3D-sculpting; A Nordic Higher Education Collaboration Project.

The project aim was to explore the learning potentials in 3D modelling for art teachers and student teachers. Another aim for the participants was to integrate the outcomes of the project in higher art education, or more specifically the didactic teaching and planning activities in visual arts teacher education at the partaking teacher education institutions. The project was linked primarily to art teacher education in the partner institutions, secondly to teaching visual arts in primary and secondary schools. The participants in the project came from different countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Lithuania, Sweden, and totally 19 persons were involved in the project activities.

The project activities aimed at overcoming the focus on technological implications of the 3D practices and instead study the sculptural qualities from using the technology artistically as well as looking at the didactic implementation in higher education. The hands-on themes of the project activities were based on the idea of modelling 3D forms applying principles different from analogue designing methods as a new image-making process using other ways to sculpture and to understand material. The idea was to curiously and critically explore possibilities provided by the technology when used in a visual arts educational context. 

Research questions:

• How does the creation process, starting with creation of a sculpture by an analogue manual mastery of a material, transform into a digital format?
• How does the linear creation process, governed by material qualities, take new directions from the point where the creation of the sculpture takes place via programming and 2D testing?

The project was organized as a combination of online instructions, offline activities, and online discussion forums from which the project partners developed and tested learning designs at their home universities and shared and related the results to the overall theme. The developed learning designs revolved around improving image-making competence within sculpturing and 3D technology for instance using the photogrammetry and CAD-based programs for visual arts education. 

The project was a collaboration with artist Morten Modin from Denmark who uses 3D methods in his artistic practice.

Participants in the project:

Aalborg university in Copenhagen, University College Copenhagen (Institut for Læreruddannelse, Campus Carlsberg at Københavns Professionshøjskole) in Denmark as well as Umeå University and HDK-Valand at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

The project group:

Mie Buhl, Aalborg university, ViLD (project leader), Kirsten Skov, University College Copenhagen, ViLD, Dan Tommi Hildén, HDK-Valand, Tarja Karlsson Häikiö, HDK-Valand, Frida Marklund, Umeå university and Mikael Heinonen, Umeå university.

In 2024 an issue will be published about the results of the project in Tilde, Umeå university with Mie Buhl and Tarja Karlsson Häikiö as editors. The results were presented at the NERA conference in Oslo in March 2023 at the symposium 3D-sculpting; A Nordic Higher Education Collaboration Project. The outcome of the development project feed into a Nordic discussion about how digital technology not only adds new tools for visual arts production but may transform existing modes of visual expression and sensitive cognition.

Financed by EDDA Norden