art & engineering workshop
ABSTRACT:
What happens when artists & engineers make something together?
Makerspaces are unique spaces for the generation and realization of creative ideas. Whereas these skills are applicable to people in a myriad of fields, makerspaces often only cater to people coming in from an engineering/maker perspective. The Art & Engineering Workshop is the result of a collaboration between NAFASI Art Space & the DIT Design Studio; an exploration in what it may look like for makerspaces to create programming in service of art education. By working together, what synergies are made possible by the collective efforts of art & engineering?
background.
NAFASI Art Space is 'Tanzania’s leading centre for contemporary visual and performing arts.' As part of the center's work in advancing artists, the organization runs the annual The Nafasi Academy for Contemporary Art, Expression, and Inclusion. The 'Nafasi Academy is a training programme for aspiring and emerging artists and cultural workers from underrepresented communities that aims to equip small cohorts of Student Members with the tools, knowledge, and skills critical to creating meaningful work and integrating into local and international art communities'.
The DIT Design Studio is a design engineering makerspace created as a result of the collaboration between the Dar Es Salaam Institute of Technology (leading technical institution) and the Rice 360 Institute for Global Health. Aimed at 'transforming students into innovators and ideas into sustainable solutions, the makerspace provided technical skills training in rapid prototyping skills and integration of problem-based learning into existing engineering curricular.
While serving as the manager of the DIT Design Studio, I was approached by a curator & educator from NAFASI seeking to explore ways to teach artists thinking outside the box and engendering the practice of coming up with many ideas during the art process.
research.
Research I : Interviews Insights
For a better understanding of art educators' needs and perspectives I conducted interviews with the main educator of The Nafasi Art Academy and attended a NAFASI art exhibition. While reviewing my primary research notes, three key gaps began to emerge.
"There is a gap within the community between art & engineering/technology."
How can we dismantle the perception that art & engineering are disparate & unrelated?
"Artists within the residency are reticent to test out, experiment & pursue ideas in excess of their very first one."
How can we teach artists to test out, experiment & pursue ideas in excess of their very first one?
"Most makerspace programming for artists involves fabrication work alone."
How can makerspaces offer design thinking/innovation training applicable to the artistic process?
Research II : Reviewing Literature
For my secondary research, I wanted to explore how people from different fields came up with new ideas. First I borrowed from the strengths of this collaboration, reading on art thinking to understand artistic pedagogy and further into design thinking to understand the similar concepts from the makerspace perspective. Based on my interviews, I also looked into lateral thinking as third comparator for ways to come up with innovative ideas. Towards synthesizing these, I compiled methods, mindsets and cognitive strategies applied by educators in the three realms the course would embody - art thinking (centering student background) , lateral thinking (desired outcome) and design thinking (makerspace strength) .
For each type of thinking, I was able to identify emblematic mindsets (ways of thinking) and methods (ways of enacting said thinking) embodying each.
Attributes from each are summarized below.
ART THINKING
Mindsets
Emotional Engagement, Tolerance of Ambiguity, Intuition
Cognitive Strategies
Metacognition, Prolonged Research, Creating resource banks of information , Problem creating, Delayed Closure, Reflection, Thematic Coherence
LATERAL THINKING
Characteristics
Perceptual Thinking, Comfort with being wrong, Chance
Techniques
Awareness, Use of random stimulation, Generate alternatives, Alteration
DESIGN THINKING
Mindsets
Creative Confidence, Empathy, Embrace ambiguity, Iterate
Methods
Research, Problem definition, Brainstorming, Prototype, Test, Iterate, Deploy
- Sweeny, Robert W. "Making and breaking in an art education makerspace." Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship 6.1 (2017): 1-10.
- Jacobs, Jessica. "Intersections in design thinking and art thinking: Towards interdisciplinary innovation." Creativity. Theories–Research-Applications 5.1 (2018): 4-25.
- Plattner, Hasso. "An introduction to design thinking." Iinstitute of Design at Stanford (2013): 1-15.
- GONZALES, ROMINA A. "Raw Art in the Mind of Lateral Thinkers."
- De Bono, Edward. "Information processing and new ideas—lateral and vertical thinking." The Journal of Creative Behavior 3.3 (1969): 159-171.
concept generation.
Using clustering and themes, I drew 5 key elements that unified these three ways of thinking. Albeit brought from different fields, each of these 'ways of coming up with ideas' contained common elements. Each key element represented a core activity to bring into the course outline.
1. EMOTION > Emotional Engagement, Intuition Awareness, Empathy
2. DATA COLLECTION > Emotional Engagement, Intuition, Awareness, Empathy
3. GENERATIVE PROCESSES > Problem creating, Generate alternatives, Brainstorm, Random stimulation
4. BUILD FIRST! > Tolerance of ambiguity, Comfort with being wrong, Creative Confidence, Prototyping
5. CHANGING AFTER FEEDBACK > Delayed Closure, Reflection, Alteration, Test, iterate
Workshop Objectives
1. Research insights revealed that general sentiment was that art and engineering were completely divorced. If art students were going to feel welcome & confident upon entry into the design studio, a makerspace inside an engineering university, the workshop would have to break down the walls imposed between the art & engineering.
2. The course should meet the primary goal of my client- teach the students lateral thinking - that is, practical methods towards coming up with many creative ideas. Art students can become members & have access to fabrication technology easily. For this workshop, it was imperative we share another one of the studio's offering; human-centered design thinking. However, whereas the products & devices created by engineers have specific design objectives within the design process- the very nature of the artistic process involved not having a set destination in mind.
3. The course should introduce students to design thinking while respecting the freedom inherent within the artistic process.
implementation.
Workshop Outline
Introduce NAFASI Academy Students to makerspace model.
Explore intersections of engineering and art.
Demonstrate function and use cases of emergent technology.
Understand human-centered design thinking process.
Create physical exploration of human emotion using design thinking methodologies, lateral thinking cognitive strategies and makerspace rapid prototyping resources.
The course comprised of two sections:
1. Art and Engineering Discussion session - here students would explore the intersection of the two fields by sharing their own conceptions of the gap, discussing how the two were distinct & seeing how artists leverage engineering methods in various ways within their work. Showcasing the work of Ai Wei Wei, Echo Yang, Arafa Hamadi and the Yale School of Engineering to showcase how art & engineering intersect in artists' methods.
2. Design Thinking for Artists Workshop - based on the d.school's Design Thinking in One Hour handout altered to include lateral and art thinking mindsets and methodologies. This session was aimed at having students understand and use design thinking & lateral thinking methods. As there isn't always a 'goal' in art creation, students were tasked to use these methods to create a physical embodiment of a human emotion.
course in action.
