About

Welcome to online-studio-culture.org, an online academic/professional platform for the interdisciplinary exploration of theories and practices of distant teaching and learning in the visual arts. We hope you will find our efforts informative, inspiring, yet also academically rigorous, and welcome your efforts and contributions towards our aims.

In the early months of 2020, the lock-downs resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic forced many academics and teachers first in Asia, then around the world to quite suddenly change their classes, assignments and assessments in practical creative studio disciplines to be delivered in “online mode”.

This site is inspired and based on the many heroic efforts of visual arts academics and instructors from around the world – and especially those of my colleagues at AVA – who have taken up the challenge of transferring their respective classes, courses, and practices to online modes as the Covid-19 pandemic overtook the world.

Even after this immediate crisis with its demand for “social distancing” will be resolved, the experiences had and the things learnt from them will not go away again. As the situation develops and changes, this site is intended as an open access information resource and repository of practices to inform and shape future online teaching in the visual arts, as many of the new practices and experiences developing these days are certainly worth retaining beyond the current crisis.

Online mode is here to stay, and a culture that integrates distant teaching and learning of creative studio practices will continue to be in demand for a variety of reasons – globalisation, further digitisation of societies, reduction of mobility for climate crisis, the next epidemic etc. Additionally, distant teaching and learning also offers plenty of potential and significant opportunities, not least access to new student bases and general audiences and innovative economic models to sustain art schools and/or creative programmes.

To this aim, online-studio-culture.org seeks to provide information, overview and eventually a database of tools, resources, (best) practices as well as guidelines, protocols and policies that contribute towards a sustainable online culture for creative studio practices. online-studio-culture.org encourages experimental speculative ideas beyond the limitations of disciplinary perspectives or conventional formats to facilitate approaches, positions, and contributions into diverse dimensions of creative practices and their teaching and learning.

online-studio-culture.org is a professional/academic endeavour of Prof. Peter Benz, who handles daily operation of the site with occasional support from volunteer helpers – and, of course, the contributions of the teaching community. Peter Benz is an Associate Professor at the Academy of Visual Arts, HKBU and currently serves as its Associate Director (Teaching and Learning).

online-studio-culture.org is strictly non-commercial – though we may consider allowing advertising on the website in the future to sustain our operation – and we insist on full financial, academic and intellectual independence.

Approach

Initially, online-studio-culture.org is simply a blog dedicated to distant teaching and learning specifically for creative studio practices in the visual arts. Each post will introduce an overview, a tool, resource, practice or policy to be potentially used for distant teaching and learning and will put it up for discussion. Where appropriate and feasible, posts will also provide links to access those means discussed. All posts will be fully searchable by titles, categories and/or tags for easy and convenient accessibility.

It is important to understand that we – the makers and hosts of online-studio-culture.org – are in no way affiliated with or dependent on any of the providers of the tools, resources, practices or policies introduced and collected on this website. We do not receive funding, support or other advantages from any entity. The selection of items on the site is purely a result of community discourse, sometimes – especially in the early days – even simply by accident.

For each post, readers are invited to rate and/or comment. Please use the rating system provided with each post to indicate your appreciation of the respective item introduced. By doing so, the aggregate average results will indicate a “recommendation” established by the community. Additionally, the comments provided may elaborate on particularly special or useful features of an item, or may suggest/outline innovative uses, applications or case studies for said item.

House Rules

We would like to take this opportunity to lay out some rules governing any contributions to online-studio-culture.org, including form submissions, comments, links and the like.

It is the purpose of online-studio-culture.org to provide an open access platform for academics, professionals and the general public to share, exchange, develop and discuss thoughts, concepts, experiences, and findings related to the distant teaching and learning in the visual arts through texts, images – still or moving – and sound, and we will do our best to create an adequate environment to achieve this intention.

We want the atmosphere of this space to remain community minded, and we therefore thank you for respecting the views expressed by others. We will be moderating this page and removing content that

– affects other users’ use or enjoyment of the site;
– is false, misleading, fraudulent, unlawful, abusive, harassing, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, and/or offensive;
– infringes others’ rights, including privacy or intellectual property rights;
– discloses personal information about others, particularly sensitive information;
– contains a virus, spyware, malware or other harmful component;
– contains commercial solicitation or ‘spam’; or
– is otherwise deemed inappropriate in the context of an academic/professional discourse.

If you come across content, which you feel may fall under any of the above categories, please report your findings by email to mail@online-studio-culture.org. The decision to remove any content is at our sole discretion, and may happen without prior notification. For transparency reasons a placeholder note indicating the reason for removal will be left in the spot where other content was removed for above reasons.

You are solely responsible for the content you post on any of online-studio-culture.org pages. Please make sure that your content is original and does not infringe the property, privacy or other rights of any other person.

Please understand that the opinions and views expressed by members of our community or visitors of the site from the general public are not representative of those from online-studio-culture.org.

At any time online-studio-culture.org has the right, at its sole discretion and without prior notification, to change these rules, our Terms of Use, and/or our Privacy Policy.

If you have any questions about these rules, or any specific issues related to these rules/terms, please send a message to mail@online-studio-culture.org.