Exploring transdisciplinary pedagogies through sonic objects

Abstract

This experiential workshop will involve participants in creating short soundscapes using a range of analogue and digital audio equipment. Improvisation experiences will form an initial 'disorienting dilemma' (Mezirow, 1991), followed by discussion and knowledge exchange around the theme of transdisciplinary pedagogies and transformative learning. The workshop connects to the conference theme of 'developing teaching and learning approaches that promote values, attributes and skill-sets' - in this case approaches associated with learning awareness and self-efficacy

We will be exploring:

a) how shared experience can be viewed through a range of discipline and subject lenses b) how commonalities between making processes in arts practices and sound improvisation can inform understandings of transdisciplinarity c) how support for learning, in its broadest sense, intersects with the conference theme of teaching that has been designed to "span, extend or even subvert disciplinary affiliation".

This workshop design builds on the 'Exploring flow through sonic objects' series of workshops run for students by UAL-wide Academic Support since early 2017. Students attending these workshops have mostly been visual-based practitioners from diverse discipline or subject areas, and have noted that working with sound has been beneficial regardless of originating discipline: comments include that it created a 'conducive mental space' and '[the workshop] has genuinely helped me with moving my current project forward, even though I am focussing on moving image'.

No experience of sound design or music-making is necessary.

References

Mezirow, J. (1991). Transformative dimensions of adult learning. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass.