Invention and Students as Prosumers

Here's a quote from Roy Ascott's "The Construction of Change," published in 1964, in which he argues the interdependency of science, art, and education to create the symbolic "control" and "creativity to which man's practical life constantly aspires": "It enables the student to become aware of himself and the world while enabling him to give dimension and substance to his will to create and change" (129, 132).  The "it" to which Ascott is referring is the educational program he designed and Ealing School of Art in London which demanded students use collage, change perspective, borrow ideas, parody, destroy, change metal to something, collide the improbable and impractical, a Happenings or Dada approach with a purpose: "becoming aware of their special creative identity" (132).  It's a seminal work in the field of New Media for its forward-thinking approach to spectators/consumers of culture as producers of culture in a real, material way and how the production of works (he calls it art but really includes everything in the material world affected by human will) that "given absolute choice and responsibility and the power to take incalculable risks, the world and his own identity are shaped to his will" (129).
Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses