Yvonne Jones: (Artist Researcher)
Blog - 2012
Our Unevolved Brains / The Displacementof Artist Researchers / Facing the Posthuman / X-cite, Feint / The Senses have no
Future /Blog 2012
Blog - 2012
Our Unevolved Brains / The Displacementof Artist Researchers / Facing the Posthuman / X-cite, Feint / The Senses have no
Future /Blog 2012
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Our Un-evolved Brains / The Displacementof Artist Researchers / Facing the Posthuman / X-cite, Feint / The Senses have no Future / Blog 2012
Saturday, 24 March 2012
Information Image 2, mxd media on paper 26.5 X 20.5 cms , framed.
Art practice research means different things to different schools of thought. The research I am exploring is where practice sets out to answer a question with a rigorous process that stands up to scrutiny and results in an outcome that produces new knowledge.
Art practice led research covers work that creates new knowledge in the field of art. It extends itself and pushes boundaries to offer different perspectives and knowledge in many differing fields. Using a specific piece of work to open with, my own research is in the area of the posthuman. It uses two practices, art practice with medical practice (to-date), developing currently towards art practice with forensic science practice (planned). In both situations the practices are brought together within the arena of my own studio art practice. In both cases the work is supported by medical and forensic specialists. In the work notions of the posthuman are interrogated within this mix opening up implications for the living humankind of to-day. Ideas that develop within the process are examined through visual expression and output. This, it appears to me, is the process that is common to art practice research, that is to say mechanisms are in place in the mind of the artist and embedded in the process that enable the coming together of disparate disciplines and theories. This is characteristic of art practice research. The methodology of Action Research may be part of this process of thought, action and outcome but it is not the whole event. Monday, 26 March 2012 
Art practice led research raises the question of methodology. From my perspective the most useful methodology is qualitative over quantitative. Qualitative methodology is (expected to be) a spiral process, although it can be a single loop. Action Research, a qualitative method, is a term first used by Kurt Levin and is recognised through its process of Observation, Reflection, Planning and Action. Although this approach can offer an overview with recognisable elements that anchor the research, there remains an unexplained, difficult to explain, 'situation' within the process. It is a something that is present, as colleagues have agreed; a difficult to define something that is non the less an integral part of the process and outcome. Symmetry breaking serves as a model (but of thought), a phenomenon where (infinitesimally) small fluctuations acting on a system which is crossing a critical point decide the system's fate, by determining which branch of bifurcation is taken. To an outside observer unaware of the fluctuations the choice will appear arbitrary. This process is called symmetry "breaking", because such transitions usually bring the system from a disorderly state into one of two definite states. Symmetry breaking is supposed to play a major role in pattern formation. Saturday, 31 March 2012 
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The idea of breaking symmetry does not get close to explaining or modelling the process of art practice research, it merely serves as a sign for the complexity. Within the field the internal process verges on chaos. It is not a question and answer process, rather existing as a multiplicity. The exploring mind is bombarded with new understandings that arise and develop from many different bits of knowing and experience. The visual in this process of art practice research keeps the chaos at bay (to use a key phrase of Lawrence Grossberg) or at least avoids submersion. Chaos per se is not negative, current thinking has abandoned the straight and narrow of presence / absence with its teleology, its movement towards a goal that is meaningful to the system, with an assumed stable self which is the basis of a liberal humanist subject. Use of chaos is a tool that assists in leaving the liberal humanist subject position to one side. Current thinking is open to pattern / randomness, Langton and Kauffman celebrate chaos 'as accelerating the evolution of biological and artificial life'. Avoiding the assumption of a stable self, extending this to accepting a changing subject as a method, is difficult to work with but ultimately rewarding when a non-prescribed meaningful pattern emerges. The operation is in the arena of the posthuman position. Hayles tells us that pattern / randomness came to supersede presence / absence in the posthuman position. The mix in the process and operation is more than a methodology. It has an internal structure of beauty of its own, with its own characteristics and effects.
Wednesday, 11 April 2012
Art practice led research covers work that creates new knowledge in the field of art. It extends itself and pushes boundaries to offer different perspectives and knowledge in many differing fields.
Using a specific piece of work to open with, my own research is in the area of the posthuman. It uses two practices, art practice with medical practice (to-date), developing currently towards art practice with forensic science practice (planned). In both situations the practices are brought together within the arena of my own studio art practice. In both cases the work is supported by medical and forensic specialists. In the work notions of the posthuman are interrogated within this mix opening up implications for the living humankind of to-day.
Ideas that develop within the process are examined through visual expression and output. This, it appears to me, is the process that is common to art practice research, that is to say mechanisms are in place in the mind of the artist and embedded in the process that enable the coming together of disparate disciplines and theories. This is characteristic of art practice research. The methodology of Action Research may be part of this process of thought, action and outcome but it is not the whole event.
Friday, 15 June 2012
There have been arguments around the rigour of Art Practice Research; initially and even recently a sense from the academic fraternity that APR does not meet the criteria for the academic world. The APR field has, in the main, opted for Qualitative Methodology to be its scaffold, and within this, Action Research. Some Art Researchers argue that this methodology is not specific enough, not fit for purpose. Graeme Sullivan has a strong view in 'Art Practice as Research: Inquiry in Visual Arts' by Graeme Sullivan, 2010.Sage, London', he says it is time the Artist Researcher stood up and be counted (my expression). He says of art practice led research that it
' -- variously emphasises insights revealed by the artist-practitioner, the creative product or the critical process
He continues
-- To fully consider the impact this quest for new knowledge has on the self, others and communities requires a new responsibility on the part of artist-researchers to take up the challenge of theorising their practice… for 'in academe, the artist-researcher cannot hide behind the robe of the mute artist' (Makela and Routarinne 2006b: 25)…
He concludes
--
It is no longer viable for advocates of practice-led research to merely borrow methods from other fields of inquiry for this denies the intellectual maturity of arts practice as a plausible basis for raising significant theoretical questions and a viable site for undertaking important artistic, cultural and educational inquiries.
His position clearly sits with that of a fellow APR practitioner who held that Qualitative Methodology is an insufficient tool, that this does not fit the shape of the actual practice methodology of APR.
Rather than there being a straight forward shape of a Methodology (Qualitative) sitting as a given, one that can be structured and readily followed step by step, there is in my view a convolution within APR. Never the less, after a great deal of unpicking and overviewing, this shape of Qualitative structure becomes visible and indeed creates the structure of the work. Without doubt there is within the structure a great deal of FOLDING in on itself, of internal jumps from one to several points within the form.
Are APR practitioners borrowing methods from other fields as Sullivan states? I don't believe so, I suggest methods are a subset of Methodology, it seems to me APR practitioners have their own distinctive 'methods' that evolve within the project.
Do APR practitioners need their own Methodology in order to demonstrate the 'intellectual maturity of arts practice as a plausible basis for raising significant theoretical questions and a viable site for undertaking important artistic, cultural and educational inquiries'? Whilst there is a distinctly different set of processes in APR, they do fit the Qualitative Methodology. So why create a new Methodology just for the sake of it?
The difference is not so much the Methodology but rather the recognition within the methodology of the fuzz. The fuzz that is incorporated within the process. That fuzz is not the Methodology, it is (I hold) the Aesthetics of Art Practice Research. The responsibility of the APR practitioner is to acknowledge the use of Qualitative Methodology while recognising, making known and making visible the AESTHETIC contained within the process.
' -- variously emphasises insights revealed by the artist-practitioner, the creative product or the critical process
He continues
-- To fully consider the impact this quest for new knowledge has on the self, others and communities requires a new responsibility on the part of artist-researchers to take up the challenge of theorising their practice… for 'in academe, the artist-researcher cannot hide behind the robe of the mute artist' (Makela and Routarinne 2006b: 25)…
He concludes
--
It is no longer viable for advocates of practice-led research to merely borrow methods from other fields of inquiry for this denies the intellectual maturity of arts practice as a plausible basis for raising significant theoretical questions and a viable site for undertaking important artistic, cultural and educational inquiries.
His position clearly sits with that of a fellow APR practitioner who held that Qualitative Methodology is an insufficient tool, that this does not fit the shape of the actual practice methodology of APR.
Rather than there being a straight forward shape of a Methodology (Qualitative) sitting as a given, one that can be structured and readily followed step by step, there is in my view a convolution within APR. Never the less, after a great deal of unpicking and overviewing, this shape of Qualitative structure becomes visible and indeed creates the structure of the work. Without doubt there is within the structure a great deal of FOLDING in on itself, of internal jumps from one to several points within the form.
Are APR practitioners borrowing methods from other fields as Sullivan states? I don't believe so, I suggest methods are a subset of Methodology, it seems to me APR practitioners have their own distinctive 'methods' that evolve within the project.
Do APR practitioners need their own Methodology in order to demonstrate the 'intellectual maturity of arts practice as a plausible basis for raising significant theoretical questions and a viable site for undertaking important artistic, cultural and educational inquiries'? Whilst there is a distinctly different set of processes in APR, they do fit the Qualitative Methodology. So why create a new Methodology just for the sake of it?
The difference is not so much the Methodology but rather the recognition within the methodology of the fuzz. The fuzz that is incorporated within the process. That fuzz is not the Methodology, it is (I hold) the Aesthetics of Art Practice Research. The responsibility of the APR practitioner is to acknowledge the use of Qualitative Methodology while recognising, making known and making visible the AESTHETIC contained within the process.