Digital research is taking the humanities by storm. This can be read not only from the many digital humanities programs in education and research in universities around the world but also from the attention for new media practices in humanities and art departments. Famously, and thought-provokingly, media theorist Lev Manovich—strongly rooted in film and media studies—set out to develop a means by which the visual analysis of big data sets of digitized cultural materials could help the study of art and culture transition into the era of big data or, as he calls it, 90the era of “more media” (Manovich, 2009). Often met with scrutiny by art historians, not in favor of a quantitative approach to the arts, Manovich insisted with this “cultural analytics” program on expanding the study of culture by including the vast amounts of user-generated content. As he wrote as early as 2009: “Think about this: the number of images uploaded to Flickr every week is probably larger than all objects contained in all art museums in the world.” Manovich developed the Software Studies Initiative, where he and his team developed software such as Image Plot, for the analysis of large visual data sets. Manovich applies his methods both to digitized materials (such as Time magazine covers) as well as—more recently—to born-digital content (such as selfies on Instagram).
LINK
The road to science for the arts therapies requires research on the full breadths of the spectrum, from systematic case studies to RCTs. It is important that arts therapists and arts therapeutic researchers reflect on the typical characteristics of each research paradigm, research type and research method and select what is appropriate with regard to the particular research question. Questions rather differ. Finding out whether a certain intervention has a particular effect with a large group of clients differs from wanting to know which change occurs at which moment by which interventions in the treatment of an individual client. Research in practice remains close to questions encountered by arts therapists in their daily practice. It concerns questions arts therapists have about their lived experience of acting due to the complexity and variability of practice. By carrying out research in practice that links up with those questions, evidence evolves; evidence that enables the professional to proceed and that makes explicit what often remains implicit and unsaid. What is explicit can be communicated, can be criticised and tested. The professional himself does the road to science of the profession. The investment in professionals’ research in practice is the motor of knowledge-productivity that bridges the theory-practice gap. Research in the arts therapies should lead to ‘knowledge’ in which the ‘art’, nor the ‘subject’ of therapist and client have been lost.
DOCUMENT
Based on his personal experience, the author aims to examine some of the key competencies that he considers essential for facilitators of group activities in arts-based environmental education (AEE). In this, participants are encouraged to enhance their sensibility to the environment through artistic approaches. A case in point is a workshop called “making a little me”. Its participants sculpt – while keeping their eyes closed – a clay version of their own seated body in miniature. When guiding such a workshop, it is of critical importance, according to the author, to encourage the participants to suspend their judgments on the art works of others. The facilitator should make every effort to provide a safe environment by practicing “holding space”.
MULTIFILE
This special issue of Somatechnics: Journal of Bodies – Technologies – Power is an invitation to critically interrogate how our everyday technological, social, and embodied experience of organisation as a traveling concept (Bal 2002) and socio-material (Orlikowski 2007) production of reality, can generate new modes of organising and being and nonbeing organised. The articles in this special issue span across the humanities, social sciences, performing arts, and critical management studies, to trouble the concept of organisation by de-organising it and the manner in which it has traditionally been instrumentalised and put to use in modern-day organisational theory and practice. Somatechnics presents a thoroughly multi-disciplinary scholarship on the body, providing a space for research that critically engages with the ethico-political implications of a wide range of practices and techniques. The term ‘somatechnics’ indicates an approach to corporeality which considers it as always already bound up with a variety of technologies, techniques and technics, thus enabling an examination of the lived experiences engendered within a given context, and the effects that technologies, technés and techniques have on embodiment, subjectivity and sociality.
MULTIFILE
In today’s technological world, human intertwinement with the rest of nature hasbeen severely diminished. In our digital culture, many people hardly have any direct experience of and sense of connection with “the real” of the natural world. The author assumes that when we want to find ways to mend this gap, arts-based environmental education (AEE) can play a meaningful role. In AEE, artmaking is regarded as itself a way of potentially gaining new understandings about our natural environment. As a reflective practitioner, the author facilitated three different AEE activities, at several times and at diverse locations. On basis of his observations, memories, written notes, audio-visual recordings and interviews with participants, teachers and informed outsiders, he interpreted the experiences both of participants and himself. To this end he employed interpretative phenomenological analysis paired with autoethnography.The artmaking activities researched here aimed to bring about a shift in focus. Participants were encouraged to approach natural phenomena not head-on, but in an indirect way. Moreover, the artmaking process aspired to heighten their awareness to the presence of their embodied self at a certain place. The research questions that the author poses in this study are: (1) What is distinctive in the process of the AEE activities that I facilitate?; (2) Which specific competencies can be identified for a facilitator of AEE activities?; and (3) Does participating in the AEE activities that I facilitate enhance the ability of participants to have a direct experience of feeling connected to the natural world?In this explorative study, the author identifies facilitated estrangement through participating in AEE as an important catalyst when aiming to evoke such instances of transformative learning. In undergoing such moments, participants grope their way in a new liminal space. Artmaking can create favorable conditions for this to happen through its defamiliarizing effect which takes participants away from merely acting according to habit (on “autopilot”). The open-ended structure of the artmaking activities contributed to the creation of a learning arena in which emergent properties could become manifest. Thus, participants could potentially experience a sense of wonder and begin to acquire new understandings – a form of knowing that the author calls “rudimentary cognition.” The research further suggests that a facilitator should be able to bear witness to and hold the space for whatever enfolds in this encounter with artistic process in AEE. He or she must walk the tightrope between control and non-interfering.The analysis of the impacts of the AEE activities that were facilitated leads the author to conclude that it is doubtful whether these in and of themselves caused participants to experience the natural environment in demonstrable new and deep ways. He asserts that most of their awareness was focused on the internal level of their own embodied presence; engagement with place, the location where the AEE activity was performed, seemed secondary. The findings show that AEE activities first and foremost help bring about the ignition and augmentation of the participants’ fascination and curiosity, centered in an increased awareness of their own body and its interactions with the natural world. The present study can be seen as a contribution to efforts of envisaging innovative forms of sustainable education that challenge the way we have distanced ourselves from the more-than-human world.
LINK
There are three volumes in this body of work. In volume one, we lay the foundation for a general theory of organizing. We propose that organizing is a continuous process of ongoing mutual or reciprocal influence between objects (e.g., human actors) in a field, whereby a field is infinite and connects all the objects in it much like electromagnetic fields influence atomic and molecular charged objects or gravity fields influence inanimate objects with mass such as planets and stars. We use field theory to build what we now call the Network Field Model. In this model, human actors are modeled as pointlike objects in the field. Influence between and investments in these point-like human objects are explained as energy exchanges (potential and kinetic) which can be described in terms of three different types of capital: financial (assets), human capital (the individual) and social (two or more humans in a network). This model is predicated on a field theoretical understanding about the world we live in. We use historical and contemporaneous examples of human activity and describe them in terms of the model. In volume two, we demonstrate how to apply the model. In volume 3, we use experimental data to prove the reliability of the model. These three volumes will persistently challenge the reader’s understanding of time, position and what it means to be part of an infinite field. http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99709
DOCUMENT
We need mental and physical reference points. We need physical reference points such as signposts to show us which way to go, for example to the airport or the hospital, and we need reference points to show us where we are. Why? If you don’t know where you are, it’s quite a difficult job to find your way, thus landmarks and “lieux de memoire” play an important role in our lives.
LINK
Dit artikel bespreekt een dynamische benadering van de muzikale (talent)ontwikkeling bij jonge kinderen (Steenbeek, Van Geert & Van Dijk, 2011). Volgens een theoretisch, dynamisch kader is ontwikkeling een emergente eigenschap. Talent kan bij elk kind ontstaan als er een opwaarts dynamisch proces tot stand komt in de interactie tussen kind, volwassene en de activiteit. Het gebruik van Expressed Pedagogical Content Knowledge (EPCK; vgl. Geveke, 2017) door de volwassene is de sleutel om een positieve talentspiraal tot stand te brengen. Een dynamische kijk op ontwikkeling gaat terug op het werkvan pedagogen als Vygotsky, Piaget, Bruner en Dewey, en is verbonden met het sociaal-constructivisme. Daarnaast hebben de ecologische theorieën van Bronfenbrenner en Gibson er een belangrijke invloed op gehad. Verder is deze visie op macro-theoretisch niveau verwant aan theorieën over motivatie, zelfbeschikking en zelfregulering (Deci & Ryan, 2000), en over self-efficacy (Eraut, 2004). Het doel van deze studie is het beschrijven en evalueren van een inventarisatie van onderzoek naar muziekeducatieve praktijken voor jonge kinderen vanuit een dynamisch perspectief. Bij wijze van kwalitatieve inhoudsanalyse is een literatuurstudie uitgevoerd naar muziekeducatieve praktijken bij jonge kinderen. Deze studie heeft verschillende voorbeelden opgeleverd van veelbelovende praktijken die dynamische kenmerken vertonen. De resultaten geven aan dat onderzoek vanuit een dynamisch oogpunt naar betekenisvolle muziek-educatieve praktijken internationaal ‘in de lucht hangt’. Door een gebrek aan gedetailleerde analyses binnen de studies van activiteiten op de microtijdschaal blijft de kracht van EPCK echter meestal een blinde vlek. Door te focussen op EPCK kan onderzoek bijdragen aan kennis over hoe professionals meer ontwikkelingskansen voor kinderen kunnen creëren.
DOCUMENT
Nixon and Metiary argue that the notion of protest needs to be included in the global education system as a distinct activity. It needs to take its place alongside other social sciences and humanities courses in the school curricula. They stress that the ability to impact society, to incite societal change, to participate through more means than voting, needs to be taught. It needs to be implemented into the global education system.
DOCUMENT
This article explores the integration of a co-mentoring scheme within the participatory music practice of Meaningful Music in Healthcare (MiMiC) in Dutch medical hospitals. Building upon prior research that revealed a shared aspiration among MiMiC musicians and nurses to enhance collaborative efforts, the study explores the role of interprofessional collaboration not only for the immediate impact of music on people in the hospital environment but also for nurturing the sustained growth of the professionals involved. This article explores the implications and outcomes of a co-mentoring scheme, which took place in the form of reflective conversations between participating musicians and nurses, and examine their form, the relationships they foster within the MiMiC practice, and their contribution to interprofessional collaboration in transdisciplinary arts and health practices.
DOCUMENT
