Joint Exploration Influences the Process of Sense-Making with Digital Technologies

Sense-making occurs to various degrees from orientation of individual sense-making to joint sense-making (Di Paolo & Thompson, 2017, p. 75). Through this study, I found that interactions between students, between children, between children and adults, and between students and teachers influenced the process of sense-making with digital technologies in interaction with the physical environment.

I found my identity and involvement as an a/r/tographer to be important to the process of joint sense-making in interaction with both students and children. In several of the teacher students’ explorations, I observed that there was more resistance in their processes than in the children’s. In fact, it was a new concept to them to explore without knowing what the outcome would be. According to Shusterman’s (1999) explanation of sensory attention, in explorative processes, a person can direct the senses to experience, for example, artistic qualities or to discover the essential in a context. In the settings with students, it became important for me to initiate the process together with them, to make them aware of some of the possibilities to

explore the combinations of materials and digital technologies, and to show them what the technology afforded in the situation. An example of this was when I put my hand into a glass bowl with water and moved my hand while videoing it and projecting it into the physical environment. Such actions were important contributions because they motivated and initiated ideas and highlighted some of the affordances in the material–digital environment. I used my earlier experience of knowing more about the material and digital technological affordances than the teacher students and the children as a means to guide them. In some instances, I understood what the children or students were trying to do, or I saw potentials in what they could do, for example, when making new artistic expressions or experience artistic qualities. I used my a/r/tographic knowledge to interact, to initiate exploration, and make sense together with them.

Thinking and interaction through exploration gives power to rhizomatic movements and to joint sense-making. The example described above where I initiated actions is an example of how an interaction can branch into and initiate new processes of explorations in an environment.

The students needed more prompting and guidance toward getting into the mood and spirit of exploration than the children did. During interaction between the students and the a/r/tographers, some of the students needed a reminder to look around and observe what other students were doing, and in some settings I needed to initiate concrete actions. After a while, when students got into the mood and flow, using their senses and focusing on the explorative, it was as if things started “to boil” in the large project room. Something was about to extend like a rhizome – new experiences, artistic expressions, and discoveries branched out. Their attention was shifting from individual to joint and back to individual sense-making (see Di Paolo & Thompson, 2017, p. 75), and I could begin to withdraw from my role as a guide. I believe that my flexibility was valuable in these settings in addition to improvisational teaching and the ability to “read” what the current situation required.

The children had a more spontaneous approach to exploring the materials and digital technologies than the teacher students did. It was as if they could not wait to join in and investigate what was in the large-scale project room. They moved together in small groups most of the time, and when they explored individually, they did not focus for such a long time. An example of this is how they explored virtual materiality projected into the room by moving their own bodies and moving flashlights in their hands. They paid attention to each other’s movements while they were moving their bodies as if in a dance, as they simultaneously made flashes of light and shifting shadows. They combined, shaped, and explored the physical and

p. 75) describe as an embodied process of active regulation of the coupling between a person and the world and in social interaction – and that settings such as this with the group of children open the possibility of sense-making being a joint undertaking among the interactors. I experienced that the children and I were attentive to each other’s initiative and movements.

Sometimes, I used my bodily language to give them a hint such as looking around, or I showed them something concrete such as moving a material artifact to see how it reflected light or what would happen when we moved a projection along the wall. But mostly the children initiated different explorations and movements in the environment and involved me and their ECE teacher in joint interaction and exploration.

In one of the instances with the children, I identified one boy’s exploration of different materialities. He had previously explored a buck skull with his hand, lifted it, used his fingers to feel the teeth of the skull, and he had taken different photos of it with the camera app on a touch device. He asked me if I could project one of his photos of the skull into the physical environment while also asking his ECE teacher if she could move a flashlight beam back and forth on the projected materiality and physical environment. The boy used his imagination and the different materialities became an expression he used to stage his actions as a scary figure.

He explored the affordances of actions and materialities in this environment through his perceptual and actionable capacities. Through joint interaction together with me and his ECE teacher, the affordances became part of the act of perception (Chemero, 2010, p. 186).

Noë (2006, p. 1) emphasizes that perception is something we do, and it is not something that just happens to us, or in us. This underlines the importance of exploring materialities in joint interactions in arts and crafts educational settings. Michaels and Palatinus (2017, p. 23) state that the concept of affordances “reflects the intimacy of perception and action.” This perspective is valuable in material–digital settings with both children and students. This is important because materiality is a process, a flow, and a connection (Ingold, 2007, p. 12; Pink et al., 2016, p. 13) between a person and the environment. For me as an a/r/tographer, this means that this is something we need to know about our surroundings, and that this has to be a focus in ECE. We need to understand that, tactile and haptic perceptions provide us with information that is, in additional to visual, essential for making sense of materiality (see Michaels &

Palatinus, 2017, p. 23). Open-ended processes open up the possibility of joint sense-making among us as interactors in the material–digital environment. Thus, joint sense-making results from joint explorations, and new discoveries are made through experiences that branch out like a rhizome.

6.1.6 Haptic Visuality and Artistic Forms of Exploration Can Deepen