Digital art-making as a representational process

Abstract

In this paper, I take a distributed cognition framework to analyze the tasks of artistic production in terms of the external representations produced. Using data collected through case studies with four youth media arts organizations (YMAOs), I ask how the digital art-making process can be understood in terms of the construction of external representations and what function these representations serve in art- making. I analyze data on the process of making digital art in terms of the macro and micro tasks performed (Spillane, Halverson, & Diamond, 2001) in order to highlight external representation construction across organizations. Then I describe one micro task in depth to unpack the role the representations created serve in sensemaking. I find that digital art-making as structured in YMAOs seems to provide a robust, authentic environment for the construction of process-based external representations which has implications for content domains that value representation as a learning goal.