MA Thesis: Waterograph
Waterograph is a creative learning kit. It is designed to provide an environment that fosters creativity, more specifically through establishing a sense of control over the watercolor painting process and through supporting the learning of design practices and concepts, through constantly creating a need for each of these ideas. The name is inspired by Spirograph, my favourite childhood tool.
Project presentation:
Waterograph is created because creativity is considered within the top 3 skills in 2020 by world economic forum.
However importance of creativity, in the development of a child was mentioned by lev vygotsky almost a century ago.The social justice part of this project is to battle with the idea that creativity is an exception, it can only exist in certain people, the idea of talent etc. Creativity has a lot to do with work and practice, as some of you are familiar to the idea from the Development of Creativity class. Creativity should not be an exclusive idea but an inclusive one.
It is a microworld that comes with certain limitations and rules. For example it provides only 3 colors, 3 brushes but then it also allows the learner to go beyond what is given by creating new colors and tools. It teaches these with the guidebook that I will show.
He underlined the phenomenon that majority of children draw eagerly until they reach a turning point. The research shows that this happens between the ages of 12-16.
The child begins to have a critical attitute towards her own paintings and begins to be dissatisfied with the objective quality of her drawing and simply stops doing it.
This is named inhibition. One type of inhibition is comparative inhibition, which can be particularly evident when someone is asked to draw after seeing an impressive artwork or after being present with a person regarded to be a skilled artist
In order to build intrinsic motivation, the child must be in an environment where she can learn how to self-express, display mastery and establish autonomy
Waterograph is designed as an environment/a toolkit that creates a balance between three concepts.. In other words it offers moments of learning by creating a reconciliation between these concepts. While the toolkit has open=ended media, it also has a guidebook, visual diary and a patternbook to log in rotation patterns - to provide structure for systematical experimenting. Therefore building knowledge as an active learner.
I wanted to use diary as a cultural form as a middle schoolar knows how to use it and I as the persona used to keep a diary / sketchbook at that age religiously
It can be a way for the teacher to assign experimenting in different aspects such as, on monday only change colors but keep everything the same etc. Creativity as work - how known people go through years of practice not because they want to reach a certain goal - but just for the sake of learning - such as Darwin`s obsession with variety - it was not his goal to write about the origin of species, he was just curious about how many roses were there in the loyal garden etc.
They can share different kinds of universe making skills and techniques like putting soap etc
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