Amalgamations

I explore time, memory, and the artist’s ability to convey experience through autobiographical photographs and drawings. In my compositions, I provide an intimate look into my life, while making wider observations about how my mind processes the world. My work is concerned with circumventing the objective, static qualities of photography. I attempt to create images that convey how experiences feel, instead of how they look through the lens of an optical apparatus. With my work, I do not wish to take from the world around me, but rather to create from the world within me. By utilizing multiple exposures and collage techniques, as well as drawings, I investigate how I experience and remember my life, and the people most important to me

Can Computers Create Art?

This essay discusses whether computers, using Artificial Intelligence (AI), could create art. First, the history of technologies that automated aspects of art is surveyed, including photography and animation. In each case, there were initial fears and denial of the technology, followed by a blossoming of new creative and professional opportunities for artists. The current hype and reality of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools for art making is then discussed, together with predictions about how AI tools will be used. It is then speculated about whether it could ever happen that AI systems could be credited with authorship of artwork. It is theorized that art is something created by social agents, and so computers cannot be credited with authorship of art in our current understanding. A few ways that this could change are also hypothesized.Comment: to appear in Arts, special issue on Machine as Artist (21st Century

Qualitative Action Research on the Benefits of Adding Humor and Aspects of Play in an Elementary Art Education Classroom with Sixth Graders

This qualitative action research study explored the benefits of using humor and aspects of play as teaching strategies in the art classroom. This study was conducted in a small Catholic elementary school located in Western New York. One sixth grade class, composed of nine students, participated in this study. Data was collected and analyzed a period of ten weeks. Conducted through the theory of constructivism, students were engaged and encouraged to construct deep understandings of important concepts in the art classroom through the tools of humor and play. My focus was how the students’ perceived humor and play in the classroom, how humor and play could be used to assist in instruction, and what I, and perhaps other teachers, learn from this inclusion as the art teacher. I collected data through field notes, observations, class dialogue, questionnaires, and student artwork. After consistently reading through and triangulating the data, I formed groups of categories which became my findings, which include: humor and play generate motivation and engagement in students, humor and play function as teaching tools, and kid culture is important to incorporate in the classroom. My findings demonstrate the various benefits of using humor and the aspects of play into the art classroom. I discovered that by using these often unconventional tools to aid in classroom and curriculum construction, student engage in concepts they need to learn. In addition, through the creation of a positive and playful classroom environment, students build relationships with one another and connect through shared laughter and humor connections. As a teacher, this unit also helped me discover the importance of humor in the role of stress and anxiety relief for both students and teacher

Chaos, culture and fantasy: The television plays of Howard Schuman

The single plays of American ex-pat playwright Howard Schuman produced for British television between 1973 and 1983 have received little critical attention. Written in a distinctly un-British madcap, non-naturalistic and often pulpy 'B movie' style, they centre around caricatured, hysterical and/or camp characters and make frequent references to popular culture. This article provides a general survey of Schuman's plays and analyses his sensibility as a screenwriter, drawing extensively on material from interviews with the writer. The article's particular focus is how and why different cultural forms including music, film and theatre are used and referred to in Schuman's plays, and how this conditions the plays' narrative content and visual and aural form. It also considers the reception of Schuman's plays and their status as non-naturalistic dramas that engage heavily with American pop culture, within the context of British drama. Finally, it explores the writer's relationship to style and aesthetics, and considers how his written works have been enhanced through creative design decisions, comparing his directions (in one of his scripts) with the realized play to reflect on the use of key devices

Metaphors, Myths and the Stories We Tell: How to Empower a Flourishing AI Enabled Human in the Future of Work by Enabling Whole Brain Thinking

Through the use of storytelling, literature review, interviews, workshops, and explorations using scenario planning, how to empower an AI enabled human being to flourish in the future of work by enabling Whole Brain Thinking is studied. The purpose of this report is to provide a roadmap for human success using the future of work as a focus. This report reaches five conclusions: 1. Training creativity is the key to building the capability to imagine new metaphors and myths in order to tell new stories to restore Ontological Safety. 2. Whole Braining Thinking is enabled by creativity. As people are able to ignite both left and right brain thinking to see other possibilities, training Whole Brain Thinking helps people to create new metaphors and stories about their future by shifting their mindset to imagine a future that is not dystopian. 3. As the nature of work changes and AI takes over more left brain tasks, Whole Brain Thinking as a skill set will place us in a position to be able to find meaningful employment alongside AI by creating new types of integrated careers, like Explainers. 4. Statisticians use AI for making predictions. If as predicted, Quantum Computing can enhance this capability by examining trends and predicting what is probably, then there is a place for people to use Whole Brain Thinking to expand predictions into the realm of the plausible and the possible outcomes. 5. Being AI Enabled requires comprehension of how AI works by breaking AI into its system components. Being Whole Brain Thinkers allow us to symphonically explain the ‘why’ and how things are linked

The Machine as Art/ The Machine as Artist

The articles collected in this volume from the two companion Arts Special Issues, “The Machine as Art (in the 20th Century)” and “The Machine as Artist (in the 21st Century)”, represent a unique scholarly resource: analyses by artists, scientists, and engineers, as well as art historians, covering not only the current (and astounding) rapprochement between art and technology but also the vital post-World War II period that has led up to it; this collection is also distinguished by several of the contributors being prominent individuals within their own fields, or as artists who have actually participated in the still unfolding events with which it is concerne