Student`s Sketchbooks for Art and Science

AGRUPAMENTO DE ESCOLAS VERGÍLIO FERREIRA
CAROLINA MARTINS
AGRUPAMENTO DE ESCOLAS VERGÍLIO FERREIRA
MARTA SILVEIRA
Escola Básica 2/3 D. Fernando II - Sintra
JOANA BORGES
JOÃO ALMEIDA, PHOTOGRAPHY
Escola Básica 2/3 D. Fernando II - Sintra
Throughout this school year, the students at D. Fernando
II Middle School were asked to look at the world around
them in the light of sustainability. This concept was
discussed under on-going clarification and soon the
students realized that the future of planet Earth
depends on it.
With the intention to share their ideas and feelings on
this issue, a group of students chose to express
themselves using Arts: photography, films and drawings.
As their ideas were taking shape in their minds and
hearts, they were encouraged to record their
discoveries, their attempts, thoughts and feelings.
As time went on, various students focused their
attention on reporting mankind's abuse of Nature. This is
the main concern mirrored in their works.
Students
Carolina Franjoso
Maria Sequeira
Débora Lourenço
Pedro Bastos
Iris Santos
Tiago Muchagato
Joana Velho
Helena Moita Deus - Teacher of Natural Sciences
The work created collects a number of science concepts:
gravity, time, light and colour. All of these belong to the
countless elements of the universe that man can't
control but has to accept as they belong to life itself.
Even though recognizing the inevitability of gravity,
time, light and colour, the interaction the work offers
the observer by means of a crank, allows them to
control, manipulate and contemplate time a little, as
well as intuit it. The hanging clock, a fundamental part
of the work, is divided into three primary colours which
through the movement of the clock hands, generate the
secondary colours. This is followed by small elements
related to the Portuguese Culture, its values and history.
Several poets like Fernando Pessoa, Luís de Camões and
Eugénio de Andrade, amongst others, approached those
science subjects in poetry.
Students
Adriana Domingos
Ana Ferreira
Ana Paulo
Beatriz Gomes
Beatriz Silva
Bruna Manso
Catarina Alves
Cláudia Catarino Cláudia Geraldo
Catarina Tomás
Inês Castro
Joana Brites
Iara Martins
Laura Santos
Lisandra Moura
Mariana Campos
Marta Correia
Marta Silva
Raquel Grilo
Rafaela Sousa
Rubia Pereira
Soraia Silva
Yarine Almeida
Rui Januário - Mathematics Teacher
Mafalda Pé-Curto - Art Teacher
AGRUPAMENTO DE ESCOLAS VERGÍLIO FERREIRA
The class who developed the Sketchbooks on the subject
"seeing science through art", is a group of 10th graders of
the Arts Course, 15 to 16 years old.
To do the work the students were inspired by the
observation and contact with microscopic animal and
vegetable cells and by watching the animals in the Lisbon
zoo.
The work aimed at understanding the science role as the
start up element to generate plastic language objects,
reading different visual messages critically, acting as a
new message creator, living and experiencing the
scientific spirit to find common points of view between
Art and Science.
Ana Nunes
Beatriz Campos
Bruno Ferreira
Carolina Martins
Cláudia Santos
Débora Neiva
Diogo Costa
Inês Contreiras
Jia Hao Ye
Josina Silva
Indira Massamá
Lóssan Póquena
Louisa Neider
Madalena Brito
Margarida Silva
Maria Piçarra
Maria Pereira
Maria Costa
Maria Ventura
Maria Dionísio
Marta Silveira
Raquel Gaspar
Rita Valente
Rita Paisana
Sara Graça
Simone Matos
Tiago Sanches
Veljko Stankovic
Vera Vilas-Boas
Isabel Cristina Trindade - Art Teacher
In response to the invitation to participate in the
Eksperimenta 2014, APECV launched the project Ast'SCI,
which was sponsored by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
and included a nationwide contest - art works under the
topics of Art and Science, and a seminar. The seminar
integrated educators, artists and scientists as keynotes.
After the jury's deliberation, three projects by students
from three schools were selected to represent Portugal :
the Professional School Gustave Eiffel, in Lisbon (23
students) under the coordination of the Visual Arts
teacher Mafalda Pé-Curto and Mathematics teacher Rui
Januário; Secondary School Vergílio Ferreira (29
students) under the coordination of the visual arts
teacher Isabel Trindade, also in Lisbon and School D.
Fernando II in Sintra (7 students) under the coordination
of Science teacher Helena Deus).
"... As their ideas were taking shape in their minds and in
their hearts, they were encouraged to record their
discoveries, their attempts, their thoughts and feelings.
As time went on, various students focused their
attention on reporting the abuse of mankind over
Nature. This is the main concern reflected on their
works."
Teacher Helena Deus
The Art'Sci exhibition was designed to be the students'
and teachers' joint display of their perspectives on the
potential of artistic thinking and representation
processes to understand the world and its scientific
interpretation. Sketchbooks were used for inquiry,
reflection, personal views on information and the
aesthetic understanding of science concepts.
Sketchbooks are widely used by artists (work journal,
cahier d'artist) as well as by scientists (scientists' field
notebooks) and educational theorists claim their
interest to promote creativity in learning environments.
Contemporary artists are also exploring this support in
their work in progress and as a final product. In
secondary school art courses in Portugal, sketchbooks
are a common practice and more and more, science
teachers are using them with their students with very
good results in terms of motivation and ownership of the
learning process.