'Paper'

June 10th

Full paper / Transforming Practices: a practice-based research approach to teaching emerging media at undergraduate level

Authors: Christopher Fry, Julie Marsh

Work:

This paper suggests how a ‘research-oriented’ and ‘research-based’ approach can help undergraduate students engage creatively with new and emerging media technologies. It also proposes a way in which arts practice, and specifically practice-led research, can inform pedagogy, improving satisfaction for tutors and students alike.

Typology:

Paper

Theme: Research-orientated, research-based, teaching, media practice, emerging media

Abstract: This paper suggests how a ‘research-oriented’ and ‘research-based’ approach can help undergraduate students engage creatively with new and emerging media technologies, as well as creating a critical and less disciplinary focused approach. It also proposes a way in which arts practice, and specifically practice-led research, can inform pedagogy, improving satisfaction for tutors and students alike. The authors reflect on their experience of modifying the module ‘Media Frontiers’ on a media arts undergraduate degree programme, presented as a case study. It sets out how the changes made transformed students’ means of engaging with emerging media technologies and developing new artistic insights.

Biography: Christopher Fry is a researcher at the Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media (CREAM), University of Westminster, UK, where he also teaches practice and theory on the BA Contemporary Media Practice. He completed a practice-led PhD in 2008 entitled ‘Perceiving Experience: accounting for the role of the audience in the construction of pervasive and locative artworks’ at the Wimbledon School of Art. His current research continues to examine relationships with digital and interactive media, employing drawing as a means of bridging between the digital and the analog.

Julie Marsh is a senior lecturer and researcher at CREAM in Westminster School of Arts. Julie is a specialist in interdisciplinary practice, exploring the intersections between film, installation, performance and site-specificity. Her research is engaged with collaborative and knowledge-led approaches to field research, from moving image to emergent technologies. Through the exploration of real and representational space she investigates how technical machines can perform site, creating critical experiences for audiences that open debate and question social spaces. She has exhibited internationally, most recently as part of the Three British Mosques at Venice Architecture Biennale (2021).

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