Published 01.03.2020
by Kids’ Own
by Kids’ Own
A children’s arts organisation and publishing house.
A children’s arts organisation and publishing house.
Artist: John D’Arcy
Teacher: Chris McCambridge
Digital artist John D’Arcy collaborated with Chris McCambridge and the children of St Colman’s Primary School, Lambeg for three years of Virtually There. They explored techniques for capturing and manipulating still images, sound and video, culminating in the project featured here in the exhibition – a virtual pixel world that blends handmade and digital techniques.
The children studied in McCambridge’s mixed year class for special educational needs. Given the mixture of P6 and P7 enrolments, a number of children were able to work for two school years over the course of the project.
Year 1’s project focused on sound art and experimental music. Here the group produced graphic scores, and created soundscapes with improvised vocalisations and recorded samples.
Year 2’s project looked at ‘media hacking’. The group worked with codes, symbols and representations; mangled still images with cut-up and montage techniques; then stretched and pulled moving images with hyper lapse and stop motion tools.
Year 3 began with a classroom radio station ‘WECHO FM’ that ended up being broadcast on community radio station Lisburn’s 98FM. To conclude our adventure, we looked at pixelation, virtual worlds and the production of a 360 video.
Our artist-teacher collaboration was strengthened by McCambridge’s own visual arts practice and built on a shared interest in digital technologies and audiovisual work. The projects were really made possible by the digital tablets available in the classroom, demonstrating the expansive possibilities for digital arts in primary education.
