PhD Research

Scientific’ art and design as a new way of learning

Abstract : The rapid growth of technology does not necessarily improve, if not worsen, the situation of social and global crisis such as ageing society, over consumption and human inequality, etc. One reason for this problem from an education perspective is the pragmatic trend in our science and technology education that alienate science learning from real social activities and problems. Only the narrow perspective of “technique” was learned rather than the creative process and the ethical value behind. Including art and design into science learning to promote creativity and social value is my hypothesis to the question.

The reason is two-fold. Firstly, art and design is also highly creative process in a different way than science, which may cause “chemical reaction” in creative science learning. Secondly, the human-centered nature of art/design practice can add a new ethical dimension to the traditional problem-centered science learning experience. Therefore, I will conduct an interdisciplinary research to answer this research question: How can we introduce artists/designers into science learning to engage distinct creative learning experiences for solving social and global challenges? How can we evaluate the validity of collaboration to draw empirical and theoretical conclusions?

This research will generally follow two phases. In the first phase, I will conduct ethnographic observation on different creative learning experiences around CRI networks, and document, analyze and evaluate their performance in terms of creativity and social benefits. In the second phase, I will conduct interdisciplinary workshops for experimenting the collaboration between art/design and science, and draw conclusions through qualitative and quantitative methods.

Keywords : art and design, creative learning, science learning, creativity, media study

Selected Publications

http://openscienceschool.org/co-lab/

2014 Interactive Installation “The Collider” exhibited in Ars Electronica 2014, Linz, Austria

Zhu, F., Fang, K., and Ma, X. (2017). Exploring the Effects of Strategy and Arousal of Cueing in Computer-Human Persuasion. In Proc. CHI2017 EA (to appear).

Ma, X., Fang, K., and Zhu, F. (2016). From Breakage to Icebreaker: Inspiration for Designing Technological Support for Human-Human Interaction. In Proc. DIS2016.

Fang,K., Shi,D., Qian,Y., Yu,j., Li,Y., Mi,H. (2014) “Human Machine Trust in Intensive Interaction” In China Computer Federation HHME Conference 2014, proceeding in Computer Science Journal.

Supervisors : Sophie Pène

Labs : Robustness and evolvability of life

Funding : China Scholarship Council (CSC)