Innovation Showcases
Parallel Realities: The Looking Glass Self
Innovation Showcase Roddy MacInnes
With minimal self-awareness, I’ve put myself in many of my photographs. I now appreciate that doing so has produced visual evidence of where I have been and, to the extent that any medium can, confirmed my existence. With mindfulness regarding interconnection, a more inclusive definition of self has emerged. A hypothesis in sociology known as the Looking Glass Self Theory, proposes that we come to know who we are from the reactions of other people towards us. This means when we look at other people’s faces, we’re also looking at ourselves. Consequently, a portrait can also be a self-portrait. Positioning self-portraits within historical and contemporary photographic practice, my presentation illustrates a more inclusive, or reflective, definition of self-images. Despite my best intentions, however, bestowing visual representation to a hypothesis is challenging.
Pareidolia of Metamorphosis: A Study in Experimental Digital Animation
Innovation Showcase Sandee Bedford
In this presentation, I will be guiding attendees through my artistic process of creating moving imagery for an experimental animated short film. The animations are completely created digitally using applications on the iPad Pro and then stitched together with accompanying music and sound effects using the Adobe CC – Premiere software. The visuals displayed will showcase experimentation of creating animations with a slight focus in mind but rather allowing the meditative state of automatism to take over crafting the emerging structure of the outcome. Moving imagery has been created in a non-linear format, to encourage the free flow nature of pareidolia and automatism to extrapolate the work. Musical influences are also explored in the framework of creating this moving imagery and how it shapes the nature of the visual result. In addition, a brief history of experimental animation will be included for context of my work. Pareidolia is defined as the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern. Metamorphosis is defined as a change of physical form, structure, or substance.
Osmotic Sensoria: Multisensory Learning Spaces and the Form of the Image in Society
Innovation Showcase Niberca Gissell Polo
Education must prepare new generations for unpredictable futures in today's digital era. The immediacy of live feeds and global connectedness pose challenges in navigating a restless, ever-changing world. Because of these constant shifts, the next generations must develop flexible ways of thinking that enable them to, organically and creatively, adapt to unforeseen conditions—ways of thinking that foster design-abled, socially responsible, resilient minds. Despite ongoing innovations and efforts to embrace different ways of thinking and creating, the Banking Model of Education (Freire, 2000) still dominates educational systems, conditioning students to be passive receivers of academic content and reducing them to mere information repositories. Neuroscientific research shows that learning is most effective when it is interactive, exploratory, and multisensory (Eagleman, 2020). Traditional visual pedagogies' static, two-dimensional nature negates the brain's preference for immersive, embodied experiences that engage multiple neuropathways (Kandel, 2012). Osmotic Sensoria advocates for immersive learning spaces that naturally stimulate brain learning systems (Kandel, 2001) through projected images, augmented soundscapes, and biophilic design in the built environment to foster neurodiversity (Singer, 1998). Aligned with The Image in Society and its influence on education, Osmotic Sensoria explores how visual projections and interactive imagery can transcend their representational function to become tools that reimagine imagery as an immersive and embodied experience. Through a series of speculative design probes, this project examines how spatially embedded images can transform educational environments into catalysts for creative thought in neurodiverse learning spaces.
