Category: graphic research (Page 3 of 4)
Strange couple of days painting…anything but canvas though. Front of house, bathroom , shed you name it if it didn’t move I painted it with white gloss. After that i finally sat down in home studio to do some ‘graphic’ work. The resulting three drawings above. First one I consciously trying to stay small in mark-making. Middle one I did ‘blind’ to see if it loosened things up and finally a very fast drawing to try and preclude conscious acts. Finally I drew the ‘country alphabet’ above which comes from a slightly different angle and refers way back to a ‘alphabet’ of symbols I built up in late eighties. I will scan some examples from sketchbook next time I in ‘proper’ studio to compare with image above which actually more aligned with Mariscal than abstract expressionism or Paul Klee.
Simplistic but this rough outline of new directions is kind of accurate.
Path One: Traditional practice-led craft orientated production – drawings not theoretical more instinctive. Crossing into surrealist/automatic and subconscious areas.
Path Two: Literary/Historical..orientated toward factual and historical research linked to a wide gamut of technology in early stages affecting a specific area of the Thames Valley – possible PhD subject area? Relating developments in 1850s to present day impact of ubiquitous media. Possible crossover with poetry/cultural geography. e.g. Charles Tomlinson’s borders thesis.
Path Three: Criticism as Research/Graphic Research. Cartoons as investigative art criticism. James Elkins and Mark Staff Brandl connection. Political edge.
I started to plan out the next phase of the ‘Research Odyssey’ and here two drawings and below the proposal sent to DRN for this year (not expecting to get accepted two years in a row) but happy that last year’s Moogee V Frayling has appeared in the proceedings for DRN 2012:-)
Link to publication here: http://www.drawing-research-network.org.uk/drn-2012-proceedings/
DRN proposal 2013
2013 A Research odyssey: The art object in search of new knowledge
Parodying both Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Rake’s Progress (Hogarth mashed up with Hockney ) the paper will be a dual submission of traditional academic paper and cartoon strip.
Following on from the previous investigation of Frayling’s categories this time the focus of the research will be the character of ‘The Art Object’ . The paper will chart the rise of the notion of ‘The Art Object’ and search for examples of the ever elusive ‘new knowledge’ which presently beckons like the ‘final frontier’ at the centre of postgraduate artistic research .
It will draw on examples of a range of contemporary theories to try and understand where this ‘knowledge’ may or may not lie and its elicitation (if found) may guide future practice and inform pedagogic delivery especially at PhD level.
Interleaving graphic techniques and traditional academic paper methodology will in itself create a trans-disciplinary enquiry. This enquiry along with an animated sequential version of the cartoon forms the basis of a current M.A. by registered project enquiry into drawing, sequential narrative, animation and the current state of research methodology.
Keywords: Art and design research, PhD, studio art, methodology, practice-led research, final frontiers, new knowledge and woolly theory.
Shaun Belcher
Nottingham Trent University
Submission type:
• Drawn / Practice-based submissions + • Theoretical, philosophical or contextual papers
I finally managed to get some things working in studio after the old XP laptop that I had managed to set up the larger tablet on failed. I have upgraded slightly an old toshiba laptop thrown out by work and after ripping the now dead screen off it have a serviceable digital drawing workstation at last. the new cheap Medion tablet (£3.99 from Oxfam!) actually works ok with Windows 7. I then drew a couple of digital versions of the daily ‘doodle’ that I have been doing in studio when there. Not with any great research output in mind but just to keep hand in and to start thinking about the glorious ‘art object’.
Below are these digital drawings and the comparable ‘real’ works. Interesting to work with similar materials in digital and physical space. Two are digital rest are drawn and scanned.
The strange thing is that the two ‘digital’ drawings are much free-er and less ‘digital’ than the hand drawn ones. I felt less prescribed as was trying out tablet and also trying out various brush sizes and effects whereas with pens I had a narrower range of mark-making available ironically ( a large, medium and small sharpie for those interested in such things and a biro). When using biro as thinner, scratchier implement I tried to match that in digital arena with photoshop brushes.
The other interesting thing is the process of trying out some new ‘textures’ was same in both processes. Maybe I have used digital pad enough now to feel more comfortable with it whereas before I always felt inhibited by the technology . But does any of this constitute ‘new knowledge’? I started reading Scrivener’s Hertfordshire essay on knowledge and the art object as preparation for the ‘art object’ as cartoon character series.
http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/papers/wpades/vol2/scrivener.html
I have about 24 hours to pull together a reasonable attempt at a PhD bursary application. No pressure there then.
For the purposes of this application I am rehearsing what may be the research ‘question’ that I would interrogate and keep coming back to the same, to me key question, of where ‘knowledge’ may be said to reside.
James Elkins in a draft of a new chapter in his second edition of ‘Artists and Phds’. Provisionally titled ‘ Fourteen ways to mistrust the PhD in studio art’ touches on this in a subsection devoted to the question of ‘knowledge’ and most pertinently for me categorises it as the following two options:
C. How is this knowledge extracted from, read into, or interpreted in, visual art?
If “artistic knowledge” is partly outside of language, then it presents a problem for assessment and what are called in the UK “learning outcomes.” The fundamental choice here has to do with how the “artistic knowledge” is imagined to be related to the art object. There are fundamentally two choices here:
(i) “Artistic knowledge” inheres in the visual object or practice, so that the object or practice is itself a form of knowledge, or
(ii) “artistic knowledge” is interpreted to exist in the object or practice, so that discourse reveals the art’s contribution to knowledge.
In a separate facebook posting he also said the following:
Is art research? Is it knowledge?
Bruce M. Mackh asked me these two questions:
1. Is “Arts Practice” research?
2. Can the products of “Arts Practice” be original contributions to knowledge?
At the moment I am revising all those posts from earlier this year, for the new edition of the book “Artists with PhDs.” So these questions were timely. He made it necessary for me to try to answer in a very succinct way. Here are my answers — any thoughts?
1. Is “Arts Practice” research?
It hasn’t been until the 20th century. It’s important to bear in mind the relatively recent development of the notion that art is research: it comes from post-war academic pedagogy, and especially the structure of UK universities, which require new fields to present themselves as being aimed at “new knowledge” by way of “research.” This isn’t to say some art practice is not research: it’s to say the great majority isn’t.
2. Can the products of “Arts Practice” be original contributions to knowledge?
If you can give me one example of art research that is comprehensible as knowledge, I’ll say yes. Until then, I’ll say that art can often be understood as if it were producing knowledge: but that “knowledge” is insight, expression, understanding, feeling, affect, constellations of objects, unexpected juxtapositions, new sensory configurations. Note that your question asks if artworks can be knowledge. The other option is that the lead to knowledge, or can be interpreted as constituting knowledge. That leads in entirely different directions.
I spent most of today in studio again for first time in six weeks as illness prevented me from being there. I went in today with the supervision meeting yesterday for M.A. in the back of my mind. Clarifying the subject of the M.A. as ‘Graphic Research’ has helped greatly. However my next decision is how far I pursue the Frayling argument between now and next September. In what form I investigate the ‘research question’ when defined (has to be submitted as a new proposal by 7th January) so something to work on over Xmas and finally how much of this can I move forward as interrogation of own practice leading to a possible PhD?
To that end I started looking through old art magazines in studio going back to 2001. I was looking for mentions of ‘academic research culture’ in an attempt to find out when this started affecting what artists produced and the way they worked. Without going into detail it did seem that by 2003 it was observable within magazines to a degree which it wasn’t earlier. There is a whole PhD in analysing this subject in relation to magazines and wider art practice ‘fashions’ but for now i simply cuttiing out references then analysing them as best iIcan with cartoons drawn over the top. This could develop into a range of artefacts or be a dead end but seems a useful way of directly looking at shifts in artist self-definitions and institutional advertising.
Before I started on the Nottingham Trent University M.A. by registered project I already had three fairly well-defined practices or is it PRAXIS. I had painted in oil for ten years and drawn regularly, I had written poetry which published as ‘Last Farmer’ (Salt Publishing 2010) and I had spent ten years or more writing songs and performing as my alter-ego Trailer Star, By the Lincoln Collection show of 2008 this morphed into a strange amalgamation of songwriting and painting in the Suit of Nettles project.
However none of this work was ‘research-orientated’ I just did it in a foolish Picasso/Miro-esque way you know like people had done for thousands of years before Research Exercises were even invented. BUT….as my M.A. was funded by my venerable institution and was supposedly part of ‘continuing professional development’ I set to on the chosen path for me of ‘MULTIMEDIA’ by registered project.This made sense to my peers and bosses and sort of made sense to me that was until they closed down ‘Multimedia’ department and informed me that the reason for that was the word ‘multimedia’ did not mean anything. This came as a bit of a surprise as we had done well to survive the mis-management from above and indeed our employability was nearly 80%. Indeed it had more to do with managerial self-promotion than common-sense but this was not apparent at the time. Whatever, it will be over soon (2014) but the M.A. carries on. I am now in a process of rationalising how my M.A. proceeds and alongside it I have created a separate ‘research’ praxis which uses cartoons to examine in detail the whole justification and deployment of postgraduate study in the arts. I now call this ‘GRAPHIC RESEARCH ‘ and a blog details all the work I am doing in this field.
https://shaunbelcher.com/research
Meanwhile the first year of M.A. ‘TRACK’ blog details all the work I did during my first year of ‘development’, all of it in the area of MULTIMEDIA AND ‘new media’.
(Developed into a Art History Blog 2016)
I also started to paint again (at a low level) and this detailed in my second year M.A. painting related blog ‘Blank Canvas’.
https://shaunbelcher.com/canvas
So as it stands I have three simultaneous reflective journals done during the past two years..I wonder if any or all count for my M.A? In my opinion the cartoon research alone should qualify for a degree let alone the rest. I am going to stretch my examiners and supervisors patience to the test now by suggesting that I revert to PAINTING as the sole focus of the final year and use it to test theories of what research is and what practice is against each other. As the whole dichotomy of practice V research is what I questioning then physically separating the two and attempting both separately looks like a valid way of testing my ideas. This makes sense to me and in conversation with James Elkins I think makes sense to him. We are both examining the apparent contradictions in postgraduate fine art delivery, he from a theoretical ‘research on research’ angle, and myself from a physical practice versus research theory angle.
Simples Meerkats. If you are confused by all of this just try reading Pessoa whilst standing on your head…..
I am busy preparing for three drawing related conferences in a row in early September 2012. It feels a bit like doing music or poetry gigs 🙂
The first is ‘Practice makes Perfect: Theorising method in in visual research’
at Swansea Metropolitan University on 9th/10th September.
http://www.smu.ac.uk/practicemakesperfect/
The second Drawing Research Network: ‘Drawing Knowledge’ at Loughborough University on 10th/11th September.
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/sota/tracey/DRN_conference_homepage.html
and finally ‘Thinking Through Drawing 2012: drawing in STEAM’ at Wimbledon College of Art on 12-14 September.
http://drawingandcognition.pressible.org/2012-2
The first and second will be a paper/presentation about my practice called
‘Perfect Maps and Imperfect Practice: How practice-led methodology turned into graphic research.’
probably delivered in a cartoon/comic strip or graphic novel style 🙂
The third is different in that I have been invited to perform live drawing whilst the conference events in progress alongside such artists as Robert Shadbolt see http://robertshadbolt.net and Yoon Bakh Royal College Innovation Design http://rca.academia.edu/YoonBahk.
Students and Staff at NCN ‘interactive drawing workshop’ March 2012.
Graphic Research Poster