Symposium | Art, Visualisation and the Cosmos in Education

Symposium | Art, Visualisation and the Cosmos in Education

Symposium themes

The combination of perspectives from art and science are increasingly acknowledged as powerful approaches to both fields, and to education and public outreach. These interdisciplinary innovations reflect new understandings of the role of visualisation in science knowledge building and learning.

This symposium aims to bring together a heterogenous group of researchers, scientists, teachers, artists and educators from around the world to discuss ideas and practical applications of combining art and science through representation and modelling, visualisation, big data, and virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), both in traditional classrooms and informal learning settings such as planetariums.

Felicity Spear keynote speaker

Felicity Spear developed a career as a practising and exhibiting visual artist after initially training as a secondary teacher. In 2007 she completed a PhD at Monash University with a practice led research project titled ‘Extending vision: mapping space in light and time’. Working with a range of media Spear’s art practice references the manipulation of optical phenomena, light, data and image capture, the processes of mapping and the influences of history. She focuses on the way we observe the physical world over time, both the human and non-human, in order to generate models which emphasize their value and complexity. During the International Year of Astronomy in 2009, Spear was included in the National Gallery of Victoria exhibition ‘Shared Sky’. She also curated the exhibition ‘Beyond Visibility: light and dust’, with pioneering astro-photographer David Malin, and celebrated indigenous artist Gulumbu Yunupingu, which took place at Monash Gallery of Art, Melbourne and University of Technology Gallery, Sydney. Spear then developed the first of the Sky Lab series of which there were five iterations, from 2009 to 2016, including both local and international artists, at private and public regional Victorian and Melbourne galleries.

Spear’s recent solo exhibitions include ‘The Observatory’ 2013, ‘Orbit’ 2016 and ‘Umwelten – eco-fields and other universes’ 2019. Extending her interest in the way in which we attempt to visualize, imagine or decode humans’ interaction with the physical world, Spear curated the group exhibitions ‘Future Tense 2014, Fossil- a slow acting violence’ 2017, and ‘Parallel Universe’ 2019 at Stephen McLaughlan Gallery Melbourne. In 2019 she was included in two exhibitions in public regional galleries commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing and the first human steps taken on its surface. The ‘Moon’ at the Geelong Gallery, and ‘Space’ at the Gippsland Art Gallery.

Proposals are due Friday October 25 for the symposium visit abstract

For more information contact Russell.tytler@deakin.edu.au