Intermediality in Contemporary Visual Art Education

Abstract

Fine arts education, a term widely used to define the school subject, is no longer appropriate to describe artistic expression goals in the educational context. Contemporary visual education allows for a comprehensive approach that considers the intermediality of contemporary visual art. Pedagogical methods, processes, and goals should be open to different approaches under the teacher’s guide. This paper presents reflections on the pedagogical process and a concrete example of a performance developed by secondary school students. It refers to an intermedial project that allows discussing multisensory perception, interdisciplinarity, and the integration of different fields of study, showing an intermedial approach to the pedagogical process. The example shows how creativity develops and grows with such an approach.

1. Introduction

The concept of intermediality in contemporary art has a broad meaning. It can refer to various aspects of artistic production, from processes and products to creative strategies and material or technical media. It can refer to descriptive, exploratory, or performative approaches to art forms. Many times verbal expressions are influenced by expressions of a similar art but also by other media and their structures [1].

Communicative media convey both commonalities and differences. These are the focus of intermedia studies. An important topic is interaction between media and the process of transferring material from one media type to another. Differences between media types can also be transferred at other levels. All communicative situations in all media types are multimodal and draw on different resources for meaning-making. In such communicative environments, people can negotiate meanings without much effort [2].

As such, it is also related to arts education and raises questions about the relationship between arts education and contemporary art production. Art education, fine arts, and drawing are widely used terms for the school subject that deals with art theory, art history, artistic expression, and the appreciation of art products. The content is often tied to specific areas such as drawing, painting, printmaking, visual design, sculpture, and architecture. Each area is usually studied without connection to the others.

Art education defined and developed in this way is no longer adequate to describe artistic expression’s goals in a contemporary educational context. Contemporary art education allows for an integrative approach that considers the intermediality of contemporary visual art. Approaches, methods, and goals should be revised in all curricula of a subject often referred to simply as drawing. Students need new and different skills to participate in today’s cultural life. Only important changes will prepare them to understand that art is moving in a different direction than what many are taught in school. The ideology of closed subjects no longer has anything to do with reality.

In such a broad context, the article proposes to understand and classify the importance of the topic. It presents major changes in the conception, perception, and evaluation of events in the world of art, accompanied by major changes in the school field. The emergence of a new real or virtual spectator, rapid functional changes in his life and self-perception, and the teacher’s responsibility as operator of the reproduction machine that is part of the ideological apparatus of culture, of which the school remains a necessary part.

The paper explores and analyzes the world of art education with a brief account of a core document that should represent the body of ideas among contemporary curricula of the subject. This explicitly explains the interwoven intermedial aspects in the definition of the subject. It then reflects on the nature of the pedagogical process, teaching and learning, the role of the teacher, and intermediality as a way of creating knowledge. Finally, the paper presents an example of an intermediate project carried out by secondary school students, showing the process and results of such a sophisticated learning strategy. In light of this, it can be argued that it would be possible to improve the approach that transforms visual culture/education into perceptual culture/education in order to contextualize intermedial artistic production and art education by stimulating sensitive experiences and generating a holistic critical perception of the world.

2. European competencies and the arts

However, the key competencies listed in the sources published by the European Union [3] show the links between artistic content and effective teaching and learning in the arts, especially at the secondary level. They recommend and encourage an intermedia approach to arts education. Students acquire an important part of their esthetic literacy through direct artistic expression. During the year-long creative and design practice, students acquire new and deepen already developed skills for artistic and esthetic work. Artistic creation is a combination of specific and other key skills. In this way, students materialize their thoughts, ideas, and concepts into esthetic material that is the product of various competencies. They overcome possible language barriers and limitations by using an artistic language that allows them to use additional ways of communication; they learn geometric, chemical, and physical concepts in visual arts, use knowledge of optics and optical color mixing, and learn basic scientific concepts such as relativity and moving perspective. They evaluate how the artist has responded to the state of nature and society and respond critically to the state of nature and society that defines them through their work. Within the esthetic and cultural literacy framework, they recognize the esthetic qualities of artistic creation and create an artistic product based on their experiences, understanding, and skills. They engage with the art of different cultures—multiculturalism—and promote independent artistic expression. In the context of esthetic and digital literacy, they recognize various media of visual culture and critically describe their characteristics in terms of communication, content, esthetic meaning, and function. Students use and strengthen their knowledge of materials and digital literacy when searching for working materials. In the context of esthetic literacy, they define the interdependence of function and artistic form. In the context of health literacy, they handle tools and materials appropriately, follow work safety instructions, and protect work and the natural environment. They can express feelings through artistic means and thus regulate their inner balance; they analyze the perceived world. Art competence enables them to read informational art messages. They use information and communication technologies correctly and combine them with creative artistic expression. As intercultural competence, they accept and respect artistic creations from other environments and different eras, as well as the products of students with different national and cultural identities; within the framework of civic competence, they evaluate the importance of domestic and foreign artistic and cultural heritage; they develop tolerance, openness, national consciousness, develop an awareness of interculturality. Students accept differences and similarities when viewing, interpreting, and responding to works of art from other cultures.

In summary, art education is a school subject that provides an understanding of the arts as a fundamental achievement of civilization and encourages creativity in artistic expression and interpretation of works of art. Art history content transparently and comprehensibly introduces the development of the visual arts as one of the most important forms of expression of human creativity and provides a starting point for understanding and experiencing art. In this way, they contribute significantly to a comprehensive understanding of the key role of artistic creation in the civilizational development of humankind. Artistic creation builds on the practical and theoretical knowledge of artistic expression acquired in basic education. In this way, the student develops his or her own creative skills for artistic expression while developing and deepening his or her understanding of the concepts of visual arts theory and becoming familiar with the diversity of visual arts genres and practices in time and space.

The so-called European competencies show that, as Kroflič [4] says in a discussion of theoretical approaches to curriculum design, planning educational activities has a very interdisciplinary character, and so is the nature of intermediality in arts education.

3. Intermediality and the pedagogical process

The paper refers to a group of competencies that a person can develop through seeing and through collecting and integrating sensory experiences. Effective learning depends on the development of these skills because they enable students to decode and explain actions, natural or man-created symbols, and objects in the environment. The application of these skills fosters communication between people. Analyzing and interpreting visual material is not enough. The ability to create visual signs is also essential. Hybrid, sensitive, and operational experiences promote the use of a specific language that enables them to discern the meaning of images. Digital processing of information has become a cultural communication tool, while technological applications and intermediality contribute to the development of educational practices and cultural policies. They expand the common heritage and promote cultural diversity and the plurality of identities [5].

The spatial experiences described are important for art classes and other school subjects, since they usually deal with visual representations of all kinds. This statement is important in developing the ability to imagine relationships between objects in space in geography, geometry, physics, biology, chemistry, or sports and visualization in history, literature, or foreign language learning. On the other hand, the school should develop a refined verbal, visual, and auditory perceptive ability—considering all the contents that this term implies and presupposes. They are indispensable in almost all activities. For this reason, students must acquire appropriate practical experience and specific competencies.

Fundamental changes in education are consequences of the development of a particular technology. The educational system in an oral culture differs from that in a written culture. Finally, new media and intermediality affect culture, literacy, and education. New media developments affect the institutions that organize “education” in the broadest sense of the word and inevitably influence what and how we learn [6].

The need to individualize the educational process requires the development of alternative, flexible, and effective teaching and learning strategies. Artistic expression, in all its heterogeneity, allows for deep insight into and contemplation of a variety of content from different angles and promotes multisensory and complementary experiences. In this way, the artistic experience, gathered through different modalities of mediation, becomes a point of connection between different contents and objectives. It supports the design of didactic material and motivates the improvement of teaching and learning in other educational areas. However, behind this is the awareness that new media and digital technologies are essentially about visual images of different kinds and their fusion with other means of expression, as well as auditory, kinesthetic, and verbal experiences, which are essential for explaining and understanding data in different subjects of study.

Teaching perceptual experiences that have their starting point in artistic subjects allows for a complementary relationship between the “world of art” and the “world of science.” This is particularly important given the increasing need for individualization of teaching and learning that responds to the different styles of teachers and learners and their prior experiences in the field and individual development in spatial representation, motor skills, etc. This becomes even more important when we consider each student’s individuality, cultural background, inclinations, needs, gender, etc. In this context, the role of advising teachers through artistic approaches concerning students’ academic achievement and helping teachers develop appropriate teaching and learning strategies through the arts are still questions to which there can be many answers.

3.1 Intermediality as creation of new knowledge

Creating new knowledge can transform how people see and think by providing new insights into how content gives meaning to ideas, issues, and questions. Images can carry meaning through description, representation, expression, or symbolization. Recent cultural discourse offers a much wider scope for the potential meaning of encountering a work of art. This inevitably raises several very interesting and highly significant questions for the various fields of arts education and education in general, for example: How can perceptual experiences be stable and continuous when other interpretations are possible? There is no longer a division between the different disciplines of art. Strong sociocultural changes condition all kinds of artistic expression; discussions about cultural and national identity, minorities, technological changes, and the postmodern philosophy of plurality and fragmentation have changed the premises that also determine the nature of art and education. These issues are changing how we relate to art, learn, and participate in experiences that emanate from art.

Additionally, it is important to approach arts education from a critical perspective addressing the complexity of experiences deeply integrated into everyday life. The esthetic dimension is a unique cognitive process developed by arts education and used by other fields. At this point, we can argue that education should embrace broad, holistic forms and practices critically examined through the interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and intermedial methodologies associated with the various fields of study, creating new knowledge about the world at every step. The approach to education should be from a critical perspective of the complexity of actual experience.

According to Mueller [7], a change from a media product to an intermedia product takes place with the juxtaposition of multimedia elements and different media, which are transformed into a conceptual juxtaposition of intermedia. Such an intermedial juxtaposition arises in artworks with combinations, transformations, or allusions to other media, Rajewsky explains [8].

It is no longer sufficient to understand media as a mechanical means of transmission that transfers some kind of information from a “producer” to a “receiver.” In this new context, the medium is that which mediates between people across historical and spatial distances based on meaningful signs or configurations of signs with the help of efficient transmitters.

3.2 Teaching and learning

Given the ever-increasing prevalence of electronic and other popular media, the complexity of the relationships among what students see and hear, what they believe, and how they interact with one another underscores now more than ever the need for cross-curricular teaching of critical thinking, critical reading, and critical viewing skills. A consensus is emerging that teaching critical viewing skills strengthens students’ abilities in traditional subjects, combats problems of adolescent apathy, and improves student, parent, and teacher attitudes’ toward school.

Intermediality challenges the classical teaching of acceptable artistic works that are far removed from students’ experiences. Instead, it emphasizes the learning environment over specific content [9].

Intermediality examines, extends, and synthesizes the existing definitions, texts, theories, processes, research, and contexts. It brings into focus the possibilities of working with different media texts. Thus, critical media literacy becomes a competency to interpret and understand how meaning is made and derived from print, photographs, and other graphic visuals [10].

The goals of art education focus on the holistic development of the child, which includes the development of three important categories of behavior based on the taxonomy of educational goals: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. In receiving information from the environment, it is necessary to learn to respond to different inputs and have the appropriate knowledge that helps their sensory system to complete the activity with a successful product [11].

A form of teaching that incorporates various means of artistic expression is influenced by several factors: the pedagogical, didactic, and methodological competencies of teachers, their personal views on the subject that affect the degree of motivation to include various media in the teaching program, and the physical and organizational conditions for conducting such programs. It is also necessary to emphasize the goals of the subject, adapted to the age of the students, and thus the pedagogical strategies.

In the media-saturated world in which we live, it is perhaps not an excess to speak of intermedial competence as a fundamental concept in communication and education. What do we achieve from teaching intermediality at different levels of education? How can intermediality be incorporated into classroom practice, not only as a pedagogical issue but also even as a teaching method from kindergarten on? Ask Semali and Pailliotet [10].

Young children have a natural need to express themselves [12]. They need freedom because, in this way, they can get to know and understand the world around them. At this stage, intermediality can manifest itself in the combined use of materials and creative strategies, such as motivation by reading a tale, guided by an experienced teacher who appreciates the nature of this mainly physical and cognitive experience for the child. Reading a verbal text that the children have to represent with visual signs is a primary kind of intermediality between languages (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Drawings made by kindergarten children. After listening a tale, each child created an individual view of the meaning of the text using different materials.https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ship_in_the_sea.jpg; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fishes_kindergarten.jpg.

Later, at around 12 years (Figure 2), the child develops sufficient psychomotor skills and abstract thinking and can think critically and understand issues conceptually. If he or she has sufficient experience in using different materials or technical media, intermediality becomes a rich strategy for the student to access the world of contemporary art without borders [13]. In this case, the verbal input was a discussion about identity, and the task was a self-representation, an auto-portrait. After the conversation, each child created an individual visual view of its meaning.

Figure 2.

Drawings of elementary school children in the final grades. After participating in a conversation on individual identity, each child created a depiction of its meaning using different materials. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AUTOPORTRAIT_ELEMENTARY_SCHOL_CHILD.jpg; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Autoportait_in_elementary_school.jpg.

Figures 1 and 2 show how an artistic expression changes over the years, from early childhood to the beginning of adolescence. In both cases, there was a remediation from verbal to visual language.

The acquisition of knowledge requires a good selection of the most appropriate learning material and must show the connection between different knowledge and stimulate the search for the essential. Individual subjects can find meanings in the context of other subjects, complementing and linking objectives, goals, and contents.

Knowledge from different subject areas allows the establishment of the transfer of thinking strategies. On this basis, creative problem-solving can take place in different subjects and promote higher thinking skills [14]. This model is based on the assumption that it is necessary to develop critical thinking skills in order to structure, order, and develop or achieve desired outcomes based on conceptual structures. Content and learning processes are strongly intertwined, with the teacher providing the content link between different subjects. Drake also agrees with this approach because the brain is organized to take in more information at once, and holistically acquired information is more easily and quickly retrieved [15].

The most important reason for students’ loss of motivation is often the isolated treatment of the content, removed from its authentic context, which does not meet their interests and needs. In planning the learning process, we understand the group as a community of individuals with different abilities, interests, experiences, and inclinations. The need for increasing individualization of the learning process requires that the teacher always keep the group and the individual in mind when planning the teaching and learning process, which requires the development of flexible, alternative, and highly dynamic instructional strategies.

Rajewsky has made clear how such intermedial coexistence comes into being in works of art via combinations or transformations, or references to other media [8]. This is exactly what usually happens in the pedagogical process of art education.

3.3 The role of the teacher

One of the most important consequences of new material culture and intermedial practice for education is that it has caused a shift in the relationship between youth and adults and between students and teachers [16].

Intermedial pedagogy calls into question the traditional institutions and fields of knowledge. Contemporary pedagogy must address how to link the question of authority to democratic processes in the classroom that do not promote pedagogical terrorism and yet offer representations, stories, and experiences that allow students to engage critically in constructing their own subjectivity. At the same time, they are in an ongoing process of negotiation between self and others [17].

A motivating, independent teacher modifies or develops the content of related items, independently makes connections, and helps construct meanings. The teacher should become a designer: indeterminacy rather than order should become the guiding principle of a pedagogy in which multiple views, possibilities, and differences are opened up as part of an attempt to read the future contingently rather than from the perspective of a master narrative that assumes rather than problematizes specific notions of work, progress, and agency [18].

An autonomous, motivating teacher modifies or develops the content of analogous items, makes connections independently, and helps construct meanings. The teacher should become a designer: Indeterminacy rather than order should become the guiding principle of a pedagogy in which multiple perspectives, possibilities, and differences are highlighted as part of an attempt to understand the future contingently rather than from the perspective of a master narrative that presupposes rather than problematizes particular notions of work, progress, and agency [18].

He selects the method of teaching (methods, forms of work, teaching aids, strategy for planning learning steps, design of artistic tasks, and approaches to linking the content of different subjects), brings the method of work closer to the students’ wishes and needs, artistic abilities and personality traits. He does not impose his own values and views, and allows students’ freedom of artistic expression. He moderates the learning process and, promotes motivation, knows how to respond to the individual student.

He encourages student activity in all phases of learning, intense perception, complete experience, internalization of the activity, responsibility for the performance of the activity, acquisition of artistic knowledge, and personal development or lifelong learning; he guides students to independent research.

He guides students to discover their own strategies for solving artistic problems, to be curious and accept differences in artistic expression, and to link content in an interdisciplinary and intermedial way. He motivates students to acquire new knowledge in an experiential way, to use a variety of design and thinking strategies, activities, processes, materials, tools and procedures, and to link problem-oriented assignments to the themes of fine arts and contemporary intermediality in visual culture.

Artistic creativity, a very important component of the personality of the students, develops with artistic activities. Therefore, this allows for the evolution of creativity in general, which today is an irreplaceable factor in the development of the individual and society. The development of artistic creativity includes the promotion of the imagination in the use of materials, the choice of appropriate strategies and working methods, sensitivity in the perception of artistic qualities, entanglement in the transformation of artistic elements and materials, complexity in conceptual aesthetic planning to solve artistic problems, and flexibility.

Undoubtedly, such teaching requires a special kind of organization; it demands great flexibility in planning and evaluating work results. It is also necessary to adjust the teacher’s own ideas about what he expects from the learning process. There is a dialectic between the successive experiences, which include the teacher, with his experience, expertise, organizational skills, knowledge, intuition in the field of individual management, etc., and the student, who interprets and builds a picture of the world. The results arise from the way each of them assumes the world and assembles the elements into a new whole that has meaning in a particular context, renewed each time.

The learning process gradually includes the possibility of introducing an individual strategy for solving art tasks, choosing art techniques and art motifs, and using new concepts in different contexts. This certainly plays an important role in the successful completion of art tasks. In addition, surprise at the unexpected results in connections between contents play an important role in motivating students.

The presented work strategy actively and intermediately involves the participants in the learning process, which increases personal engagement and reveals contradictions between own and others’ experiences, between processes and goals. In this way, it helps to change entrenched attitudes, broaden the perspective of viewing certain phenomena, and helps to connect separate aspects, cognitive, emotional as well as action aspects. We could say that it is a realization of Dewey’s thought that when we look at a work of art—we would add, create or recreate—emotion and thought are together in their perceptual and sensory connection. Therefore experience is a complex in which the world opens up to us and conveys meanings and values in a non-verbal way [19].

The conditions in which we can ensure the success of such an approach to work are also specific: an atmosphere that motivates the participants and allows the relaxed expression of opinions and feelings. It is also important to ensure adequate preparation of the physical environment in which the activity takes place and of the didactic material, a combination of different forms of work to allow temporary privacy and, simultaneously, to express a diversity of ideas.

Intermediality refers not so much to new kinds of problems per se as (at least potentially) to new ways of solving them, to new ways of representing and thinking about them. It also points to new, or at least different, ways of looking at medial boundary crossings and hybridization; in particular, it points to a heightened awareness of the materiality and mediality of artistic practices and cultural practices in general [8].

4. An example: ‘The expected escape’

The paper presents an example of how strategies of intermedia approach and integration of program orientation content and arts content were the focus of a project at a specialized high school with a music high school program. The content presentation was based on a comparison of terms from the field of music that are also found in art theory, such as rhythm, composition, harmony, chord, high note, middle note, low note, major and minor, etc.

In order to verify the importance of the ability to process visual images and sounds efficiently, an experiment was carried out that resulted in a product, an intermedia performance that allowed to understand what effects these stimuli – sound, and images in their entirety – can have on viewers/listeners.

The first question was about the possibility of finding an analogy between sounds and images. This was the core idea of the project. Although psychologists such as Kubovy argue that the realm of sound sensation in music, strictly speaking, offers an analogy to space, this is manifested in verbal language. “We speak of high and low tones, not of right and left tones, although our musical instruments make the latter designation seem very natural.” Von Ehrenfelds, long ago in 1890, was the first to claim that musical chords and visual forms have the property of being substitutable without losing their identity, citing Kubovy [20]. In media studies, an esthetic focus on intermedia relations has been placed in the historical perspective by research on how a given medium “remediates” other media [21]. One form of intermediality inherent in this example highlights artworks in which there is a reference to another artwork or to another artistic system as a whole. For example, this form of intermediality appears in literary texts describing a painting or a piece of music [1].

Sound enlightens us about causes and events, not about surfaces and material objects: Our language suggests to us that objects are visual in nature; visual objects have considerable control over what we hear. Wightman and Jenison [22] distinguish between concrete auditory objects, which consist of sounds emitted by real objects in the environment, such as an orchestra, and abstract auditory objects, which often do not correspond to real objects in the environment, such as a melody. Listeners distinguish between the auditory subsystem that processes the concrete objects and the auditory subsystem that processes the abstract auditory objects. We need to abandon the vision-focused notion of the object to understand this and provide a more general definition of the perceptual object, whether visual or auditory.

Intermediality as a contemporary concept between different artistic languages or media can be traced throughout art history. Research attempting to demonstrate a connection between the location of a painting or visual sign and the sound value of that location in Paleolithic cave paintings is astonishing. In many cases, it has been demonstrated that the locations with the greatest resonance are the locations for images. An image requires sound, and the extent to which resonant sites were used indicates the importance of sound itself: sound requires an image [23]. Among the most interesting examples from the last century are probably Wagner’s concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, which in this case means the fusion of the arts into an all-encompassing Gesamtkunstwerk, or Klee’s Polyphonic Painting [24].

Although the expression “hearing the image” may seem paradoxical, it describes a particular response to visual stimuli, a phenomenon called aural-visual synesthesia. A good example of a person with this ability is Kandinsky, who described the psychological effect of colors thus: “A psychological shock produces a corresponding shock by association. The sound of colours is so distinct that it would be difficult to find someone who would express bright yellow with bass tones.” The aspect of synesthesia is the ability to perceive objects with particular tastes, sounds, and colors. His formulation of the reactions of the sensitive soul is supported by centuries of mnemonic theory, current cognitive psychology, and many contemporary studies of the visual arts. In other words, visual stimuli can evoke auditory sensations or memories in individuals who are receptive or trained to do so [25].

The metaphor linking sounds produced by the piano to color sequences has been used from the Baroque period well into the twentieth century. Music and painting share a basic vocabulary that includes concepts such as color, tone, harmony, composition, improvisation, modulation, and scale. Hector Berlioz wrote that instrumentation in music is the exact equivalent of color in painting [26].

The project, titled “The Expected Escape,” was conceived as a multisensory, intermedial experience. Multisensory and intermedial means that the experience to promote was neither visual nor auditory, but a combination in which neither of these manners was favored. Rather, it was a combination of two different languages, taking into account the idea that music or sound, in this case a Bach fugue, can be transmuted into a visual product. Every fugue has a theme, which should become the main theme of a visual composition. This means that it is possible to select an image that will act as the theme in the context of the sequence of images in the entire visual or pictorial composition. In Bach, the theme appears in different voices as bass or tenor, depending on the fugue chosen. Changes in musical form mean parallel changes in pictorial or visual form. The whole composition acquires its meaning only by considering all these elements. Regarding the research experience, it is clear that listening and looking provide descriptive information that helps to find the narrative, and symbolic content of the event. The auditory and visual elements are linked so that the viewer/listener overlooks the fragments in order to discern a unity, a narrative with broader potential content. Both the musician and the visual artist want to evoke specific sensations that the listener/viewer is expected to place within a larger symbolic narrative. The effectiveness of communicative intent is overwhelming when visual and auditory elements form a unity. Each element is different and represents a different sensation and narrative content. When the unit is viewed in its spatiality, it can tell many different stories.

As mentioned earlier, a group of secondary school students developed the project. After selecting the concert program, the students made sketches with drawings, paintings, collages, and photographs that illustrated the different moments of the musical theme. Then they selected about 350 images that were scanned and arranged parallel to the music (Figure 3). With the images, they created a presentation that was a visual representation of the sounds. During the performance, the presentation was projected onto a stage set that consisted of a cube of fine white textiles that hung in different directions, reflecting and changing the views of the images depending on the viewer’s angle. The piano was placed in the center. The viewers placed around the cube were to follow both media, the visual and the acoustic, simultaneously (Figure 4).

Figure 3.

Examples of the first sketches for the design of the visual part of the performance. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_expected_escape_drawings.jpg; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_expected_escape_drawing_1.jpg; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_expected_escape_drawing_2.jpg; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_expected_escape_drawing_3.jpg; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_expected_escape_drawing_4.jpg; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_expected_escape_schema.jpg.

Figure 4.

Pictures of the final performance. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_expected_escape_performance.jpg; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_expected_escape_performance_1.jpg; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_expected_escape_performance_2.jpg; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_expected_escape_performance_3.jpg; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_expected_escape_performance_4.jpg; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_expected_escape_performance_5.jpg.

The project’s title symbolized the expressed content, but it was not intended to function in its classical verbal meaning. To test the eventual hypothesis about the differences that occur when perception is considered holistically, a test was conducted. Forty-five randomly selected assistants to the presentation of the performance agreed to participate. They were divided into three groups: 15 of them could not see the visual part, 15 could not hear the sound, and 15 could perceive the performance as a whole.

Each participant completed a short questionnaire. The first question was, ‘Which word would you assign to the presentation? The suggested words were dynamics, harmony, passivity, escape, joy, aggression, and contrast. The most frequent answer was dynamics in the group that could only hear the sound. The most common answer in the group that could only see the images were contrast. The most common response in the group that could consider the performance as a whole was escape. Interestingly, the participants in this group chose a word that theoretically cannot be associated with the world of sound or visual art. Instead, it was a world with a narrative background that gave new meaning to the concept of performance as a whole. The second question was, ‘What would you call the performance?’ The possibilities were ‘Thriller Night’, ‘The Expected Escape’ and ‘Luxury, Calmness and Voluptuousness.’ The majority of the participants who were able to see and hear the performance as a whole chose the correct title.

From the results, it can be concluded that the possibility of “reading” the performance as a whole actually meant a process that fostered the construction of its own meaningful significance.

In this example, intermediality can serve primarily as a generic term for all those phenomena that (as indicated by the prefix inter) take place in some way between media. Intermediality, then, refers to configurations that involve crossing boundaries between media and can thus be distinguished from intramedial and transmedial phenomena (i.e., the occurrence of a particular motif, esthetic, or discourse in across different media) [8].

5. Intermediality as multisensory experience

This experiment has shown how intermediality is a concept and a methodological tool that allows analyzing the world of contemporary art, which nowadays actually knows no boundaries. Intermediality includes multisensory experiences and is not only bound to the visible space, as in traditional art fields but allows an open definition of what art is. Thus, as media scholar Mitchell has pointed out, all communication involves all our senses. There are no purely visual, textual, or auditory media. All media products are, therefore, mixed and heterogeneous rather than monomedial [27].

Conceptually, spatial perception in a work of art is related to sensory perception, a fleeting action or reaction triggered by a specific context. Generally, it is considered an internal feeling perceived by each individual according to his or her personal interpretive filters, cultural and social dimensions; however, it can also be recognized as a feeling shared by a community with a common denominator. The perception and appropriation of space give it properties that complete its semantic and physical definition. The experience does not emanate directly from the space, but is created in part by the viewer, who changes, defines, and completes it through his active and creative appropriation. He is a producer and creator, more than a mere observer of an ‘empty vessel’ [28].

Embodied experience means that we comprehend space with all our senses in motion so that qualities that in the Cartesian tradition were considered secondary such as color, texture, the glint of sunlight on the windowpane, and the echo of footsteps, become primary to space. Thus, spatial sensibility can be considered as the unconscious recognition of the fleeting fusion of sensory signals that constitute the sense of place at a given moment [29].

Our perception of space is not continuous but partial and fragmentary. Although all the senses are in action, the image received is a combination of all the senses, with none of them predominating except in moments of concentration on something specific. It is a multisensory experience. Pallasmaa reinforces these ideas by saying that the image is generally considered from a purely visual point of view, but that the qualitative property of the senses is their tendency to integrate; connotative effects involving all the senses always accompany a visual image. The visual image is essentially a fusion of discontinuous fragments and ideas [30]. In art as experience, Dewey says that the qualities of the senses, touch, taste, sight, and hearing, have aesthetic qualities. However, they are not isolated, but connected in a totality in which they interact, rather than as separate entities. These entities are never related to themselves, just as color is related to color or sound is related to other sounds. The author highlights fundamental aspects of perceptual experience in space, such as individuality, subjectivity, and originality. It is a specific experience of each person [19].

In relation to intermediality, it is also necessary to describe the experience of virtual space as it is peculiar to contemporary visual art. A virtual space is located in an indeterminate place for the subject. On the other hand, the individuality of the gaze confirms the existence of different “viewing techniques” and a particular awareness of attention in perception as a model for the way the subject constructs a coherent idea of the world. The model is not only visual in nature, as perception is not measured only in terms of proximity or actuality. Perception is a function that ensures activity, productivity, adaptability and predictability, and social integration of the subject, Crary said. This means, according to him, that a reconceptualization of perception is very important for the transformation of mass culture and that it may be necessary to acknowledge that digitization has changed the way space is looked at and seen [31]. Regarding the importance of seeing Grau affirms, what is called reality is simply a statement of what can be perceived, seen [32].

Digitization has also changed the way bodies are perceived. It promises the possibility of interaction between one or more subjects, spatially dispersed but able to interact with each other and a shared environment through a computer terminal, acting invasively in increasingly complex situations characterized by increasingly hybrid and subtly designed technology [33]. Much of the excitement generated by virtual reality has to do with the expendability or redundancy of the body. An existence without debt, without obligations, without attachments, the fantasy of the liberal subject creating itself. This fantasy denies the connection between the sexualized body and the sexualized subject. It is a unique and unchanging body that is much more liberal than restrictive, Grosz argues [34].

6. Perceptual literacy instead of visual literacy

The artist is a central figure in the creation of new knowledge. He has the potential to transform the way people see and think by providing new insights into the way objects carry meaning about themes, ideas, and issues. Images forward meaning in many ways, be it through description, representation, expression, or symbolization. Recent cultural discourse has changed the relationship between the artwork, the artist, and the viewer. It offers a much greater scope for meaning to emerge from an encounter with a work of art.

Researchers in visual culture are interested in the communicative and political role of art and help understand the contexts surrounding art so that it is possible to control the visual information the viewer confronts. The approach is to seek understanding by researching art to determine the many functions and purposes for which art can be used [35].

A genuine understanding of information should develop by conceiving it as a complex consisting of at least visual, auditory, and verbal stimuli combined in specific ways.

In view of this, it would be possible to extend the approach that transforms visual culture/education into perceptual culture/education or media culture/education. With such predisposition, it would be easier to contextualize visual or auditory artistic production that stimulates sensitive experiences and produces a holistic critical perception of the world, insofar as various forms of manipulation are effective when their components address unconnected perceptual capacities. This process should include learning art concepts, as it is necessary to understand auditory/visual art signs as carriers of meaning and to be able to interpret and use them in creative artistic expression, especially from an art education perspective.

One of the most systematic approaches to fostering a critical attitude would be to develop a wholesale connection of the artwork with daily life conditions. As Dewey wrote, “We fail to see how the works we encounter in museums or their equivalents for other art forms, such as concert halls or classrooms, have actually grown out of the common conditions of life we share with the artists who created them. After that, we can make a second mistake. If we believe that aesthetic experience belongs to a delimited realm, we cannot see how the success of artists in creating expressive, intrinsically fulfilling objects from the raw material of life can be applied to the entire spectrum of human existence… The purpose of aesthetics is to restore continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience that works of art represent and the everyday events, actions, and sufferings that are generally recognised as experience” [36].

7. Conclusion

Dynamic sociocultural changes have affected artistic expressions of all kinds; debates about the cultural identity of minority groups, questions of national identity, rapid technological changes, and the emergence of the postmodern philosophy of fragmentation and plurality have reshaped assumptions about the promotion of the arts and education. These changes have affected the approach to the arts. However, also how to learn and teach about them. It is important to approach arts education from a critical perspective that addresses the complexity of experiences strongly integrated into everyday life today.

Due to multimedia technologies, we are often disturbed by visual, auditory, or verbal images and other sources, and we must constantly respond to them and make decisions that require creativity, uniqueness, spatial awareness, motivation, and imagination. However, the abundance of visual cues should not prevent us from having rich experiences with the other senses, especially hearing, closely related to the visual.

For that reason, the multisensory orientation of intermediality corresponds to contemporary trends in art and culture. It enables art educators to encourage the esthetic imagination necessary to attract students and participate in contemporary art and cultural activities. It also allows them to appreciate and understand cultural history holistically, using hybrid methods and environments for teaching and learning in a holistic way [37].

In challenging the current shift in art education toward a visual culture position, these authors argue that art education would be better served if, instead of adopting a visual culture perspective, it adopted broadly holistic forms and practices that can be critically examined through the interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary methods associated with intermedial approaches to study. Vision-centered education, or education that focuses only on the traditional arts disciplines prepares students for art and culture in far too myopic ways.

We support these considerations insofar as we have shown how conditional the importance of vision is, considering it as the only sense that can bring about improvements in the development of spatial representation besides emotional receptivity to the perceived world.

An effective critical attitude toward the world should promote the formation of critical perceivers of the environment who are able to deal constructively with possible dissonance. This should lead the viewer/listener/student to new discoveries, to the representation of their own desires or feelings, and to the spontaneous valorization of their experiences, thus enabling changes in responses to the manipulation of visual and other stimuli in our environment. These ideas become even more important when we consider the individuality of each viewer/consumer/student living in a specific cultural environment. Arts education can be a way to develop understanding of the world create holistic representations of it, and promote creative and critical thinking through intermedia esthetic dimensions.

The esthetic dimension is a unique cognitive process. A global understanding of our past, as well as our present world, requires complex elements and rich unifying experiences, which should be one of the main goals of education at all levels and a key to personal and social growth and emancipation from the various forms of ‘cultural slavery’ that impose themselves at all levels of our globalized world.

Finally, we engage with media because of their material, sensorial and spatiotemporal qualities. We engage with media products because they mean something. The qualities of media products provide information that we understand to be a representation of something else. Thus, media products employ our ability to make meaning of signs [38]. A key competence in contemporary times.

Acknowledgments

I could not accomplish this task without the cooperation of colleagues who understood the importance of the challenge. I sincerely thank Samo Amon for his critical ideas and patience during the writing process and Primož Urbanč for accepting the challenge of the project. Finally yet importantly, I would like to thank the students and teachers who participated in the project. We hope that with them, we will be able to promote changes in the way art education is defined and implemented. Our final goal is the development of creativity. Without creativity, we cannot imagine our future life.