15-20 Minute Paper
Adam Brown
Lecturer Photomedia
School of Creative Arts, James Cook University, Australia
Biography:
Adam Brown lectures in Photomedia at the School of Creative Arts, James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia. His research includes explorations of experimental digital pedagogies, and interrogations of the politics of the representation of the built environment.
Abstract:
This paper explores the potential for blending theory and practice in photographic education, by the creative detournement of imaging technologies to reveal concealed networks of agency and power. The creative intermingling of technology and teaching practice explicitly brings into focus the mediation of social relationships by technology – but also the mediation of technologies by social relationships. Following recent developments in sociology and philosophy, a potential field opens up to redraw the relationships between reception, production, actor and agency in the teaching of the practical skills of image making. ‘Mechacritique’ describes what happens when humans and non-humans come together to ask critical questions of each other.
As the lecture theatre becomes a networked space, and imaging makes inroads into the field of discourse in all disciplines, it becomes possible to describe both the studio and the classroom as spaces in which images are made and critique takes place. Imaging and communication technologies have so much power and user adaptability that it would seem uncurious not to explore how they could be adapted, twisted or reformed to allow for a creative integration of theory and practice in the workshop. Adam Brown will reflect on his experience of implementing such models, and outline his future research in the context of a rich history of past practice. The potential of hybridity has been explored by artists since the advent of technological imaging. The awakening of the world of the academy to the long repressed knowledge and practices of communities of humans and non-humans is long overdue.