Workshops

The following is a set of workshops and lectures offered by Jill Scott. If you are interested in any of these workshops then please contact Jill Scott directly.

1) Storyboarding Science

By Jill Scott, Marille Hahne and invited guests

Duration: 5 – 10 Days

Limit: 25 Participants

This workshop aims to give scientists and science communicators from all disciplines the basic knowledge to collaborate on documentary films and help them to humanize science through the medium of film and interactive media. It includes storyboarding and storytelling skills, semiotics, critical discussions of film examples and basic production and editing techniques by invited filmmakers. Film students are also encouraged to participate.

Former workshops include:
Kulturama Film and Neuroscience workshop (2013), The Singapore Science Center (2014) and Platform Biology, Switzerland

2) Enhancing sensory perception for Artist and Designers

By Jill Scott and invited neuroscientist

Duration: 2-3 Days (including one day for students to work on a specific research parts in partner groups)

Limit: 20 Students

This workshop is a unique blend of sensors systems lab exercises from Neuroscience, electronic media, digital art and design exercises and body awareness experiments designed and taught by Jill Scott. It is designed to not only educate students in neuroscience and cognition, but to help them work in a unique way with users or their interactive viewers in the actual process of construction. It focuses on the stimulation of three neural systems, the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS), the Central Nervous System (CNS) and the Automated Nervous System. The aim is to help artists and designers think differently about sensory stimuli past old fashioned interaction ideas of cause and effect, and to understand cross-modal sensory interaction. The following themes are explored:

Sight
Observation, saccade movements, blink and light reflex reaction, the blind spot, visual acuity, eye dominance, visual impairment and photoreceptor adaptation.

Taste
Understanding taste receptors, relation of taste to visual, olfactory response, trigeminal (hot, cool). Mechanical contributions to “sapictive” perception, location, distribution and thresholds of taste.

Smell
The act of odour detection, smell and taste, adapted nostrils, somatic mapping, chemo-sensors and the role of cilia.

Touch
Touch Reception, distribution of touch receptors, tactile discrimination, temperature, pressure and vibration.

Sound
Deafness, localization and eco-location, inner ear interpretation and action potentials, bone conduction and substitution.

Proprioception
Balance and sound reflex, relative position and tactility, Movement and mind body centring, sight and the sense of the bodies edge. Smell and movement. Environmental effects on the body. Students attend lectures and work in pairs to develop unique approaches to media art and digital design interaction processes.

Comments from participants in Saarbrücken, Germany
– “Very good, things I learnt here were not connected in my mind before now.”
– “The content of the course was amazing and I learnt a lot from their own neuromedia experiments. I totally recommend this workshop.”
– “I enjoyed every part of this 3 day workshop. It was a unique chance to learn about how the percepts works and it gave me tons of ideas for new media art.”

Former Workshops include
School of Visual Arts NY (2013) | Rutgers School of Art (2014) | Nan Yang University, Singapore (2016) | Tasmanian School of Art (2017) | University of the Arts (Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien), Department Digital Arts, Vienna, Austria (2018) | Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Saar, Saarbrücken, Germany (2019)

3) Redesigning Nature

by Jill Scott and Invited Ecologist

Duration: 1 Day

Limit: 20 participants (participants work in groups of 4–5)

Originally designed by Christoph Kuffer (ecologist) and Jill Scott (artist). How are artists and designers representing the changing relationships between humans and “nature” today? This workshop is for both scientist and artists, about the challenge for ecosystems to be adjusted through targeted new design concepts. How do we deal with climate change, urbanization, invasive species, or ecosystems eutrophication and the fundamental anthropogenic changes that these cause? Using drawing and brainstorming techniques, the science students work with ideas like: intervention ecology, re-wilding, resurrection ecology or assisted migration and reconciliation ecology.

Former Workshops include
Monte Verita: Conference on Ecological Novelty ETHZ (2011), The ETHZ Integrated biology department Summer School Zurich (2014)