Art Through and Through, Cross Curricular Pedagogy

Physics Through Art; Sound

Art can be taught through many other subjects. This is not a new idea by any means but it is evident in many secondary schools that they would not be aware of how much other subjects are being investigated by working artists.

My own practice takes several different approaches to 'reframing' the traditional disciplines such as drawing and painting. In the third year of my degree, I exhibited in the Crawford gallery. My journey here was a strange one. 

I started out as many an artist would, by roaring at inanimate objects. I wanted to explore the idea of sound through a statement that I am here as a person. This is how I know I am here. This is how I am orientated. I can fill the space around me with a sound only I can produce and I can occupy that space, if only briefly, but fully.

Sound began to take over my way of interacting with the world as a whole. I began to close my eyes as I walked and listen for the sounds. This was not a  good idea without practice, highly dangerous behaviour. 

This began a journey of Art through Physics. I became obsessed with sound. Sound, if one could read it would give a truer representation of a space than any visual representation. As we know from sonar we can map out a space and get a pure reading from this information. I began using spectrograms to create my art. During one session I noticed that when I would whistle it would give me a clean clear line on the spectrogram. This I could control with the frequency of the whistle. Soon, I was whistling mountains and trees and buildings. 

I drew with sound. To me, this was the taking of one form of information, pure information and creating a new form of information with it. The piece I exhibited in Crawford was titled 'A Country Mile'. This was a two and a half hour journey into the country whistling my interpretation of the landscape as I went. It was suggested that this drive might end up with one going to a hurling match, which is exactly what we ended up doing. This led to the piece being given a subtitle; 'Shamballymore beat Ballyhooly in the County Final'. Here is a two min excerpt from the drive;

Country Mile

This reconstruction of information led me to think about the reconstruction of traditional practices such as drawing and painting in contemporary settings. The 'frequencies' I was using to create these 'drawings' are more at home in a physics class than an art room yet here I was creating drawings from them. I recently held a presentation with a fifth-year class that introduced this idea and let them explore it by themselves. For this, I showed them the roaring pictures first;

Thes pictures begin all my work

Whenever I have to revert, I always go back to these pictures.

They begin with the question, 'Am I here?'

They ask that everlasting question; 'How do I know I am here?'

From here I can go several different paths depending on the work I am attempting to produce. Simultaneously, while working on the Country Mile drawing I was also working on prints with several different titles. These looked like so;

Artist roars at a 50c piece on the ground and Artist roars at a bowl of soup.

I printed off fifty different roars on small pieces of card. I introduced absurdity to the prints through the names I gave them. They were all titled; 'Artist roars at' and each piece had an object more ridiculous than then last. These I then signed and dated and placed in randomly picked catalogues for the third year show. I was the organiser of this show so had free reign as to what decisions were made in the show. The show was held in Cork Airport for the month of June 2015. It was named Ascent and received footfall of 60,000 people over the course of the month. 

This introduction of physics to my work had opened the doors for new possibilities everywhere. My end of year show for my degree was also inspired by this cross-curricular approach.

I had reinvented drawing through technology by use of the spectrogram. I now wanted to do the same with painting. It wasn't until I started to project the spectrograms onto my painting that an idea struck me. While doing so, I realised that some colours reacted differently to the projections. With the use of colour theory, I was able to control what colours reacted and were seeing when the spectrogram was being projected onto the canvas. This literally meant I could paint with sound. Here is an example of the work;

This now was using what I understood of colour theory to create paintings that were activated by sound. What I had to do was paint in colours that the spectrogram activated. 
The idea for the subject of the painting came out of a crucial seminar in college where the 'Shroud of Turin' was mentioned several times. 

The Shroud of Turin

This was a satisfactory connection as what I was trying to convey through my work was that paintings, no matter how famous or 'important' they may be considered are only 'important' because we prescribe them a narrative to explain their context. In other words, we talk all paintings into existence. The connection between the 'Shroud of Turin' and my understanding of painting is a very strong one in this case. The teleological narrative that painting had adopted throughout the Modernist era was not that dissimilar to the Catholic religious narrative that I and my fellow countrymen and women had grown up listening to. In fact, the religious narrative seems to have met the same end as the painting narrative did with the introduction of Postmodern philosophies. Jean Francois Lyotard would describe these narratives as Meta or Grand Narratives and would also describe their breakdown in the shift from Modernism to Postmodernism in his book, 'The Postmodern Condition'. 

The Postmodern Condition

This change in thought patterns had shattered the idea of a search for Utopia. The idea that all things had a designed end, a pinnacle of perfection. This is an idea that many cultures had been obsessed throughout the ages. Artists and writers during the age of enlightenment were obsessed with this idea. This had led the likes of Greenberg, a painting critic during the 1940's, 50's and 60's to also be obsessed with this idea. His approach to critiquing painting was done while keeping this in mind. He looked for the pinnacle of perfection within a singular painter or painting. This is why he championed Pollock as the greatest painter of all time.  

Mathematics through Art;

Greenberg's idea of perfection was brought about by Kant's reasoning that a discipline should be critiqued with the elements of that particular discipline and nothing else. This Kant has done by critiquing logic with logic. Greenberg's approach was quite similar to painting. He believed that a painting was a flat object and it should never try to be anything else, i.e. a representation of a 3D object. When it comes to painting in 2D Pollock is a master of this. Pollock paints what are known as fractals. This is explained by mathematician Marcus Du Saotoy;

Mathematicians have recorded the fractal nature of Pollock's work from his early career to his later years. Fractals are recorded in values of D. At the beginning of Pollock's career his painting would have a value of 1.4 D as fractals. Towards the end of his career, his paintings would have had a value of up to 1.9 on a fractal scale. Visually, this would mean that the paintings are almost a 2D representation of a 3D object. This is explained in detail available at this link;

Calculating Fractals

Pollock had managed to create images that were almost 2D representations of 3D objects but had not crossed this line. For Greenberg, this was the perfection he was looking for when he was judging these 2D flat surfaces.

Art is no stranger to mathematics. We all know of the Fibonacci sequence. This was a major concern of the renaissance painters. Leonardo's depiction of The Vitruvian man being one of the famed works;

Vitruvian Man

The Fibonacci sequence is yet another fractal. The spiral repeats itself mathematically as it extends out or in, whichever the case may be. The Fibonacci sequence is explained in full at the link below;

Fibonacci Explained

The Fibonacci sequence or the Golden Ratio is said to be used in many paintings such as 'The Girl with the Pearl Earring', painted by Vermeer and pictured below;

And of course, 'The Mona Lisa' painted by Leonardo Da Vinci and also pictured below;

Leonardo's 'Last Supper' is also another great example of this;

Vermeer brings us back into the realms of physics. It is believed that his particular eye for detail may have benefitted from some early enhancement methods. Namely, the camera obscura. This apparatus is theorised to be how Vermeer achieved his photorealistic. A recent documentary on Vermeer by Tim Jenison would question this in detail. More information at;

Tim's Vermeer

The camera obscura was an early version of the camera. One would have used it like this;

Or there is the proposed ridiculously large versions

Vermeer's use of the camera obscura is a good way to explore with your students what makes a masterpiece. It also is a good introduction to the use of new media in contemporary art.

Not to veer too much away from mathematics, excusing the badly placed and spelled pun. M C Escher is always an interesting candidate when talking about mathematical art. Escher is a fan of fractal images again but it is through complex numbers that Escher's mathematical art gets very interesting, as explained here by Kevin Woods;

Escher and complex numbers

Explained quite simply when you multiply a complex number you rotate it visually. This is what Escher was doing by feel and eye;

Lenstra Print Gallery

Fractals are a naturally occurring pattern in nature. It is often hypothesised that the golden ratio is the fingerprint of nature itself. This is probably why many an artist has used these recurring patterns in their work. Although sometimes the maths and physics get a little advanced for Post Primary classes; I would only talk to senior classes about multiplying complex numbers or the value of fractals. Sometimes these concepts are exactly the extra learning outcome you are looking for when it comes to interacting with students who are at an advanced level. 

A good introductory level to cross-curricular pedagogy strategies within Art is in Geography;

Geography through Art;

Geography is a subject that many artists have dealt with since the mid 50's to present day. The idea or concept of psycho-geography was defined by Guy Dubord in 1995 as  “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.” Artists engaging with the environment around them was not as new as this definition though. 

The maturity of your students will decide what level of this presentation you would use within your class. Dealing with first years I always started with Andy Goldsworthy;

The different uses of materials often capture the student's imagination

The idea that stones can be used in a different way to scuplture to create a different type of Art

Goldsworthy creates site-specific work and often comments on the environment around us. This is a great access point for students of any age. 

For the junior years, I also introduce Christo and Jean Claude. Wrapped Coast in Australia often starts up an interesting conversation even through magnitude itself. One million square feet of coastline wrapped in cloth. The students often find this impossible to imagine;

Christo and Jean Claude also wrapped the Reichstag in Berlin. A project that they worked for twenty years just to be allowed to do. This feat was repeated by Weiwei in response to the refugee crisis in Germany. This, Weiwei did to the Konzerthaus and instead of cloth, he used refugees lifejackets. This opens up the students to yet another relevant topic in current affairs.

I also like to introduce relatively simple and straight up artistic creations when talking to the first years. These would include;

Sand sculptures

Shadow Art with Rubbish

It is when teaching the senior classes one can start introducing the madder ideas through geography. One of my favourite to date is the mapping of Scotland through dialect. This is done by slight changes in the way the word is pronounced;

This is a poem written by Edwin Morgan in 1965. This idea of visualising or mapping the area through dialect being a very interesting way to introduce your students to sociology. 

Another mapper of areas through strange means is Richard Long.
This is another artist I would discuss with the senior years rather than the junior. His line drawn into the countryside, 1967;

is a matter for very interesting if not contentious discussions about what makes a drawing and what makes art. Also, his self-burial never fails to stir some ideas within the class;

Where geography and art start to get wonderful together is where artist have directly affected the environment they and the spectator occupy. Berndaut Smilde creates different types of clouds indoors;

His creations only last 10 minutes

Each one is around just long enough to be photographed

 
There is a full description of how they are created available at the link below;

Berndaut Smilde's Indoor Clouds


This leads to the 'Weather Project' created by Olafur Eliasson in 2013. For this project, Eliasson turned the turbine hall into a sunny day. Amazingly the people who came along to the Tate started acting like they were sitting out in the park enjoying the sun on a really hot day;

For my own presentation, I also had a backing track of very light music. This was made by an artist who makes music from the pulse within plants. Here is an example of some of this music;

Here is an interview and discussion from the artist about how this is possible;

This makes for a good backdrop and presentation closer for either Geogrpahy or this could be applied to Biology as well.