Artful: Art and Dementia at the Museum Of Contemporary Art

Recently I had the pleasure of undertaking the Artful program at the MCA (Museum of Contemporary Art). This program has two aspects – a research component that is conducted by the Brain and Mind Centre, University of Sydney, and the Artful experience itself. The research aspect is exploring how art can enhance the well-being and neuroplasticity of people with Dementia. The Artful experience is by far the more fun (even though the research aspect involved an MRI).

Simply, the program runs of 10 weeks, broken into 5 sessions. Each session comprise a fortnightly visit to the MCA to view and discuss some of the exhibits followed by exploring in a hands on fashion a follow on theme from the viewing. This is followed up by a take-home pack of resources to further explore some of the ideas at home.

As part of my exploration of these resource packs my creative journey took me into the world of video and some experiments in Claymation and Green Screen photography. My objective was to take the challenge and have fun – my way.

These links will show the creative journey I took and will illustrate my approach in chronological order.

You should I hope notice an improvement in design and execution as these videos progress. Part of my interpretation of this creative process was to make art that was more than two dimensional, as such most of the material produce does have an interactive component including but not limited to sound and music.

The projects are the  Emu That Ate Paris,   Devils Food an experiment in ClayMation, The  NeoBlast a mobile exploring green screen photography and an optical Theremin.

The next project  Tempered of Wind and Fire,  was an excursion into sculpture and performance art.  The next was themed on the unexpected, this was followed by Dealing With The leftovers that explored using the remaining objects from the resource pack.  A Lullaby further explores these materials but with a diversion via William Blake’s imagery and poetry. Finally there is New Years Special going bravely beyond what was asked into a new world.

Finally I would like to add that if you have the opportunity to be involved in this project do so.