Between worlds | hybrid pedagogy of art and design

Panel: Barak Pelman (Bezalel Academy of arts and design Jerusalem), Nitzan Cohen (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Nitzan), Darryl Clifton (Camberwell College of Arts UAL) and Chelsi Cocking (MIT Media Lab) Merav Salomon (Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem)

Abstract

In the last two years, an international group of educators in arts, design and architecture have been meeting regularly to discuss the effects of COVID-19 on art and design pedagogy. Led by the Bezalel Art and Design Teaching Center and the Bezalel international office, this group discussed new ways to theorise and practice art and design education in light of recent advances in CAD, CAM, and communication technologies, significant cultural shifts and social restrictions. Drawing on recent sociomaterial orientations in education research, the group developed a novel perspective of contemporary art and design learning processes. This perspective conceives art and design learning environments as complex ecologies of hybrid sociomaterial and digital interactions that extend beyond academic campuses’ areas. Different kinds of agents take part in these interactions: There are physical agents, digital agents, and hybrids of both. They include the students themselves as well as the components that comprise their physical, virtual, and social environments; the physical and the virtual spaces they occupy, the physical and virtual artefacts they iteratively create, the software and the hardware they use, and the physical and the virtual modes of communication they employ with their peers and instructors. This panel will explore the implications of this perspective on art and design education through four workshops delivered by representatives from four high profile institutions of art and design higher education institutions around the world.