Thinking through Drawing Symposium

& Drawing Research Network Conference:

24th – 26th of October, 2013

at Teachers College, Columbia University and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York

What is drawing for? What can it do? What can we do with it?

We are pleased to announce the 3^rd Thinking through Drawing symposium in conjunction with the annual Drawing Research Network conference.

A wide variety of workshops, discussions, presentations and panels in studios and museum galleries will address the following questions:

• What methods do artists, and others who draw as part of their professional practice, have to offer researchers and educators in a variety of disciplines?
• How might the teaching and learning of and with drawing provide rich inspiration for research?
• Can the act of drawing itself be a form of research, and if so, what methods might reveal this particular function of drawing?

Drawing is rarely a pure thing: practice shapes research, pedagogy shapes practice, and research shapes both. As we think with, through and about drawing, how might pedagogy, methodology and research inform one another? We look forward to exploring interweavings between these aspects of drawing in art, cognitive science and education.

Interdisciplinary research conducted by members of the International Drawing and Cognition Research network suggests that our growing understanding of the cognitive skills involved in drawing can be put to practical use across various arenas, from the K-12 classroom to the training of surgeons. This research was presented at the first Thinking through Drawing symposium at Teachers College in the fall of 2011, and the second at the University of the Arts in London, UK, in the fall of 2012. The symposia brought together artists, performers, cognitive scientists, medical practitioners, philosophers and art educators to consider the relationships between drawing and cognition. Researchers across geographical and disciplinary borders addressed how recent findings from cognitive psychology and neurosciences can inform arts education, with a particular emphasis on drawing. The mix of practitioners, researchers and scholars from the arts and cognitive sciences made the interchanges challenging, exciting and forward-looking. Resulting publications have garnered much critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic (see links below).

Your input is vital as workers in the field of drawing and drawing research: we need your support and submissions of work for consideration.

The symposium is calling for your proposals for: workshops, chaired discussions on drawing subject matter that you would wish be explored, presentations of practice (both arts and other) involving drawing, and proposals for panels.

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http://www.facebook.com/drawingandcognition

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Angie B

Thinking through Drawing 2012. The event brought together artists, educators, scientists, medical practitioners, philosophers, engineers, computer scientists, and more, to examine the uses of drawing across Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths.

A highlight of the symposium was the practical emphasis, with communal drawings on walls and floors, and dynamic inventive workshops using and exploring drawing in a wide range of ways.

Conference proceedings will be published in 2013 in a special edition of Tracey drawing journal, on Drawing and Cognition. Video footage of presentations and workshops will also be available in 2013.

How is drawing used within and between these disciplines? What is the relationship between drawing in the Arts and STEM subjects? What is our current understanding of drawing, cognition and learning, and how is it contributing to curriculum development and instructional design in these areas?

Thinking through Drawing 2012 addressed these issues, exploring learning and teaching practices and new research directions. The symposium functioned as an active discursive platform in which we considered the place of drawing across disciplines and professions.

We were joined by colleagues from around the world in order to share practice and discussion across countries as well as disciplines.

To register your interest in Thinking through Drawing 2013, October 25-26th, NYC please e mail drawingandcognition@gmail.com

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MODEL (in science): a set of equations or algorithms that takes the same inputs used in an experiment, and outputs numbers that are similar/compatible with the experimental outcomes, or predict the outcomes of future experiments.
- Descriptive model: addressing the ‘what’ question “what are the key variables that determine the observed phenomenon?”
- Mechanistic model: addressing the ‘how’ question “what are the physical mechanisms that produce the observed phenomenon?”
- Normative model: addressing the ‘why’ question “what are the principles from which the observed phenomenon can be derived?  or, why does nature behave the way it does?”
EXPERIMENT (in science): ideally, a set up in which, all but one variables of the system of interest are fixed; the remaining variable is varied under the experimenters control, and changes in the behavior of the system are recorded as a function of the controlled variable. In practice, typically many variables are not under the control of the experimenter, and repeating the same experiment several times will give different outcomes -> statistical analysis of uncertainty, experimental errors/noise, significance
- Exploratory experiment: “let’s try to change this variable and see what happens”
- Hypothesis-based: “I think if I change this variable in this direction, the system will behave in this way; let’s check if that’s true”
- Model-based: “My model predicts that this and that will happen if I run this and that experiment: let’s check if that’s true, and if not I’ll change the model”

- language: keywords mean different things in different fields; an important keyword in one field means nothing in another field
- methods: applying methods from one discipline to a question that is typical of the other discipline; when is this sensible and how to avoid the criticism that you are using ‘unorthodox’ methods?
- conceptual: any good examples of interdisciplinary projects that significantly advanced *both* disciplines?
- knowledge/skills: to what extent collaboration is enough, vs the individual researcher becoming an expert in both fields?
- funding: usually harder for interdisciplinary projects?