Objects-to-be-from: Attending to Embodied Ways of Knowing and Being in Creative Computing Learning Design

• In Event: Empowerment-Focused Computing in Constructionist Learning Environments

Abstract

Objectives
Creative computing can be a pathway to computational empowerment, or the ability to engage with our technological landscape in critical and interdisciplinary ways (Castro et al, 2024; Iversen et al, 2018). Work that prioritizes the sociocultural dimensions of creative expression have demonstrated how computational learning environments can create expansive computing experiences when focused on the holistic development of the learner (DesPortes et al, 2022). However, there are still open questions surrounding how learning design can cultivate a “dignity affirming” environment when computing is framed as an embodied experience (Mathayas et al, 2022). Through an investigation of pedagogical tools in a creative computing residency for high school learners, we explore how cohesion between artistic, computational, and self knowledge can affirm learners and cultivate safe spaces for authentic embodied participation. We examine how the tools are not just “objects-to-think-with” but “objects-to-be-from”—emphasizing the vulnerable, collaborative, and expressive practices in which learners explored themselves and connected with each other.

Theoretical Framework
We apply queer theory to inform the research and design of empowerment in creative computing spaces. We are inspired by the concepts of “becoming” and “performativity,” which emphasize that identity is not a fixed, natural truth but a non-linear and evolving process by which self is rendered intelligible through material and relational acts of differentiation (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; Butler, 1991; Goffman, 1956)—including, in our view, computational self-expression. We integrate these concepts with theories of embodied cognition (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; Johnson, 1987) and sociocultural learning theory (Vygotsky, 1978) to explain how creative computing affords unique ways to navigate and express fluid, unstable, or community identities.

Methods
Over the past two years, we have hosted two 8-day interdisciplinary arts residencies for ~15 high school students to make projects combining poetry, visual art, and physical computing. We collected pre/post surveys, instructor debriefs, photos of artifacts, video reflections, and post-study interviews. We chose three pedagogical tools to investigate because the facilitation team noticed their embodied expressive affordances: a tangible programming language (touchBase), radial diagramming, and theater games. We thematically coded the photos and interviews to understand how these tools helped students reflect on, represent, and feel at home in their embodied selves.

Results
The ways the tools engaged with the physical space was essential to their affordances in the learning environment. Intentionally choosing the theater games according to students’ socioemotional and epistemic needs eased learners into collaboration, participation, and computing. The games promoted vulnerability from typically quiet students and provided opportunities for learners to use their bodies to form subversive and creative representations of physical computing concepts. Furthermore, the upright, writable surfaces of paper radial diagramming and whiteboard touchBase required groups of learners to stand together around the tools with writing instruments, prompting them to make sense of the tools and their project ideas through ad-hoc collaborative movements, annotations, and sketches.

Significance
This work contributes to our understanding of how embodied characteristics of pedagogical tools can facilitate opportunities for computational empowerment in both collaborative and safe ways.

Authors

• Cassandra Scheirer, New York University

• Francisco Castro, New York University

• Kayla DesPortes, New York University