Today in the studio I am creating a new sculpture. It’s been a while since I created new sculpture – not sure why, it seems so many other things get in the way!
So why am I creating a new sculpture – some motivation, I guess!! Recently I was invited to create a work for a micro exhibition for the Lorne Sculpture Biennale in response to the bushfires that occurred on Christmas Day in the Wye River area. The brief was positivity and regeneration.
I was really pleased to be asked, as only a month before I had experienced a large scale bushfire near my home where some close friends had been affected, but thankfully had kept their house and business, though unfortunately many other homes were lost! And three years ago the mount I live at the base of had been on fire. So, in a way, making a sculpture for the Wye River bushfire also allowed me to communicate the emotions I had felt in response to the other two fires.
Mount Warrenheip fire 2013 Photo: Dawn Whitehand – View from my backyard
Photo : Dawn Whitehand Scotsburn Bushfires 2015
So with these thoughts in my head as a starting point I started out in the studio with a pre conceived concept, but – of course – ended up with something completely different.
Now, this above thought is not be taken lightly, and I am intending to write a post about this in the future Why was I able to change my concept/design on the run? I believe the arts cultivates dynamic thinking which can drive innovation and be flexible upon need…. this is why STEM needs to be STEAM in our education system (*see below).
But back to my sculpture… I am not going to post a completed picture of the work, that will come at the opening or after, however, I will post some progress pics from the studio today …. cheers 🙂
*STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics
*STEAM = Science, Technology, Engineering, ARTS, Mathematics
” this is why STEM needs to be STEAM in our education system (*see below).” Great! I like that. Where did you get that?
STEM is not creative, the sciences describe systems that can be described in terms of a fixed formal theory. Creativity is the ability to get out of the framework of any given fixed formal theory, and that is not captured by STEM.
Human beings and human cultures are creative. That is why it is impossible to reduce the humanities and philosophy to science (while science can be viewed as a special case of the humanities).
Posted by nannus | March 1, 2016, 5:27 amDoing science is as creative as doing art . However science is taught about rather than taught or done in most educational institutions – at least until postgraduate level but increasingly in the UK not even then . On the other hand even when art is badly taught it is difficult to stop students producing some actual work !
Posted by rukshanaafia | March 1, 2016, 5:56 amI totally agree that science is a creative activity. Math is a creative activity as well, as is computer science (my own profession) and the rest of STEM disciplines. I think that science does not follow fixed rules (any set of fixed rules is limited), so if science is defined as describing systems in terms of formal theories, science itself falls outside the scope of science. The theory of science is within the humanities (it is philosophy), but many scientists seem not to see this.
Posted by nannus | March 1, 2016, 6:08 amOf course , real science is done when someone thinks originally and cannot be automatically generated from the so-called scientific method (cf Feyerabend’s “Against Method”) . My 1st degree was in Pure Maths where I agree this was extremely obvious . When I realised I did not have true mathematical ie creative ability but had been teeming with 3D artistic ideas since 2ndary school I went in for training in ceramics and later textiles .
I fear that education whether in art , science (natural philosophy) or the humanities is , at best , confused right now in the UK .
Posted by rukshanaafia | March 1, 2016, 6:43 amInside maths, one can even proof that creativity is necessary. What can be done with algorithms is always incomplete (or can be extended). I am thinking here of the results of people like Gödel, Turing, Kleene etc. Every formal theory of how to do maths (and, as a corollary, any formal theory of human cognition and human culture) are incomplete. You can extend the theory, but the resulting theory is incomplete again. That is the reason there is a science/humanities divide. Any algorithm only describes a single pattern and you can always construct something outside of such a pattern. If science can identify the laws or patterns in arbitrary data, it cannot be an algorithm, so its meta-theory must be outside of science itself.
(Sorry to our host here, we are moving way out of the topic of her post and blog, I think :-), although there is a connection).
Posted by nannus | March 1, 2016, 6:54 amI’d hardly disagree with you on Maths since I was & am intrigued by its philosophy and have gone into it a lot . I’m not sure about such a clear humanities/science divide . I thought ‘humanities’ meant human ways of seeing things – as such the natural sciences and Maths are also humanities since human beings have been doing both since ever . I suppose I am also a bit of an etymological pedant and remember that ‘science’ means knowledge and ‘philosophy’ the love of wisdom so that eg history and theology are sciences (with the Moral Sciences tripos at Cambridge being the philosophy degree course) and also physics used to be called natural philosophy .
Apologies from me too ! (But I also think there is a connection) .
Posted by rukshanaafia | March 1, 2016, 7:18 amYou hit the nail on the head. Scienc, as understood by many people, is just a special case. I am German and in my native language, there is not even an equivalent of the concept of Science. We have “Wissenschaft” and that is a much wider concept comprising both. It is an artificial divide, a result of a certain tradition of philosophy. Some scientists seem to think that the humanities will be made obsolete by science, but I think it will happen the other way around. Science is just a special case.
Posted by nannus | March 1, 2016, 7:26 amwow you sparked a debate there Dawn 🙂 me, I can’t wait to see your creation and congrats on being invited to take part in the Lorne event.
Posted by Anna's Ceramics | March 1, 2016, 8:55 am