Our first seminar was on Object Based Learning (OBL) hosted by Judy Willcocks and Georgina Orgill. Without realising it, I’ve been using OBL for almost all of my career as an illustrator and educator. My graduate project was called ‘We Need to Talk’, it was about how illustrations, objects, and installation can be touchstones for difficult conversations, specifically conversations around love, dating, and technology. I made a series of ceramic objects, purposefully tactile and pleasing to hold, and furniture including gigantic heart shaped bean bags.
‘The Analogue and the Digital: Experiencing Objects’ Workshop
We were asked to write descriptions of 3 objects: an object we could hold, a photo of a ceramic bowl, and a UAL archive entry.
We were asked which method we preferred. For me, I found describing an object in my hands to be my preferred method. I had picked up a cat toy (my cats are very interested whenever I have a lecture) lovingly named ‘Smelly Chicken’. When I compare the information I could glean from the physical toy versus the images and written descriptions of the other two items, it’s clear why it is my preference. I discovered information about the Smelly Chicken that I would not have known purely by sight. For example, it has a very strange texture from where one of my cats grooms it. It does, unfortunately, smell like a cat spit too. It has a small hidden pocket in the side.
As an illustration lecturer, this kind of understanding of an object is vital in understanding how to draw it. Your drawn interpretation is informed by all of your senses, not just touch. We always encourage our students to draw from life where possible. This experience is echoed by Kristin Hardie in ‘Engaging the Senses: Object-Based Learning in Higher Education‘ (2016). In reflections on an activity called ‘A Matter of Taste’, design students felt their evaluation skills be developed.
Many have reported that they enjoyed debating items and the challenge of justifying their view of an item when others present opposing opinions. Students’ visual literacy is evidenced as they decode designs; such open discussion of objects is perhaps less evident when items appear on a screen or presented as a photograph.
Many have reported that they enjoyed debating items and the challenge of justifying their view of an item when others present opposing opinions. Students’ visual literacy is evidenced as they decode designs; such open discussion of objects is perhaps less evident when items appear on a screen or presented as a photograph.
Chatterjee, Helen J., and Leonie Hannan. Engaging the Senses: Object-Based Learning in Higher Education, Taylor & Francis Group, 2016.
I’m interested in how this can be used in my micro teaching session. I wonder if the absence of the object can also be a form of object based learning. If you cannot bring the object you want to reference into the studio to draw, what methods (if any) can you use? I wonder if we can use sensory making to access memory. Can we work collectively on visual research and image gathering?
Chatterjee, Helen J., and Leonie Hannan. Engaging the Senses: Object-Based Learning in Higher Education. London: Routledge, 2016.
Museum & Study Collection: Judy Willcocks Copenhagen Presentation, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3O7MM5WuFo.