Expanding artistic-pedagogic mark-making: thinking creatively with reusable 3D surfaces

Boardman, Kevin (2024) Expanding artistic-pedagogic mark-making: thinking creatively with reusable 3D surfaces. Masters by Research thesis (MA), Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

This practice-as-research concerns the flow of idea exploration and active participation in relation to chalkboards and whiteboards. It considers how reusable mark-making surfaces might be reclaimed and repurposed as spaces for radical thought and action, in contrast to their former conventional use in business and educational institutions. The research is situated within the field of contemporary art, intersecting with design and arts pedagogy. Artthinking and making methods and new speculation combine to form alternative pathways in collective and individual thinking. The study aims to reinvent reusable media in new formats and spaces, by experimenting with sculpture, installation, performative workshops, and drawing. A genealogy of reusable mark-making surfaces, relating to artistic, business, and educational activity and spatial design, reveals their productive qualities including idea generation, communication, and participation. However, the reusable board has also been documented as a site of conflict, rigid hierarchy, and unequal ownership, whilst the media ‘form’ has seen very little change during its history, usually appearing as a 2D panel. By examining these conditions for the flow of ideas and participation, the research arrives at an alternative proposition to transform the reusable surface into 3D forms, to open the possibility of breaking away from the normative flat surface. Using art-thinking and Heideggerian praxical knowledge, a methodology is formed to combine previous practice, interdisciplinary sources, and metacognition to progress from critique into practice. A toolkit of methods, including sculpture, workshop facilitation, drawing and conversation, enables an evolution of the reusable surface whilst opening new routes to active participation, mind-mapping, and idea generation. The resulting artworks are applied in pedagogic and engagement events, and together propose a new method for individual and collective ideation and problem solving.