Beyond The Tertiary Institutional Classroom: How I use mobile technology for field data gathering

Abstract

Originally focused on the scientific study and documenting of sea wave patterns and the phenomena of beach cusps off the coast of New Zealand, this poster presentation will focus on how I use digital mobile technology in the field and how it is documented. The focus of this paper lies with pedagogy going beyond the tertiary institutional classroom. As an educator and artist using mobile digital technology within the environment, this paper will explore the connection between research, field data gathering, mobile technology and how these ideas can be transferred back into the digital graphic design classroom. In doing so it will also show examples of the findings and how they are translated into digital artworks in the form of motion graphics and poetic artworks such as the poem film. Taken from the inspiration of the findings it will further explore what is real and what is virtual and how inspiration is taken from nature and explored in the digital environment. In the creative processing of this research, I employ the methodology of heuristic inquiry. This is referred to by Moustakas as, “internal search through which one discovers the nature and meaning of experience and develops methods and procedures for further investigation and analysis” (Moustakas, 1990). It will further investigate the poetic and artistic patterns created from these natural events seen through a poetic moving image piece. These creative visualizations and scientific study of water wave energy patterns and the formation of beach cusps has shaped an artistic observation of these energy patterns created from their movements. It will show examples of the creations of the artistic works and explore the digital environment of the poem film and how this is explored within pedagogy.