects, returning to the same sites at all hours to look again and again. He traveled to Rouen to visit the cathedral painted by Claude Monet but found the building closed for renovation. Undeterred, Finch decided to make a series of paintings depicting the colors of various objects in his hotel room. By the time he had completed the arduous task of matching 55 colors, the changing light had altered every one. Thus the work grew into a triptych, a wry blend of Conceptual and Impressionist methodologies, representing the same set of colors in the morning, afternoon, and evening. As Finch is fascinated with the interaction of the physiological and the psychological aspects of perception, the way our inner world casts a veil over the outer, it makes sense that he would travel thousands of miles to make a work that explored the tiniest details of his hotel room. For him vision is an act of projection as much as of apprehension. . . . Darkness and light. Blindness and insight. Nature and Science. These dichotomies arise in Finch’s work only to have their usefulness and validity interrogated. Their too-easy formulas and their promise of an absolute veracity are not to be trusted.
His work for the past decade had consciously distilled these issues and has grown richer, more potent. Resisting conclusion, Finch nevertheless aspires to a greater appreciation of the problem. . . excerpt from Charles LaBelle, Frieze pp. 66-69, May 2003 This means that Finch’s understanding of color theory, in the end, doesn’t amount to an alternative to formalism or Conceptualism. He is unafraid to inhabit the paradox that art exists in the play between language and perception. What many artists and theorists find unbearable, literally, the ‘speaking against itself’ implied in para-doxa, is for Finch less something to escape than the very condition necessary for his art practice. That is why his work demonstrates a Proustian interest in the difficulties and disappointments of recollection. He knows that color lies at the boundary of what we see and what we remember. Despite the thick red line of humor that runs through his work, Finch’s projects are always laced with the acute pathos of someone disappointed by both
perception and language and by their mutual exclusivity and incompatibility. "There is always a paradox inherent in vision, an impossible desire to see yourself seeing. A lot of my work probes this tension; to want to see, but not being able to,” Finch says in a catalogue for a 1997 show at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT. Color is less a trope of indeterminacy than a way to
re-create an almost visceral experience of our impossible desire to name our perceptions.
-the shadow work of Lozano-Hemmer has greatly influenced the progression of my project, I love the way he actively challenges the audience to participate with art in a public space, which is something I would like to explore in my final work. I want to create an interactive installation.
Body MoviesA spectacle of light and shadow transformed part of the waterfront as Wellington plays host to one the world's largest interactive artworks. Unveiled for the duration of the NZ International Arts Festival outside Te Papa on Cable Street, from 22 February until 16 March 2008.
Transforming a space of around 1,000 square metres, Body Movies is a free public art installation featuring 1,000 photo portraits of people taken on the streets in and around Wellington, as well as using a bank of photographs from Rotterdam and Hong Kong. As darkness falls the photo images will be cast by a powerful projector onto the side of Te Papa and then completely washed out by white bright light from 10,000-watt lamps placed at ground level. As soon as people walk in the area, their shadows are projected and the photo portraits are revealed within them in a variety of scenes. People can match, animate or embody a portrait by walking around and changing the scale of their shadow engaging “in a game of mimicry and representation” says the artist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.
A fusion of technology and public art, Body Movies is the brainchild of award- winning Mexican-Canadian artist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer that he describes as a relational architectural installation. It is inspired by Samuel van Hoogstraten’s 1675 engraving The Shadow Dance. Lozano-Hemmer has employed the same image distortion effect, and updated it with 21st-century technology, actively challenging the community to participate with art in a public space. “Every time we show this piece, the behaviours are totally different, ranging from playful parading to erotic performances to aggressive stances. On average, about half the participants try to match the portraits by enlarging or reducing their shadows, while the other half is more interested in playing with each other's shadow,” says Lozano-Hemmer, who won the Prix Ars Electronica Award for Distinction in Interactive Art for this work. “In Rotterdam, where the work premiered, participants started using props after a few days. Breakdancers appeared. People brought their pets. A man in a wheelchair projected his shadow 22 metres high and he seemed to derive a lot of pleasure from crushing everybody around him.” A camera-based tracking system monitors the placement of the shadows, and when all shadows match the location of the portraits in a given scene, the controlled computer changes the scene to a new set of portraits. A small .wav sound is heard to give feedback to the people in the space when they have matched the portrait.
Spencer Finch
-Darkness and light. Blindness and insight. Nature and Science. These are the dichotomies described by Charles LaBelle which arise in Finch’s work. His work is inspiring for me because of these, I am interested in creating some kind of balance within the technology I wish to use in my installation.
Sensing that our observations must be tied to experience if we are to get at the truth of something, Finch is compelled continually to expand the scope of his projects, returning to the same sites at all hours to look again and again. He traveled to Rouen to visit the cathedral painted by Claude Monet but found the building closed for renovation. Undeterred, Finch decided to make a series of paintings depicting the colors of various objects in his hotel room. By the time he had completed the arduous task of matching 55 colors, the changing light had altered every one. Thus the work grew into a triptych, a wry blend of Conceptual and Impressionist methodologies, representing the same set of colors in the morning, afternoon, and evening. As Finch is fascinated with the interaction of the physiological and the psychological aspects of perception, the way our inner world casts a veil over the outer, it makes sense that he would travel thousands of miles to make a work that explored the tiniest details of his hotel room. For him vision is an act of projection as much as of apprehension. . . . Darkness and light. Blindness and insight. Nature and Science. These dichotomies arise in Finch’s work only to have their usefulness and validity interrogated. Their too-easy formulas and their promise of an absolute veracity are not to be trusted.
His work for the past decade had consciously distilled these issues and has grown richer, more potent. Resisting conclusion, Finch nevertheless aspires to a greater appreciation of the problem. . . excerpt from Charles LaBelle, Frieze pp. 66-69, May 2003 This means that Finch’s understanding of color theory, in the end, doesn’t amount to an alternative to formalism or Conceptualism. He is unafraid to inhabit the paradox that art exists in the play between language and perception. What many artists and theorists find unbearable, literally, the ‘speaking against itself’ implied in para-doxa, is for Finch less something to escape than the very condition necessary for his art practice. That is why his work demonstrates a Proustian interest in the difficulties and disappointments of recollection. He knows that color lies at the boundary of what we see and what we remember. Despite the thick red line of humor that runs through his work, Finch’s projects are always laced with the acute pathos of someone disappointed by both
perception and language and by their mutual exclusivity and incompatibility. "There is always a paradox inherent in vision, an impossible desire to see yourself seeing. A lot of my work probes this tension; to want to see, but not being able to,” Finch says in a catalogue for a 1997 show at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT. Color is less a trope of indeterminacy than a way to
re-create an almost visceral experience of our impossible desire to name our perceptions.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Internalization
I am very interested in the work of pioneering psychologist Lev Vygotsky and his Western contemporary Jean Piaget.
At the Institute of Psychology in Moscow (1924–34) \Vygosky worked extensively on ideas about cognitive development, particularly the relationship between language and thinking. His writings emphasized the roles of historical, cultural, and social factors in cognition and argued that language was the most important symbolic tool provided by society. Vygotsky investigated child development and how this was guided by the role of culture and interpersonal communication. Vygotsky observed how higher mental functions developed historically within particular cultural groups, as well as individually through social interactions with significant people in a child's life, particularly parents, but also other adults. Through these interactions, a child came to learn the habits of mind of her/his culture, including speech patterns, written language, and other symbolic knowledge through which the child derives meaning and affected a child's construction of her/his knowledge. This key premise of Vygotskian psychology is often referred to as cultural mediation. The specific knowledge gained by children through these interactions also represented the shared knowledge of a culture. This process is known as internalization. Internalization can be understood in one respect as “knowing how”. For example, riding a bicycle or pouring a cup of milk are tools of the society and initially outside and beyond the child. The mastery of these skills occurs through the activity of the child within society. A further aspect of internalization is appropriation in which the child takes a tool and makes it his own, perhaps using it in a way unique to himself. Internalizing the use of a pencil allows the child to use it very much for his own ends rather than draw exactly what others in society have drawn previously.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Piaget's works inspired the transformation of European and American education, including both theory and practice, leading to a more ‘child-centred’ approach. In Conversations with Jean Piaget, he says: "Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society . . . but for me and no one else, education means making creators. . . . You have to make inventors, innovators—not conformists" (Bringuier, 1980, p.132). Mainly, Piaget influenced two parts of education: early education and moral education. In early education, teachers use his theory of cognitive development as a tool in the classroom. According to Piaget, children developed best in a classroom with interaction. Using this idea, teachers in elementary schools or pre-school can make use of classroom time better using peer interaction. In moral education, Piaget believed in two basic principles. The first one is the fact that children develop moral ideas in stages. The other is the children make their idea of the world: "The child is someone who constructs his own moral world view, who forms ideas about right and wrong, and fair and unfair, that are not the direct product of adult teaching and that are often maintained in the face of adult wishes to the contrary" (Gallagher, 1978, p.26). The idea is that children observe the world, and then decide what is morally correct. So in today's education, we have started to bring moral education into education, such as talking about cheating and what is morally correct in today's society, dealing with crime and morals in politics. Piaget's theory of morality was radical in 1932, when his book, The Moral Judgment of the Child, was published, due to his use of philosophical criteria to define morality (as universalizable, generalizable, and obligatory), and his rejection of equating cultural norms and moral norms. Piaget, drawing on Kantian theory, proposed that morality developed out of peer interaction, and that it was autonomous from authority mandates. Peers, not parents, were a key source of moral concepts, such as equality, reciprocity, and justice. In his account of the development of moral judgment Piaget (1932) introduced a fundamental distinction between different types of social relationship, or more specifically he attributed different types of psychosocial processes to different forms of social relationship. Where there is constraint because one participant holds more power than the other the relationship is asymmetrical, and, importantly, the knowledge which can be acquired by the dominated participant takes on a fixed and inflexible form. Piaget refers to this process as one of social transmission, and he refers to the way in which the elders of a tribe initiate younger members into the patterns of beliefs and practices of the group. Similarly where adults exercise a dominating influence over the growing child, it is through social transmission that children can acquire knowledge. By contrast, in cooperative relations, power is more evenly distributed between participants so that a more symmetrical relationship emerges. Under these conditions authentic forms of intellectual exchange become possible, since each partner has the freedom to project their own thoughts, consider the positions of others, and defend their own point of view. In such circumstances, where children’s thinking is not limited by a dominant influence, the conditions exist for the emergence of constructive solutions to problems, or what Piaget refers to as the reconstruction of knowledge rather than social transmission. Here the knowledge which emerges is open, flexible and regulated by the logic of argument rather than being determined by an external authority. In short, cooperative relations provide the arena for the emergence of operations, which for Piaget requires the absence of any constraining influence, and is most often illustrated by the relations which form between peers.
Project Research
I see creating pieces of art as a way of resolving moral dilemmas. I am faced with different situations everyday, I must empathise with others. What is it that makes me decide what I perceive as right and wrong?
Working backwards from a decision made it is interesting to try and work out what the possible influences of the outcome were.
In my work I am interested in testing the validity of my arguments. I research the basis of an idea, predominantly by looking at philosophical reasoning.
Kant
Plato, the most creative and influential of Socrates' disciples, wrote dialogues, in which he frequently used the figure of Socrates to espouse his own (Plato's) full-fledged philosophy. In "The Republic," Plato sums up his views in an image of ignorant humanity, trapped in the depths and not even aware of its own limited perspective. The rare individual escapes the limitations of that cave and, through a long, tortuous intellectual journey, discovers a higher realm, a true reality, with a final, almost mystical awareness of Goodness as the origin of everything that exists. Such a person is then the best equipped to govern in society, having a knowledge of what is ultimately most worthwhile in life and not just a knowledge of techniques; but that person will frequently be misunderstood by those ordinary folks back in the cave who haven't shared in the intellectual insight. If he were living today, Plato might replace his rather awkward cave metaphor with a movie theater, with the projector replacing the fire, the film replacing the objects which cast shadows, the shadows on the cave wall with the projected movie on the screen, and the echo with the loudspeakers behind the screen. The essential point is that the prisoners in the cave are not seeing reality, but only a shadowy representation of it. The importance of the allegory lies in Plato's belief that there are invisible truths lying under the apparent surface of things which only the most enlightened can grasp. Used to the world of illusion in the cave, the prisoners at first resist enlightenment, as students resist education. But those who can achieve enlightenment deserve to be the leaders and rulers of all the rest. At the end of the passage, Plato expresses another of his favorite ideas: that education is not a process of putting knowledge into empty minds, but of making people realize that which they already know. This notion that truth is somehow embedded in our minds was also powerfully influential for many centuries.
Is a resident of the cave (a prisoner, as it were) likely to want to make the ascent to the outer world? Why or why not? What does the sun symbolize in the allegory? And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened:--Behold! human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.
Working backwards from a decision made it is interesting to try and work out what the possible influences of the outcome were.
In my work I am interested in testing the validity of my arguments. I research the basis of an idea, predominantly by looking at philosophical reasoning.
Kant
The categorical imperative is the central philosophical concept of the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and of modern deontological ethics. Kant introduced this concept in Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Here, the categorical imperative is outlined according to the arguments found in his work.
Kant thought that human beings occupy a special place in creation and that morality can be summed up in one, ultimate commandment of reason, or imperative, from which all duties and obligations derive. He defined an imperative as any proposition that declares a certain action (or inaction) to be necessary. A hypothetical imperative would compel action in a given circumstance: If I wish to satisfy my thirst, then I must drink something. A categorical imperative would denote an absolute, unconditional requirement that exerts its authority in all circumstances, both required and justified as an end in itself. It is best known in its first formulation:
"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."
He expressed extreme dissatisfaction with the moral philosophy of his day because he believed it could never surpass the level of hypothetical imperatives. For example, a utilitarian would say that murder is wrong because it does not maximize good for the greatest number of people; but this would be irrelevant to someone who is concerned only with maximizing the positive outcome for themselves. Consequently, Kant argued, hypothetical moral systems cannot persuade moral action or be regarded as bases for moral judgments against others, because the imperatives they are based on rely too heavily on subjective considerations. A deontological moral system based on the demands of the categorical imperative was presented as an alternative.
Plato: The Allegory of the Cave, from The RepublicPlato, the most creative and influential of Socrates' disciples, wrote dialogues, in which he frequently used the figure of Socrates to espouse his own (Plato's) full-fledged philosophy. In "The Republic," Plato sums up his views in an image of ignorant humanity, trapped in the depths and not even aware of its own limited perspective. The rare individual escapes the limitations of that cave and, through a long, tortuous intellectual journey, discovers a higher realm, a true reality, with a final, almost mystical awareness of Goodness as the origin of everything that exists. Such a person is then the best equipped to govern in society, having a knowledge of what is ultimately most worthwhile in life and not just a knowledge of techniques; but that person will frequently be misunderstood by those ordinary folks back in the cave who haven't shared in the intellectual insight. If he were living today, Plato might replace his rather awkward cave metaphor with a movie theater, with the projector replacing the fire, the film replacing the objects which cast shadows, the shadows on the cave wall with the projected movie on the screen, and the echo with the loudspeakers behind the screen. The essential point is that the prisoners in the cave are not seeing reality, but only a shadowy representation of it. The importance of the allegory lies in Plato's belief that there are invisible truths lying under the apparent surface of things which only the most enlightened can grasp. Used to the world of illusion in the cave, the prisoners at first resist enlightenment, as students resist education. But those who can achieve enlightenment deserve to be the leaders and rulers of all the rest. At the end of the passage, Plato expresses another of his favorite ideas: that education is not a process of putting knowledge into empty minds, but of making people realize that which they already know. This notion that truth is somehow embedded in our minds was also powerfully influential for many centuries.
Is a resident of the cave (a prisoner, as it were) likely to want to make the ascent to the outer world? Why or why not? What does the sun symbolize in the allegory? And now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened:--Behold! human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.
Whereas our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being, and learn by degrees to endure the sight of being and of the brightest and best of being, or in other words, of the good.
Blacklight Experiments
I photographed a series of images under blacklight using 35mm colour film and a tripod. I wanted to experiment using the shadow in image making, and also remove the 'real' object or figure from the picture.
Shadow Play
Shadow play or shadow puppetry is an ancient form of storytelling and entertainment using opaque, often articulated figures in front of an illuminated backdrop to create the illusion of moving images. It is popular in various cultures. At present, more than 20 countries are known to have shadow show troupes.
*The 1984 film Once Upon a Time in America, where it is occasionally seen in the Opium house.
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