Entanglement matters : using geometry in visual art practice to unearth STEM insights as a way ofcontributing to interdisciplinary knowledge

This doctoral research investigates and articulates the presence of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplinary ways of knowing and doing in visual art practice. Through a combination of autoethnography and practice[1]based research, tacit and embodied ways of disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowing and doing are surfaced and storied in paint, ceramics, and text. The research focus is the n of 1; that of the single experience. This n of 1 is used to provoke and to challenge, and to offer a new perspective (Siegesmund, 2014). My findings articulate where arts and sciences historically interconnect, and how those connections persist today. This tacit and embodied practice-based investigation reveals how and where instances of STEM content knowledge become available through, and is foundational to, ceramic practice. This research considers how, where, and for what purposes embodied and tacit ways of knowing integral to the arts can be applied across disciplines (Juntunen, 2020).

Through this research, I contend and reveal how successful execution in ceramics is contingent upon knowledge in and of STEM. In its exploration of specific perspectives in art and STEM, this research unearths how and where geometry contributes to the formulation of perspective in western painting. In the context of this research, the act of unearthing is practised to reveal how these outcomes were previously known by myself and by others at specific points in time. The autoethnographic and practice-based data generated and analysed in this exegesis intersect arts-based research (ABR) and Bresler’s (2016) five aspects of interdisciplinarity. These five aspects of interdisciplinarity include positionality; the potential, promises, and perils of intercultural travel; enabling awareness of the larger picture; border-crossing; and being comfortable with unknowing (pp. 321–332).

Bresler’s use of the intercultural experience as a metaphor for interdisciplinarity provides the theoretical lens through which I make and examine meanings of my own personal and creative experience. By identifying, examining and articulating my interdisciplinary experience, an opportunity to identify and highlight nested transferables from my findings becomes possible (Mertler & Charles, 2005). After the literal aspects of STEM are identified, Bresler’s metaphor of journeying is deployed to vi render interdisciplinary possibilities, drawing on the symbolic and metaphoric use of geometry in the work of artists. In the context of this research, interdisciplinarity operates as an alternative to the confines of one discipline and is characterised by the communing of different disciplines, knowledge, and learning forms to contribute to a more holistic understanding of something (Klein, 2015).

This doctoral research draws attention to ways and means for expanding out from the constraints of discipline (Bresler, 2016). It is through this ongoing and critical reflection that we move toward what has been described as becoming a more educated citizenry (Greene & Yu, 2016). Interdisciplinary knowledge arises from and in the interdisciplinary environment, for it is through the engagement of and entanglement with different ways of knowing that new perspectives arise. In its exploration of different perspectives in art (Evdokimov, 1990; Whiteman, 2021) and application of perspective as a metaphor for positionality (Bogumil et al., 2017; Milner, 2007) this research interrogates the utility of positionality in and for interdisciplinary endeavour.

The study establishes and crosses boundaries of practice in the two dimensions of painting and the three dimensions of ceramic art practice. Through this boundary[1]crossing, I unearth how my practice, processes, and products of visual artmaking grapple with disciplinary ways of knowing and doing, and where my arrival at learning outcomes can contribute to broader understandings of interdisciplinarity in visual art settings. I argue that rather than seeking to become expert, there is utility in our becoming comfortable with unknowing (Bresler, 2016; Edelholm, N. (2018); Fisher & Fortnum, 2013). Considering positionality is critical to how we create settings and foster circumstances conducive for interdisciplinarity to thrive, and the significance of this finding suggests a process and practice of identifying, confronting, and reconciling positional assumptions and presumptions.

This exegesis documents the rationale, context, and literature that inform, build, and substantiate the theoretical framework underpinning this practice-based doctoral investigation. Textual and visual narratives are woven across the exegesis as a way of entwining autoethnographic and practice-based knowledge making.This exegesis articulates the methodological and practical processes of research creation adopted for this doctoral investigation. The resultant body of examinable practice is assembled in the Entangling art with STEM exhibition at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, in Launceston, Tasmania, September 2–30, 2022. Together, the exhibition and vii exegesis provide a research-informed and generative account of my lived experience of negotiating interdisciplinary entanglement, arising from visual art making and engagement with STEM education research