Description
Post-Digital and Convergent Technology in Creative Arts Pedagogy: 'When I put up my print for the exhibition in The Spark, it was really amazing.'Many, most, of us in academia have had some sort of analogue childhood and digital adulthood. Today's students have largely grown up in a 'post-digital' world. This term expresses the notion that digital is already part of the fabric and materiality of life; in other words, it's presence is so ubiquitous as to effectively render it transparent, or, unremarkable.
This brings us back to the quotation from a student in the title: 'When I put up my print for the exhibition in The Spark, it was really amazing.' Asked what the student meant by this seeming innocuous comment, the student explained that it was a completely different way of seeing and experiencing their work compared to screen. (Indeed, the writer and strategist Russell Davies even back in 2009 had already declared 'Screens are getting boring. It's really hard to impress anyone with stuff on a screen any more.')
Cultural theory and student feedback around the 'post-digital' articulate something of the course ethos and pedagogical philosophy on the BA (Hons) Photography undergraduate degree. This presentation will consider 'post-digital' pedagogy, learning through 'convergent' technology (Jenkins 2006), differences and challenges in different photographic technology (especially how technology affects learning, thinking and behaviour), the importance of physical experiences, emotional connection, community-building, locatedness, and slowing thought in age where digital photographs are mass-produced, instantaneous, and ubiquitous. This area of practice research as ‘slow scholarship’ (Baker 2024) can be transformative for our students. The comparatively slower pace of analogue’s tangibility enables a rich learning-through-doing, allowing ‘a slower way of scholarly being’ (Ulmer 2017) that builds in confidence, self-esteem and a deep sense of creative empowerment that is often hidden and perhaps overlooked in the production and reception of the digital image.
It is always revealing, for example, when applicants (and their parents) are often most impressed by the non-digital photographic technologies available at the university.
| Period | 30 Jun 2025 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Solent Learning, Teaching and Research Conference 2025: Advancing Learning, Teaching and Research in the Digital Age |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Southampton, United KingdomShow on map |