BODY OF KNOWLEDGE
arts-based learning lab creates new dimension in education
By Cecile Duhnke

Imagine stepping onto the screen of an Internet game, becoming part of the electronic landscape, interacting with the characters, sights, sounds and other elements of the game. Oh, but here's the twist — imagine this happening with your real body, not some Second Life avatar or role-playing cyber-surrogate.

Researchers from ASU's Arts, Media and Engineering program have developed a life-sized, multi-media learning environment that replicates that sensation. SMALLab, which stands for Situated Multimedia Art Learning Lab, addresses students' diverse learning styles and encourages creativity and interactions in the classroom. The result is a stage where student become the artwork.

SMALLab is a portable, freestanding media environment that can be installed in classrooms or community centers. It engages the naturally expressive sound and movement gestures of learners and facilitates free-play, structured movement and vocalization in support of learning,. Students follow an integrated curricula, drawn from both the arts and sciences, which provides structure for the learning experience.

"We wanted to look at creating infrastructure to enhance learning...with people physically moving in the space," says David Birchfield, assistant professor with the transdisciplinary AME program, a joint venture involving the Herberger College of the Arts and the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering. "We are trying to be really hands-on" in a world that is increasingly computer-oriented, he said.

Perhaps the single most valuable impact of the SMALLab tool, proponents say, is in how it helps students look at thinking and learning differently. It makes learning more of a game, an interactive game or piece of art, rather than a lecture. "The complicated things that kids needed to learn (involve) embodied cognition," says Thanassis Rikakis, director of the AME program. "The ability to swim, which is a fairly complex thing to do, comes from embodied cognition. Not only must we understand how our bodies work, but also how the water works around us. So, not only do we have to know about the technique of swimming, we must also have an awareness of the medium in which we're working and how our bodies react to that medium."

Birchfield has brought the SMALLAb technology to three student groups in the Phoenix metropolitan area so far, including a group from the Phoenix Metropolitan Arts Institute. The work of that 15-student team was showcased in a recent ASU Museum exhibit, "Connectivity Stage 1, Interlab. "The exhibit featured the works of students who Birchfield and other AME researchers asked to observe three well-known pieces of art and then interpret them through their own multi-media work.

One group assigned to Alexander Calder's sculpture, "Many Pierced Disks," decided the mobile-like piece reflected balance between the urban and natural worlds. Then they created their own multi-media work using audio, video, and other electronic mediums to reflect their interpretation. In order to see the exhibit, visitors had to walk onto the exhibit "stage,"' pick up two space-age glow balls and move them around, which involved an array of 3-D scene changes underfoot with coordinating audio.

"(The exhibit) invites the audience to take center stage to interact with the work, to be the work," says ASU Art Museum Director Marilyn Zeitlin of the SMALLab technology. "It makes creativity and spontaneity central to what we show. And it uses technology to be playful - acknowledging its ubiquity in our lives."

In addition to being an exciting interactive platform for art, SMALLab serves as an innovative learning platform, said Birchfield. In fact, Scottsdale's Coronado High School has established a permanent installation of SMALLab in one of its classrooms specifically for the school's C.O.R.E. program for at-risk juniors. The installation, which costs approximately $25,000, includes a rectangular shaped participation space supported by trusses, with a six-element camera, a video projector for real time visual feedback and four audio speakers for surround-sound feedback. Linda Flinn, administrator for Coronado's C.O.R.E. program, holds a lot of faith in the SMALLab and its potential to engage students whose learning styles are not addressed in traditional classroom teaching.

Now that SMALLab has received some well-deserved attention in the education community, Rikakis envisions greater notoriety for his program and for the research projects coming out of it. He notes that a Ph.D. in Embodied Mediated Learning is under discussion, and that the program could further increase ASU's reputation as an educational leader

"We are very excited." Rikakis said. "All of us are highly aware that we are sitting on a tremendous opportunity to be on top of how education can be perceived in the future."

Cecile Duhnke is a Scottsdale-based freelance writer.