Mosaic Animation: Relational Art Project Modified from Board Game Go

With roots in the ancient Chinese board gameBoard game Go and relational aestheticsAesthetic (Bourriaud, Relational aesthetics. La presses du réel, 1998), aBourriaud, Nicolas relational artArtrelational art project, Mosaic Animation—combining a physicalPhysical production of abstract mosaic artArt and digital post-production (Bourriaud, Postproduction: Culture as screenplay: How art reprograms the world. Lukas & Sternberg, 2002) ofBourriaud, Nicolas animation—was developed to enhance social skills of young studentsStudents with autism. Modified from the two-player Go game where players take turns placing black and the white stones on a board marked with a grid, mosaic artArt creation is a game played by multiple participants, each with an individualized repertoire of colour combinations, pasting coloured dots regularly on the board. The rules are modified to include the conceptConcept of relational aestheticsAesthetic and virtualVirtual walking, so that young autistic studentsStudents can learn social skills from the collaborative interactions of creating abstract artArt together. This educationEducation-through-art initiative ran in a special school and two autism spectrum disorderAutism spectrum disorder (ASD)austim (ASD) rehabilitation centers, where the Mosaic Animation project is accepted as a valid and ground-breaking practice for rehabilitation. DocumentationDocumentation of this project demonstrates an a/r/tographic processProcess in development, resulting in an open-endedOpen-ended andCommunity/communalcommunity-based art community-based artArtcommunity-based art form that is sustainable as an on-going joint effort for art-makingArt-based methodart-making, researching, and teaching among university researchers, childrenChildren with autism, and professional therapists.