U-Create 2020: Creativity amid Crisis

U-Create 2020 will be organised as an online event across two days, examining different pedagogical, research and industry responses to creativity during times of crisis. The online programme will take place between 10:00-15:00 on the 23rd and 24th of November.

The U-Create Seminar is free and open to members of the Aalto community as well as to the general public. Students are encouraged to attend. 

REGISTER HERE TO RECEIVE THE SYMPOSIUM LINK

Zoom link: https://aalto.zoom.us/j/69735077796

U Create 2020: Creativity amid Crisis

Day one: Creativity amid Crisis - Pedagogy 

Is it possible to define creativity and teach or learn it? In which ways? How do we understand creativity and teach it in different areas, such as business, technology or arts? The first day of the U-Create seminar aims to advance Aalto University’s creative pedagogy by sharing experiences that come directly from Aalto’s campus, connected networks, and communities. The main objective is to nurture an evolving discussion on teaching and practicing creativity across fields, and to explore how creativity is currently being understood through different perspectives.  It also aims to understand the relevance given to creativity among other crucial skills of our age. The programme presents teaching practices around themes of creativity, including discussion on both the failures and successes of various approaches, and reflecting on how to be creative in these unprecedented times. Moreover, amid pandemics and environmental disasters that do not appear to have possible solutions how can creative education thrive?

Day two: Creativity amid Crisis - In the field

Day two of this year’s U-Create seminar will provide insight from across the field of creative practices which explore the function of the interface in times of Creativity amid Crisis. One of last year’s U-Create keynotes ‘The unbearable cleanliness of creativity’ by Nishant Shah focused on the structure of authorship, authority and authenticity in the creative complex. It highlighted that creativity is not a neutral process but a continually contentious form of production and reproduction. Creativity in the digital realm of online connectivity can render the limits of permission visible as new ideas and forms are approved or limited by regulation. The creative act requires not only the act of recognition but the integration of ethics and care to operate in this way. As computational systems are increasingly being adopted by institutions, replacing disciplines with protocols, is creativity becoming a protocol in a system with an increasingly computational logic? What are the impacts of this on the creative disciplines of art, architecture and design? As our access to information contracts around the frame of our screens, how are the interfaces and computational representations of data shaping our understanding of the world and our expression of creativity?

The webinar link will be emailed to registered participants. Please click here to register for the event. 

The U-Create seminars are organised Arts and Creative Practices, a joint-strategic initiative of Aalto University. This year’s event is coordinated by Designer-in-Residence Andrea Bandoni and Aalto Curators Edel O’ Reilly and Bilge Hasdemir. Assistant support by Verna Kuusniemi. Graphic Design by Heini Hälinen.

PROGRAMME

MONDAY 23.11.2020 // 10:00 - 15:00

Day one: Creativity amid Crisis - Pedagogy 

10:00 - Welcome words by Art and Creative Practices 

10:10 - Opening by Petri Suomala, Vice President of Education, Aalto University

10:25 - Keynote by Joana Ozorio de Almeida Meroz - Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (NL) - 25 min

10:50 - Q & A - 10 min

11:00 - Flash Talks: 4 x 10 min each

11:00 - Henri Weijo (BIZ) Teaching Creativity Has Probably Made Me a Luddite

11:10 - Katja Hölttä-Otto (ENG) Mechanisms of Creativity 

11:20 - Kushagra Bhatnagar (BIZ) Creativity as Cultural Critique: Using Critical Theory to Teach Creativity 

11:30 -  Tua Björklund & Senni Kirjavainen (ENG)The human side of responsible creativity

11:40 - Q & A - 20 min

12:00 - LUNCH BREAK - 1 hour

13:00 - Keynote by Andy Best - Aalto University (ARTS) 25 min

13:25 -  Q & A - 10 minutes

13:40 - Flash Talks: 4 x 10 min each 

13:40 - Tim Smith (ARTS) Teaching Toward Reframing Creative Economy in the Arts

13:50 - Tomi Kauppinen (SCI) Learning about information visualization via exploring and creativity

14:00 - Patrizia Hongisto (BIZ) How many boundaries does creativity need?

14:10 - Jaan Praks (ELEC) Creating Space Missions with Students

14:20 - Q & A - 20 min

14:40 - Closing remarks from the Art & Creative Practices Team

CLICK HERE FOR SPEAKERS' ABSTRACTS AND PROFILES

TUESDAY 24.11.2020 // 10:00 - 15:00

Day two: Creativity amid Crisis - In the field

10:00 - Opening and welcome words. Tuomas Auvinen, Dean for the School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Aalto University

10:15 - ‘Teleported Narratives’. Avner Peled, Doctoral Researcher, Media Lab, Aalto University

10:40 - ‘Everything Flows’ Interactive Online Arts Residency. Anastasia McCammon, Curator of Performance and Experiential Dance at the Xarkis NGO 

11:25 - Will the crisis spawn new beginnings? The Kone Foundation home residencies. Anna Talasniemi, Executive Director of Kone Foundation

11:50 - Q&A moderated by Aalto Curators Edel O’ Reilly & Bilge Hasdemir 

12:15 - Outi Turpeinen introduces new public art work 'Mare Tranquillitatis' by artist group IC98 video 

12:20 - LUNCH BREAK - 40 min

13:00 - 'Wall of Silence: Using Creative Data Collection and Visualization to Expose Uncomfortable Truths'. Adina Renner, Visual Data Journalist at Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ)

13:25 - ‘Risk and Representation: the iconography of epidemiological knowledges under crisis'. Gerry Kearns, Professor of Geography, National University of Ireland, Maynooth

14:10 - Q&A moderated by Aalto Curators Edel O’ Reilly & Bilge Hasdemir 

14:45 - Thanks and closing remarks from the Art & Creative Practices Team

CLICK HERE FOR SPEAKERS' ABSTRACTS AND PROFILES