Örökmozgó - Creative media studies and intermedia for kids
Interactive exercise book with YouTube channel and AR application.
Published by GYIK Műhely, December 2018.
Authors: Dávid Kara & Virág Varga
ABOUT ÖRÖKMOZGÓ
Örökmozgó is the name of the workshop-based group where 10-14-year-old students conduct their experiments in the area of media studies and intermedia at GYIK műhely. This anthology of assignments and tasks and the accompanying Örökmozgó Media Space (Örökmozgó Médiatár) presents the experiences and conclusions of the experiments we conducted in the last five years and shows the results of this artistic collaboration that is in process currently as well. We recommend our book to teachers of media or visual studies, artists and teenagers interested in making films, working with photography, animation, or to parents who are seeking the creative alternatives of computer and smartphone games for their children. So what do we do exactly? First of all, we play and collect visual experiences. We construct stories and worlds using the inspiration and themes of science, technology and art. Our work was influenced by the utopian visions László Moholy-Nagy had for the future of photography and film, by the knowingly infantile attitude of the Dadaist artists, by the pioneers of the science fiction, by the films made at the dawn of the 20th century, by the creative exercises devised by Miklós Erdélyi for camera and also by the work of many contemporary media artists and contemporary artists in general. The goal set by Örökmozgó is to include the use of analogue and digital media tools in the art tuition of children, looking for points where traditional techniques and new media tools can intersect. We have used smartphones in the group since they first appeared, we would like the children to become creative users, becoming aware of how to use the opportunity that a multimedia approach has to offer. It is great to see when a student uses a photograph he or she created in our group as a profile picture or a background picture or when they send us a video they have just created at home. It is apparent how they become more and more aware of the construction and composition of the images: they gradually discover the importance of lighting while working on a photo-based or a video-based assignment. The starting point of each photograph, video or animation is a montage, a drawing, a painting, a mobile sculpture, a puppet or a maquette created by the student. No digital tool can substitute the experience of manual creation in two or three-dimensions, the tactile nature of materials, their morphability. Children connect to self-made objects and pictures in a special way. We deploy old and new media simultaneously: smartphones, cameras, scanners, photocopiers, projectors, photo and video-editing software, mobile apps, to name a few. During our workshops, we often use overhead projectors, slide projectors, old gramophones. It becomes second nature for these children that these distinct technologies and tools can be used together. Often we surround this technological framework with different materials: cardboard, mirrors or foils. We sometimes create mobile phone stands or construct analogue filters or camera ballasts to alter our images. This is how we came up with our animation board game: Kartoon studio.
The media tools at Örökmozgó enable us to play with light, space, sound, time and movement, to confront diverse perspectives and changes in scale during our practice, to become a physical part of our creations, entering our self-created spaces and installations – at the same time opening gates to contemporary art. In the beginning, we called our workshops creative media studies, it is only recently that we started using the phrase "child intermedia". Intermedia, as a genre of fine art, synthesizes different areas of knowledge and creation, it encourages transdisciplinary thinking and uses any available tool and material for creation. It creates bridges between science, technology and art. "Its primary purpose is to activate and perpetuate a kind of creative attitude that is open towards new opportunities, unexplored territories, that is experimental, open to constant research and learning.”(Miklós Peternák: What is Intermedia? Balkon, 08/07/2000).
Interdisciplinary and process-based thinking is an inherent part of the organically morphing methodological practice at GYIK Műhely. Intermedia is a tool for playing and experimenting at Örökmozgó. The source of inspiration can be anything from renewable energies to images drawn by frequency waves, from the photo archives of NASA to the Atlantean legends, from Renaissance drawing machines to artificial intelligence, from prehistoric cave paintings to video installations.
Every occasion starts with the introduction of one such topic or question, then the children start working and we help them implement their ideas. Each workshop is nothing more than a well-prepared game, in other words, creative work, an artistic practice. It is a game for us art teachers: the joy of paying attention to what course the marbles take, and where do they roll to. In the descriptions of the tasks we redubbed our experiences and the problematic aspects as inspirations: this is where we initially start from. The technical part is a concise list of the materials, tools used and a brief explanation of how the task is built up. We complimented each task with references, making it easy to trace and find our resources.
Basic knowledge of the technological tools is required for the tasks, also some experience in photography and video-making. For this reason, we compiled some guidance in the form of a list of useful hint and ideas in the Workshop Secrets-section at the end of the book. The book is complemented by the Örökmozgó telephone application. The app can be downloaded free of charge from Google Play Store and makes the book interactive: in the place of some of the photographs in the book a video jumps up that is related to the task at hand. You can look at the videos without the use of the application on the YouTube channel of Örökmozgó Media Library. We would like to thank the children, their parents, the former and present teachers at GYIK műhely for helping this book come to life!
Dávid Kara and Virág Varga
