Documentation-forms
of reflection, with Meret Rostad
Journal of Research
Practice, The role of Documentation in Practice-Led Research, Nithikul Nimkultrat, Helsinski, FINLAND
Abstract: to document the
interplay between researcher-practitioner and her artistic work in process. Two
principal aspects:
1. Phases of documentation
2. The role of documentation within research process.
Introduction: Practice-Led or Practice-Based Research
She will explain how to
apply documentation methods to record her artistic process and how she relates
the Documentation with the overall research process.
Practice-led research (or Practice-based research): two decades
debating those terms with no clear conclusion.
(The goes on by giving
definitions the the terms practice-led and or research.)
Practice-led: conscious exploration with the knowledge involved in the making of
artifacts. Role of practitioner/researcher : the two roles: practitioner and
researcher are more equally important because the research becomes intertwined
part of practice.
Practice-based: can be carried out freely for its own sake in order to produce artifacts
(fairly similar to general conception of ART/DESIGN practice). Role of
practitioner/researcher: the practitioner’s role is more dominant than the researcher
role. The emphasis is on practice.
To capture visuals and texts
become data that can be used as research material.
Documentation as research
material.
Research in art involves
multiple methods.
Makela (2003) “retroactive
gaze” the process of looking back at one’s own practice in order to answer
one’s research questions.
She uses research logs, diaries
and journals to do documentation. She advises to write while making art: self-awareness
of the evolving thoughts, intentions, and decisions, leading to appreciation
for the whole process. Self-awareness difficult to disseminate only through
text (due to the limitations of language): that explain why we keep out
practice to complete communication.
Documentation: recording the journey. Documentation is vital for the Journey of a practice
led research.
.
Documenting the Artistic Process. Interactions between different actors: materials,
practitioner, and artifact. Written diary, sketchbook, voice recordings,
photographs. Both successes and failures are to be recorded.
Role of documentation in the overall research
Process. It connects practice with the world of research.
As a practitioner she has come to realized that documentation has raised her
understanding of how practice-led research could be carried ot: by being able
to be critical of her own process, analyzing her own artistic process.
Visualizing research: a guide to the research
process in art and design by Carole Gray and Julian Malins., Ashgate
Publishing, 2004
I wish this book before, like just when I started,
excellent. I would like to develop with you a custom Mind Mapping and a
Reflective Journal.
She starts the book with a
quotation from Alice, she compares the exitment of being a research student and
the risk of getting lost on the rabbit hole due to te broad and
interdisciplinary approaches we have on front of us.
She believes that persuing a
research degree requires three things: passion, self-confidence and method.
The book enphazises
pedagogy, experimental learning, theory of
constructive learning. Encourages stdets to engage in active exploration
in relation to practice and context.
Metaphor
Visual thinking
Journey
1. Planning & preparation for research
2. Surveying the research context
3. Locating your research questions to the context
4. Generating and gathering data through the use of
research methods
5. Evaluating, analyzing and interpreting research
outcomes
6. Communicating research findings
The content of this guide
book is derived from creative relationship between research, practice and
teaching in Art and design.
1.
Planning the journey: Introduction to research in Art
and Design
1.1
Travelers’ tales
How do practitioners come to do research:
Socratic dialogue, the author goes on with different
disciplines true stories of people who tell why they came to do a
practice-based research.
1.2
The research process
What?: the question of the research; Why?: context,
locate position, explore strategies; How?: appropriate methodology, evaluating,
analyzing and interpreting evidence; So What?: the research contribution to
knowledge. Communication and dissemination.
Key stages
of the process: genuine desire to
find something out.
1.3
A route map: the importance of methodology
the process is more important than the product.
Knowing about knowledge. Method:
a way of doing something; orderliness of thought, action; the techniques or
arrangements of work for a particular field or subject. Methodology: the study of the system of methods used in a
particular discipline; the aim of methodology is to help us understand the
process itself.
Reflection and Action question:
·
What could
research in Art be?
·
What might artists
do research?
·
How might
artists do research?
1.4
The ‘reflective practitioner’
the extended professional is a reflective
practitioner-researcher.
Consider what characterizes professional context. How
do the best ‘professionals’ operate in the context? In what ways are you
already, or could be in future, a reflective practitioner?; what problems do
you think you might encounter being reflective practitioner-researcher?
1.5
Completed research for higher degrees: methodological
approaches
She goes on examining examples
of PhDs Pioneers and Settlers.
2- Mapping the terrain: methods of
contextualizing research
2.1
The purpose and structure of contextual review
It’s a major part, long as
the project itself: critical, analytical activity. The contextual review helps
to identify precisely the nature of the research questions.
Defines:
·
The scope of the
inquiry
·
The state of the
relevant knowledge
It’s a bridge between the
problem (What?), and researching the problem through methodology (how).
The contextual review
prompts a number of questions:
·
Rationale: why
is the research needed and what evidence is there to support this?
·
Competitors,
contributors, cooperators: Who else in the fields has addressed significant
aspects of the research questions?
·
Currency,
cultural, context: When and where was the research carried out?
·
How has the
research carried out, what are the implications of this for your methodology
and specific methods?
·
Gaps, new
ground: What aspects remain unexplored or required further work
2.2
Critical thinking and response: key generic skills
Meta-thinking: thinking about your thinking,
and self evaluation. Critical thinking is creative thinking, it encourages
questioning, connecting, interpreting, applying.
Argument is a process of
reasoning in which: influence. 4 components: Claim, Evidence, Warrant, Backing.
Intellectual standards: Clarity,
Accuracy, Precision, Relevance, Depth, Breadth, logic/reason.
Critical thinking in visual
practices: artists are visual, lateral thinkers.
Applying critical skills: outline
strengths and weakness of different positions in order to
explain/justify/defend preferred position. Develop a conceptual framework,
concept map: purposes of, types of, kinds of, methodological assumptions,
related literature, scale and scope of., and so on…
Critical writing: in
relation to contextual review: different writing styles should be used:
2.3
Locating and using reference materials for art
research
Pragmatic topic. No more
than 6 key words when searching.
Identifying a gap of
knowledge.
Using bibliographic
software: ProCite, EndNote, FileMaker Pro.
FIELDS: Summary,
Critical Evaluation, Key notes, other media.
2.4
Undertaking a contextual review: mapping the terrain.
Mapping techniques:
·
Mind Map: key
words in its importance. www.inspiration.com
·
Matrix: columns
and rows:
·
Networks same
concepts as Matrix less structured. It’s a collection of nudes (points)
connected by links (lines), visualize as tree. Describing an unfolding
narrative.
2.5
A Reflective Practice
Reflective Journalling will:
·
Developing
various models of practice
·
Developing
interdisciplinary and collaboration through better communication
·
Extending
professionalism through self-evaluation
·
Having better
conversations with ourselves
3- Locating your position: orienting
and situating research
3.1 Raising a Research question: from
mapping to location-overview to your view
·
Why is the
research needed and what evidence is there to support this
·
Who else in the
field has addressed significant aspects of the research are?
·
When and where
was other research carried out?
·
What aspects remain
unexplored or required further research?
Raise a research question:
·
Immersion in the
context where the possible questions lie
·
Adopting a
proactive, creative approach to identifying possible questions
Ethics.
3.2 Methodology revisited: possible
research positions and approaches
·
Naturalistic Inquiry: an approach for real situations
·
The bricoleur: collage and construction
·
Action research: designed to make a difference
·
Soft systems: understanding the complex whole
·
Inquiry by design: design and research, parallel
process?
·
Reflection and action: suggestions
3.3
structuring and writing a research proposal
3.4 Managing research Project Information, a rigorous
process.
4-Crossing the terrain: establishing
appropriate research methodologies.
4.1 A case for Visual Inquiry.
Leonardo Davinci statements about the visual issues and
Einstein statement about Chos are discuss in this section. …Visual research
methodology…
4.2 Data, Evidence, Claim: The bases for argument
·
A claim: an argument,
·
Evidence: data used ti support the claim
·
Warrant: an expectation that provides the link
between the evidence and the claim
·
Backing: context and assumptions used to suppert
the validity of the warrant and evidence
Primary and secondary DATA:
·
Secondary data: archive texts, available txts,
classify periods or movements. Convincing arguments by other, some times no
easy to take a fresh view.
·
Discovered as a result of the application of
research methods. Raw, partial view, possibly incomplete. More risky because
they are new.
Good quality data are bedrock of an argument, for both
primary and secondary must be critical of their authenticity and dependability.
Source and context.
4.3 Crossing the terrain: vehicles for exploration
·
Vehicles for research: she goes on explaining In
detail many research methods validated in Art & Design…(pg 121
triangulation)
4.4 Considering preliminary evaluation and analysis
·
To
evaluate: is to ascertain the value of something and to judge or assess its
worth.
·
To
analyze: is to examine something in detail in order to discover its
meaning, to break something down into components or essential features.
5-Interpreting the map: methods of evaluation and analysis
5.1 Evaluation, analysis and interpretation
·
Evaluating methodology and methods
·
Validity & reliability: establish research
quality. For a naturalistic inquiry validity and reliability concepts are
replaced with “TRUSTWORTHINESS” just being honest in everysingle thing.
5.2 Examples of analysis from completed formal research in Art &
Design
·
Analysis using triangulation:
·
Visual analysis
·
Multiple perspective analysis
Reflection and action: suggestions
5.3 Playing with data: ttols for analysis
·
Matrices
·
Mind maps
·
Networks
·
Activity records
·
Flow charts
·
Dimensional analysis
·
Chronological analysis
·
Analysis of physical and social environments
·
Analysis on Reflective Journal/development log
·
Metaphor and analogy a analytical and
interpretative tools
6-Recounting the jounrney: recognizing new knowledge and communicating
research findings
6.1
Recognition
of the new knowledge
“original and independent
contribution to knowledge”
·
Theoretical
knowledge
·
Apply
knowledge
·
BOTH
Portfolio of evidence
·
Learning outcomes
o
Visualize concepts
·
Evidence of achievement
o
Map mind
o
Network display
o
Set of photographs
·
Reflective statements
6.2
Recounting
the Journey: communicating research findings
·
Thesis as argument
·
The written part
o
Introducing and contextualizing the research
topic
o
Describing and evaluating the research
methodology
o
Analyzing and discussing the research outcomes
·
Exhibition
and exposition expect to see articulated in a exposition:
o
The research questions which were posed
o
The project objectives
o
The methodology including how practice has been
involved
o
Some positioning of the project in relation to
other key research field, research context
·
Criteria
for evaluating involving practice
o
Rigour, depth, critical approach, use of method
o
Revelation, new contribution, dissemination,
public output
o
Relevance, contribution to the discipline,
society, industry, education, and so on
o
Return, feedback-economic physical,
psychological
·
Abstract
o
State research issue/question
o
Describe briefly the context and rationale
o
Describe briefly procedures/methods
o
End with a statement of the main
point/outcome/contributions to knowledge
·
Keywords:
o
Social Sculpture, SOCIALLY ENGAGED ART,
PERFORMANCE, PHILOSOPHY, VIDEO, PHOTOGRAPHY
·
GLOSSARY
o
The original derivation of a term
o
Definition of the term
o
References to key sources
o
How do you adapt a term to your research
6.3
destination
achieved: defending your territory, disseminating the research and future
expeditions
Artistic research methodology : narrative, power
and the public by Mika Hannula, Juha Suoranta, Tere Vadén, New York : Peter
Lang, 2014
1-
Artistic Research Inside-in
o The research is done inside the practice, by doing acts that are
part of the practice.
o Context: Its made no found, its in a process not static, its
situated not stale.
o Antti Eskola: ” it is not rational to exclude any form of
critique or methodological principals of inquiry at the start”….but at the end
at the final analysis one should clearly state which ones better than others:
“one has to dare to declare the winner, for the debate does not stop here, but
continiues with such questions as who were the judges, and what were their
principals of justification”
o CONTEXTUALIZE FIRST
§ What constitutes a tradition is a conflict of interpretation
§ Questioning and doubting by necessity take place within the
context of a tradition
“to be born is to be born of the world and to be
born into the world. The world is already constituted, but also never
completely constituted” Maurice Merleau-Ponty
§ TO COME TOGETHER AND TO STAY TOGHETER
Ø To recognize what are the inherent chances and challenges of
one’s oeuvre and genre, its contested internal logics and the strategies of its
survival
Ø To enjoy those contextual freedoms and responsibilities that
come down both as openings and as restrictions and impossibilities but as focus
dilemmas to be addressed and articulated
Ø “Is not to say that art and science are the same, but their
separation in the name of creativity and discoveries is false” Nisbet
Ø The cloven viscount by
Italo Calvino
Ø THERE IS NO IMAGINATION WITHOUT A SENSE OF CONTEXT
§ DILTHEY, a knowledge must be lead by the following:
Ø Organization
Ø Stability
Ø Coherence
Ø Economy of expression
Ø Logical consistency
2-
Basic formula of Artistic Research
· “Being
engaged in the artistic process means moving back and forth between periods of
intensive (insider) engagement and more reflective (outsider) distance taking”
pg. 16
· Conceptual
Work
o Contextualization: situating the research in its tradition.
o The text =
conceptual work
The narration of one’s
research findings is dependent on how one situates, interprets and
conceptualizes its parts…writing is about thinking and discovering things.
The starting point, the inside
from which everything starts and to which everything returns, is the
contextualized practice.
3-
Back to
the future: Democracy Experiences, Methodological Abundance and Verbalization.
Naukkarinen (2012) List of what has to be written:
· What is topic and the question
· What kind of materials (books, artefacts, interviews, etc.) are
used addressing the question?
· How are the materials used? How are they read, interpreted?
· On what viewpoints, theories and concepts is the approached
based? (feminist, psychoanalytic, hermeneutic, etc.)
· How can the results, the method, the material and the viewpoints
be criticized?
PART II: Narrative, Power and
the Public
4-
Face-to-face, one-to-one: Production of Knowledge in and
Narrative Interviews
· Background: qualitative research: Dilthey develops the differences between quantitative
(natural sciences, explains the issue) and qualitative (human or social
sciences, understands the issue) research (1910): they do not exclude each other they respect each other. DEMOCRACY OR
EXPERINCES: both must be used in different aims, must have clarity when to
used one or another.
· Reasons for
narrative interviews:
o Why?
o What kind of a narrative of a narrative is in question?
o Open-ended or closed?
o Linear or fragmented?
o Collective, one time or a continuous encounter?
o Transcribed and by whom?
o Done with voice recorder or with video?
o Shared and interpreted by the researcher only or by other?
o Focus in how is said or what is said?
o Etcetcetc
The narrative interview method
is to move toward, seeking a contact, a connection and a contradiction.
Hermeneutics principals
o To allow and encourage the other to articulate and to present
his or her views and visions on his or her vocabulary, manner and vernacular.
In short: the first task is to listen and to try to open up toward a different
perspective.
o To relate and reflect what this different view says to you about
the same or similar and issue. In short: there should be a critical
interpretation of what is said, how the context is constructed and
orchestrated, and how it relates to one’s own views and visions.
· A practical
case
5-Methodology
of power: commitment as a Method
what is unique in artistic research
There must be a unique argument for artistic research, based on
the unique things it can do.
6-Different roles of an artistic researcher, the
public and the uses of sociological imagination.
Typology>
Live Writing with Geoff Cox
Kenneth Goldsmith, Uncreative Writing, New York:
Columbia University Press 2011
I enjoy this book greatly!! It opened plenty of
doors in my thinking, I will definitely add in my research bibliography, I already
had selected parts to potentially quote from it.
The world is full of texts, more or less interesting I do not
wish to add anymore…
New
condition on writing today:
o
We must learn to negotiate with amount of txt
already exists
o
How to manage to parse, organize, distribute
Perloff’s notion of unoriginal genius.
Raymond Queneau’s 1964 Hundred
thousand Billion poems:
Working of technology and Web as ways of constructing
Literature:
·
Word processing
·
Data basing
·
Recycling
·
Appropriation
·
Intentional plagiarism
·
Identity ciphering
·
Intensive programming
Jonathan Lethem publish a pro plagiarism essay The ecstasy of influence: A Plagiarism. (very
interesting to me: examples where he assumed to had own original thoughts and
then later he realized by Googling them that he unconsciously absorbs someone
else’s ideas.
Lethem essay it self is an example of patchwritting a way of weaving together other’s people’s words into
a tonally cohesive whole.
Context the new content.
SELECT ALL/ COPY/ PASTE: Literary Revolution.
1-
Revenge
of the text
Web for writing = photography
for painting
“Mallarme asks us to consider
the act of reading-whether silent or aloud-as an act of decoding by actualizing
and materializing the symbols (in this case letters) on a page.” Pg. 12
James Joyce’s Finnegan’s wake the act of reading
itself is an act of decoding, deciphering and decryption.
Nail Mills Seven number poems, 1971 “I believed
that the meaning which emerged I the reading of poetry lay primarily in
intonation and rhythm, and only secondarily in semantic content i.e. that what
was important was how something was read, rather that what was said-the human
voice functioning as a musical instrument” pg. 13
Quantity is the Quality: writing needs to
redefine in order to adapt to the new environment of textual abundance.
Joyce inspired language/data ecosystem…writers as custodians of
that ecology
2-Language
as material
“…language works on several levels, endlessly flipping back and
forth between the meaningful and the material: we can choose to weigh it and we
can choose to read it…” pg.20
· The
situationists out in the streets
·
Concrete Poetry and the
future of the Screen
·
Verbovocovisual: Ezra
Pound, Chinese ideograms…music element: Klangfarbenmelodie
3-Anticipating
instability
·
Blurred: Parsing thinking and Seeing
5- Toward a Poetics of Hyperrealism
· Uncreative writing is a postidentity literature.
Subjectivity and the
Mirror with Ruth Novacek
Hilton Als: Photos, writing and portraits: www.hiltonals.com
I didn’t see
phots, portraits, I read some of his articles… I check the blogs round; I wish
we got more specific about what to seeing this blog. I did see the pics, looked
like polaroid, illustrating his movies articles, and I read them as well. No
much to say.
Joe Brainard I Remember, 2001, Granary Books pdf
Beautiful
postcards of memories, I could see and feel what he sees and feels. Excellent!
Chris Kraus I Love Dick [excerpt] 1997, Semiotext(e),
2015, Serpents Tail pdf
Very
interesting and enjoyable reading, I like how Kraus plays with 1st,
2nd and 3th person, I like how he construct the story, the train of
thought the description of the characters. I really enjoyed this reading.
Film: Jim McBride, David Holzman’s Diary 1967
– Available on Vimeo https://vimeo.com/117733608
Amazing
video, I will make my version from a single mother, artist, 2016, Miami beach….
Eileen Myles, Inferno (A Poet’s Novel) 2010. see extract
here http://www.eileenmyles.com/infernoexc.php
Enjoy it,
one more reading full of postcards, images, memories…
Eileen Myles, My Childhood pdf
Beautiful
poem bur I think is more of the same…self portrait. Memories, porstcards…
Cindy
Sherman, Untitled Film Stills 1977
Very familiar
with Sherman’s portraits. Very interesting the way she embodies other women
stereotypes, no very fan of her work though. The article ststes “…She stopped, she has explained, when
she ran out of clichés.” I personally believe that clichés born everyday.
Polyplot with Lynn Book
Excerpts, Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects, preface +
chapter 1, 60 pages pdf
·
Implications
of the loss of unity of the subject.
·
What
exactly are the political and the ethical conditions that structure nomadic
subjectivity, and wat are their implications for critical Theory?
·
Nomadic
Subject ever be taken as Metaphor for the Human condition.
·
Nomadic
thought amounts to a politically invested cartography of the present condition
of mobility in a globalized world.
·
Space (geopolitical, social, and ecophilosophical dimesion)
·
Time (the historical and genealogical dimension)
o
Analize locations in terms of powers in
two terms
·
Potestas restrictive
·
Potentia empowering and affirmative
Momadic
subjectivity= ethically accountable and empowering
o GAP between
· How we live and how we represent ourselves this lived existence in
theorethical terms and discourses.
Postmodernity:
inhabiting different time zones an schizophrenic characteristic.
Global Hybridity
Subjectivity
as a process to became nomad.
Figuration
of the nomad=
renders
image subject=
nonunitary,
multilayered, dynamic and changing entity.
Socioeconomic=
Perverse hybridization= Capitalism=Interim, part-time, substandard, underpaid
work= Pseudo Nomadism
Bradotti’s
nomadic subject genealogically plunges its roots in feminist theory and
antiracist politics. Addresses the need to destabilize and activate the center.
Excerpts, David Apelbaum, Voice, preface + Cough, Verge,
Chant, Poem, 60 pages pdf
Iris Rogoff, We Collectivities, essay, 6 pages pdf
Anne Carson, Glass, Irony and God, “The Gender of Sound”,
18 pages pdf
Done and very interesting….good amount of history in a subject I
have never thought of. Im a woman with a low tone voice, I like to be like
this.
Michael
Parsons, The Scratch Orchestra, essay, 7 pages pdf
Very
interesting in fact I will use it for my research.
An essay about
interdisciplinarity, i.e.visual music….
Cornelius
Cardew, “towards the Ethic of
Improvisation”> Scratch Orchestra:
“Ideally such
music should be played by a collection of musical innocents (people who had no
misucal training)”
Influences to
the Scratch Orchestra:
·
John
Cage> 4”33” “silent”
·
Early
Fluxus>George Brecht’s “Water Yam” his pieces operate in an intermediate zone
between object and event &
LaMonte Young
Parsons, The Scratch Orchestra and Visual Arts pg 6
the Scratch Orchestra’s more collective ap- proach to performance reflected its loose and informal sociability, which was based on mutual respect and tolerance rather than on adherence to any pre- conceived structure or set of rules.
Parsons, The Scratch Orchestra and Visual Arts pg 7
Tim Mitchell, Michel Chant, Brecht, Lucier, Young, Ichiyanagi.
All inclusive social music and performance.
