I work with another former student at Emily Carr College under the tutelage and direction of Dean Emeritus Tom Hudson. Our first year of research involved only two-dimensional studies using Deluxe Paint II. This research involved basic explorations of the available marks and forms built into the software, and those we could devise ourselves, at the level of pure exploration. We systematically explored Point, Line, and Shape as separate subjects, and later in more complex combinations.
A lot of the early work was done in black and white, to keep emphasis on pure mark energy, but colour was used constructively when suitable. (Much of the rationale and concepts behind our work are evolved from the ideas and teachings of artists and educators like Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Sir Herbert Read.)
This year-long research was ultimately integrated into the student exercises for the "Mark and Image" television series, where myself and my colleage Jeanie Sundland were to do work which paralelled that of the other television students on the programs. ("Mark and Image" has aired regularly twice per year since it's first broadcast on Knowledge Network, British Columbia's educational channel.)
Since that time, our research in what we later called "Computer- Based Visual Literacy" developed into two articles written by Mr. Hudson for the British Journal of Art & Design Education, and a 67 minute VHS videotape called "Computer-Based Visual Literacy" (which was a record of our collective research using the Amiga computer and Deluxe Paint II/III) and is currently being distributed in Britian by Sussex Video.
Tom Hudson has taken many tapes of our collective work with him to Britian for his lectures, and print-outs of the work have also been exhibited in England, and here at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design.
Unfortunately, response to the work here in Canada has not been quite as successful as we'd hoped, but this may change as "Colour: An Introduction", and "Mark and Image" gain more exposure here and internationally.
"Colour: An Introduction", the first educational TV series to be produced by the Emily Carr College (ECCAD) and the Open Learning Agency/Knowledge Network, has won a number of Canadian and U.S. awards for technical and educational excellence, and has been purchased by a number of U.S. PBS stations. "Mark and Image" was the second production, and has been considered for broadcast in Australia and Japan.
The current series in production is called "Material and Form", and deals with three-dimensional forms and materials: construction, sculpture, architecture, and three-dimensional perception. We are producing a number of 10 to 20 second computer animated sequences for each of the 10 episodes in the series, and expect the programs to be broadcast in 1992.
Mr. Hudson concieved these programs as actual first year art college courses, and later developed them into television programs, with companion course supplies and a course manual also written by him.
Future video projects under consideration are "The Creative Process", (the fourth of the four "foundation" or core courses in art and design), and perhaps a professional broadcast-quality series which deals exclusively with Tom's most ground-breaking subject to date: "Computer-Based Visual Literacy". Plans are currently under way which may make distribution of some of our research materials and findings available to educators in BC for their professional use in the classroom.