*3.1.2 Charlotte*

Charlotte, like Aynsley, embeds artified visual representation behaviours that could be seen as informed by both algorithmic representations, brain scans, and mixed media conceptualisations in her installation. Reading from left to right of her installation in **Figure 5** we see the set of three painted artworks that illustrate stages of imbalance or disease states in the human brain. The inquiry is related to psychological and emotional well-being from a healthy brain towards a brain in an imbalance, the result of neglect. In front of her paintings are three plinths with a plant pot on top. Each pot carries a resemblance of brain neglect through the analogy of plant growth. Charlotte literally speaks to her performance of neglect in her artist statement.

#### **Figure 5.**

*Memory, Cortical, Brain. Art installation comprising three mixed media ink and printed drawings accompanied by three plants in pots (Charlotte, 2017).*

*Transdisciplinary Art-Science Identities and the Artification of Learning DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101092*

> *My aim was to look at the effects of neglect on brain development... examples of brain scans... The first brain is healthy, the second brain has experienced mild neglect and the last brain has experienced extreme neglect. The red represents the most active areas of the brain and the black represents the least active areas of the brain with yellow, green and purple in-between.*

*The sprouts represent each brain. I treated the first sprout the best. I placed it in an area with the perfect amount of sunlight, I watered it when needed and placed the seeds in the best soil…. The last sprout was extremely neglected. I watered it only a couple of times, I didn't place it in the sun, and I placed the seeds in the worst soil. (Artist's Statement, 2018)*

In **Figure 6**, two pages from Charlotte's visual diary are displayed. She draws heavily from the scientific epistemic insights and the comparative study of each brain state.

It contains a strong observational focus with an effective and personalised perspective as she considers the implications of neglect on the individual and society. In addition, you can see her actively bringing together scientific emergent evidence, concepts, and visual communicative ideas. At the interview Charlotte revealed that loved ones surrounding her worked as mental health professionals, so she was both aware of mental health issues and the social consequences of neglect.

Being a critical self-reflective visual art student requires that one writes about one's artmaking in process, critically reflects on both one's intentionality and the emergent artwork. This is a continuous process as concepts emerge in progress and must be constantly re-assessed for their potential interpretive outcomes such as those formulated in an artist statement that is specifically for an audience. In the fine art course studied by both Aynsley and Charlotte these material artefacts are measures of the summative assessment course components. So, it was gratifying to be able to see audience statements that confirmed the scientific, social, conceptual, and communicative goals of Charlotte:

*The effects of neglect on the brain – Charlotte: I like the contrast between the paintings themselves and the paintings and sprouts to illustrate the impact of neglect on the brain. I think the artwork very successfully conveys its theme and purpose (Audience survey, 2018).*

Making artworks, describing processes and practices, engaging in critical selfreflective acts through performative subject/object engagements are core in visual art education pedagogies.

There are similarities and differences between both Aynsley and Charlotte's artworks. Both appear to have started from the position of a school taught deductive scientific investigative approach, gathering facts and visual evidence surrounding their inquiry towards a reasoned and logical conclusion. In Charlotte's research, she goes directly to algorithmic digital evidence and uses accessible scans of the brain as her starting point as she seeks evidence of brain deterioration related to psychological states in humans. Of course, there are limitations or conditions to the validity of her accessed images [60], given that they may have already gone through an artification process prior to accessibility via the web. However, the images are sufficient to allow Charlotte to commence her thinking as an experiment. Aynsley commences her

#### **Figure 6.**

*Visual process learning diary page entries.*

investigation through the processes of image development and refinement in line with non-algorithmic methods, such as scientific illustration. Aynsley performs her own perceptual and sensory artification when drawing her butterfly. From the outset, her research is a process of knowing-in-being [24]. Both the investigative processual approaches of Charlotte and Aynsley bring into play the need to understand that a more nuanced conceptualisation and empirical operationalisation of materiality in communication, learning, and education needs to be considered.
