iLearn Part 1 – art, agency and [mach-ine] learning

OpenInnoTrain Secondment series

I arrived in Melbourne June 4th, 2023, to undertake a Secondment as a part of the OpenInnoTrain project at RMIT University. My host is Professor Anne-Laure Mention and the Team, who ironically has spent time teaching some PhD researchers under my supervision. Kudos to you Anne-Laure, they loved their time in Vienna. I’ve also had the wonderful assistance of Kerry O'Connor and Ben Johns, who have made my visit as smooth and enriching as possible. These three blogs – “iLearn Part 1 – art, agency and embodied learning” as well as “iLearn Part 2 – transparency, manipulation and reclaiming data”, and “iLearn Part 3 – games, gamification and meaning” – are what I call the OpenInnoTrain Secondment series (VME Special Editions). The idea behind them is to thematically account for the learning taking place during this incredible secondment period. I am incredibly grateful to the European Research Council for funding OpenInnoTrain, who has funded me in this journey. I would also like to acknowledge the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation, the traditional custodians of the land upon which RMIT was built and operates.

I thought I’d document the discussions I’ve had with the wonderful people I’ve met here. As a short disclaimer, I didn’t realise that I would be landing in Melbourne right at the exam and holiday season. Funnily enough, I thought that it was just Europe venturing away for holidays. But, with that said, this little hap and circumstance has meant that I have ventured further into my interests and imagination by speaking to people across disciplines and institutions. This blog focuses on the art and creativity side of the visit. While here I have met: Professor Kit Wise, Dean of the School of Art (RMIT) who operates in Design and Social Context; Dr Elizabeth Preza, Academic Coordinator and Head of the Centre for Ideas (Victorian College of Art, University of Melbourne); Professor Dan X Harris – Associate Dean of Research and Innovation at the School of Education (RMIT); Professor Ingrid Richardson - Professor of Digital Media, School of Media and Communication (RMIT); Dr David Rousell – Senior Lecturer in Creative Education and Co-Leader of the Creative Agency (RMIT); Artist and Lecturer Aleks Danko (University of Melbourne); Artist and Senior Lecturer Anne Scott Wilson (Deakin University); and Associate Professor Sharlene Nipperess – Associate Professor of Social Work.

Before entering into the grand worlds of Cognitive Science and Communication Studies, I trained and practiced as a Visual Artist. I majored in printmaking, minored in drawing, and graduated to be a performance artist. It was thanks to art that I even hold a degree. Art dismantled the psychological barriers I possessed in relation to being able to complete an academic degree. Neither of my parents graduated from high school. I thought that people who did go to and graduate from university were of some other species. Smart people, maybe. Different species, definitely.

It was through the guise of art that I learned how to learn and research. It was through art, that I learned that I loved learning. Art has a sneaky way of appearing bourgeois and decorative, while snatching you into a world that is highly political, contemplative and scientific. These are the qualities that should be brought back into education across all disciplines and levels. For, I’ve been increasingly worried lately. Students (and teachers, and researchers) have all these fancy technologies at their disposal, such as ChatGPT. You could say that this is a ‘natural part of evolution’, a move on from the calculator. We’ve been dreaming of talking machines for centuries. And, well, with Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the form of Large Language Models (LLMs), why bother take the long road to research and/or write? Especially when you could spend more time doing something better worthwhile, such as….(?)

Also, don’t think that I’m against Generative AI. What I’m worried about is the decreased interest in learning. The lack of understanding of what learning is. What learning actually means for human beings, and to human beings. Without learning and active, conscious engagement with both primal and higher order cognitive processes, such as is offered in situations of hands-on and embodied learning, as well as embodied problem-solving, we begin to lose the control and agency that we were created with, as human beings. When passing the responsibility for learning blindly over to the tools we use, we’re getting ‘hammers’ (thank you Pekka Abrahamsson ) to do our thinking. And, we can expect that ‘hammers’ will make the decisions for us that will govern our lives in the very near future. How much do 'hammers' think of our wellbeing? I wonder.

Creativity, creative practice, art (of all forms), and design are engaging forms of learning. As pointed out by my above-mentioned colleagues, emerging technologies such as Generative AI, provide new opportunities for creative engagement and critical reflection of what and who we are as human beings. The technologies enable us to view our world through alternative perspectives – much the same as art, at its true essence, enables. And, as we already perhaps have considered, these technologies augment human abilities to realise ideas that otherwise would not have been doable.

Maybe however, more than anything, current technological developments are forcing us to consider drawbacks in our contemporary educational systems and methods that have been present for decades. More than anything, perhaps these drawbacks have been the result of socio-cultural systems that do not value or prioritise learning for what it is, and should be – sustenance, sustainment, sustainability of human life. Even when thinking more-than-human you understand the role of human intellect in promoting ecosystems that are in harmony and balance. Perhaps, the ChatGPT-written essay, exam, assignment and article epidemic among students and academics alike, isn’t a problem stemming from ChatGPT, but from the very nature of what essays, exams, assignments and articles are. As with job simplification, these artefacts have been abstracted from activities to exist as single, simple units. They are not meaningful nodes as a part of a complex whole. Rather, they are fragmented punch cards to move on to the next level. Indeed, even gaming these days has its mods, fast level ups and V-bucks (Fortnite) that can be purchased with real money. What happened to playing?

As an educator and researcher, I see that fundamental changes need to occur across the disciplines to not only make learning more effective, but to strength our existence as humans once more. Educational models need radical changes. Before moving into the future, we should look at the astounding scholarship and training of the past. Artistic means of engagement can be applied in any type of learning imaginable. [Mach]-ine learning is for machines, intentional and critical creativity is learning for people.

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