The scholarship of transdisciplinary spaces: Art meets science

BACKGROUND Our recent experiences as guest editors for a special issue on ‘Science meets Art’ in education for International Journal of Innovation in Science and Mathematics Education (Quinnell, Wegener, LeBard & Beames, 2019) have made us wonder how ‘scholarship’ is defined when working in transdisciplinary spaces that map across STEAM. Strategies that significantly enrich student experiences and invite broader adoption deserve sharing. However, some strategies are not being disseminated through SOTL research fora because they are judged to lack scholarly framing. CASE STUDIES We offer a synopsis of the submissions that came across our desks. We wonder at how best to offer work that sits at the edges of science, science education and creative arts, and where the scholarly frame is somewhat mercurial. We offer a compelling study from the University of Queensland (UQ) where medicine students were asked to respond artistically to pathology museum specimens and associated case notes, as part of their ‘coping with medicine’ program. Medicine is inherently interdisciplinary, depending on science, technology and human interactions. This program focused on developing empathy and reflective practice in students and culminated in an exhibition of students’ work in the Integrated Pathology Learning Centre (Faculty of Medicine UQ, 2018). The creative works that the students produced were visual representations of the essence of students’ understandings of disciplinary knowledge and tell the stories of their experiences in coming to grips with sometimes-confronting knowledge. ARGUMENT We advocate pushing the boundaries of what is considered appropriate scholarly work in science education and to accommodate methods other than those based on numbers, such as ethnography, and to support those who are currently using the arts in their science and mathematics education to discuss their contributions using the full spectrum of scholarly approaches. CONCLUSIONS Scholarly practices from disciplines beyond science and mathematics have the power to invite critical reflection on discipline norms. We encourage STEM educators to look to the arts to lend creativity and to inform both teaching and SOTL practices

24 Hrs

'The ongoing project of texts and audible writings of the ‘24hrs’ series are a point of departure for everything I have done more recently. Handwritten footage of street observations translate into texts, audio and radio work. Translation processes continue between the ears of a listener: acoustic movies, moving images on inner (acoustically projected) screens. The work took place in cities such as Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo (2001/02), London (since 2002), Istanbul, Athens, Nicosia (2004) and Johannesburg (2006); it has been published in books, on film, as installation and on the radio. In recent articulation of the project, urban observation extended into, and was complemented by conversations, interviews and workshops (e.g. no-go-zones project 2007). The writings collect evidences of an obsessive relationship. It is a known obsession shared by many, walking in the city, drifting. The writings are dedicated to the obsession, the streets, the people of the city, and the drifters. Obsessive observation surrenders to a choreography of the street and copywrites it. The drifter becomes a dicta-phone, a seismograph. The machine of writing registers what escapes statistics, photography or film-making. It writes what is neither simply pictorial nor scenic nor accountable in numerical relations. A forthcoming (2008) collaborative project with artist Nicolas Robbio will include a joint exhibition and a further exploration of a ’24 hrs’ text in an artists book

Street Writings

'‘Street Writing ‘as an audio art work grows out of a series of writing and audio workshops with people at crisis/skylight in London’s East End during May and June 2006. In the research for the project, I was working with changing group of audiences, firstly, with a small limited audience group who becomes more and more active as a producer, finally signing, as group, a piece of work (the first radio programme). Only after this process is completed a secondary reflection process starts for me as an artist exchanging with the other artists involved, each of us responding with an ‘edited mix’ of workshop material, an in some way formalised articulation; the question guiding us (and me esp. as editor of the entire piece) was, how to make the experience and the material of six weeks of workshops perceivable to a wider audience who had no knowledge of the workshop process, i.e. how to capture the attention of an uninformed listener. The work includes the publication of an audio CD by WEEDWORKS (distributed via the ARTWORDS Bookshop: www.artwords.co.uk, copies of the CD were also sold at the Eastside Bookshop in Brick Lane and in the bookshops of FACT centre Liverpool and Palais de Tokiyo Paris); in collaboration with artists Charles Hayward, Valerie Vivancos, Alan Dunn and Jeff Young; it was presented on Resonance104.4fm on 22ndJune by the workshop participants, followed by a radio conversation with writer/curator Guy Brett, Terry Humphrey, Charles Hayward and myself -Claudia Wegener on 29thJune, ); funded by Arts Council England

No-Go Zones

'NO-GO-ZONES is a black youth radio project in South London created and run by myself as part of my sound art research activities. Between May and July 2007, weekly workshops led to a series of 6 one hour radio broadcasts on London’s Art Radio Station Resonance104.4fm run and presented by the participants. A CD was launched with a special event in October; the project was funded by the Arts Council England’s Grants for the Arts programme, Camberwell College of Arts and Southwark Council. Dissemination relating to No Go Zones includes; from 9-13 July, the BBC World Service showcased the NO-GO-ZONES project on their 'outlook' show with daily excerpts from the NO-GO-ZONES on-line archive and a studio interview with the young production team at the end of that week; established links with ‘sound scape rhythms’, a weekly programme on the Canadian station cjam in order to test the grounds for communities around our common concerns and interests.( Cjam broadcasts worldwide and on air across the border in both Canada/ USA); radio Grenuille in Marseille; Bushradio in Cape Town; an intercontinental radio event in the autumn 2007, in conjunction with Black History Month

Long Walk

'‘LONG WALK’ is directly related to an artist residency at the Bag Factory Fordsburg artists studios in Johannesburg S.A. from Oct. 2005 to April 2006; funded by the Bag Factory/ Triangle Trust and the British Council. It includes a series of interlinked works: LONG WALK: public chess tournament across the fence between Joubert Park and the Johannesburg Art Gallery, in collaboration with Joburg artist Pitso Chinzima, participation of S.A. international chess champion Watu Kobese, 20Nov. 2005, see also: ; LONG WALK (abridged)’, radio work, commission for RADIA network of independent European radio stations and ; RADIO ARMED RESPONSE: commissioned by Goethe Institut Johannesburg, initially in collaboration with Joburg artist Steven Hobbs, 2006; original sound piece exhibited in; ARMED RESPONSE II at the Goethe Institut Johannesburg, April/May 2007; new radio work broadcast on Resonance104.4fm, 28 April 2007, see: In projects like ‘LONG WALK (abridged)’, urban observations are complemented with ad hoc street interviews, emphasising the theatrical and performative quality of verbal interaction a form of ‘dramatic’ field recordings. I see myself involved in processes drawing new challenge from ancient concepts like antiphony (‘Wechselgesang’ in German), testing its relevance with a ‘view’ on active listening, and audio/radio work as theatre of the voice