2011 Conference

Editorial

ACUADS CONFERENCE 2011: CREATIVITY: BRAIN – MIND – BODY

A view into the future of Australian Art and Design Schools
21 – 23 September 2011

ISBN: 978-0-9758360-7-1

Welcome to the 2011 Australian Council of University Art and Design Schools (ACUADS) conference hosted by the Australian National University, the University of Canberra, and the Canberra Institute of Technology.

The title of the conference was ‘Creativity: brain, mind, body’. Artists working within the university sector now confront vital and, at times, vexed issues regarding the relation between conventional academic disciplines and notions and measures of knowledge; and the kinds of knowledge and insight involved in creative practice. Creative research involves engaging distinctive kinds of knowledge located in the body, in the senses and the emotions as much as in the mind or brain. Artists across the sector are grappling with the challenge of finding a language with which to effectively account for the complexities of creative experience, and we may well find that the insights which artists bring to this process has the potential to shed light, not just on their own particular creative practices, but on the nature of the creative imagination itself.

The two keynote speakers, Dr Iain McGilchrist and Prof Ross Gibson, anchored this theme, and the three day program explored its implications. Many, but not all, of the papers are related to the theme: we also aimed to present a wide range of research representing the diverse interests and practices of our sector.

Canberra provides the opportunity to visit the great exhibitions at our national institutions: especially at The National Portrait Gallery, The National Museum of Australia, the National Gallery of Australia, The Australian War Memorial, The National Film and Sound Archive, The National Library of Australia, and The National Archives of Australia.

Other local exhibiting institutions are: Craft ACT: Craft and Design Centre, Canberra Museum and Gallery, Canberra Glassworks, the Gallery of Australian Design, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, M16 Art Space, ANCA Gallery (Australian National Capital Artists Inc), Megalo Print Studio and Gallery, and the Huw Davies Gallery at PhotoAccess. There are two galleries on the ANU campus: School of Art Gallery and Drill Hall Gallery.

Gordon Bull
Head of School
School of Art – ANU

11 May, 2012 Paper Publication Date

ACUADS offers participation to the wider art and design sector by co-ordinating a theme-based annual conference (with rotating locations throughout Australia) as part of its professional development responsibility.

The Conference three day program was built around the interests of those proposing papers:

Day one was entirely driven by members’ interests;

Day two was built around the broad theme of inter disciplinary practices and creativity: making links between scholars involved in practice-led research in Schools of Art and academics and practitioners working in related fields such as other arts practice disciplines, neuroscience, visual perception, psychology, philosophy and anthropology;

Day three focused on Higher Degree Researchers.

Research Higher Degree (Masters and Doctorates) candidates were strongly encouraged to propose papers. Additionally, three ACUADS Postgraduate Grants were made available to assist currently enrolled doctoral candidates to participate in the conference. The ACUADS Executive Committee selected Abdul Aziz, Betty Sargeant and Deborah Marks as grant recipients from the full papers proposed by doctoral candidates for conference presentation. Recipients received $500, which covered the registration fee with the balance being made available to assist with travel and accommodation costs.

Refereed papers were presented during the three days of the Conference.

Refereed Papers

The refereeing process complied with accepted guidelines. Referees were chosen from the academic community and were independent experts in their chosen field. Each full and completed paper was submitted for refereeing as a ‘blind’ (unidentifiable) copy to two referees. Written comments were received from each referee for each paper. Papers requiring revision were returned to authors for the required changes. At no time were referees informed of the identities of the authors whose papers they were assessing, nor were authors informed of the referees’ identities. The Keynote papers were not subject to this process. The conference papers have been edited for consistency in presentation, and an effort has been made to ensure that all papers are free from errors.

ACUADS 2011 Conference

Australian National University – School of Art

University of Canberra – Faculty of Art and Design

Canberra, Australian Capital Territory

21 – 23 September 2011

Papers

Playing with Complexity: An approach to exploratory data visualisation
Ben Ennis Butler, Sam Hinton and Mitchell Whitelaw
Collaborative Approaches to teaching Design History
Lisa Scharoun, Stephen O'Connor and Tat-Ming Yu
The Creative Researcher In Search of Outputs
Tim Thomas and Susan Thwaites