CALRG Conf: Artcasting

Koula Charitonos, PhD student.

Question: What do you think a museum is? Took some time for museums to agree – but ICOM 2001 have agreed it – includes service of society, open to public, tangible & intangible heritage, education, study and enjoyment.

First physical museum C17th, now a ‘distributed network’ as Museum 2.0. Co-creation important. Focus on podcasting – not from institution, but created by users. Looking at artworks on a website.

Museums are (mainly) about objects; need to know about how to interpret them – Bourdieu on ‘interpretive strategies’. Assumption – if give children opportunities to view art on their terms, then will break down access barriers. Museums investing lots in online; know that they’re visited but not how they’re used in the classroom.

Research framework ‘Inspiring Learning for All’. Five generic learning outcomes – widely used in museum sector.

Case study on Tate Kids – includes ‘my gallery’ feature where users can add artworks, upload their own, comment, rate, share. 43 children in Year 5. Pre/post questionnaire, intervention with pre/post interpretation phases, followup interviews. Qualitative content analysis plus some basic quantitative.

Some interesting responses – I thought of nothing, my mind was blank’ – then had more by end ‘It’s a woman dead in the river and flowers are falling fro the trees above her […]’. Were making observations, but not involved in dialogic conversations, and not interested in that – just appeared as a series of unrelated posts.

‘Artcasts’ were object created by kids in process; audio recording of intepretations on artworks, with researcher as prompter. Thirteen audio files created, about 30-40 minutes long. Entertaining stuff! There were references to artist and title, drawing on social techniques, making up a story, drawing on personal associations (somewhat), and exploring the meaning (a little). Discussed visual elements, but in basic terminology; a few drew on process of art-making. Only one group placed an artwork in a historical context – when prompted to look at the year of creation.

Findings: the kids enjoyed artcasting. Participants were employing a wider range of ‘interpretative strategies’, and use of website can enhance learning, can be beneficial, contextual tools require to enable interpretation and meaning-making process.

Question

Kim: Role of researcher. Would need an adult to do something, or could embed in to software?

Koula: Could be teacher. I was trying not to impose my ideas. Was useful to have another person there.

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