I have been making comments and reading with interest the revisions which James Elkins is posting online here: http://jimandmargaret.wordpress.com/ and opening up for debate on facebook.
Page 7 of 9
A useful page of lnked resources (mostly google books) from course at Westminster.
http://thinkingpractices.wordpress.com/theories-of-art-practices-as-research/
N.B. a good few of the links given are broken and the Google Docs links are to limited view documents.
Cut and pasted here as useful source material in building new bibliography for amended proposal.
Graeme Sullivan, 2006, Artefacts as evidence within changing contexts. Working Papers in Art and Design 4. Available online http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/papers/wpades/vol4/gsfull.html
“A central feature of art practice is that it embodies ideas that are given form in the process of making artworks. Irrespective of the informing sources, media preferences, or image-base, the artist exercises individual control over the creation and presentation of artefacts as forms of knowledge. Further, the images and ideas created have the capacity to not only change the artist’s conceptions of reality, but also influence the viewer’s interpretation of artworks. Consequently art practice can be seen as a form of intellectual and imaginative inquiry, and as a place where research can be carried out that is robust enough to yield reliable insights that are well grounded and culturally relevant. This paper argues that artefacts created as a result of visual arts research have the capacity to be interpreted as evidence in a range of robust ways.”
Sullivan, G. (2010-2005). Art Practice as Research: Inquiry in the Visual Arts (2010 edition). SAGE.chapters available to download Chapter 1 – Pigment to Pixel
Chapter 4 – Art Practice as Research
Art Practice as Research: Inquiry in the Visual Arts (2005 edition). SAGE.
chapters available to download
Chapter 3- Explanation, Understanding, and Beyond
additional samples available in google books
Part 2: Theorizing Visual Arts Practice. 3. Explanation, understanding and beyond
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Barrett, E. & Bolt, B. (2007) Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry. I.B.Tauris.
Interesting (almost complete) sections available via google books include Introduction; Very useful: Appendix. Developing and writing creative arts practice research: a guide.
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Barbara Bolt, 2006, A Non Standard Deviation: Handlability, Praxical Knowledge and Practice Led Research. In Speculation and Innovation: applying practice led research in the Creative Industries. Available online http://www.artsresearch.brighton.ac.uk/links/practice-led/Bolt2005.pdf
“Martin Heidegger’s notion of handlability builds on the assumption that our understanding of the world is predicated upon our dealings in the world. According to this perspective, we come to know the world theoretically only after we have come to understand it through handling. Through such dealings, our apprehension is neither merely perceptual nor rational. Rather, such dealings or handling reveals its own kind of tacit knowledge. This
paper investigates the operations of handlability in creative arts research.”
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Barbara Bolt, 2006, Materializing pedagogies. Working Papers in Art and Design vol4. Retrieved November 30, 2008
‘Theorising out of practice, I would argue, involves a very different way of thinking than applying theory to practice. It offers a very specific way of understanding the world, one that is grounded in (to borrow Paul Carter’s term) “material thinking” rather than merely conceptual thinking. Material thinking offers us a way of considering the relations that take place within the very process or tissue of making. In this conception the materials are not just passive objects to be used instrumentally by the artist, but rather the materials and processes of production have their own intelligence that come into play in interaction with the artist’s creative intelligence.”
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Estelle Barrett, 2006, Foucault’s What is an Author: Towards a critical discourse of practice as research. Working Papers in Art and Design, 4. Available online: http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/papers/wpades/vol4/ebfull.html
“A problem confronting many artistic researchers is related to the need for the artist to write about his or her own work in the research report or exegesis, The outcomes of such research are not easily quantifiable and it can be difficult to articulate objectively, methods processes, and conclusions that emerge from an alternative logic of practice and the intrinsically subjective dimension of artistic production. Moreover, conventional approaches and models of writing about art generally fall within the domain of criticism, a discourse that tends to focus on connoisieurial evaluation of the finished product. How then, might the artist as researcher avoid on one hand, what has been referred to as “auto-connoisseurship”, the undertaking of a thinly veiled labour of valorising what has been achieved in the creative work, or alternatively producing a research report that is mere description (Nelson 2004)?”
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Estelle Barrett, What Does it Meme? The Exegesis as Valorisation and Validation of Creative Arts Research. Available online: http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue3/barrett.htm
“In the arts, conventional modes of valorisation such as the gallery system, reviews and criticism focus on the artistic product and hence, lack sustained engagement with the creative processes as models of research. Such engagement is necessary to articulate and validate studio practices as modes of enquiry. A crucial question to initiate this engagement is: ‘What did the studio process reveal that could not have been revealed by any other mode of enquiry?’ Re-versioning of the studio process and its significant moments through the exegesis locates the work within the broader field of practice and theory. It is also part of the replication process that establishes the creative arts as a stable research discipline, able to withstand peer and wider assessment. The exegesis is a primary means of realising creative arts research as ‘meme’.”
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Linda Candy 2006 Practice Based Research: A Guide. Sydney: Creativity & Cognition Studios, University of Technology.
http://www.creativityandcognition.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/PBR-Guide-1.1-2006.pdf
Read:
Differences between the two types practice related research: practice-based and practice-led.
Essential distinction: “If a creative artefact is the basis of the contribution to knowledge, the research is
practice-based. If the research leads primarily to new understandings about practice, it is practice-led.” (p.3)
practice-based. If the research leads primarily to new understandings about practice, it is practice-led.” (p.3)
The role of the artwork/ creative artefact in reporting the research results
” The artefact is not an explanation in itself: it requires linguistic description that relates the development and nature of the artefact to understandings about creative process; the text describes the innovation embodied in the artefact but cannot be fully understood without reference to and observation of the artefact.” (p.9)
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Scrivener, S. (2004) The practical implications of applying a theory of practice based research: a case study. Working Papers in Art and Design 3. Retrieved November 16, 2008
Scrivener, S. (2002) The art object does not embody a form of knowledge. Working Papers in Art and Design vol2. Retrieved November 16, 2008
Pakes, A. (2004) Art as action or art as object? the embodiment of knowledge in practice as research. Working Papers in Art and Design vol3. Retrieved November 26, 2008
Biggs, M.A.R. (2004) Editorial: the role of the artefact in art and design research. Working Papers in Art and Design 3. Retrieved November 16, 2008
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Kathrin Busch, 2009, Artistic Research and the Poetics of Knowledge Art&Research vol 2 (2) [available online]
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Balkema, A.W. & Slager, H. (2004) Artistic Research. Rodopi.
full chapters available via ingenta (free PDF download)
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Henk Borgdorff, 2010: Artistic Research as Boundary Work, pages 4-11. In How does Artistic Research Change us? Proceedings of CARPA 1 – 1st Colloquium on Artistic Research in Performing Arts. Theatre Academy, Helsinki November 19.-21., 2009 Performing Arts Research Centre, Theatre Academy 2010. ISBN 978-952-9765-59-1. Previously published in: Corina Caduff, Fiona Siegenthaler and Tan Wälchli (Eds) Art and Artistic Research / Kunst und Ku?nstlerische Forschung Zurich Yearbook of the Arts / Zu?rcher Jahrbuch der Ku?nste, vol.6, pp. 72-79 Zu?rcher Hochschule der Ku?nste (ZHdK) and Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess, 2010.
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Michael A R Biggs “Learning from Experience: approaches to the experiential componenet of practice-based research” in: Forskning, Reflektion, Utveckling. Stockholm, Vetenskapsrådet, 2004, 6-21. Online version.
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Corina Caduff, Fiona Siegenthaler, and Tan Wälchli, Eds. (2010)
Art and Artistic Research: Music, Visual Art, Design, Literature, Dance.The University of Chicago Press
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Michael Biggs, Henrik Karlsson, Eds. (2010)
The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts. Routledge
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Leavy, P. (2008). Method Meets Art: Arts-Based Research Practice. Guilford Press.
Download the sample chapter Social Research and the Creative Arts An Introduction from the editors’ site.
Another interesting chapter available via google books include
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Gray, C., & Malins, J. (2004). Visualizing research : a guide to the research process in art
and design. Aldershot, Hants, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
and design. Aldershot, Hants, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
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Miles, M. ( 2005). New Practices, New Pedagogies: A Reader. Routledge.
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Macleod, K. & Holdridge, L. (2005) Thinking Through Art: Reflections on Art as Research. Routledge
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Carter, P. (20050, Material Thinking. Melbourne University Publishing.
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Hesse-Biber, S. N. & Leavy, P. (2008) Handbook of Emergent Methods. Guilford Press
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Kester, G.H. 2004) Conversation pieces: community and communication in modern art. University of California Press.
[ chapters available in Google Books]
Dialogical Aesthetics
See also:Grant Kester Conversation Pieces: The Role of Dialogue in Socially-Engaged Art.
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Journal Studies in Material Thinking
selection of relevant papers:
Miles, A.(2008) Virtual Actual: Hypertext as Material Writing. . Studies in Material Thinking 1 (2). Retrieved November 30, 2008.
Ross, T.(2008) Material Thinking: the aesthetic philosophy of Jacques Rancière and the design art of Andrea Zittel Studies in Material Thinking 1 (2). Retrieved November 30, 2008.
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McKenna, S. E. (19990 . Theory and practice: revisiting critical pedagogy in studio art education. Art Journal
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Wainwright, C. (2008). The Importance of Artistic Research and its Contribution to ‘New Knowledge’ in a Creative Europe’. ELIA
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“It would be wonderful to have some conferences, and then some books, on which practices are best served by self-awareness. (And another set of conferences and books on the practices most amenable to research, as in point number 2.) From a philosophic standpoint, two more even more difficult problems would then follow: Who can measure self-awareness? Who is trained in teaching it?”
From James Elkins – Reasons to mistrust the phd ( Updates for a second edition of ‘Artists with Phd: On the new doctoral degree in art’
Source: http://jimandmargaret.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/reasons-to-mistrust-the-phd-numbers-5-7/
This seems to me to go to the heart of the problem. I am mid-way through a M.A. by registered project which a more flexible version of a standard M.A. where the student sets own parameters. I am going to suggest to my supervisors that the second year consists of two distinct self-set pathways.
One studio practice in painting ignoring ‘research’ and secondly an analysis of this from a very ‘research-orientated’ perspective via my cartoons. Not sure how that will go down but it does attempt to wrestle with the problem. Can one have two heads? Probably not. I will keep a reflective journal of my practice day by day that purely practice driven.
The cartoons/research will comment separately on where I think practice does cross-over naturally with ‘research’ or not as the case may be. This then begs the question ‘where is the research located’?
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…..
Have rewritten the ‘Perfect maps:Imperfect Practice’ paper to contain new knowledge gained at conferences.
This paper has now appeared as part of Drawing Research network proceedings 2012 and now available here: http://www.drawing-research-network.org.uk/drn-2012-proceedings/
New title is Can grey ravens fly: Beyond Frayling’s categories.
Here original document and the associated cartoon strip.
It is ‘Graphic Research’ Spock but not as we know it…
An earlier post (see below) relates my two year long tussle with the idea of a ‘Multimedia’ M.A.by research project which spawned tis separate research trajectory as a by-product.
The turning point for treating cartooning of art criticism/history as a viable research subject came with my acceptance for the Mostyn Humorous Intent Symposium in March and subsequently acceptance for three drawing related symposia in September 2012. All related to notions of practice and drawing in some way. All reflected my seven year output of critical cartoons and blog entries which began in 2005. In this period I have had work published by Axis, Arts Professional and Matter Magazine ( interview with Matthew Collings). Ironically none of this has been recognised ot supported in any way by my institution. Indeed this has been conducted beneath the radar because of the nature of the material created and because as a member of a ‘Multimedia’ faculty I was coerced into accepting a ‘Multimedia’ M.A. as part of professional development. Ironically again, professional development seemed to disappear when my course was closed down (it has two years to run) in October 2011 coinciding with my decision to take a year of absence because of my mother’s serious illness of which she passed away in June this year. Having removed both the raison d’etre of professional development and having offered no supervision or help at all during my first year of ‘study’ it not surprising I a little confused.
I took matters in my own hands in March 2012 by applying to the Mostyn conference which firmly in the Fine Art area. The drawing conferences could be seen as straddling both fine art and graphic design. In light of this it makes clear sense to me that if I attempt a PhD M.A. it should be re-assigned into one of these two areas and I hope to sort this out before commencing one. As the research also combines pedagogic research it may be difficult to find a supervisor again. Trent is presently lacking a art history professor or staff at that level with a art history background since Richard Woodfield left maybe the new Dean will freshen things up a bit. That is for future after the M.A. completed.
So I now have to complete the three symposia. Develop or rewrite the original MA:RPT proposal in light of changes of direction.and then focus on creating a body of work in the ‘graphic research’ area to lead up to PhD ( a term invented by myself in conversation with Ian Williams a.k.a.Thom Ferrier at a graphic novel conference at Nottingham Contemporary).
My interests going forward towards PhD (RESEARCH ROUTE) are firmly in the areas of art criticism/history (comic and written) and for M.A (PRACTICE ROUTE) new media and painting and drawing.
Even a week of travelling elsewhere artistically speaking is very welcome…..and maybe signals a new start.
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
Two totally unrelated but interesting uses of mapping and text.
Firstly AYREEN ANASTAS & RENE GABRI
Their combined sketchbooks/mindmaps offer a tantalising glimpse of what ‘graphic research’ paintings might look like.
http://www.tanyaleighton.com/index.php?pageId=189&l=en
This led me to thinking on my interest in Simon Lewtys ‘painted maps’ too. These had a big influence on me when I saw his exhibition at Nottingham castle many years back.
http://www.artfirst.co.uk/simon_lewty/index.html