How are Australian higher education institutions contributing to change through innovative teaching and learning in virtual worlds?

Abstract

Use of encephalographic (EEG) signals of brain activity can generate dynamic representations of thoughts and emotion when experiencing and creating artworks. EEG responses were produced in reaction to artworks and a recursive reaction to the dynamic representation of the artists own EEG response. These were used to amplify artistic experiences and provide a complementary visual experience in which the observer's neural reactions to an artwork formed an additional component of the work. Subconscious reactions were made visible and a complex interplay of the observed artwork, reactions to that work, reactions to reactions to that work, and the visual EEG representation itself as an artwork, combined to produce a complex and nuanced artistic experience. The attitude of 53 primary preservice arts education students to arts education was surveyed using the Teaching With the Arts Survey (TWAS) instrument pre and post use of EEG visualisations during arts education studies, and compared to two 53 student control groups in the same course. Improved attitudes to the incorporation of arts education into teaching was shown as a result of using EEG displays to make explicit the effects of holistic artistic experiences.