Shared Language

Shared Language is an experiment in teaching and learning at the meeting point of art, design and neuroscience by Sigune Hamann and Jonathan Kearney, Camberwell College of Arts, in collaboration with neuroscientists at Oxford University.

Our perception is highly limited; we derive only a few elements/objects/items from the environment/surroundings at each moment, which we stitch together into cohesion and carry forward into the fabric of our cognition. In counterpoint, our perception is highly adaptive, picking out the elements that matter to us in a given situation. This selective guidance of perception, which we call ‘attention’, involves signals from our goals, expectations, memories, motivations, and emotions proactively and dynamically shaping what we come to perceive and remember.

When we arrange images of different objects – playing cards, for example – on a table we are free to modify constantly their configuration. We can make piles or constellations. We can discover new analogies, new trajectories of thought. By modifying the order, we can arrange things so that images take position.

The table is not made for definitely classifying, for exhaustively making an inventory, or for cataloguing once and for all - as in a dictionary, archive or encyclopaedia – but instead for gathering elements or parcelling out the world, while respecting it’s multiplicity and its heterogeneity – and for giving a legibility to the underlying relations.

We apply methods of juxtaposition and suspension: Juxtaposition of images, ideas, projects, disciplines and levels of study and suspension defined as a relative motion between two positions which is independent and bi-directional, as fluid negotiations, working with an open/suspended attitude and holding back judgements.

WORKSHOP 1 – ONE TO ONE

EXPERIMENTS

10 one to one 10 min meetings

WHO

Art, Design and Neuroscience Students,
Camberwell College of Arts and Oxford University

WHERE

Oxford University, Experimental Psychology

DATE

13.12.17

BRING

3 images (printed approx. postcard size) of or relating to your work

PROPS

3 images each, sheets of cardboard as small tables, chairs facing

WORKSHOP 2 – ONE TO ONE

EXPERIMENTS

one to one collaborative image making

WHO

Art, Design and Neuroscience Students,
Camberwell College of Arts and Oxford University

WHERE

Camberwell College of Arts,
Photographc Darkrooms and Printmaking Workshops

DATE

10.2.18

SCIENTISTS BRING

3 images

The process from the start was interesting in that I felt, maybe unnecessarily, that I might have to explain what I do slightly differently than when speaking to others within our own course. The actual process showed that we used a lot of the same language to describe very different things, particularly when talking about things like association and connection.

Told my ‘story’ in different ways over the 7or 8 times. I noticed more connections in the images I showed. Fascinating how the connections made with others were sometimes close and sometimes quite distant even though mostly I was talking with art & design students. Most of the graphic design student images were very text based

It was great to meet people who study a completely different discipline and still find a huge amount of common ground and shared interests. I liked the use of images as shared communication and I thought it was interesting that the art students perceived some interesting things in our science images that I wouldn’t necessarily have noticed. I also felt like I gained a new perspective on the images we provided after having worked with them in a different way.

The practical / hands on process felt like the differences in our approaches that we’d identified on the last trip weren’t quite so noticeable or there at all, but the ideas and triggers that came throughout the process opened up interesting conversations where we could share knowledge of our own practices and interests.