SWISP Lab x Practitioner Residency
SWISP lab works across speculative design, education, data, radical pedagogies, digital activisms, Anthropogenic inquiry and media arts residencies in various virtual and physical settings; sometimes in onsite residencies in museums and studios such as Science Gallery, other times in residencies located inside SWISP Lab such as Jennifer Thy and Yvette Walker.
With the support of a University of Melbourne India Diversification grant, the SWISP residency in Science Gallery began. Here we work methodologically as co-researchers with young people through Hacking the Anthropocene to be able to co-design what will emerge as a Pluriversal Climate Curriculum. 4 x 3 hour workshops create the conditions for coming to know between art and science and becoming with a/r/tography in pluridisciplinary sites to mediate possibilities with other young people.
The Lab is a community of interdisciplinary practitioners, co-directed by Kathryn Coleman and Sarah Healy working in the fields of speculative a/r/tography, digital creativities, digital childhoods, digital methods, digital education, and digital scholarships in the humanities, arts and social sciences with collaborators and scholars in residence such as Dr Angela Molloy Murphy and the FOSU artist-collective.
SWISP Lab seeks to speculate as activist a/r/tographers about reparative futures in the Anthropocene through a series of hackathons. The hackathons pivot around the Hacking the Anthropocene Kit (HAK), a co-designed toolkit created with young people for young people. HAK guides our encounters with young participants toward speculative reimagining of the Anthropocene through living inquiry.
Jennifer Thy | Hacking the Anthropocene Kit (HAK) Designer-in-Residence |
Following a wholesome career path to this point, Jennifer holds a Bachelor of Design (Communication) from RMIT and a Master of Teaching (Visual Arts & Design) from The University of Melbourne. She has worked in a variety of multidisciplinary roles across the fields of art and creative direction, design, marketing, communications, campaigns, and online (print and digital). Jennifer collaborates and learns with and from her clients within the movement of considering and challenging the dialogue around creative intention and consumption through storytelling and narratives. She is curious for continual development and change, and always looking for something new to learn, living within the questions and the uncomfortable. Bringing this focus into the art and design classroom, she strives to provide student-centred and justice-driven approaches to education.
Yvette Walker | SWIM Artist-in-Residence |
Yvette is an artist, researcher and teacher. She is interested in the relationships between visual art, literacies, place/space and institutional narratives. Her study has led her education work within VCE an IB secondary classrooms, The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, The National Portrait Gallery, The National Gallery of Victoria and University of Melbourne. Yvette was a Grimwade Collection Miegunyah Student Project Awardee, in 2022.
This presentation is a snapshot Yvette’s artist-in-residency with SWISP LAB’s, Learning with the Land: Dispositions for Hacking the Anthropocene. In this video she shares some processes and critical reflections of the digital creative and artistic methods that have been led, informed and enriched by working within SWISP Lab.
You can visit our SWIM here: Walker, Y., Healy, S., & Coleman, K. (2023). ‘Walk through’ of SWISP Lab’s Speculative Wandering in the Metaverse site as of October 2023. University of Melbourne. Media. https://doi.org/10.26188/24433915.v1
Dr Adrian Howe | Playwright-in-Residence | Othello on Trial | Fostering creativity and wellbeing in the face of high levels of violence against women. This CAWRI funded project ran from March 2021 – December 2022. The project received further funding from The Victorian Women’s Trust in 2021 to extend it until December 2022. ‘Othello in Trial’ continues as part of SWISP lab’s key projects.
The significance of this research lies in its ability to provide a relevant and accessible approach to cultivating critical literacies that pertain to race and gender, femicide and violence against women while also addressing how do we teach this? It represents a continuation and support of Howe’s ongoing engagement with the topic (See Howe, A. (2023). Crimes of Passion Since Shakespeare Red Mist Rage Unmasked. Routledge). This study is important not only to the field of arts-based educational research but also to the Victorian curriculum and has the potential to inform global educational research on the intersection of arts-based integrations, Respectful Relationships, and critical literacies.
We used collage as method and played the zine card in this project to explore ways of discussing Othello on Trial and ways of teaching and learning with this project.
Dr Angela Molloy Murphy | Scholar-in-Residence | Extending the HAK.io: Remixing a SWISP inspired provocation for Early Childhood Inquiry and Project Learning | Angela is an early childhood lecturer and post-qualitative researcher at the University of Melbourne. Her research activates experimental arts practices to explore children’s multimodal storying with place and the more-than-human. Recent research includes a participatory inquiry regarding children’s storied relations with the more-than-human on the stolen lands of the Multnomah, Clackamas, Tumwater, and Chinook peoples in Portland, Oregon. @23Angelas \ ORCID
David Rose | Comedian-in-Residence | David was the comic at SWISP Lab’s 2-day event Hackathon in partnership with Science Gallery Melbourne, where the best of our practitioners and the most creative of university students came together to play in the digital realm. We begin with humour, because “Hacker’s value cleverness, ingenuity, and wit. These attributes arise not only when joking among friends or when hackers give talks but also during the process of making technology and writing smart pieces of code” (Gabriella Coleman, 2013). The hackers worked under the mentorship of SWISP Lab partners (Yvette Walker (artist-in-residence/metaverse builder), Cassie Truong (PhD Candidate), Erica from Pernix, Zsofi from SentiOne, to hack our SWISP research and research platforms. During the Hackathon, hackers leveraged off some of our working methods to help develop their insights.
