Spring 2019 Course: Art and Sensory Acuity (taught by Christine Lee)

For the course Art and Sensory Acuity, we looked at how our perception and ability to experience a range of sensation can inform the creation of artistic and design based work. We explored perception through the lens of artist James Turrell’s Roden Crater, under which specific materials, environment, and conditions present, shaped our sensory experience. Concurrently we expanded our sensory acuity through engagement with guest speakers ASU Assoc. Professor Patrick Young and Assist. Professor Christy Spackman, Ed Krupp Director of Griffith Observatory, and writer Lawrence Weschler, to develop a deeper sensibility across media, time and space. The resulting sculptural forms/prototypes, performance, and installations were designed and constructed in response to the collective experience.

In this multi-media dissertation, water is used metaphorically to equate the process of learning with embracing change. Paradigm shifts needed for sustainability require transformative learning where one is open to being shaped by new knowledge and experience. Properties of water – such as molecular bonding and phase changes – uncover lessons for humans’ adaptability. Given that human bodies are comprised mostly of water – what implications exist for human capacity to similarly undergo continuous change? An arts- based research methodology is practiced to produce a four-chapter project. Artistic methods of data collection and communication retain subjective complexity of lived experiences central to learning processes. Each chapter is prepared for a target audience and addresses widening scales of creative learning for sustainability.

Chapter one is a narrative ethnography that focuses on a personal creative process for sustainability learning. Chapter two is a co- authored journal that covers creative learning tools and design principles for sustainable classrooms. Chapter three is an open-access and adaptive, online toolkit that shares creative methods to cultivate curiosity and critical contemplation. Chapter four is an interactive showcase event that explores how water can inform and inspire individual and collective learning for sustainability.

This four-chapter project addresses the power of creative learning for sustainability at the personal, familial, formal classroom, informal online learning community, and public scales. Arts-based methods harness aesthetic power, welcome subjective complexity, and allow multiple meanings to be interpreted from research results. This multi- media project stretches the conventional structure of sustainability dissertations. The bridge between the arts and sciences is strengthened as this project shows synergies between these two ways of knowing. This research invites what can be learned from the wisdom of water – to both change and be changed by circumstances.