STEAM = Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics.

While many may be familiar with the acronym STEM, the inclusion of Arts in STEAM recognises the importance of art-based learning in creating well-rounded cross-disciplinary approaches. STEAM reminds us that everything is connected.

In STEAM, Art plays the important role of sustaining curiosity, encouraging flexibility, and sparking innovation. It reminds us to learn from each other and our surroundings. Without creative thinking, we don’t have ideas, hypotheses or inventions.

Contemporary art and art thinking have a place in STEM: they can offer a starting point, a time to play and listen to our gut, or help us reflect and reassess.

This class kit is part of the STEAM and contemporary art learning resource set. It focuses on the importance of Art in STEAM through three main themes: ‘Take another look’, ‘The role of emotions’ and ‘Embracing the unknown’.

Pick up an object. Imagine that this object could talk. What might it tell you about the place you are both in?

You could ask your object:

• How long have you been here?
• What activities do you do in this place?
• What have you noticed in this place?

• How does this place make you feel? What emotions do you feel as you interact with this place?

Return your object to where you found it. Now take a moment to think about all of the people, objects, and other elements that have gathered or interacted with this place over time. Think about your relationship to this place you are in and acknowledge the land you are on.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF COUNTRY

ACTIVITY

Theme 1:

Take another look

Pick up a different everyday object and analyse it carefully. What are the different parts that make up this object? What role does each element play?

Now take a closer look. Can you spot anything specific about this object that would help you identify it compared to another one made in the same factory?

In Untitled (useless, powerful) I, White has recreated a powerboard using polymer clay. She has taken something familiar and turned it into something different.

List all the similarities and differences you can think of between the artwork and the object it is copied from.

I am more interested in focusing on really specific things like particular marks or accidental arrangements that tell a story of how we spend our time.

I’m drawn to the power of representation to transform things from one thing to another.

Contemporary artists often bring everyday objects into the gallery, either as an art material or as an art subject. This encourages us to look at these items through a different lens.

Why might artists want us to take another look at

these objects?

Theme 2:

The role of emotions

Look at the list of emotions below. How many of these have you felt today?

amused | angry | annoyed | anxious | awe | awkward | bored | calm | confused | confident | craving curiosity | determined | disappointed | disgust | empathy | embarrassed | energised | envy | excited fear | foggy | friendly | frustrated | guilty | happy | hate | horror | humiliated | interested | kind | love lonely | panic | patience | pride | relief | sad | shyness | surprise | worry | thoughtful | unsure | vibrant

After seeing the still in the previous slide, now take some time to watch the excerpt from Plasmid region (2003) by Patricia Piccinini on the following slide.

Make a list of all the things you notice in the artwork.

Take a moment to look at the words on your list and consider each item separately from the artwork.

Write a corresponding emotion next to each item on your list.

The animated imagery of Plasmid Region, in which pulsating organic forms extrude embryonic blobs, looks like it could have been filmed in the depths of the human body, or deep underwater, yet it is entirely computer-generated. These fleshy life-forms have no life outside the screen on which they are shown – they are entirely the products of technology and imagination.

The intersection of biology and technology has been a defining concern in Piccinini’s work. Her works probe the frontiers of scientific innovation in cloning, stem cell research and genetic modification and invite the question: what is it that makes us who we are? If the body can be unmade and remade through technology, what implications does this have for our identity as human beings? The question of what our ‘nature’ might be in a world of biotechnology is one that hangs over Plasmid Region and its repellent yet intriguing mimicry of bodily functions that expel and eject.

This symbolises the fantasy of biotechnology, where the ‘bio’ and ‘technology’ become fused into an inseparable whole. So you can see it is very fleshly.

To me, it is very beautiful because it is like birth. But then you have to ask: what are these creatures, and where are they going to go and who is going to look after them?

Piccinini’s works ask us to consider a future where human, other beings, and technology are combined. Her works often bring together opposites, for example, combining familiar and foreign or beauty and repulsion.

What role do you think emotion plays in our engagement with Piccinini’s work?

Objectivity

noun

The fact of being based on facts and not influenced by personal beliefs or feelings.

Cambridge Dictionary

Subjectivity

noun

The quality of being based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes or opinions.

Oxford English dictionary

Scientific objectivity “expresses the idea that scientific claims, methods, results —and scientists themselves— are not, or should not be, influenced by particular perspectives, value judgements, community bias or personal interests”1. It asks us to separate ourselves from our work.

Do you think it is possible to be truly objective in STEM? Why or why not?

Well, let me tell you a secret about science; scientists don’t prove anything. What we do is collect evidence that supports or does not support our predictions. Sometimes we do things over and over again, in meaningfully different ways, and we get the same results, and then we call these findings facts.

Theme 3:

embrace the unknown

Think of a memory from when you were 5 years old or younger. Tell the story of this memory, by writing, talking or drawing it.

Did you remember all the details of the story? If not, how did you fill in the gaps? If yes, can you think of more details, such as what you were wearing or the weather?

Daniel Boyd is a Kudjala, Ghungalu, Wangerriburra, Wakka Wakka, Gubbi Gubbi, Kuku Yalanji, Yuggera and Bundjalung man with ni-Vanuatu heritage from Far North Queensland. For the 2014 Circular Quay Foyer Wall Commission, Boyd’s work Untitled was composed of more than 18,000 circular mirrored disks. The mirrored surface reflected the activity of the MCA foyer environment as well as the Circular Quay foreshore. The work was ever-changing, composed of the infinite possibilities of its own surroundings. Visitors directly influenced the appearance of the artwork through their movement and interaction.

In this work, Boyd drew on Gestalt psychology, a theory of human perception that suggests the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. He described the mirrored disks as a collection of ‘lenses’, capable of both focusing and distorting what we perceive. The artist is interested in how the human mind makes sense of what it sees, connecting colours, shapes and lines to form a meaningful sense of reality.

For Boyd, the mirrors and black space in Untitled also referenced ‘dark matter’ – a scientific term for the invisible substance that is thought to hold the universe together.

Untitled 2014 was a response to the landscape here in The Rocks here at Circular Quay. The driving element of the work is how we don’t comprehend, you know, we can’t comprehend the full extent of the history of this place.

Daniel Boyd is interested in Gestalt theory and the principle of closure where “the human mind has a tendency to see complete objects or forms even if they have gaps in the linear or structural make up. You see the image as a whole by piecing together the marks made on the surface” 2 rather than considering things as separate components.

How might our desire to fill in gaps and view things as a whole affect the way we communicate stories and ideas?

Students struggle with ambiguity, because we all do. Artists, on the other hand, realise that ambiguity is part of the process. They take it, they identify it, and they tackle it head on.

If artists are doing this, can’t you imagine if art education was a place where we knew students could go to prepare for lives of not knowing?

Unlike many of the disciplines in STEM, contemporary art does not have a clearly defined language or grammar. Each artist creates their own rules and makes a choice as to how clearly or abstractly they present their ideas.

It is also an exchange. As viewers, we use our own emotional connections and individual and collective knowledge to de-code and draw meaning.

Why might artists choose to work in a discipline that encourages and allows for multiple interpretations?

What art brings:
Art skills