In this blogpost I want to focus on some key points I took away from ‘Chapter 3: Understanding Art: The Play of Work and Spectator’ by Vilhauer and propose how they could be interpreted in a (mine?) teaching context, taking a camera workshop as an example. I’m doing this following Tim’s and Lindsay’s recommendation of trying to reflect in our blogposts on our seminars, group discussions and readings from a teaching point of view. 

For this week’s reading we had to look at Vilhauer’s writings on Gadamer’s concept of ‘Play’ when experiencing a work of art. It’s a dense, academic, but evocative text. 

• According to Vilhauer, Gadamer considers viewing an artwork not as a passive intaking of whatever the artwork holds within itself, but as an active, interpretative work. 
  • Here, artwork could be replace with and piece of information/knowledge that I as a teacher present: students will always bring their own context, background and knowledge with themselves and interpret this information through their own personal point of view. 
  • At the beginning of the workshop I can ask everyone to tell a little bit about their previous experience with filming and/or if there is anything they recently watched and liked. This could help illustrating different approaches and experiences around filming and cameras.  
• When ‘Play’ occurs between several ‘players’, it doesn’t happen individually in each players head, but it manifests itself through the interaction of all the players involved, it is outside of them. It is crucial to ‘Play’ that it is a group activity. Vilhauer describes its central attribute as ‘Back and Forth Movement’, therefore ‘Play’ cannot manifest itself when being on one’s own. 
  • ‘Play’ is a conversation or interaction between students and me and my role is to create the space and facilitate this interaction, and depending on the situation, playing or more or less ‘visible’ part. ‘Knowledge’ can be created in a shared experience through interaction. 
  • ‘Play’ could be read as the process of interpreting and applying knowledge in a group environment. This could be a situation where students get hands on experience on how to operate equipment (after I gave them a demonstration). They work in a group of 3 to set up a tripod and a camera and film a quick scene. They rely on each other’s knowledge to work out the task together. Their previous experience and interests have been highlighted before, so now they can bring them in actively.
• Another requirement for ‘Play’ is that there must be ‘room for the freedom of variability – a variability that can only take place if the player’s moves are not identical to each other or totally predictable in advance’. 
  • ‘Play’ is not static, it is not a predictable task with only one, ideal outcome. This time I would like to replace ‘Play’ with the idea of ‘Group activity’. I feel like students get the most satisfaction out workshops that involve a group activity in which they create something together and can take it away from the session.
  • In the camera workshop scenario, ‘Play’ and ‘Variability’ appears after students set up the tripod and camera: now it’s time for them to assign roles (‘director’, ‘camera operator’, actor’) and create a very short video, utilising all the settings on the camera that we’ve have discussed before. After a couple of minutes, they swap roles. This way, they can see how each one of them interprets the role differently and they create a series of short videos, that evidences their shared effort and creativity.