Ethics of invention in the digital studio classroom

Greg HUGHES
2008 Conference

Interdisciplinary scholar, writer and artist Paul Carter has established a suggested ethics of invention concerning practice-based research. An observably naturalised digital logic and materiality is forming within the creative digital studio classroom that resists Carter’s ethics of invention. This shift is based around a dependence on digital modes of production, particularly industry standard software agency, as opposed to traditional combinations of both analogue and digital. For this analysis, the humble process journal, visual diary, and mood board represent inscribable analogue modes of production, with digital modes represented by the interactive screen and its connotations of standardisation.

General perspectives and ambiguities surround education and our relationship to the interactive screen. Consequently these ambiguities also surround the relationship between analogue and digital modes of production in the creative classroom. I briefly consider two contrasting examples from incompatible discursive fields to demonstrate this ambiguity, firstly, Holly Willis, new media theory, and secondly, Susan Greenfield, popular science. It is within this ambiguity that our actions in the classroom sit. It is also because of this ambiguity that I push the described classroom concern towards tension and consideration by distilling a set of relevant questions for further investigation and discourse, rather than closed answers.

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About the author

Greg Hughes considers himself a modest ‘creative’ and happy to be a jack-of-all-trades. Greg moves between visual arts, graphic Web and multimedia design, music performance, sound and analogue effects pedal design and exploration. Having taught within the University of Wollongong’s undergraduate Graphic Design program for over two years Greg has moved into his first year as a PhD candidate focusing theoretically on analogue remediation in a digital realm along with practice based endeavours into generative design, quick response codes and interactive painting.