Notes taken during the session.
Object analysis through touch…
It is cold and smooth to the touch, with a natural guidance to turn. There are bumps where wax has fallen from the candle to the ridge which break up the smoothness. It has been turned and carved beautifully and I cant help but wonder what it’s story is… Who carved it? When was it made? Why was it made? And where? It looks to be a dark wood, but may also be a more readily and less expensive wood that has been stained.
Object analysis through looking only…
It looks to be a round carved bowl with a short neck that has been made from stone. I imagine that it would be cold to the touch and smooth. You can see different rock / sediment colours as well as some pitted black bits. It’s interesting to see and note two stickers on its neck, are these price stickers, indicating that this is a more modern object, or, are they archival stickers indicating a unique reference number assigned to the item? I find myself curiously wondering how big the object is, where did it come from? How old is it?
La Pavillion d’Amide – Jacket – Digital Collections (arts.ac.uk)
This top on first appearance seems medieval in style. It looks to be made from silk that has been block printed and has velvet capped sleeves that have slits in them, revealing elements of silk that poke through. It has a gold cross that has been appliqued onto the front of it, that also has beading applied over the top. The final picture shows the inside, which appears to be made from a linen, which is stained yellow/orange with age, the binding at the neck has been slip stitched and one can see little blue stitches along the edge. It has a label hand tacked in, with the name ‘Gordon’ written on it in what looks like blue biro.
Compare three descriptions
It’s interesting to note that I wrote more when I was describing the online objects, particularly the final costume one, was it that there was more to see? 3 pictures instead of one. That I was more interested, or that more information was shared so it was easier to come up with a description?
I found each of the encounters as engaging as one another, albeit in different ways. I was certainly more curious about the first and second as I didn’t know as much information about them.
I am wondering if I could incorporate a similar activity into my first ‘research’ workshop with the first years, to inspire them to undertake primary research in a more physical way or to be more discerning in thinking about secondary research conducted online. – TEST THIS IN MICROTEACH
Very engaging chat
-discussed that we all seemed to write more for each activity as we went along
-we also all agreed that we made massive assumptions based on our previous lived experiences, eg that the bowl was made out of stone.
-some had difficulties engaging with the online resources because of internet issues, slow to load, pixelating etc.
THOUGHTS – add my shoe sketch to the ‘research’ presentation – the one based on Raggy’s toy
Padlet – The analogue and the digital (padlet.org)
For questions:
Power of conversation as a learning tool.
2 or 3 really simple questions – feedback clear and interesting
OR wind up by making something
Make sure time to engage with all of the objects
Art
Interesting to hear about use of botanical sketches to discuss colonial roots – colonial drawings used to map world but in context of how resources could be exploited..
Objects can be used to have very rich conversations about ethical issues.