-
1998/99
Archive of provocative art-research comments
-
- last updated Apr
2000
-
- These are the 1999
months' 'provocative comments', along with selected
responses including those from the RTI
mailbase discussion
list. Please
contact Beryl
Graham with
responses to any month's comments, as comments
can be added at any time.
Index:
1999 Nov/Dec:
Have new media changed research?
1999 Oct: Are
artists interested in others'
research?
1999 Aug/Sep:
What is rigour in art practice?
1999 Jul: The
Right to Failure
1999 Jun: Why
would a "fully engaged" artist want to do a
Ph.D.?
1999 May:
Artists Exploited for RAE Points?
1999 Apr:
Professional Practice
1999 Mar: Is it
a Boy Thang?
1999 Feb:
Theorised Practice or Practice-Based
Research?
1999 Jan: Is
Play a Valid Methodology?
1998
Nov/Dec: Difference Between Art and Design
Methods
1998 Oct: Does
Ph.D. Artwork Have to be Dull?
< To
2000 archive
<
To 2001 archive
-
Nov/Dec
1999:
Have new media changed
research?
- New media including
hypertext, multimedia CDs, the Internet and DVD
have changed the range of options for how
information can be presented. Are these media also
changing the nature of what is acceptable as
research presentation (and process)?
Some excerpted responses this
month:
- ... maybe it takes
some of the drudgery out of card indexes etc. but
the basic skills of checking sources etc. are still
needed. No one seems to have standardized
electronic research presentation yet, so lots of
people aren't doing it.
anonymous
-
-
Oct
1999:
Are artists interested in
others' research?
"It is not easy to imagine
how little interested a scientist usually is in the
work of any other, with the possible exception of the
teacher who backs him or the student who honors him."
Jean Rostand
(1894-1977), French biologist, writer. Carnets d'un
Biologiste, in The Substance of Man (1962, p.
195).
Are artists similarly
uninterested?
- Beryl
Graham
Some excerpted responses this
month:
- I think the key
problem is that artists in general would not
necessarily know that such research exists, nor
where to look. It's certainly not in mainstream art
magazines, more's the pity. If we're talking about
artists using new materials in new ways, there's
also sometimes a reluctance to publicise such
hard-won information (just like in science
research!)
anonymous
-
Aug/Sep
1999:
What is rigour in art
practice?
The Relationship of Making to
Writing conference (Macleod, 1999a) asked a question
which remained largely unresolved: "What is rigour in art
practice?"
Some excerpted responses this
month:
'Rigour and
Language'
I feel that Rigour and language are interconnected
'thorny' issues for Art/Design and Craft research.
As artists/craftspeople we have already begun to
develop our own constructivist research culture and
methodologies. As A.Britton said at a Crafts
Council conference in 1996 'Craft is a visual code
containing concepts not contained in verbal
language.' Although I agree to a certain extent
with this statement, Art and Design does have a
similar language, which is communicable, as we are
working from the same knowledge base eg:-
sketchpads,images and concepts. However it needs to be
exactly the same, we need better ways of describing
this tacit knowledge. Artefacts themselves
embody research and knowledge of a rigorous nature,
generated by the practitioner through ergonomic,
conceptual, market and material research.
Criteria needed for doctorate or RAE research suggests
an academic rigour which (although it is explicitly
present) needs to be fully recorded, through images,
interactive means and thesis. We are not perhaps
accustomed to theorizing our endeavors and making
explicit our thought processes with quite the rigor
expected.
We must make our inquiries,
self-observations,experiments and visual concepts
communicable using an identical language to all
Art/Craft and Design Researchers, in order to express
the rigour which is an integral part of what we
do.
Maggi Toner-Edgar, Cumbria College of Art and
Design. maggi@pedgar.freeserve.co.uk
There
is no requirement for rigour in art practice -
artists are not required to account for their
activities, indeed this is one of their defining
characteristics.
There seems to be agreement that there is a
requirement for rigour in the art academy, though what
'academy-art rigour' is, and how it should be
demonstrated is debatable.
Tom Fisher, Sheffield Hallam University,
T.H.Fisher@shu.ac.uk
-
July
1999:
The Right to
Failure
"I regard a lot of my work
as research. We live in an age where the artist has
forgotten that he can be a researcher. I see myself
that way. I work intuitively. I follow my instincts. I
don't mind if something fails."
David Hockney
(British Journal of Photography, 6 Jun 1991,
p.16)
The right to fail is perhaps only
accepted in securely established artists ... and in
research? Please respond with views of the role of
'failure' in your experience.
Some excerpted responses this
month:
"To be an
artist, or any other kind of researcher, is to search
to engage in the process of search with an open mind
(although not without a focus)- so we do not know
exactly what we will find, but must be prepared to
take risks - sweeping wide areas and burrowing deep
into holes.
To be an artist is to learn. To fail is to learn. We
should demand the right to fail because the point of
failure defines the point of achievement, and of
desire."
Sue McMorran, Uni of Lincolnshire & Humberside:
smcmorran@humber.ac.uk
"Failure seems to be
only relative. I don't know how we can judge failure.
Failure seems to me to be based on expectation. If we
want a certain result and don't get it -failure.
The arts and science worlds fortunately do seem to
allow a degree of failure, but with forboding RAE's
commercial goals or when financial restrictions are
influencing output, outcome is affected and
expectations dominate.
I personally do feel failure occasionaly. When I'm not
giving myself enough time to be creative mainly. But I
generally like to be optimistic, preferring to see a
'missfire' or accident as a useful addition to the
process.
Suffice to say science is not an exact science!!! Art
is not an exact Art!!!"
Andy Kennedy,
ATRAK@garthdee1.rgu.ac.uk
- "Beckett
interjected in an interview "Dare to fail, like
nobody else has done" (Davey, 1999. p.15)"
Beryl Graham
-
June
1999:
Why would a "fully engaged"
artist want to do a Ph.D.?
At a recent symposium
Prof. Jon Thompson asked why a "fully engaged" artist
would want to 'take six years out' [sic] to do a
Ph.D. (actually, three years for a full-time
doctorate).
Would any artists currently (or
recently) engaged in a Ph.D. like to respond to
this?
Some excerpted responses this
month:
For much the
same reasons as they might want to be a professor (but
with less teaching) ? Long-term financial and
equipment support? But also, more seriously, to try to
find out what they want to know, not what a gallery
wants to exhibit. To humbly search for answers which
other funders assume that they will find as a matter
of course. To find out different ways of doing
research.
Anonymous
---
I am not an artist (so
perhaps not my place to interject) but I have done
some research on practice-based research degree
students (see latest edition of POINT). Even a
cursory analysis of the data, reveals a vocabulary of
motives: ranging from the instrumental (to obtain an
award which allows one to do creative work, no matter
what happens to the research component), to the
strategic (the possession of a PhD will help secure
the occupational future, which will allow one to
practice one's 'art' via institutional resourcing), to
the intellectual (the research dimension will allow
one more fully understand one's own work, and thus to
advance it, and to justify it to self and wider
audiences).
John Hockey (JHockey@chelt.ac.uk)
---
[My Ph.D] ...
has used data generated from practice and has used my
experience of practice as the basis for an
intellectual argument. I have not tried to make art
through research. The two things have different social
functions although sometimes their methods
overlap.
It seems to me from reading the pros and cons comments
from the one-day conference that research is badly
needed into the tacit values and assumptions within
the professional domain of contemporary visual arts
that serve to keep artists separate from the rest of
society by keeping them ignorant. Such research is a
deconstructive activity and there is a danger that the
emperor's new clothes would be revealed as a result as
is evidenced in the sad thing about 'failure' and
'good' and 'bad' art. Making art is different from
doing research. End of story.
Different purpose, different intention. Until people
understand their intentions for making art, then they
will always be threatened by other activities which
use methods of visualisation and representation.
Formal research seems to be about asking a question,
finding out about something and then having the
humility to try and work out how the new information
may be of use to someone other than the researcher and
finally in succeeding in the task of explaining or
representing it to that somebody in order that they
can do something with it. Although art is about making
meaning from everyday life, it mainly uses metaphor to
do so which is not about explaining anything. Only
certain genres such as socially engaged practice seem
to be about empowering others to do something on their
own terms with the experience of making art. Art is
not about explaining. Research is about
explaining.
Susannah Silver (no email)
The word
'humility' rang lots of bells for me - research is
very much about being able to admit that you can't
predict an answer, whereas the public image of the
artist tends to demand certainty as a defense
against criticism. I'm still willing to experiment
with ways in which making art CAN be regarded as
being research though - for example trying to get
the rules changed about what can be submitted as a
thesis, so that other researchers don't experience
the same uncomfortable 'shoehorning' effect.
Beryl Graham
(beryl.graham@sunderland.ac.uk)
- I am a researcher
also doing a PhD, which was until recently, based
within an old art college. I'm not sure many
artists do want to do a PhD. I have found that, in
a lot of circumstances, arts practitoners working
within Universities are forced into more
academic/scientific forms of research by the
institutions they work for. The reasons for this
are entrenched within the funding practise of
Higher Education institutions today.
I also found that art faculties work traditionally
on very different lines to other faculties and
often don't have the infrastructures in place to
support traditional forms of research, including
more structured research such as that involved in
doing a doctorate.
Anonymous
-
-
May
1999:
Artists exploited for RAE points
?
"The situation seems
further confused through institutional approaches,
with artists' CVs 'bought in' by colleges for the RAE
(Research Assessment Exercise) forms, art practice
research 'tacked over' existing university structures,
and of artists wishing to undertake research through
practice being told to 'go away and get on with your
work'." Franki
Austin, 'Practice-based Research' Artists'
Newsletter, April 1999. p. 5.
Some excerpted
responses:
"I was
responsible for putting together RAE stuff for a range
of work (5 different assessments) across our Faculty,
and we got pretty good results, with one exception.
That was the one where a section leader had bought in
researchers on minimal contracts and insisted against
my advice on including them. This section had our only
low result, all other areas, in some of which work by
practice predominated or was given by us equal status
with traditional written research, got 3As or more.
Much of the work submitted as practice was real work
done by those on permanent part time contracts. We
don't seem to have suffered from this - is the
suggestion that we would have got 4+ results if we
hadn't included these?"
Name withheld on request
"I think
external RAE assessors are actually pretty good at
sorting the 'real' from the cynical, and 'real work
done by those on permanent part time contracts' is
rightly valued for its long-term feedback to all
levels of students. Your experience seems to
reinforce this (thankfully!) Nevertheless, in
search of those elusive 'international standing'
points, is it not tempting for Universities to 'buy
in' a more short-term 'researcher' (a currently
internationally fashionable artist) who has been
free and mobile enough to establish many
'International' points? Is it not also tempting for
artists being offered money and facilities to
remember the 'make artworks' part, but to rather
forget the 'communicate their research' part?
At a symposium
the artist Brighid Lowe wryly suggested that, with
rumours around that Louise Bourgeois (who never
leaves Paris) was going to be offered a research
fellowship by a university, that soon universities
would be offering fellowships to dead artists, in
order to be sure of the durability of their
'international standing' in RAE terms."
Beryl Graham
(beryl.graham@sunderland.ac.uk)
"Reading some of
the comments: - I would really like to get away
from a binary concept (the exploited also exploit).
Maybe something new could be made out of a number
of voices, powerful and powerless both listening
and speaking? Idealistic I guess."
Franki Austin
(frankiaustin@hotmail.com)
"Although not a direct
response to Beryl's comment of the month, I came
across something at a conference this week relates to
this topic.
A report from the SCUDD (Standing Conference of
University Drama Departments) RAE group draws a
distinction between 'creative/professional' and
'research' imperatives in practice submissions, and
suggests that only the latter are really relevant to
the RAE.
"distinctions
should be drawn between creative work driven by a
'research imperative' and that driven by a
'creative/professional' imperative. While the
latter may often involve research, its primary
purpose may/will tend to fall outside the
definition of research adopted by HEFCE. It will be
necessary, therefore, for individual researchers to
indicate clearly how research is the chief
characteristic of the process/outcomes of their
creative projects."
The mechanism they
propose for this (which I understand is a development
of the practice used by this panel in 1996) is for
researchers having to prepare a brief statement (one
side of A4) that outlines the research/innovative
significance of the work submitted and locates it a
relevant context.
Would such a practice be of benefit to practice-based
researchers in art and design, is the distinction
suggested possible/useful, or does it just sound like
more paperwork?
The full paper is available of the SCUDD
website."
Darren Newbury
(Darren.Newbury@uce.ac.uk)
-
Apr
1999:
"Ph.D.s and Professional
Practice: What difference will art-practice Ph.D.s
make to the way that those who have them are treated (in
their art-making professional lives outside of academia,
that is)? Will we see art bodies demanding such
qualifications? Might we see art funders paying artists
highly as consultants for their practice-based
knowledge?"
- Beryl Graham
-
Some Excerpted
Responses:
- "... it's nice to be
able to 'compete' on qualifications with other non-art
academics but really I don't think anyone outside of
academia knows about it yet. Art bodies like
commissioners tend to ask for portfolios - visual
evidence of experience - maybe that is already a good
way of respecting 'practice-based
knowledge'..."
- name
withheld on request
-
-
Mar
1999:
Is it a Boy
Thang?
During a recent
seminar at the
Current
Research exhibition at
Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, I suggested that
several of the artists displayed an obsessive approach to
collection and categorisation which was rather like the
'boy thing' of wanting their record collections in
alphabetical order. A gallery curator disagreed, pointing
out that women can also be into the ordering, analysing
and controlling of things.
Are traditional 'scientific'
methods of taxonomy etc. a 'Boy Thang'? What might a
'Girl Thang' method be?
- Beryl Graham
-
Some Excerpted
Responses:
- "... it's tempting
to caricature traditional science methods as the
retentive 'boy thing' and new art methods as fluid
and intuitive and that sort of earth-mother thing,
but of course things aren't that simple. In my
college there were just women art Ph.D. students
for a while, and the whole thing was pretty much
sneered at by the art lecturers as as being 'too
plodding/retentive' and the science people thought
it was 'too new/intuitive'. But then the male
students started and suddenly it was all words like
'challenging traditions' 'pushing the envelope' and
'thrusting' stuff and then it all got taken more
seriously though they are doing about the same on
the intuitive/retentive scale! Very
Interesting."
- name withheld
on request
-
Feb
1999:
Theorised Practice or
Practice-Based Research?
Art education in some areas (lens
media in particular) has encouraged a 'theorised
practice' where students using deconstruction, semiotics,
psychoanalytic and media theory analyse and reconstruct
images. (For example, the influence of Victor Burgin
et al at PCL in the 1970s). In postmodern practice
theory and practice are often tightly intertwined. So how
are the methods of 'practice-based research' different
from this theorised practice?
- Beryl Graham
(this comment relates to discussion of the
Current
Research
exhibition at Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art,
and is also the subject of a short paper presented at
Exchange99
conference this month)
-
- Sorry, no
responses to this one yet.
-
Jan
1999:
-
- "... if I had to say that I
had a methodology then I have a method of play which
is bringing things in without a pre-established notion
of their use ..." (Macleod,
Katy (1998a), quoting research
student)
-
- Is play a useful
method?
-
Beryl Graham
Some Excerpted
Responses:
"... the
pressure in departments of Universities is for the
students to complete on time. I don't believe this is
conducive to a playful environment.
Also a distinction can be made between Ph.D. research
which stems from the students own corpus of ideas, and
which is then supported by a multi-disciplined
department which perhaps has no one working precisely
in the area of the researchers approach, and a student
who is working within an existing framework of
research within a department.
In the former case members of the department will
almost certainly regard a `playful' student as
eccentric, difficult and possibly `anti-social'. Where
the activities involve creative use of the departments
computers the research student may find a playful
approach regarded as disruptive and intolerable.
In the latter case where students are working within a
framework of existing work. The most significant
problems seem to be based around students conforming
to their supervisors perception of the direction which
the research should take. As research students work
doesn't count towards the research assessment exercise
`papers' need to have head of department or
supervisors names on them, and a `healthy' set of
`important people in the field' in the paper. These
are often people whose creative talents and drive
petered out long ago, albeit under a welter of
teaching, administration and charitable acts for the
institutions they represent.
This leads to the stifling of playful research,
because the cutting edge of creativity does not, as
everyone knows, occur within the establishment body,
but rather, one might say, on the fractal edge of the
marginalised..."
Dr Paul Margerison
<p.margerison@open.ac.uk> The Open
University
---
"The ludic turn has been with us since, um, Hermann
Hesse's Glass Bead Game, and probably from
Wittgenstein, too. In philosophy, during the 1960s,
there was a great deal of discussion of the concept of
heuristics: rules of thumb, good guesses, dithering
devices, and so on. Art & Language (New
York) dealt with this; it's coming back, now, it
seems, not because of an interest in play as such, but
due to the bureaucratising pressure of assessable
criteria in higher education. How academic can we make
play before play is but a cliché?"
Michael Corris <mcorris@brookes.ac.uk>
Oxford Brookes
---
The following article
in Leonardo makes some interesting structural
links between art and play: Dissanayake, Ellen (1974).
'A Hypothesis of the Evolution of Art from Play'
Leonardo Vol.7 No.3. 211-217. Also, Macleod
says (1999b, p.36) "Play, of course, is testing out;
it is problem solving and it is subversive in its
experimentation."
Beryl Graham
-
Nov/Dec
1998:
-
- "So, what's the difference
between 'fine art research methods' and 'design
methods'?"
-
- There are perhaps more
established materials on design methods, and certainly
more periodicals dealing with design. Are the
brainstorm/prototype/improvisation/feedback methods of
design really that different from fine art
production?
-
- Is the difference that whilst
designers are obliged to work in response to feedback
on usability, market research likes etc., artists
rarely seek this information, or can choose to work
contrary to it?
-
- Beryl Graham
-
- Some excerpted
responses:
-
- "There are
materials on 'Design Methods' but they have led to
'Design and Build' in my opinion. Design Studies
continues to to be rigorous but, mostly,
significant journals are published from the States.
Design Issues and Leonardo are
exemplary in the same way. We have to maintain
contacts in America to achieve what we set out to
do. But, that said, Modern Painters is as
good if not better than anything designers
have.
It seems to me that successful artists work like
designers and famous designers work like artists.
Nobody actually works 'contrary' if they need to
earn, but it is how they negotiate their own place
in that system that is important - and what HE
should be about."
Pam Schenk
pmschenk@globalnet.co.uk
-
October
1998:
-
- "Curiously, the 'pure idea'
of art, the relation of form to content in what is a
process bound discipline, does not appear to be in hot
debate. Until it is, artists will be in danger of
producing poor art as research."
(Macleod,
1998, p.35)
-
- If Mphil/Ph.D. research
produces 'poor art' (whatever the definition), is that
a problem? After all, many scientific research
projects end with the conclusion that the original
hypothesis was incorrect. Unlike MA level art
education, which involves a 'quality' judgment on
finished artwork for 'success', with PhDs it is
theoretically possible to produce truly terrible,
'unsuccessful' artworks, which form a most excellent
piece of research (and may be more successful at
communicating knowledge to other artists than the most
perfect finished products).
Whilst I would argue that PhDs
form a rare and valuable arena for an artist's 'right
to fail' (as long as knowledge is gained from
failure), I would also argue for artists to
consciously struggle against a certain tendency of
'research artworks' to be, well, a little dull.
Dullness is not stipulated in academic regulations, it
is optional.
By putting practice first, that
relationship between form and content is necessarily
foregrounded, even if not formally theorised. By
pushing the boundaries of the representation of visual
knowledge, excitement is maintained.
Beryl
Graham
-
- Some excerpted
responses:
-
- "WHY IS ARTWORK
PRODUCED AS PART OF RESEARCH OFTEN 'DULL'
- Research methods
generally focus on only what can be made
- tangible/visible/explicit/
observable/evaluated by peers - somewhat limiting for
the
- artistic process.
Research methods which can embrace the
implicit/tacit/experiential/unconscious
- dimension of art
might generate art that is less 'dull' as part of the
research
- process.
As someone returning to art and design after looking
at practice based research in
- psychology/education
I wonder about the value of excavating methods such as
- 'construct theory'
(Kelly, Bannister) which are in fact designed to
inform practice
- by making unconscious
mental 'constructs' explicit, as a basis for
a) helping novices learn from successful practitioners
who clearly 'know' how to do
- something but cannot
make it explicit.
b) making individuals/groups aware of the different
sets of constructs they are
- using to inform their
practice / perception / evaluation ..."
Jenny Ure, ATSJU@garthdee1.rgu.ac.uk
-
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