Research

In a future world of robotics and artificial intelligence, everything may seem possible to create and experience. But not everything is possible. We cannot envision something if we cannot conceive it.
(Gulliksen, 2021, p. 149, a publication in the “Making Matters?”-project)

Current project: Making Matters?

In the project Making Matters? I explore the cognitive processes that take place when a person works creatively in materials. Founded in theories of embodied cognition and an interdisciplinary link of phenomenology, sociocultural analyzes of creative processes, learning sciences and neuroscientific knowledge of cognition, the project aims to develop knowledge of creative, material processes. Empirical data is developed in my own creative process of working with raw wood. Thematically, the problem is limited to how the woodcarver activates cognitive skills to visualize future, three-dimensional shapes and how the individual’s understanding of space is activated and expanded in work with subtractive design in raw wood. The project is affiliated with USN’s faculty HIU’s teacher education programs.

The project is a combined research project and artistic development project. The artistic work is called “Purkinje Series”, “Astrocyte Series” and “Neural Connections“.

METHOD: Case methodology; autoetnographic narrative inquiry; translational theoretical study.

PUBLICATIONS in the Making Matters? project: https://app.cristin.no/projects/show.jsf?id=430822

Most Recent articles:

Gulliksen, Marte Sørebø & Groth, Camilla (2024). Scaffolding visualization and mental rotation in designing and crafting. In Nimkulrat, Nithikul & Groth, Camilla (ed.) Craft and Design Practice from an Embodied Perspective. Routledge, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003328018-18

Groth, Camilla & Gulliksen, Marte Sørebø (2024). Thinking through hands in education. In Schilhab, Theresa & Groth, Camilla (ed.) Embodied Learning and Teaching using the 4E Cognition Approach: Exploring Perspectives in Teaching Practices. Routledge, DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003341604-13

Gulliksen, M. S. (2023). What I learned by doing craft when I got terminal cancer: On woodcarving and psychophysical wellbeing from an insider perspective. FormAkademisk , 16(4). https://doi.org/10.7577/formakademisk.5378

Gulliksen, Marte Sørebø (2021), ‘There and back again: A carver’s tale of losing and regaining sense of space due to a brain tumour’, Craft Research, 12:1, pp. 127–152, doi: https://doi.org/10.1386/crre_00043_1

(psst – don’t have time to read the full article? – A short video featuring excerpts from the autoethnographic narrative in the “There and back again”-article is available here: https://youtu.be/E_Qdi2vPtFI )

My research areas, current and previous:

  • Arts and crafts as socio-cultural practice (like “Constructing a Formbild” and related content, 2000-2008)
  • Culture education and subject specific education (like “Choosing content and method” and related content, 2006-2016)
  • Learning in embodied making (especially in the Making Matters? project, see above, 2014-d.d.)