Material Inventions: Applying Creative Arts Research 9780755603695, 9781780769868

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Illustrations 1. Barbara Bolt, Neon Blue, 2007, oil on canvas, 180 × 120 cm. Permission: Barbara Bolt 2. Lucas Ihlein, a detail of Sites Mentioned in Bilateral Petersham, 2009, marker pen on drafting film laid over offset printed map. Permission: Lucas Ihlein 3. Keith Armstrong et al., photograph of the dual-site interactive work Intimate Transactions, 2005–8, Bodyshelf interface. Permission: Keith Armstrong 4. Keith Armstrong et al., photograph of interactive digital media work, Knowmore (House of Commons) 2009–10. Permission: Keith Armstrong 5. Keith Armstrong et al., a detail from digital media work, Finitude (Mallee: Time), 2010–12. Permission: Keith Armstrong 6. Jan Davidsz de Heem, La Desserte, 1640, oil on canvas, 1.49 × 3.42 m. Permission: Louvre Museum 7. Henri Matisse, Still Life after Jan Davidsz de Heem’s La Desserte, 1915, oil on canvas, 180.9 × 220.8 cm. Permission: The Museum of Modern Art, New York 8. Deborah Beaumont, printer-machinists Brett and Aaron check the spoilspaper, 2009, photograph. Permission: Deborah Beaumont 9. Deborah Beaumont, sorting the Twofold spoilspapers, photograph 2008. Permission: Deborah Beaumont

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10. Deborah Beaumont, Twofold, 2008, spoilspaper with inserted spoil. Permission: Deborah Beaumont 11. Deborah Beaumont, Twofold, 2008, spoilspaper presented on wall with its cognate (spoil). Permission: Deborah Beaumont 12. Jo-Anne Duggan, Impossible Gaze # 1, 2004–5, chromogenic photograph, 1 × 1.25 m. Permission: Jo-Anne Duggan 13. Jo-Anne Duggan, Impossible Gaze # 2, 2004–5, chromogenic photograph, 1 × 1.25 m. Permission: Jo-Anne Duggan 14. Cameron Rose, John Bates, 2008, video still from the Kew Cottages History Project. Permission: Cameron Rose 15. Cameron Rose, Anna, Anastasios and Arthur, 2011, video still. Permission: Cameron Rose 16. Carole Gray and Gordon Burnett, a framework for a ‘material invention’, flow chart, 2012. Permission: Carole Gray and Gordon Burnett 17. Bernadette Spendley, photographic detail from logbook exemplifying visual and transformative thinking (sculpture practice), 2011. Permission: Bernadette Spendley 18. Carole Gray and Gordon Burnett, Making Sense workshops, 2011, photograph of diverse outcomes from three different interdisciplinary teams. Permission: Carole Gray and Gordon Burnett 19. Oksana Zelenko, Visualising Resilience, 2008, exemplar of digital media prototype interfaces. Permission: Oksana Zelenko 20. Ali Verban, in an other light, 2006, intermedia installation. Permission: Ali Verban 21. RMIT and St Vincent’s Hospital, Designing Sound for Health and Well-being, 2010, photograph by Katharine Dettmann. Permission: RMIT University 22. Keith Armstrong, Natalie Jeremijenko, Leah Barclay, Tony Fry et al., Sydney Botanical Gardens Xtension of Brarangaroo, Investigating The Bat/Human Problem, 2010, Remnant Emergency Artlab, promotion material. Permission: Keith Armstrong

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Acknowledgements We would like to thank Philippa Brewster and Anna Coatman for encouraging us to complete this volume and all our contributors for their input and patience throughout the editorial process. Our sincere thanks are extended to Elizabeth Braithwaite, Gaylene Perry and Emily Potter who were co-conveners of the Material Inventions: Applying Creative Research Conference held at Deakin University in December 2009, the genesis of this book. The conference and this volume were made possible by an Emerging Research Group grant for Deakin Creative awarded by the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University. We also wish to thank the Centre for Memory Imagination and Invention at Deakin University for a small grant that assisted with the production of the manuscript.

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Notes on Contributors Keith Armstrong Queensland University of Technology Keith Armstrong has specialized for 18 years in collaborative, hybrid, new media works with an emphasis on innovative performance forms, site-specific electronic arts, networked interactive installations, alternative interfaces, public arts practices and art-science collaborations. His practice-based research focuses on how scientific and philosophical ecologies can both influence and direct the design and conception of networked, interactive media artworks. Armstrong’s artworks have been shown and profiled extensively both in Australia and overseas and he has been the recipient of numerous grants from the public and private sectors. He was formerly an Australia Council New Media Arts Fellow, a doctoral and postdoctoral New Media Fellow at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and a lead researcher at the ACID Australasian Cooperative Research Centre for Interaction Design. He is currently a part-time senior research fellow at QUT and an actively practising freelance new media artist. His major work, Intimate Transactions, was recently acquired by the ZKM Centre for Art and Media, Germany. Estelle Barrett Deakin University Estelle Barrett is Professor Research and HDR Coordinator in the Institute of Koorie Education at Deakin University. Barrett’s research xi

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interests include body-mind relations, affect and embodiment in aesthetic experience and creative practice as research. Her area of practice is creative writing. Her co-edited book, Barrett, E. and Bolt B. (eds.) Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry, published by I.B.Tauris in London in 2007, combines these interests and her experience in research pedagogy and supervision. Barrett has published reviews and articles in Real Time, Artlink, Text, Social Semiotics, Double Dialogues, The International Journal of Critical Arts and the Journal of Visual Arts Practice as well as at national and international conferences. She has recently published a book entitled Kristeva Reframed: Interpreting Key Thinkers for the Arts, London: I.B.Tauris (2011) that examines the relevance of the work of Julia Kristeva for the creative arts and creative arts research and a co-edited book with Barbara Bolt, Carnal Knowledge: Towards a ‘New Materialism’ Through the Arts, London: I.B.Tauris (2013). From 2007–11 she was an inaugural member of the International Advisory Board: Material Thinking; inaugural member of the international editorial board of the refereed journal Studies in Material Thinking and was a member of the international editorial board and reviewer for the refereed journal Creative Approaches to Research, RMIT Publishing; a member of the international review panel for the research into practice conference and is currently a Research Fellow of the International Centre for Fine Arts Research, Birmingham University. Deborah Beaumont In 2005 Deborah Beaumont coined the term ‘repropriation’: a process where the reproduction is appropriated and itself reproduced. Repropriation recognizes and repeats differences between copies, sometimes minute or imperceptible; it denies the passivity of the reproduction and positions print as continuum. Beaumont’s ‘repropriative’ practice utilizes the detritus of local newspaper production to investigate the reproductions and slippages of print. She has primarily collected and worked with newspaper misprints (spoils) and used newspaper printing plates. These materials are translated into artist’s books, digital, mechanical and manual prints and a tabloid-format artwork Beaumont has termed ‘spoilspaper’. Since 1998 Beaumont has exhibited in 12 solo and 19 group exhibitions including the Fremantle Print Award,

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Barbara Bolt University of Melbourne Barbara Bolt is a practising artist and art theorist and is currently the Associate Director of Research and Research Training at the Victorian College of Arts, at the University of Melbourne. Her publications include two monographs, Art Beyond Representation: The Performative Power of the Image (London: I.B.Tauris, 2004) and Heidegger Reframed: Interpreting Key Thinkers for the Arts (London: I.B.Tauris, 2011) and three co-edited publications: Carnal Knowledge: Towards a ‘New Materialism’ Through the Arts (London: I.B.Tauris, 2013) with Estelle Barrett; Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry (London: I.B.Tauris, 2007) with Estelle Barrett and Sensorium: Aesthetics, Art, Life (2007) with Felicity Coleman, Graham Jones and Ashley Woodward. She maintains a strong dialogue between practice and theory in her work. Publications such as ‘Whose joy?: Giotto, Yves Klein and Neon Blue’ (2011), ‘Unimaginable happenings: material movements in the plane of composition’ (2010), ‘Rhythm and the performative power of the index: lessons from Kathleen Petyarre’s paintings’ (2006), ‘Shedding light for the matter’ (2000) and ‘Im/pulsive practices: painting and the logic of sensation’ (1997) have emerged from this dialogue. In 2008/9 she was part of a BBC World Service/Slade School of Art project, A View from Here, which led to the DVD production Neon Blue. She was a board member on the executive of the Society for Artistic Research (SAR), which produces the Journal of Artistic Research ( JAR), from 2011–13, is an inaugural board member of Studio Research and is a member of the editorial board of Australian Art Education. She exhibits with the Catherine Asquith Gallery in Melbourne. Her website can be found at www.barbbolt.com/.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Libris Awards for Australian artists’ books and The Churchie. Deborah is the recipient of a number of art awards and her artworks have been acquired by Artspace Mackay, Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery and the State Library of Queensland.

Gordon Burnett Gordon Burnett’s practice as a master craftsman includes work in the media of jewellery, site-specific clocks, civic silverware trophies and ceremonial furniture He has explored the redefinition of cultural xiii

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issues using digital technologies, especially while working in Australia in collaboration with Koorie Research Centre, Monash University, Melbourne. He proposed the concept of Making Sense as a vehicle for collaborative research, resulting in a major international conference, Challenging Craft, 2004. In 2007 a new phase of research was initiated through a practice-led project with Carole Gray and other contributors: www.makingsenseresearch.net. Gordon has extensive experience in teaching Three-Dimensional Design. His research contribution to the field of craft, in particular for the exploration of computer-aided design and manufacture, was acknowledged with a readership in 2002. Jo-Anne Duggan The late Jo-Anne Duggan was a photomedia artist who investigated site-specificity, the complexity of the museum and the pasts that collide in the context of viewing art and historical materials. Her works have been widely exhibited in Australia and Italy; they are part of private collections in Australia and Europe and in public collections in London, Honolulu and throughout Australia. Her sumptuous images were created in the spaces of international cultural institutions such as the Galleria degli Uffizi, the Galleria Doria Pamphilj and Mantua’s Palazzo Ducale, where she examined the effects of time and memory on cultural tourism, cultural conservation and cultural identity. Duggan received numerous grants, including three from the Australia Council; in Italy she undertook residencies in Milan, Florence and Prato. Carole Gray Professor Carole Gray’s practice as an artist has involved both individual and collaborative work exploring context-specific artwork using contemporary technologies and materials. Recent work includes a series of sculptural lights/light sculptures (www.shadowandlights.org). Her long-standing interest is in experiential learning in Art and Design education, developing research student education and research supervision since 1988. The core of this pedagogic work concerns encouraging creative and visual approaches to enquiry and its intimate relationship to practice. This experience resulted in a co-authored book with Julian Malins, Visualizing Research: A Guide to the Research Process in Art and Design (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). She is a contributor to research development at various UK art and design institutions and has worked

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Bree Hadley Queensland University of Technology Dr Bree Hadley is Senior Lecturer in Performance Studies at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. Her research investigates the construction of identity in contemporary performance, concentrating on the way artists marked by disability, race or gender mobilize images, motifs and media from the public sphere to subvert stereotypes. She has a particular interest in practices that position spectators as co-performers, and the ethics, politics and efficacies of such co-performances. Hadley’s writings in this area have appeared in a range of journals including Performance Research, About Performance, Australasian Drama Studies, Brolga: An Australian Journal About Dance, Liminalities, Scope Journal of Film & TV Studies, M/C Media and Culture Journal, and the Asia Pacific Journal of Arts and Cultural Management. She is also currently President of the Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies (ADSA) and a Director of Performance Studies international (PSi).

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internationally in Europe, New Zealand, Mexico, the USA and South Africa. She is a member and a strategic reviewer of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Peer Review College.

Jillian Hamilton Queensland University of Technology Professor Jillian Hamilton is located in Art and Design, the Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology (QUT). She supervises theoretical postgraduate studies in art history and design analysis, as well as practice-led PhD projects in the fields of intermedia art, tangible media, visual design, interaction design, 3D animation and experimental interactive film. She has published on several aspects of practice-led research, including disciplinary distinctions, methodologies, research reporting and the exegesis. Her practice-led research is in the field of locative media and related technologies, and the topics of her theoretical writings include media arts, sculpture, interaction design, interdisciplinary practices and design for social benefit. She was the editor of Intimate Transactions: Art, Exhibition and Interaction within Distributed Network Environments (Brisbane: ACID, 2006), which brought together writing by interdisciplinary creative practice xv

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researchers from several arts and design disciplines. She currently leads an Office of Learning and Teaching-funded research project entitled Building Distributed Leadership for Effective Supervision of Creative Practice Higher Research Degrees. Lucas Ihlein University of Wollongong Lucas Ihlein is an artist who works with performances, expanded cinema events, re-enactments, lithographic prints, writing, public lectures and blogs. He often works collaboratively with the artist groups Big Fag Press, SquatSpace and the Teaching and Learning Cinema. Ihlein’s PhD was completed in 2009 at Deakin University. Entitled ‘Framing Everyday Experience: Blogging as Art’, it won the 2011 Alfred Deakin Medal for Best Doctoral Thesis. Ihlein is a lecturer in Media Arts at the University of Wollongong. Valerie Ingham Charles Sturt University Valerie Ingham is a senior lecturer in Emergency Management within the Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security at Charles Sturt University, based on the Canberra campus. She has been at Charles Sturt University since 2005. Her PhD examined the somatic and aesthetic awareness of incident controllers in time-pressured decision making. She is a founding member of the Bangladesh Australia Disaster Research Group and her research interests include perceptions of risk and decision making, community resilience, disaster recovery and the tertiary education of emergency managers and fire investigators. Valerie has extensive experience in the design, development and delivery of programmes in the disciplines of emergency management, fire services and adult education. Luke Jaaniste Luke Jaaniste is a sonic and visual artist, writer and researcher, currently based in Brisbane. As an artist, he explores embodied experience of ambient space, through sound- and visual-based projects and events. He works as an individual practitioner and as a member of several ongoing collaborations. This includes co-directing Super Critical Mass, a participatory sound arts project that has travelled to cities across

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Australia, the UK and the USA. He is also a collaborator with Loud and Soft, the BodySound Collective and Black Box Four. As a visual artist, he has exhibited installations, still and moving images and temporary public art. In 2006, he completed a practice-led PhD exploring ambient modes of experience at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Creative Industries. After this, he worked as a researcher on issues of arts, innovation, research methods and cultural policy at QUT. This included a fellowship at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries (CCI) from 2010 to 2012, followed by a post at Brisbane City Council working on a new creative city policy in 2012. During his time at QUT, he also taught postgraduate research methods units and supervised practice-led research higher degrees across the broad gamut of creative industries disciplines in arts, design and media. Current writing projects are focused around the conditions of living and liveliness, related to arts, educational, community, family and other domains of human practice. Margaret Mayhew La Trobe University Margaret Mayhew is a casual academic, blogger, textile artist and performer living in Melbourne. She holds a PhD in gender and cultural studies from the University of Sydney as well as degrees in science, visual arts and art history. Margaret has lectured on practice-based research at UNSW College of Fine Arts and published research with the UK Drawing Research Network in 2008. She has practised and exhibited in drawing, painting and performance art since 1996 at venues including VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery in Melbourne (2010), as well as the Performance Space and Alaska Projects in Sydney (2012). Since completing her PhD, Margaret has worked and taught in multidisciplinary research with culturally and linguistically diverse communities, and is currently teaching in gender, sexuality and diversity studies at La Trobe University. Cameron Rose Cameron Rose is a media artist, filmmaker and lecturer based in Melbourne, Australia. His work includes video and multimedia production for the Kew Cottages History Project (2008) which explored the history of one of Australia’s oldest institutions for people with an intellectual

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disability; the What Next? (2011) series of documentaries that tell the story of elderly carers of children with an intellectual disability and the Hive Project, an experiment in interactive visual anthropology exhibited at the Frankston Arts Centre in 2011. Cameron’s research investigates how styles and modes of media production influence representation and communication of identity and society. Iris van der Tuin Utrecht University, the Netherlands Iris van der Tuin is Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and Philosophy of Science at the Department of Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Her recent book is New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies, co-authored with Rick Dolphijn (Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press, 2012). Iris publishes on feminist epistemology and the philosophy of the humanities. Her work on new feminist materialism has appeared in Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Australian Feminist Studies, the European Journal of Women’s Studies and the Women’s Studies International Forum. Scott Welsh Victoria University Scott Welsh is a poet and playwright. His plays have been performed in Fringe festivals, by La Mama theatre and on ABC Radio National. He has had a radio documentary about a long poem, ‘The No-Teeth People’, broadcast on ABC Radio National and has had various plays presented at La Mama theatre including The Biography of a Battler (Explorations season 2009, Mental Health Week 2011) and Barcode 30!!7 307 (2002–3), which is an exploration of domestic violence. He has presented papers at various national and international conferences exploring his playwriting practice and is currently studying for a PhD in drama education at Victoria University.

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Introduction: Extending the Field: Invention, Application and Innovation in Creative Arts Enquiry Estelle Barrett

In a previous publication on creative arts research (Barrett and Bolt, 2007), we suggested that there was a need to shift the focus of critical discourse that accompanies creative arts research away from valorization and criticism to examining studio enquiry as a process and also to evaluating the completed work within the context of the research question or problem rather than as an exhibition artefact. This approach has contributed to understandings of how the methodologies of artistic research have the capacity to produce new knowledge and to shift understandings of the way in which knowledge emerges and functions. However, despite the flourishing of literature in the field – including a number of highly regarded refereed journals dedicated to disseminating the methods and outcomes of artistic research, the extension of artistic research programmes in universities and, finally, the establishment of formal research assessment exercises (Excellence Research Australia, ERA; Hong Kong Research Assessment Exercise, RAE; British Research Assessment Exercise, RAE now REF; New Zealand’s Performance Based Research Funding, PBRF) which 1

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demonstrate increasing international recognition of the value of artistic research as an end in itself – the need remains to clarify and delineate the distinguishing features of this relatively new research paradigm, and to demonstrate and articulate more clearly its potential for innovation and broader interdisciplinary, industry and community applications. The appropriate method of doing this seems, as before, to be through artistic researchers’ own accounts of the specific processes and methodologies that have resulted in uptake and impact of the inventions and innovations of their research both within and beyond the field of creative arts. We commenced this task by convening the conference Material Inventions: Applying Creative Research, held at Deakin University on 30 November–1 December 2009. This volume is largely made up of papers presented at the conference from practitioners and academics of disciplines including fine art, digital media, performance, film, photography and new hybrid forms of art, and subsequent reflections upon the trajectory taken by the contributors’ research and research outcomes in the ensuing four years. A number of additional contributions by key scholars and practitioner-researchers in the field have been included to extend the scope and contextualization of the ideas and outcomes of the case studies presented. The following questions were posed as part of the brief for contributors:

r What are the inventions of creative arts research? r What are the interdisciplinary applications of practice-led research methodologies and outcomes?

r In what ways can the methods and outcomes of practice-asresearch benefit the creative and other industries?

r How can the impact of creative practice as research be measured and more clearly articulated? What has emerged through responses to these questions is a clear indication of the increasing recognition and application of artistic research and its innovations across diverse fields including science, medicine, social, environmental and health sciences and education. Moreover, and often in surprising and unpredictable ways, the inventions and innovations of creative arts researchers are being taken up beyond the research arena in diverse community and industry settings – in the 2

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INTRODUCTION

case of projects presented here, for example, in firefighting, computer interfacing and design, caring for the aged, public relations, local history-making, museology and a range of therapeutic settings. In a chapter from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions entitled ‘Revolutions as changes of world view’, Thomas Kuhn observes: ‘Led by a new paradigm scientists adopt new instruments and look in new places’ (Kuhn 1970: 111). After almost two decades in which we have seen the ‘coming-of-age’ of creative arts research in terms of its uptake and impact, it is timely to lay claim to its status as a new paradigm or ‘successor science’.

Creative Arts Research: A ‘Successor Science’ In order to claim the status of ‘successor science’ we must first articulate what is meant by the term and outline criteria that may allow us to adopt it in relation to creative arts research. In Practice as Research, we identified several distinguishing features of creative arts research: the subjective and situated approach of artistic research that draws not only on established knowledge, but tacit and intuitive processes; the experiential and emergent nature of its methodologies that result in a degree of unpredictability in terms of outcomes and finally, the intrinsically interdisciplinary dimension of this mode of research that is derived from its material and social relationality (Barrett and Bolt 2007: 7). As evidenced in the ensuing chapters, a number of additional features or dominant tendencies can be attributed to creative arts research approaches. These include: attention focusing and the notion of embodied, empathetic or what I call ‘attached’ looking as opposed to the scientific mode of distanced observation; processes that do not involve naming of phenomena, but an expansion of visual, verbal and other forms of language, thereby allowing new objects of thought to emerge through cycles of making and reflection; a recognition of the generative potential of the ambiguity and indeterminacy of the aesthetic object and the necessity for ongoing decoding, analysis and translation and, finally, the acknowledgement that instruments and objects of research are not passive, but emerge as co-producers of the research – in the case of human subjects, this results in collaborative and, in the case of audiences, participatory approaches that may not be predetermined at the outset of the research. 3

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In order to frame the essays in this book and provide further substantiation for our assertion that creative arts research constitutes a distinct paradigm, I would like to consider two key terms in research parlance, ‘objectivity’ and ‘data’, through the lens of Eliott W. Eisner’s ‘The promise and perils of alternative forms of data representation’ (1997) and Donna Haraway’s seminal essay ‘Situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective’ (1988).

The Limits of Representation: Towards a New Conception of ‘Data’ Philosophers of science have long asserted that science’s use of propositional statements and numbers to represent data is reductive and limits what can be said about phenomena. Moreover, it is clear that these representations are not exclusive agents of meaning. Eisner suggests that alternative forms of data representation can overcome the limitations of science and points to artworks as articulations of what the numerical and the propositional cannot tell us. He suggests that art objects have the capacity to go beyond propositional limits by:

r giving rise to multiple perspectives; r creating productive ambiguity; r engendering empathetic participation and giving access to the emotional lives of others;

r increasing the number of questions that can be asked about the phenomena being presented;

r presenting a sense of particularity that the abstraction of number and generalized laws cannot contain;

r articulating the ways in which the transformation of the personal (what is inside of consciousness) and the private to the public sphere can occur. (Eisner 1997: 4) These features provide a useful basis for preliminary discussion of artistic research outcomes (the artefacts) and indeed mirror what is made evident in the account of artistic research projects to follow. However, Eisner’s understanding of artistic products as ‘data’ and as ‘representations’ reflects a tendency in creative arts research writing that fails to break free of the traditional paradigm or take us far enough 4

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towards understanding what is specifically generative about the creative arts research process itself and the complex nature of the artefacts that it produces. I would like to examine why this is so and, through this examination, attempt to extend Eisner’s approach to interpretation. The Shorter Oxford Dictionary of Historical Principles defines ‘data’ as, ‘a thing given or granted; something known or assumed as fact and made the basis of reasoning or calculation’ (Onions 1978: 491). For Eisner, films, drawing, theatre and other artefacts are representations that illuminate rather than obscure the message or phenomena. The artworks, then, are symbols allowing us to name certain ideas or objects that the enquiry has permitted us to observe. Underlying this view is the idea that language can fully capture the referent or stand in for it; that knowledge is static and phenomena are pre-existing, immutable and waiting to be revealed or discovered. By objectifying the artwork as ‘data’, Eisner’s approach adheres to science’s privileging of reason or rationality and the idea that objects are passive and remain external to a transcendent consciousness. For example, in his interpretation of the film Dead Poets Society, he suggests that despite being fictional, the film captures or reveals aspects of what actually occurs in real schools similar to the one depicted. Viewers are then able to access the new insights and knowledge that have been harnessed by the film and integrate this into rational consciousness. In this context, knowledge is already there, waiting to be captured through the technical apparatus and the language of film. This does not take us away from the scientific notion of objective observation and naming.

Knowledge as Action Interaction/Intra-action In order to demonstrate that artistic research reconfigures our understandings of how knowledge is produced, we need to go beyond this view of language and knowledge production. Michael Polanyi (1958) and Ian Sutherland and Sophia Krys Acord (2007) discuss the way in which art gives rise to experiential knowledge. Praxical knowledge is not a priori, there to be discovered, but is knowledge as action or ‘knowing’ that emerges from both thought and biological or sensory interaction or, as I have previously noted, from aesthetic experience (Barrett 2007: 2). As Haraway (1988) and Ross Gibson 5

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(2010) have explained, this is often overlooked, in more traditional research approaches. One of the strengths of artistic research is its capacity to uncover or reveal the aesthetic dimension of all forms of discovery and this is certainly borne out, for example, by the accounts of Keith Armstrong and Valerie Ingham (Chapters 3 and 4 respectively). Pre-existing knowledge does not merely emerge from objects to be discovered by scientists, but scientists work to elicit this knowledge through social interaction. Artists reveal it through material interaction (aesthetic experience) and audience interaction (Gibson 2010: 8). The material/aesthetic dimension articulates subjective and sensory processes as inextricable aspects of discovery. Knowing through action involves the application of personal knowledge, sensation and tacit and intuitive know-how in order to bring about unexpected changes to the perceived world.

Creative Arts Practice as Expansion of Language The creation of artworks involves being in the world and using tools or instruments (including conceptual ones) to bring about changes in the world; this gives rise to semiotic activity – a movement between and across sensation (our biological responses), the materials of making and thought. This intra-action produces changes not only to the material environment and iterative adjustments to the process of making, but also to language itself. These changes are, in turn, instantiated in language and accessed via the structure of the work or what I call the aesthetic image, a re-configuration of language that produces unexpected and surprising transformations in consciousness and also allows these to be articulated and transferred to the viewer or audience of the work. The notion of artistic research acting not only as a mode or process of enquiry, but also as a mode of knowing in action and knowledge transfer is clearly articulated in most of the research projects examined in this volume – most notably in Lucas Ihlein’s account of blogging as art (Chapter 2), Valerie Ingham’s account of aesthetic awareness in firefighting (Chapter 4) and Cameron Rose’s reflection on poetic documentary filmmaking (Chapter 9). Artistic research can be understood as a ‘successor science’ in that, unlike science, it does not rely on naming objects through established codes of language, formulae and other forms of representation, but is 6

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rather an emergent production that brings into being new knowledge and altered consciousness through an expansion of language. Reflection during the making of the work and the writing of the exegesis or research paper allows the practitioner-researcher to synthesize and articulate how the shift in language has occurred; and, through subsequent contextual and comparative analysis, to demonstrate how the work takes us beyond what is already known. In artistic research, movement is therefore from the particular/private to the general/public domain. Knowledge transfer and testing against what is already known occurs first through interaction/intra-action in the making of the artwork and, subsequently, through interaction/intra-action engendered by viewing or experiencing it. In Chapter 13, Iris van der Tuin draws on the work of Karen Barad (2007) to explicate the notion of the quantum leap as a feature of the creative process and the idea of intra-action as material semiotic process. In creative arts research, cycles of interaction/intraaction and reflection are shown to underpin the emergence of new insights and knowledge made possible through an alteration of language itself.1

Partial Objectivity If the field of creative arts research is to be validated as a new paradigm or successor science, criteria for understanding what might constitute ‘successor science’ must also be articulated. I would like to turn now to Donna Haraway’s critique of scientific objectivity, her notion of ‘partial objectivity’ and her view of what constitutes a ‘successor science’ in order to draw out some of these features or criteria. Haraway suggests that science has become a game of rhetoric and that the ideological doctrine of scientific method distracts attention from what scientists actually do or ought to do, which is, she tells us, getting to know the world effectively by practising the sciences (Haraway 1988: 576–577). Her description of what constitutes a successor science bears an uncanny resemblance to creative arts research. As such, it provides both a rationale and the criteria for putting forward our claim, as well an analytical framework for examining, decoding and translating significant aspects of methodologies and outcomes that operate as modes of knowledge production. Underlying Haraway’s notion of ‘successor science’ is the recognition that pure objectivity is 7

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impossible. She explains that, because knowledge claims emerge from subjective and situated positions, knowledge(s) are therefore always partial and provisional. Moreover, the value of situated knowledge is its potential to lead to a larger vision through its capacity to produce unexpected webs of connections: ‘We do not seek partiality for its own sake, but for the sake of the connections and unexpected openings situated knowledges make possible’ (Haraway 1988: 584). Haraway’s account resonates with many of the case studies of creative arts research presented here, in which inventions of creative research are shown to lead to unexpected collaborative inventions and applications

Ethics and Accountability in Research Haraway’s critique of the traditional notion of objectivity turns on two ways in which scientific objectivity is conventionally understood. Her first objection is to the idea that personal biases, emotional involvement and vested interest can be eliminated from the research process. Objectivity is also often linked to the need for scientific measurement that can be tested independently and in isolation from the scientistresearcher, who puts forward propositions and laws. Underlying this is the assumption of the transcendence of consciousness or rational thought. In this paradigm, subject and object are separated by an inside/outside divide. This leads to ‘the view from nowhere’ (Haraway 1988: 581). Her second objection is related to science’s attempts to overcome relativism within the context of post-modernism and socialconstructionist accounts of science. These discourses posit science as just one ‘myth’ or construction amongst many. To counter this, contemporary discourses in science claim objectivity on the basis of a technological and technocratic capacity to observe from multiple perspectives; this is the view from everywhere which amounts to the same strategy that claims a vision from nowhere (Haraway 1988: 584). In this sense, scientific objectivity amounts to disembodied vision, the ‘god trick’ that confers uneven power and privilege as well as immunity from having to locate and be accountable for knowledge claims. Haraway uses the term ‘primate vision’ to describe the alternative approach to looking or observation. Primate vision is embodied vision that allows us to go beyond fixed appearances, which are only the 8

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end products of observation. It invites us to investigate the various apparatuses of visual production including prosthetic technologies, tools, materials and language itself, interfaced with our biological eyes and brains (Haraway 1988: 588). Here, Haraway points to the implication of environments and technologies as agents in the research process and posits a self-reflexive and ethical mode of looking. The idea of an alternative ethical mode of observation is a recurrent theme emerging from many of the essays to follow – most notably those of Bree Hadley (Chapter 8) and Margaret Mayhew (Chapter 10). The crucial role of participants or subjects of research and audiences as coproducers of knowledge that continues to unfold and emerge beyond the immediate research context is also apparent in many of the accounts to follow. Drawing on Haraway, we have identified the features of what she calls a ‘successor science’ and suggest that these mirror creative arts practice as a mode of research and help to distinguish it as an alternative paradigm. This mode of knowledge production acknowledges the particular, the subjective and the personal as important aspects of enquiry; it articulates the notion of ethical or embodied forms of observation – ways of looking and being accountable for knowledge claims that do not deny the agency of the objects of research – in particular human participants; it is a mode that replaces traditional notions of objectivity with the idea of situated knowledge and partial objectivity; finally it asserts the potential of situated and partial knowledge for forging webs of connections – identifying for whom, how and where else knowledge can be put to use. We conclude (after Haraway) that if it is to fulfil the promise of providing transforming and more enabling accounts of the world, this mode of production cannot be exempt from critical re-examination, decoding, deconstruction and translation. We acknowledge that translation, too, is always partial and incomplete. However, it provides a springboard for harnessing the indeterminacy that characterizes aesthetic research. Contributors to this book have reflected, analyzed and explored the generative potential for invention of these aspects of their research and, in doing so, have articulated more clearly the impact of their work; that is to say, they have shown how webs of connections have been forged resulting in innovative application and extension of knowledge within and beyond their fields of creative arts.

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Overview of Chapters Within the context of the need for creative arts researchers to demonstrate how their art practice is research and to articulate research outcomes in a statement required by formal assessment exercises such as the Excellence Research Australia (ERA), Bolt’s account in the first chapter is heuristic. With illustration from her own painting research, she provides both a conceptualization of the research process and a clear approach to articulating the impact, innovation and application of her own practice as research. Bolt tells us that the key to illuminating the achievements of an artistic research project is to distinguish between the artwork (the artefact) and the work of art, or the work that art does. She poses key questions that need to be answered in order to achieve this task and acknowledges that the nature of this articulation is necessarily retrospective. This is the case not only because understandings of the research process and outcomes are often ‘incoherent and unstable’ until adequate reflection, decoding and translation have illuminated them, but also because (as for all research) uptake and application proceed over time and as a result of the degree to which the work has been disseminated to a wider audience. Bolt’s essay also provides a framework for reading the accounts that follow in this volume, though it must be said that contributors repeatedly demonstrate that individual projects are necessarily unique and carry the element of unpredictability that characterizes this mode of enquiry and the often surprising outcomes it produces. The unfolding of these accounts has significantly extended our own understanding of how the methodologies and outcomes as well as the inventions of creative arts research emerge and are taken up leading to innovations beyond the field. The contribution made in these accounts strengthens our assertion that creative arts constitutes a new paradigm of research. In Chapter 2, Lucas Ihlein’s research reveals how blogging can be understood as a new way of doing art. This research was initially motivated by the fact that only fragmentary and incomplete archival documentation survives of notable moments in the history of ephemeral avant-garde art practices such as conceptual art, performance art, Happenings, Fluxus events and Expanded Cinema. Ihlein’s objective was to find a method of extending practice in this genre by

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producing art that would also constitute an archive of its own processes, permitting the immediacy of the events to be accessed by historians in the future. The project involved remaining within the confines of his own suburb, Petersham, for several months and maintaining a blog of everyday activities and events including his own attempt to walk the officially-mapped borders of the suburb. The blog becomes an instrument that defamiliarizes the minutiae of everyday life and consequently focuses attention upon them. This leads to seeing with ‘fresh’ eyes and a deepening relationship of attachment between subject and researcher. A recording of the experiences of walking the borders of Petersham and chance encounters along the way results in an experiential and empathetic remapping of the suburb revealing ‘real’, rather than official, representations of the place. Ihlein’s process and one of its many outcomes, the alternative map of Petersham, articulates a new way of doing ethnography and social research. Though not initially planned or predicted, the blog emerges not just as a recording tool, but also as a form of doing action research. Ihlein’s account resonates with many of the chapters in this volume that reveal the capacity for creative arts research to produce new instruments of vision and new ways of looking. Significantly, this feature is repeatedly demonstrated across the diverse case studies presented, irrespective of variations in artistic disciplines (digital media, performance, drawing, photography, film) and the divergent approaches employed. The account of the impact and application of Keith Armstrong’s research in Chapter 3 is largely retrospective and indicative of the emergent and often unpredictable implications of artistic research beyond the context of production and exhibition. His research has been taken up in areas of environmental and health sciences, conservation, engineering, architecture and new communication and biofeedback technologies. Armstrong’s artistic research practice involves the development of large-scale experimental forms of human computer interfaces that avoid the traditional mouse and keyboard in order to focus on body sensitization, perceptive process, space and immaterial form. A major earlier production, Intimate Transactions (2005–8), is an interactive work that involves resituating audiences as performers who engage with ecological issues through their interactions with both the artwork and other participants. The practice-led research, which investigated

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cooperation and interaction at a distance via digital computer interface, was able to focus on the effects of the interaction of participants on each other and the physical environment across a computer network, demonstrating how interaction is embodied and its actual effects on an environment. The two basic premises of the research are, firstly, that experiential and collective access to problems permits different ways of framing and re-imagining them and, secondly, that change comes from experiential knowledge. Eco-philosophical concerns underpin a strong ethical focus in Armstrong’s research, a focus that recurs across many of the case studies that follow. Apart from outlining the specific technical and conceptual inventions and innovations of this research, Armstrong’s account demonstrates how methodologies and illuminations that emerged inadvertently in earlier projects were later applied in more deliberate and directed interdisciplinary and collaborative practices where, for example, art audiences at public exhibitions ‘trial’ experimental processes; and subjects of the research are involved co-researchers rather than passive objects of study. The contribution of his early work can be understood as the invention of a new collaborative method of doing research that can and has been applied across a wide range of disciplines as well as in community and industry settings. In Chapter 4, Valerie Ingham, who lectures in Emergency Management at Charles Sturt University and is also a practising artist, reflects on her PhD research project, which examines the broader significance and application of how images function and how aesthetic awareness informs human behaviour – in particular, the capacity to innovate. This project is not led by creative arts practice but is an application of an understanding of how aesthetic experience engenders ways of knowing. Ingham’s research investigates the role of aesthetic awareness in the time-pressured making of emergency workers such as firefighters. Her work indicates that this form of awareness is crucial to decisionmaking and is the source of transgression from which innovative practice emerges. Her experience as an artist led her to connect two previously disparate fields in developing her research question: ‘What is the relationship between risk perception, decision making and aesthetic and somatic forms of awareness in Incident Controllers on the fire ground?’ Ingham suggests that there are some parallels between the

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experience of firefighting and that of art practice. An objective of her research was to capture the multimodal and holistic essence of the fire scene in its entirety. Understandings of arts-based practice emphasizing the artist as both practitioner and researcher led to the development of her multimodal research method, which involved interviewing firefighters to examine their responses and decision making during critical incidents. On the basis of collected data from incidents, Ingham has developed the theory of multimodal decision making that can be applied in broader professional, community and interdisciplinary research contexts. Deborah Beaumont’s research reveals how collaboration and openness to creative arts researchers by the broader community has the potential for innovation both within her artistic discipline and beyond. Her account in Chapter 5 elucidates how knowledge is made through a close engagement with materials, personnel and a site from the newspaper industry. The term ‘repropriation’ is coined to indicate a working methodology by which the index of a reproduction is appropriated and reproduced. By using the newspaper printing press as a method of production and appropriating rejected newsprint copy, Beaumont invents a new art form or technique of printmaking, producing what she calls ‘spoilspapers’ – the first artworks to employ the index of newspaper printing and the tabloid format within their structure. Both the making or research process and the artworks produced lead to rich and unexpected illuminations. Firstly, the making of the spoilspapers reveals how technologies and materials have their own agency and, further, how the slippages of newspaper production challenge the idea of the press or any form of mimesis or repetition predicated upon producing exact reproductions. The engagement with these technologies reveals that in repetition, change is not always immediately evident and that subtle and imperceptible differences exist in objects and concepts that are assumed to be similar or identical. Also made evident through this research is an understanding that knowledge is held within the materials and processes of making. Waste material, failed messages, errata – or what is sometimes referred to as ‘noise’ – is reconfigured as the ground and potential for innovation. By utilizing newspaper printing plates from an outdated mode of newspaper production, the making of her artworks preserves a record of the time, place and technologies of local newspaper production and

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becomes an historical record of the technologies of local newspaper printing. Close and personal or embodied relationship as opposed to distanced observation and the value of participatory involvement is again shown to be a critical aspect of this mode of research. Jo-Anne Duggan’s PhD research, outlined in Chapter 6, was carried out through site-specific photographic practice conducted in the interiors of Florence’s Palazzo Pitti. The aim of the research is to capture the elusive and transient detail of ephemeral experience in the museum environment. It draws attention to the way in which viewing is framed and the gaze is structured. Duggan’s process of imagemaking captures the multi-sensorial ambience of viewing in these locations by freezing them, so that what would normally be fleetingly or unconsciously seen becomes conscious or foregrounded. The research is motivated by a sense that the visually saturated environment of the Italian museum precludes contemplation of the objects of sight. Her images are intended to engender ‘slow’ viewing as opposed to a vertiginous consumption of whatever hits the gaze. This research casts light not only on the curatorial practices of the museum, but also on the nature of viewing in contemporary society where one is endlessly bombarded by images produced for rapid consumption. Like many of the other case studies in this volume, it posits a different approach to observation and looking both in research and other settings. Duggan’s practice is concerned with things that are usually missed; by highlighting these, a new understanding and awareness is made possible. It is a method that suggests that focusing on an aspect of research that is not central casts light on the original object or idea. As an instrument of observation, this produces similar effects to the attention-focusing techniques described by Lucas Ihlein in Chapter 2. As such, it may be adapted and applied across a range of research disciplines. In Chapter 7, Scott Welsh examines how theatre can go beyond entertainment to reveal and transfer knowledge that has not hitherto been articulated, because it has remained unconscious and or has been repressed. He likens theatre practice and his particular approach to scriptwriting – or what he calls ‘real fiction’ – to the process of psychoanalysis. However, Welsh’s research is not concerned with therapy, but focuses on the potential of the theatrical experience to generate new knowledge and understanding through sensitivity to an

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alternative non-discursive dimension of language articulated by the intonations and rhythms of the voices of performers. This extends artist Paul Klee’s notion of ‘making the invisible visible’ to the idea that theatre, or certain forms of theatricality, can ‘speak the unspeakable’. This resonates with Bree Hadley’s elaboration of the dynamics of spectatorship and identificatory processes in Chapter 8 and Cameron Rose’s discussion of the power of documentary in Chapter 9. Welsh’s account also demonstrates how research in this discipline reflects many of the features that I have suggested distinguish artistic research as a new paradigm: its emergent, unpredictable and subjective dimensions; the acknowledgement of the value of collaborative and participatory research where the subjects of research emerge as co-researchers and, finally, the application of an alternative, embodied, empathetic and ethical mode of observation. However, perhaps the most notable aspect of this case study is its illumination of the delicate balance that exists between the desire for discovery and an ethics of practice in research. Provoking debate with regard to this – not only within artistic disciplines, but also across the general arena of research – has generative potential. Following a similar theme, Bree Hadley’s research The Ex/centric Fixations Project, discussed in Chapter 8, investigates the way spectators perceive and interpret human experiences of difference, marginalization and discrimination as depicted onstage. Specifically, it examines how post-modern performance-writing strategies, conveyed by the performing bodies of artists with disabilities, affect spectators’ perceptions and interpretation of difference. The project is concerned with the way artists with disabilities use stereotypic ideas and images drawn from the public sphere to stage public interventions in an attempt to deconstruct the way their identities are defined. These interventions are also intended to draw spectators’ attention to their own complicity in constructing the disabled body as ‘Other’. This research highlights the dynamics of spectatorship within the context of spectators becoming co-performers or co-authors/producers in performance practice. In doing so it illuminates the complex identificatory processes that occur between performers and audiences. Hadley’s research also points towards the invention of a new kind of theatricality or an expansion of the language of theatre. In this regard, her account has correspondences with Scott Welsh’s notion of ‘real fiction’.

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Apart from reflecting the often participatory feature of practiceled research already alluded to in this introduction and other essays, Hadley’s research contributes to debates about whether live interactive encounters with the body in performance are a privileged site for producing ethical face-to-face engagements with the ‘Other’. It also raises the question of whether live performance practices and strategies risk perpetuating, rather than challenging, stereotypic constructions of the other. Ethical issues that emerge in relation to modes of observation raised by this research, that of Scott Welsh in the previous chapter and Cameron Rose’s reflections in Chapter 9, apply to various modes of observation involving human subjects in both science and social science research. Social scientists and anthropologists acknowledge the need for discovering alternative approaches to observe, document and describe experience. Cameron Rose’s research, discussed in Chapter 9, outlines how this can be achieved, adapted and applied in broader research settings using creative documentary filmmaking as a research method. The aim of Rose’s Kew Cottages History Project was to create a multimedia installation that told the stories of residents who were unable to communicate their experiences verbally. The resulting exhibition consisted of five documentaries and an historical video montage representing people with an intellectual disability and their ageing carers. Rose’s account provides insights into the way the poetic or aesthetic image operates as ‘data’ in the ways that I have already discussed in this introduction. The project involved developing a mode of observation that avoided treating subjects of the research as objects to be scientifically analysed; this permits self-representation by those being observed and acknowledges the role of subjects of the research as co-producers of its outcomes. Using the mode of poetic documentary, the research discovers techniques of creating experiential, and hence empathetic, viewing by structuring the gaze to reduce voyeurism and increase empathy; these techniques can be applied, in various forms, to social research to permit deeper understandings of the subjects of enquiry. Rose’s poetic approach to documentary filmmaking was identified by other organizations as an appropriate vehicle for conveying sensitive subject matter. The research had almost immediate impact and uptake. Shortly after completing the Kew Cottages History Project, Rose was

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approached by Commonwealth Respite and Carelink Centre to produce a series of documentaries focusing on the lives of ageing carers whose children would soon go into community housing or state care. In Chapter 10, Margaret Mayhew presents an account of her research in life-drawing and how these findings have influenced subsequent interdisciplinary research. Her project extends understanding of practice in her own discipline by challenging long-held preconceptions of the relationship between artist and model. It also demonstrates how understandings derived from studio drawing practice can be applied and are relevant beyond the creative arts arena. Mayhew draws on her experiences of modelling and drawing, as well as those of other life-drawing practitioners, to question traditional assumptions pervading the practice of life-drawing and the discourses that surround the artist-model relationship. In doing so she demonstrates the gap between actual experience and institutional accounts of experience. The analysis of life-drawing in this essay uncovers the dynamics of spectatorship; it constitutes a conceptual framework for understanding practices of observation and a methodology for developing different modes of observation in other research settings such as cross-cultural sites of ethnographic fieldwork. Practices of looking linked to the practice of mark-making or drawing are shown to be performative rather than mimetic and therefore have the capacity to operate as a praxis or mode of immersive, complex, open-ended research. Mayhew also uses life-drawing as a vehicle for examining how looking and marking can promote reflexivity across multiple sites of social science research. Her central concern is to investigate possibilities of developing modes of observation that involve a more participatory and collaborative engagement with the subjects of research. The account extends a common theme of many of the essays in this volume. Mayhew’s research not only challenges conventional understandings of spectatorship, but suggests that a different kind of looking produces a different kind of knowledge and a different relationship to the object of research. This has been borne out in Mayhew’s subsequent experience in academic research settings. Making Sense, a research programme developed by Carole Gray and Colin Burnett, is the central focus of Chapter 11. The programme aimed to examine ways of knowing generated through collaborative practice and reflection in craft. It was first proposed by Gordon Burnett

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in 2000 as a vehicle for collaborative research, and was followed by a new phase in 2007 that investigated experiences of making and their value as a form of knowing through reflective and active method. The approach that they adopt and its 11 methods, one of which is described as Art as Random Process (ARP), carry all the hallmarks we have identified as features of creative arts research, including: collaborative and participatory approaches; a recognition of the subjective, unpredictable and emergent dimension of creative arts processes which necessitate cycles of making, reflection and analysis and, finally, a recognition of the generative potential of the ambiguity and indeterminacy of the aesthetic object or products of creative arts enquiry. In 2009, Burnett and Gray applied findings from earlier phases in the project to investigate the effects of collaborative art-making on ‘wellbeing’ and this was followed by a further collaborative research project in the area of ‘ageing well’. This chapter outlines the approach developed by Gray and Burnett and includes a catalogue of methods or a programme for enquiry, illustrated by their application in the Making Sense project. It concludes with seven principles drawn from their findings as well as suggestions for how the Making Sense methodology might have further application. For example, techniques developed in the programme may be useful for engendering innovative entrepreneurial practices and inform programmes that aim to create healthy workplaces. Gray and Burnett have found that artistic practice can be used as a kind of agitator to promote innovative thinking. Their notion of artworks as ‘epistemic objects’ has led them to consider how art practices might be applied in the development of prototypes in industry and manufacturing. A key implication of their findings is the importance of extending artistic research into the broader community and other arenas of research. In Chapter 12, Jillian Hamilton and Luke Jaaniste present a metadiscourse on creative arts research with illustration drawn from a number of case studies of successful doctoral research projects conducted at Queensland University of Technology in the areas of interactive digital design, intermedia installation and interactive digital sound practices. The chapter outlines the authors’ view that creative arts research is not a unified field and that an understanding of different categories and modalities of artistic research enables us to focus more specifically on the important distinctions between disciplinary research objectives,

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methodologies, processes and outcomes. Whilst they do not categorize research approaches in strict disciplinary terms, they identify two major modalities: ‘the effective’ and ‘the evocative’. Effective practice research is generally associated with design practice and is aimed at solving a specific problem, that of producing an artefact that effects change. The research involves investigating the problem, its contexts and stakeholders and establishing a research approach to address the problem. This modality is largely pragmatic and intentionally directed. Evocative practice research on the other hand, is practice-led rather than problem-based and described as being associated with art practices as ‘creative-production’. It is usually driven by individual preoccupations, though these may articulate with cultural and social concerns. In this category, the research goal is the generation of artefacts that produce affect and resonance through evocation. This affect cannot necessarily be measured and evaluated in specific terms because the artefact may have no direct ‘application’. However, outcomes can be documented qualitatively, and reflections upon the artefact can be drawn upon to articulate the research findings. The authors acknowledge and illustrate hybrid forms of research that can harness or display the features of both categories. The essay maps the specific processes of each modality and provides a valuable framework for approaching the design, interpretation and analysis of outcomes of research across the diverse fields of creative arts and design research. What emerges from these analyses is an illumination of how, in certain contexts, the boundaries between research, design and development no longer hold. Indeed, the case studies presented in the volume confirm that this is the case. Moreover, as attested by the essays, the pursuit of pragmatic objectives and solutions often necessitates the application of evocative approaches. Conversely, in creative arts research, evocative approaches are often found to have (albeit often surprising and unexpected) pragmatic application in solving problems beyond the individual subjective and aesthetic concerns of the artist-researcher. Rather than strictly adhering to these categories, it may be useful to acknowledge the heterogeneity of the field of practice-as-research and apply the illuminations provided by Hamilton and Jaaniste to determine which approach is dominant in the research projects under

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examination – and, more specifically, to show where and how invention and innovation is made possible. In doing so, we may claim that the inextricable relationship between these modalities is what distinguishes creative arts research as a distinct paradigm. Chapter 13 concludes this volume with Iris van der Tuin’s essay in which she puts forward her view that creative arts research can be understood as ‘onto-epistemology’. She tells us that affirming the onto-epistemological nature of all research practices ‘privileges the how question’ of engagement with research. Van der Tuin observes that material practice, by definition, produces or gives rise to knowledge. Through a materialist lens and rigorous scholarly analysis, she locates creative arts research within the broader field of philosophy and unveils underlying principles of artistic research as the production of knowledge. Van der Tuin’s account provides a cogent conceptualization of this field of research with reference to the thought of (amongst others) Karen Barad, Henri Bergson, Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour and proceeds with an explication of the creative process with illustration from Manuel DeLanda, Brian Massumi and Gilbert Simondon. In critiquing some of the underlying assumptions and approaches of other paradigms – atomism, linguisticism and realism – she highlights distinguishing features of creative arts research and lends power to our assertion that the field constitutes a paradigm capable of extending knowledge and informing the general field of research. Researchers and scholars in the field are now articulating how artistic research is making a difference by informing and contributing to the broader field of research. The aim of this volume is to extend the discourse of creative arts research beyond the field and to put forward the claim that creative arts research constitutes a new paradigm of research, a ‘successor science’ that is capable of producing transforming accounts of the world. We acknowledge that achievements in this regard continue to surpass what has been demonstrated in the chapters presented here. In their own field, and increasingly through their collaborations with researchers in other fields, creative arts researchers are engaged in a multitude of projects that are challenging, provoking and offering up new possibilities. Australian performance artist Stelarc’s research project, Ambidextrous Arm, for example, illustrates the generative capacity of

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emergent research. Stelarc’s earlier works were primarily concerned with investigating how the body can be used as a direct medium for making art. His suspension works extended to the use of electronic instruments to amplify the sounds of the body in performance. Stelarc’s engagement with human-machine interfaces has since lead to various projects with robotics and notions of the cyborg to investigate what humans might be becoming. In his Ambidextrous Arm project, he builds on previous works, including his Third Hand project (1980–98), to ‘test’ our assumptions about what an arm is and what it can do. Whilst Ambidextrous Arm will come into existence as an artwork, its conception has already engaged the interest of medical researchers who see potential applications in the field of medical prosthetics. The close link between arts and science is also articulated in the work of Oron Catts, the director of SymbioticA, an artistic research centre based in the School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology at the University of Western Australia. Catts’s focus was initially directed at the aesthetics of tissue culture for creating biological art. His later collaborative projects have taken on a more critical perspective in their investigations of relationships between living things and, in particular, the impact of human manipulation of environments and other life forms. For example, the Victimless Leather project (2004) uses living tissue to create a stitchless garment made from leather-like material. The project not only explores the aesthetics and ethics of tissue culture, but provokes reflection on the possible effects of new forms of life as cultural productions and provides a tangible illustration of possible futures. The double articulation of creative arts research as the production of an artefact that operates as both as an artwork in itself as well as the opening up of new possibilities, as seen in these practices and the accounts of case studies presented here, exemplifies how the vital life of creative arts research continues to evolve.

Note 1

See my account of the aesthetic image and material process as an expansion of language in Kristeva Reframed, I.B.Tauris, 2011.

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1 Beyond Solipsism in Artistic Research: The Artwork and the Work of Art Barbara Bolt

In 2010, Australia conducted its first audit of research in Australian universities. Excellence Research Australia (ERA), the Australian research assessment exercise, drew its impetus from Hong Kong’s Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), the British Research Assessment Exercise (RAE and now REF) and New Zealand’s Performance Based Research Funding (PBRF). The purpose of ERA and the research assessment exercises in the UK, Hong Kong and New Zealand were threefold: Firstly, they provide governments with a tool to benchmark research and rank universities according to their research excellence. Secondly they enable governments to direct funding to universities based on their ranking, and finally the research assessment exercise ‘provides accountability for public investment in research and produces evidence of the benefits of this investment.’ (HEFCE et al). Whilst this may seem an unlikely place to situate a discussion of material invention in the creative arts, it is a necessary one. In all of these research assessment exercises, the creative arts are counted as research clusters and their research outputs are assessed alongside all other research disciplines. The pragmatic nature of the research assessment exercise could be seen to be antithetical to the enterprise of the creative arts. Yet it has 22

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also provided opportunities for the creative arts and for creative arts research in particular. The inclusion of the creative arts in ERA and the other research assessment exercises has consolidated creative arts research in universities. It has brought us into the research fold and enabled creative arts outputs to be counted as research; it has raised our profile as researchers and made other disciplines puzzle over what this ‘thing’ called creative arts research or artistic research actually is. It has also raised the stakes for us, since ranking actually affects the level of funding that will accrue to creative arts programmes. Finally, it has required artists and artists to think of their practices differently, not only as art but also as artistic research. Whilst art is articulate and eloquent in its own way, ERA draws a distinction between art and art-as-research and requires that the creative arts researcher not only demonstrate how their art is research, but also articulate what new knowledge and innovation has emerged through the research. This takes the form of the research statement that accompanies each artistic research output assessed in the assessment exercise. This has proved to be challenging for researchers in the field. We can make all sorts of assumptions and claims about the innovation and inventiveness of art and its values for a society, but in the context of research and the research assessment exercise, these assumptions and claims do not hold. This requires us to ask: How do we evaluate the material interventions that creative research makes in the world? What allows us to articulate what creative research actually does? Anterior to this, we need to ask the questions: Does creative research make material interventions in the world? If it does, what methods do researchers employ to achieve this? And, finally, how do we know whether they are successful? This chapter aims to demonstrate that the distinction drawn by the Australian Research Council (ARC) between art and art-as-research allows us to shift the terms of how we talk about art and artistic research. In addition to describing, explaining, interpreting and reflecting on the art, we may also map its effects. Beginning with the ARC definition of research, the chapter outlines the guidelines developed by ERA to identify what constitutes eligible creative arts research. It contrasts the traditional artist’s statement with the ERA research statement in order to demonstrate how the research statement shifts the focus from the artistic intention of the artist to how the work is art and what it does

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in the world. It argues that through mapping what the research does, the creative arts are able to demonstrate the performative power of the creative arts to make a difference.

Research Assessment and the Task of Articulating Material Invention in Creative Research In setting out the terms of ERA, the ARC defined research as: The creation of new knowledge and/or the use of existing knowledge in a new and creative way so as to generate new concepts, methodologies and understandings. This could include synthesis and analysis of previous research to the extent that it is new and creative. (ARC 2008: 1)

This definition of research specifically allows for ‘practice-based’ and ‘practice-led’ or ‘artistic’ research as found in the creative arts. The ERA documentation notes that adopting this definition of research allows ERA to develop a consistent notion of research and development (R&D) across the disciplines including the humanities and the creative arts. Thus, according to the guidelines, the definition encompasses ‘creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of humanity, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise applications’ (ARC 2008: 1). The 2010 ERA protocols provided the first clear guidelines of what constitutes an eligible creative arts research output in the Australian context: original creative works in the public domain; live performance works in the public domain; recorded public performance works and curated or produced substantial public exhibitions, events or renderings. From this, it could be claimed that since all art involves research activity, all art should be counted as research. However, in its deliberations on how the creative arts would be measured and evaluated in the ERA assessment exercise, the ARC Creative Arts Advisory Committee did not agree with the assumption that all art is, by definition, research. The committee asked the question: How is work ‘that reflects the definition of research’ distinguished from ‘other 24

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creative work that represents a high level of professional endeavour but which does not reflect that definition?’ (Seares 2009). In other words, what distinguishes ‘art’ from ‘art-as-research’ or creative arts research? The motivation for making this distinction was initially to find a mechanism for legitimating artistic research or what has come to be called ‘non-traditional research’ in the eyes of the broader research community. Margaret Seares, the chair of the advisory committee, observed that while people working in the creative and performing arts recognize that much of their work reflects the principles that underpin research, those outside the creative disciplines were (and remain) perplexed about the possibility that art can also be conceived of as research (Seares 2009). How is art research? The emergence of creative arts research at the turn of the century has resulted in a burgeoning of the literature in the field including: Balkema and Henk 2004; Carter 2004; Gray and Malins 2004; Sullivan 2005; Makela and Routarinne 2006; Barrett and Bolt 2007; Biggs 2009; Grieson and Brearly 2009; Leavy 2009; McNiff 2009; Smith and Dean 2009; Biggs and Karlsson 2010 and Slager 2012. This literature has provided creative researchers with approaches, tools, methods and case studies that enable creative arts research to proceed. These authors have tended to talk to the field rather than establish the legitimacy of creative arts research in the broader research context. Michael Biggs and Danielle B¨uchler’s 2009 article ‘Supervision in an alternative paradigm’ explicitly deals with the uniqueness of this alternative paradigm and sets it against established research paradigms. They identified four characteristics as indicative of something being a research activity across all fields: the possession of a question and potential answer; the presence of something corresponding to the term ‘knowledge’; a method that connected the answers in a meaningful way to the questions that were asked and an audience for whom all this would have significance. A functional relationship between these four issues would represent a functional connection of the worldview to the corresponding research paradigm (Biggs and B¨uchler 2009: 8). However, in identifying these characteristics, they established that these did not address the pivotal role of the artwork in creative arts research. In creative research, artworks are integral to generating the research question, are an instrumental component of the response to

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that question and are one of the key outcomes of the research. Without artworks, creative research would be ‘incomprehensible as research’ (Biggs and B¨uchler 2009: 9). Nevertheless, Biggs and B¨uchler also made it clear that artworks do not in themselves constitute research. The mere presence of art is not indicative of a novel paradigm called artistic research (Biggs and B¨uchler 2009: 9). They argued that it is not the novel form – the artwork, performance, recital, composition or architectural form – that distinguishes it as research, but the ‘type’ of content (Biggs and B¨uchler 2009: 8). Art and art-as-research are not one and the same thing.

The Artist’s Statement and Research Statement The tension between assumptions in the creative arts that art is research and questions arising outside the field asking how art could possibly be research challenged the ARC Creative Arts Advisory Committee to identify a mechanism with which to differentiate between art and artas-research. They recommended that in order to establish the ‘research’ in their art, creative arts researchers prepare and submit a discursive research statement to accompany each artistic output submitted to the assessment exercise. Within the field of creative arts, particularly the visual arts, there is a recent tradition of artists being required to write artist’s statements to accompany their artwork in an exhibition or support an application for a grant, a commission or an award. The artist’s statement is a brief description of the work that provides the context for the work and will often speak of the artist’s intentions for the work. These statements often, although not always, encourage the first-person narrative: ‘my work . . . , I am interested in . . . , my project . . . ’. The ‘problem’ of artistic intention has been comprehensively addressed through the postmodern critique of authorship. Whilst it is important to acknowledge the subjective dimension of research and the need to locate or situate oneself in the field, the form and address of the artist’s statement also raises a second issue; the potential for solipsism. Stephen Thornton has written on the problem of solipsism which, he claims, stems from the ‘methodic doubt’ and emphasis on the conscious mind of Ren´e Descartes: 26

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In the research context, whereas Biggs and B¨uchler argue that ‘the judgment and classification of a work of research, is made by the audience and is an issue of its reception rather than being determined by the intention of the author,’ (Biggs and B¨uchler 2008: 89), this emphasis on ‘me’, ‘my work’, can result in solipsistic or circular conceptualization and argumentation. Biggs and B¨uchler’s discussion of audience is pertinent for the ERA research exercise. They argue that the audience for artistic research is different to the audience for art. It consists of the ‘greater academic community as a whole, within which there resides a smaller, more specialised academic community’. It is the specialized academic community who are ‘appropriately situated’ to ‘judge the meaningfulness and significance of the research’ (Biggs & B¨uchler 2009: 88). This is what we understand as ‘peer review’. In the ERA assessment exercise, peer review became the foundational principle underpinning the assessment of the quality of artistic research outcomes. Whilst they were drawn from within the research community, the ‘peers’ that constituted the assessment panels for the creative arts engage with both the research community and the art world. In this context, though, their task was to assess how the art operates as research. Here the research statement replaces the artist’s statement and proposal. The research statement required for each creative output assessed in the ERA assessment takes on a different form than the artist’s statement. Rather than operating as a reflection on one’s own practice, the purpose of the research statement is to identify how the artwork constitutes research and what the research does in the world. Here, the focus shifts from the artist to the work. In order to assist creative artists to write research statements, the ARC developed a clear but prescriptive structure:

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Descartes’ account of the nature of mind implies that the individual acquires the psychological concepts that he possesses ‘from his own case,’ that is that each individual has a unique and privileged access to his own mind, which is denied to everyone else. . . . On this view, what I know immediately and with greatest certainty are the events that occur in my own mind – my thoughts, my emotions, my perceptions, my desires, and so forth. (Thornton 2004)

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Research Background:

r Field r Context r Research Question Research Contribution:

r Innovation r New Knowledge Research Significance

r Evidence of Excellence (Australian Government ‘Appendix C’ ARC 2011 : 75). The research statements address three broad themes: research background, research contribution and excellence. In addressing research background, the artist is required to contextualize the research in terms of the field of enquiry, and articulate the research question that drives the project. Secondly, through identifying the innovation and new knowledge that has emerged through the research, the artistic researcher is asked to identify what the research contributes to the field. Finally, through demonstrating recognition of its excellence, the research statement provides evidence of its impact in the broader field as judged by peers. These criteria are the same as expected in all fields of research endeavour and reflect Biggs and B¨uchler’s four characteristics of research – question, answer, method and audience. In so-called ‘traditional research’ outputs – books and journal articles – the discursive form of reporting encapsulates the research claims. Researchers contextualize and locate their research within the field, identify their research questions, present substantiated argument and, through doing so, demonstrate the innovation and new knowledge that has emerged through the research. In the creative arts, contextualization of research doesn’t pose a problem for artistic researchers. From early in their art education, creative artists are only too keenly aware of the field and where their work fits within or differentiates from it. Neither is establishing ‘significance’ a problem. Where the sciences may demonstrate research significance through citations and awards, the creative arts cite awards, 28

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invitations, commissions, prizes, public recognition and the status of the venue or event where the work was performed or exhibited. The issue that remains for many researchers in the creative arts is an adherence to the idea that new knowledge and innovation is the artwork and that this should not have to be argued discursively. However, as we have already seen, the ARC Creative Arts Advisory Committee did not consider the novel form of the artwork as sufficient to demonstrate new knowledge and innovation. Whilst they accepted that the presentation of a novel or new art form could be considered innovation within the discipline and have applications beyond it, they insisted that the practitionerresearcher articulate how and why this is so. In providing this discursive account of the innovation, the task of the researcher is to identify the inventive components of the work, including the methodologies that allowed the artwork to be created. The assessment process and the research statement can be seen as a repressive mechanism, as a way of making the creative arts conform to traditional research’s modes of reporting. On the other hand, I would suggest that the research statement may offer a way of recalibrating how we think about those hoary questions of new knowledge and innovation across all disciplines. In order to argue this, I wish to return to the ARC definition of research and tease out the core issue at play here. According to the ARC, research is ‘the creation of new knowledge and/or the use of existing knowledge in a new and creative way so as to generate new concepts, methodologies and understandings’ (ARC 2008: 1). The key here is the generative or productive nature of research; it creates new knowledge – concepts, methodologies, understandings and, I would add, experiences. The artist may paint another painting, make another performance, design another building or play another composition, but unless he or she can demonstrate or map the effects of this production, it remains just that: a production. In other words, what characterizes the material invention in research is not just what the work is, but what it does. If we are going to move beyond the production to the productivity of the work, we need terminology that will enable us to distinguish between what the work is and what it does. Elsewhere, I have differentiated between the artwork and the work of art as a way of distinguishing the work in itself and its performative potential (Bolt 2004a, 2007, 2009a). Whilst the terms are often used interchangeably, the artwork is

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not the same thing as the work of art. In this context, the artwork can be defined as the production – the novel, poem, screenplay, performance, painting, film, installation, drawing or event that has emerged in and through practice – it is what is published or exhibited or performed. The work of art is the work that the artwork does; it is the movement in concepts, understandings, methodologies, material practice, affect and sensorial experience that arises in and through the vehicle of art and the artwork. The work that art does is its performative quality. This can relate to the process of making the artwork and the effects for the artist and for the field, and/or to the effects that the artwork may generate in the world.

Performativity and the Creative Arts The performative potential of art is one of the key ‘knowledge claims’ made by the creative arts both inside and outside the research realm. The slippage between performance and performativity has led to an assumption that all artworks – theatre and dance productions, performances, installations, paintings and the like – are ‘performative’. As the term ‘performativity’ has gained favour in the arts, it has come to be used to describe the mere appearance of art without regard to the origin and principles embedded in the term. A return to the etymology of the word as elaborated in J. L. Austin’s elaboration of ‘performativity’ in his 1955 lecture ‘How to do things with words’, published as How to Do Things with Words, helps us to clarify the term and its application across different disciplines. Austin argued that certain speech utterances or productions don’t just describe or report the world, but actually have a force whereby they perform the action to which they refer. The performative utterance (as opposed to the constative or descriptive utterance) does things in the world. In its capacity to be both an action and to generate consequences, the performative utterance enacts real effects in the world. It is an utterance with effects. Thus, he argued, performative utterances inaugurate movement and transformation. Judith Butler, the cultural theorist whose notion of performativity has had the greatest influence on the creative arts, built on Austin’s work, arguing that it is through reiteration and citational practices that the performative principle 30

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proceeds in language and also in other cultural practices (Butler 1993). Practitioners in the creative arts have been quick to adopt the notion of performativity. However, can we justifiably make the assumption that just because a practice brings into being what it names (a performance, a painting, a film or photograph) that it is performative? Whilst the production of a work may lead to its appearance as an artwork, I would propose that this does not necessarily produce the ‘movement’ or ‘inventiveness’ that is implicit in the theory of performativity elaborated by J.L. Austin and carried through into our lexicon by Butler. Elsewhere, I have argued that notion of performativity is a valuable conceptual tool to understand the research process (Bolt 2009a). I have suggested that the ‘new’ emerges through reiterative and citational practices. However, Butler’s notion of performativity does not account for the ‘movement’ that occurs through art. For Butler, reiterative and citational practices involve repetition of the same. Gilles Deleuze, in contrast, argues that ‘repetition produces only the same of that which differs’ (Deleuze 1990: 289). For Deleuze, each performance and each repetition involves different intensities, different flows and different connections so that each repetition is always a singular behaviour. We can understand this dynamic in our practice; one day we may be working hot and fast, another we may be slow and reflexive; sometimes our medium or our ideas flow smoothly, whilst at others they are slow and cumbersome, or thick and viscous. The effects of these variations emerge in and through the work. This ‘intensity of the different’ is central to artistic invention, where practice involves the interplay between the ‘matter’ of bodies, the materials of production and discourse. What emerges is not a repetition of the same, but something new and singular. The ‘intensity of the different’ is the performative principle that moves our material practices, our sensorial experiences and our discursive formations elsewhere. I have used the term methexis to account for the acts of concurrent actual production that produces material and discursive movements (Bolt 2004a). Thus, we can argue that ‘singularity’ or newness arises in and through reiteration and citational practices. Working with this concept in and through practice, we can map the effects of art.

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The Performative Mapping of the Work of Art Performativity is not first and foremost about meaning. It is about force and effect. What effects does the artwork produce? This involves a mapping process from within and without the practice itself. In addition to describing, explaining, interpreting and reflecting on the work, the focus must also turn to mapping its effects. This shifts the analysis from an emphasis on ‘me’, ‘my’ and ‘I’ to a focus on the inventiveness of the work. The effects of the performative in art are multi-dimensional – they may be discursive, material consequences and/or affective. How then do we assess these effects? Our task is to find ways to map the movement in concepts, understandings, methodologies, material practice, affect and sensorial experience that arises in and through the research experience. This leads to a series of possible questions that a researcher may ask of the research:

r r r r r

How did the research shift material practice in the field? What methodological shifts occurred through this process? What was revealed through the work? What did it do? What new concepts emerged through the research? Do these new concepts shift understandings and practices in the field and/or in other discursive fields? r Does the work a/effect its audience aesthetically or affectively? r Does the work shift the way we perceive the world? r Does the work have sensorial effects on/in the body? These shifts or movements are not confined to, or unique to, creative arts research. The performativity of art is central to its persistence and power in society. This is not in contention. The issue is one of context. Returning to Biggs and B¨uchler’s argument that the judgement and classification of a work of research is made by the audience and is an issue of its reception rather than being determined by the intention of the author (Biggs and B¨uchler 2008: 89), in the research field, the audience is the broader academic community and, more specifically, the specialized academic community (Biggs and B¨uchler 2009: 8). Where the reception of art is concerned, we have a more complicated notion 32

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of audience, or rather a number of different audiences – the academic community of creative researchers, artistic peers in the art world and the broader community who become audiences of the work. In this context, ‘judgements’ about the work are negotiated in the public arena through criteria such as attendance and critical reception. There can be a veritable discursive explosion around particular exhibitions, performances and events – reviews, catalogue essays, programme notes, public lectures, artist talks and social media virality. These may be seen as the impact of the work in the public arena. In the research context, questions of ‘impact’ are often more difficult to assess. How has the work shifted or extended practice? What new knowledge understandings are made possible by it? The impact of the work of art is revealed over time and there is no immediate or clear way of assessing it in a snapshot view. However, as the first audience or viewer of the work, the artist-as-researcher has some responsibility for the ‘knowledge claims’ that can be made for the work. How do we know what the work has done and how may we articulate this?

A Performative Mapping of Neon Blue How do we map the performativity of the artwork? I have suggested that not every artwork can be considered to be research and that not all artworks do the work of art. Here I would like to turn to my 2007 painting Neon Blue, which I have subjected to the rigours of the research statement in order to make the claim that it is evidence of research. In other words, I would like to map how the work is performative and brings about a movement in thought/affect.

Research Background Neon Blue was exhibited in All that is Solid Melts into Air, an exhibition held at the McCulloch Gallery in Melbourne in 2007. In the introduction to her catalogue essay for the exhibition, Estelle Barrett begins with the following statement: ‘All that is Solid Melts into Air is not so much about what the artist is trying to say, but what the medium of painting can tell us about perception and the nature of things as we experience them’ (Barrett 2007). Here, Barrett identifies the tension between 33

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Figure 1. Barbara Bolt, Neon Blue, 2007.

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Bolt’s focus has been on the relationship between colour and light and the way in which these constitute human perception. In these works, light and colour are shown to have the capacity to cohere and destabilise form. Bolt resists both the fixity of vision and the urge to master her medium but rather allows the materiality of paint to invoke a perceptual encounter. . . . Her use of blue has been shown to have a non-centred or de-centring effect that lessens both object identification and phenomenal fixation. (Barrett 2007)

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what the artist’s intention is and what the work does. In their book, New Materialism: Interviews and Cartographies (2012), Rick Dolphijn and Iris van der Tuin suggest that where art is concerned we become concerned with ‘how the form of content (the material condition of the artwork) and the form of expression (the sensations as they come about) are being produced in one another’ (Dolphijn and van der Tuin 2012: 90). Barrett encapsulates this entanglement of matter and meaning in her description of the work for the series:

We understand that both catalogue essays and research statements have the benefit of hindsight and that the ‘questions’ that drive the work are often incoherent and unstable, and may be barely or not even articulable. It is, rather, a grumble or an irritation – not a well-defined and elegantly phrased question – that sets the work in process and that implicates both matter and meaning. In retrospect, I can understand that Neon Blue, like the other works in the show, was concerned with the questions: What does our contemporary experience of urban light do to those Enlightenment-inspired understandings of light that underpin representation and insist that light reveals, unveils, illuminates, makes perceptible and renders legible our relation to the world in which we live? What technical and material strategies can be engaged to produce ‘light effects’ in and through painting? Through articulating the questions in this way, one can come to the following background statement about the work: Enlightenment notions of light underpin western representational painting. Light is shed on matter. It reveals form. Neon Blue is concerned with the experience of urban light rather than the representation of light. Conceptually it addresses how neon light obscures

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rather than reveals form and identity. Materially the research draws on the tradition of colour field painting to investigate a material practice that creates ‘light effects’ and evokes the experience of urban light. (Bolt 2012)

Research Contribution – Assessing “Neon Blue” as Research In assessing what the work has done, I return to the questions that I raised earlier: Did the research shift material practice? Were there any methodological shifts that occurred through this process? Did new concepts emerge through the research? If they did, do these new concepts shift understandings and practices in the field and/or in other discursive fields? Finally, does the work a/effect its audience, aesthetically, affectively or sensorially? I cannot begin to know how the work a/effects an audience unless I engage in testing of emotional responses to the experience of the work, or use qualitative interviews with audiences to gauge their reactions. I would need to be a scientist or a psychologist to assess the former and would have to become adept at qualitative research to do the latter. There are methodological limits on how this research can and did proceed. I can, however, reflect on how the work has affected my own perceptions, then begin to map the material and conceptual shifts that have occurred through the work, through reference to other material practices and conceptual work in the field and to the way that the practice has itself shifted through the process of making. The fact that the painting was the impetus for an article, ‘Whose joy: Giotto, Yves Klein and Neon Blue’ (Bolt 2011), that examined the intertwining of matter and meaning to understand the effects of colour in painting makes it possible to offer the following research contribution: Neon Blue’s innovation lies in extending material practice and offering a new understanding of realism. The technical innovation involves the use of successive layers of transparent oil stains to achieve luminosity or ‘light effects’. The conceptual innovation draws on Julia Kristeva’s analysis of the triple register of colour and Yves Klein’s perceptual approach to painting in order to propose a new understanding of realism as a material realism; one that arises out of the matter of the body and a rethinking of perceptual approaches to the Real. (Bolt 2012)

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As discussed earlier, our peers judge the research significance of a creative research output. It is not something that we can claim without justification or invent. This significance or excellence can be demonstrated through invitations, prizes, awards, peer-reviewed publication, the status of the venue or event where the work was exhibited or how the artist’s concepts and methodologies have been taken up and extended by researchers in other fields. In the case of Neon Blue, there were no prizes or reviews. However, in 2009, the BBC World Service and UCL Slade School of Art commissioned a 12-minute DVD entitled Neon Blue, as part of an international collaboration, A View from Here. Secondly, the article ‘Whose joy: Giotto, Yves Klein and Neon Blue’ was selected for presentation at the first international Conference on the Image and was subsequently published in the inaugural edition of the refereed journal, International Journal of the Image, which was published in 2011. The peer review process legitimizes the claim of significance.

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Research Significance and Evidence of Excellence

Conclusion Words are inadequate to the task of encapsulating the material fact and the experience of the work of art and one could argue that the kind of mapping process I have engaged in with regards to Neon Blue is a distancing device that creates objective ‘data’ and denies the embodied experience that is central to our encounters with art. This may be true, but it is not the task of the research statement, catalogue essay or dissertation to stand in for or describe the artwork. The artwork stands eloquent in its own way. However, with its demand that we demonstrate what the work has done, the research statement enables another way of thinking and talking about our material inventions. It moves us away from artistic intention and the inherent danger of solipsism to focus on how the work is art and what it does in the world. This opens out our thinking to encompass the performative power of art to make a difference in the world. Through mapping what the research does, the creative arts are able to demonstrate not only how art can be understood as research, but also how its inventions can be articulated. This will not deny the artwork its own eloquence.

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2 Blogging as Art, Art as Research Lucas Ihlein

Since 2003, I have used a blog to collect and publish my ideas about art and social engagement, or to write short accounts of artworks I have witnessed and participated in (Ihlein 2003). What motivates me to blog in this way is the desire to leave behind an experiential document of ephemeral art practices. Conceptual art, performance art, Happenings, Fluxus events and Expanded Cinema: all these constitute important moments in avant-garde art history which I ‘know’ only by accessing fragmentary, incomplete archival documents – photographs, videotapes, artists’ statements. For artists working today, these archives make a significant contribution to our own aesthetic heritage, but – especially when one considers the emphasis supposedly placed by the original works themselves on the actual experience of ‘being there’ – the historical value of such scraps is rather disproportionate. Blogging is one way to make a deposit in the archive today – a deposit which might, I propose, be useful for future historians of ephemeral art. In this chapter, I introduce briefly the development of my own method of blogging as a component of socially-engaged art practice. I argue that the particular technique of online exchange and experiential documentation which emerged through the projects I will discuss here begins to model a new form of process-based aesthetics, by creating ‘a record of its own making’. For contemporary artists working in the 38

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field which has recently become known as ‘relational aesthetics’ (or ‘dialogical’ art, or ‘new genre public art’),1 blogging offers a method for experientially documenting those particular social encounters which constitute the core of these works of art – documenting, that is, the very materiality of our own practices. This experiential documentation is able to generate a rich body of evidence, revealing new insights into difficult-to-research areas of everyday life and popular culture. Furthermore, as this chapter will explore, the intimate, embodied nature of the particular method of blogging I have developed means that it not only functions as a means of documenting experience, but also, importantly, transforms the experiences themselves – leading to a deepening of the relationship between researcher and subject matter.

Developing Bilateral Blogging: Bilateral Kellerberrin and Bilateral Petersham In early 2005, when I visited Kellerberrin, a small town in Western Australia, as an invited artist in residence, I used a blog for taking brief notes from my daily life there. However, after a few weeks of reflecting online about my everyday encounters with local residents, I realized that what I was doing was not just gathering data, which might be useful in the making of a future art object about my experiences. Rather, blogging had begun to intervene in the very processes of localized social engagement, contributing to a cycle of action, reflection, and discussion, documented and instrumentalized through the public sphere created by the blog itself. Blogging had become an integral part of what was, for me, a new way of doing art. The blog which emerged from this two-month residency, Bilateral Kellerberrin, became a catalyst for developing relationships with local people in the town (Ihlein 2005). I quickly became aware of the cyclic nature of my artistic process – being out in public, meeting and participating in the life of the town, and being online, writing about and reflecting upon my encounters each day. The life cycle of bilateral blogging began to look something like this: . . . action → publication → dialogue → action → publication → dialogue → action . . .

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Readers of the blog (and its subsequent printed-book version) will be able to recognize these spiralling cycles, embedded as they are in the narrative of each daily blog entry, as well as within the comments and discussion contributed by readers. The project was thus a tool for publicly reflecting on, discussing, and intensifying the experience of everyday life – for myself and for the people I encountered. Because of the dual nature (both online and offline) of the interactions which produced Bilateral Kellerberrin – and as a result of the project’s reliance on a series of social interactions moving the work of art beyond a model of solo-authorship – I came to call this particular method of art-making ‘bilateral blogging’. Combined with the capacity of this new method to keep a detailed record of its own social encounters (that is, of its own materiality) this led me to a hunch that bilateral blogging might have something to offer to discussions around the ethics of engagement in the practice of so-called ‘relational’ art (Ihlein 2007). Exactly one year later, I had the opportunity to test out this hunch, when I re-enacted the project within my home suburb of Petersham, Sydney. Rather than being an artist in residence 2,000 miles from home, I became a self-appointed ‘artist in residence in my own neighbourhood’. However, since Petersham seems to blend indiscernibly into its neighbouring localities, I made a strict rule for this new project: for the two months of the residency’s duration, I would not be allowed to cross the boundaries of my suburb. What started out, in a small country town, as an experiment in developing a new method of socially-engaged art practice, had now became an instrument to be consciously wielded, tested and refined in the crucible of my own neighbourhood. The stakes were much higher: whereas in Kellerberrin I had been a privileged visitor who would soon be gone, Bilateral Petersham challenged me to face the social and geographical reality of my home environment (Ihlein 2006). Whatever happened during this ‘residency in my own neighbourhood’ had the potential to transform a set of continuing local relationships from which there would be no subsequent ‘escape’: no leaving, no farewell. As an art-as-research project, then, Bilateral Petersham played directly within the arena of ‘the real world’ (albeit a rather small portion of it) rather than restricting its aesthetic operations to the relatively safe sphere of a gallery context.

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Something about the town of Kellerberrin being ‘different,’ and ‘new’ to my experience meant I could write with a freshness. I felt that freshness. The very task I set myself – to see if I could experience that freshness in my own neighborhood – is proving more difficult than I expected. Or maybe, I did expect this difficulty (it’s built into the project brief), but I haven’t developed a method of moving through it yet. (Ihlein 2009b: 22)

BLOGGING AS ART, ART AS RESEARCH

Bilateral Petersham was a significantly more difficult project than Bilateral Kellerberrin. As I reflected within the blog itself, I often struggled to see clearly what surrounded me. How, I asked myself, when I was embedded in all that is familiar and ‘normal’ (as opposed to exotic and strange), could I begin to experience my local everyday environment with fresh eyes? (Ihlein 2009b: 22). A week after starting Bilateral Petersham, I wrote:

Seeing the Everyday According to Maurice Blanchot, the everyday is by nature a rather slippery phenomenon. The everyday, he writes, is precisely ‘the inexhaustible, irrecusable, constantly unfinished [ . . . ] that always escapes forms or structures’ (Blanchot 1987: 13). The tension between the familiar and the strange, between the fresh and the habituated (as embodied in the above excerpt from Bilateral Petersham) is addressed by philosopher of aesthetics Arto Haapala. In unfamiliar environments (that is, in someone else’s everyday), ‘we are more sensitive to the looks of things. They seem to require our attention much more than in familiar surroundings’ (Haapala 2005: 46). The local environment (that is, our own everyday) is usually ‘seen through’ rather than ‘looked at’ – its functionality, or practical use, has become our primary means of interacting with it (Haapala 2005: 49). For this reason, he writes, ‘we often have to make a special effort to really see the visual features of things surrounding us’ (Haapala 2005: 48). For Haapala, the purpose of intentionally bringing attention to the visual (or aesthetic) features of the seemingly invisible everyday environment is not simply to make it appear strange (to ‘defamiliarize’ it, in the manner of much twentiethcentury avant-garde art) but, importantly, to deepen our ‘attachment’ to a familiar place. In other words, the purpose of this attentiveness 41

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is to strengthen one’s relationship with the local environment, and to become more appreciative of (or attentive to) this transformation as it takes place. To defamiliarize in order to see the everyday with fresh eyes and yet, at the same time, to strengthen the attachment with the world around me rather than alienating myself from it, or it from me: this was the challenge presented by Bilateral Petersham. ‘Swamped’ by the familiar, and without the ability to exoticize my surroundings (which is the luxury of the tourist), I was forced to invent new ways to pay attention to the everyday. In the process of resolving the tension between the familiar (invisible) and the exotic (freshly experienced) within my local neighbourhood, Bilateral Petersham showed me a new way of practising an ethics of social engagement as research, which I propose could be useful to the field of relational art, as well as broader methods of study in the humanities. As Ben Highmore has suggested, because the nature of the everyday is to slip under the radar of our noticing, new ‘kinds of attention’ might be required – in other words, new research methods (Highmore 2008: 83). One of the ways we might begin to fashion what Highmore describes as a kind of of ‘avant-garde sociology’ is via art practice as research (Highmore 2008: 83).

The Inventions of Bilateral Blogging The method of bilateral blogging, developed through the projects I carried out in Kellerberrin and Petersham, offers one such method for paying new attention to the everyday. This is not to argue that this transformation dispels incoherence and elusiveness, which are fundamental qualities of everyday experience. Nor does bilateral blogging create a fictionalized online image of everyday life where everything seems to lock into place in a seamless way. On the contrary, the value of the method of bilateral blogging is that it creates a framework which allows the qualities of experience – whether they be deeply felt and meaningful, or irritating, or puzzling, or only semi-consciously grasped – to exist on their own terms. The expansive container which blogging provides does not require closure or fixity. Small observations, questions, ruminations, phatic utterances and even self-criticism can sit side by side with more traditional processes of narrative and storytelling. As a tool for research, bilateral blogging is unique in that it is able to 42

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reflect critically – and publically – on its own difficulties, failings and struggles, even in the process of moving forward day by day. In this way, such difficulties can be raised to consciousness and workshopped in the public sphere, in a collaborative dialogical process between blogger and readers. Failure (for instance, my struggle in Petersham to see my local environment with fresh eyes) can be positioned not as something to be swept under the carpet – as so much embarrassing ‘noise’ to be discarded in favour of the desired ‘signal’ – but rather as a source of potential revelation in itself. Using the method of bilateral blogging, the artist/researcher is also recast. No longer an intimidating voice of authority, my faltering online persona reveals me as simply another local resident (albeit one who happens to be attempting an unusual project). In this sense, one of the methods I developed for paying closer attention to what Blanchot describes as the ‘inexhaustible, irrecusable, constantly unfinished’ (Blanchot 1987: 13) everyday is simply to name aloud this difficulty as it arises – and this is something that occurs repeatedly throughout Bilateral Petersham. In this way, the banal, irritating, barely discernible aspects of daily life are able to continue to be noticed as such, rather than becoming aestheticized, or tidied up by the valorizing lens of art.

Walking and Blogging as Transformative Interventions Thankfully, Bilateral Petersham does not entirely consist of navelgazing, self-conscious critique and despair. In order to engage with the seemingly intractable invisibility of my physical environment, I needed to actively intervene to transform my relationship with it. One such intervention was via a series of walking explorations, weaving together the textual meanderings of bilateral blogging with what Michel de Certeau has called ‘spatial stories’. For de Certeau, spatial stories can transform restrictive geographical territory – what he calls places – into spaces with multiple possibilities for a proliferation of unofficial uses (de Certeau 1988). My own situationist-inspired d´erives were an attempt to tramp, as close as possible, to the invisible boundaries which separate Petersham from its neighbouring suburbs: Marrickville, Stanmore, Lewisham and Leichhardt. Four walks – one for each cardinal point on the compass – had the effect of allowing me to familiarize myself with the territorial 43

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frame separating ‘Petersham’ from ‘not Petersham’ (Ihlein 2009b: 18– 20; 48–52; 81–84; 139–142). This was by no means an easy task – often the mapped borders ran through fenced-off properties or across inaccessible railway lines, demanding compromise and inventiveness. Guided by a large-scale official suburb map, I attempted, rather absurdly, to walk as close as possible to the edge of Petersham, without stepping into ‘foreign’ country. The border walks revealed the arbitrariness of Petersham’s mapped borders, precisely by treating them literally, as boundaries not to be crossed. And yet, despite the apparent absurdity of this ritual of exploration, walking the borders had a profound effect on my relationship with the local environment. This practice drew together the fragmentation of spatial arrangements, which sprawl over the land: divisions, which slice it up for sale or use (in this sense, alienating it) and brought these fragments into a provisional unity. In the process of walking (and blogging) Petersham’s arbitrary borders, I drew an experiential line around my suburb, creating it as a meaningful entity distinguishable from other places. As de Certeau might put it, I wrote the edges of Petersham with my feet – an embodied ritual of circumnavigation. The border walks were carried out in the company of friends or neighbours – companions and co-witnesses who could share in the creation of spatial stories. We collaboratively transformed not only our relationship to the geographical landscape, but also to each other. For instance, an account of the northern border walk, carried out in the company of my friend Sue, takes us along a thin median strip down the middle of Parramatta Road, one of Sydney’s busiest traffic arteries (Ihlein 2009b: 139–142). As I note in the blog, this incredibly noisy, dangerous strip of land does not lend itself to promenading, especially at dusk, during peak-hour traffic. However, the attentive framework generated by bilateral blogging encourages an open-minded, curious consciousness which can turn chance experiences into quiet insights.2 Thus, although in this walk Sue and I experience the northern border as a fundamentally inhospitable environment for humans, our attentiveness to the ‘constant din’ of traffic makes it ‘somehow . . . almost peaceful’, and even conducive to a sensitive discussion about Sue’s ageing mother (Ihlein 2009b: 140). Shortly afterwards, our walk takes us past Miss Dee’s Cake Shop – a place I had never noticed before. In the blog, I describe the cake shop as a ‘refuge’ (Ihlein 2009b: 141).

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And indeed, our experience of being rattled by the noise of Parramatta Road makes us especially receptive to the hospitality offered by Elaine, the cake-shop lady we find inside. Bringing us pastries, she sits down with us, gently interrogating me about the distinction between art and craft. She also tells us stories about the history of this particular segment of the northern border of Petersham, whose fortunes have long borne a close relationship to automobile traffic. This kind of encounter is typical of Bilateral Petersham’s border walks, which weave together the slow navigation of space with the unearthing of stories, in a deepening relationship with the neighbourhood’s spatial and social fabric. This process of deepening one’s relationship with the local environment via situated experience can be seen as part of a process of developing a sense of ‘belonging to country’. Belonging, for the original occupants of Australia, did not involve owning land, as an alienable property, but existing in relationship with it, as custodians – the land and the people belonging to and caring for each other (Ihlein 2009b: 157). This deep conception of geographical relationality and responsibility is based on a radically different philosophy of spatial inhabitation to that which forms the basis of the standard Western system of property ownership. In fact, as philosopher of law Alexander Reilly points out, this kind of relationship is distinguished, in Australian indigenous culture, by the word ‘country’ – as opposed to ‘land’ which can be ‘commodified, subdivided and owned’ (Reilly 2003: 217). Furthermore, as Australian philosopher Linn Miller points out in her essay ‘Belonging to country – a philosophical anthropology’, the state of being that constitutes belonging in indigenous culture involves an intrinsic connectivity between the self and the environment (Miller 2003). For Miller, there are three basic senses in which connections to the world might be established. These include social connections (between individuals and communities), historical connections (to traditions and stories from the past) and geographical connections (‘to a particular locality or dwelling place’) (Miller 2003: 217). She writes that ‘the self does not exist independently of the life it lives or of the world it lives in’, and thus any path towards belonging must acknowledge the inherent relationality of the self, interconnected with these social, historical and geographical worlds (Miller 2003: 219). For Miller, politically progressive white Australians, conscious

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Figure 2. Lucas Ihlein, detail of Sites Mentioned in Bilateral Petersham, 2009.

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of Aboriginal displacement, have in recent years often despaired of the possibility of attaining, for ourselves, such a sense of integrated belonging, given our fundamental status as trespassers on Aboriginal country (Miller 2003: 220). However, she argues that in order to overcome this condition – which she calls ‘conscious despair’ – we must embrace and acknowledge the ‘particular heredity, history or locality’ which constitutes our own selves ‘wherever and whenever we dwell’ (Miller 2003: 223). Drawing on the work of philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, Miller describes this as a process of working toward ‘correct relation’ between self and world. Others have described similar endeavours as ‘becoming indigenous’, ‘becoming native’, or developing ‘attachment’ (Mathews 1999; Moreton-Robinson 2003; Leff 2004; Haapala 2005). Achieving ‘correct relation’, for Miller, requires active work: ‘Such a state of being is not something that just happens; it is something we must create for ourselves’ (Miller 2003: 223). Bilateral blogging, I suggest, might offer one such method for working towards a relationship of belonging to country, or ‘correct relation’. By positioning the researcher publicly at the centre of the process of enquiry (rather than politely standing to one side of it and testing it from without), Bilateral Petersham demonstrates that this unconventional form of ‘aesthetic auto-ethnography’ is able not only to access aspects of everyday life which might otherwise elude standard social science methods, but also to radically transform the researcher’s relationship with the surrounding world.

Further Applications of Bilateral Blogging The potential for this particular method of bilateral blogging to be further applied, beyond the projects outlined above, was first suggested to me by curator Jasmin Stephens. In 2008, Stephens commissioned me to produce a six-month public artwork called Bon Scott Blog (Ihlein 2008). Although at the time I knew little about Bon Scott, the project brief challenged me to adapt my method of blogging, developed within the two geographical communities of Kellerberrin and Petersham, to a research process located in a ‘community of interest’ – namely, the fans of singer Bon Scott. Scott, until his death from alcohol poisoning in 1980, was the front man for Australian rock band AC/DC. His legacy has endured not only as a large body of recorded music 47

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but, importantly, in the embodied memories and cultural rituals of an enormous community of fans from all around the world. The international scope of this project meant that it was not relevant to utilize a geographical constraint, as I had done in Bilateral Petersham. Rather, with the Bon Scott Blog, I discovered that the key to embarking on this research journey lay, precisely, in my own initial ignorance about Bon Scott. I embarked on a six-month journey of public discovery, learning from the fans themselves. Focusing my attention – by listening closely – to the stories of hundreds of Bon Scott devotees, and feeding those stories back into a global community of fans, the Bon Scott Blog brought to light an aspect of popular culture which had not previously been given credence or value on such a large scale. Several volumes have been published on the histories of Bon Scott and AC/DC, but never before had a researcher spent so much time and energy with the fans. As an artist using blogging as a research tool, I was able to take a unique approach to this enquiry. Placing myself as a central character in the Bon Scott Blog, as I transitioned from ignorance to fandom, this project re-enacted and dramatized the fans’ own processes of creative cultural consumption. As a form of research, the art of bilateral blogging collects microhistories and rapidly feeds them back into a set of communities far beyond the constraints of geographical proximity. Reflecting on this, I would suggest that this kind of comprehensive, participatory, publiclyaccountable research method may thus also have something to offer to sociological or ethnographic studies based in a broad range of communities of interest. Where else can uses for bilateral blogging be found? The method has the potential to generate situated knowledge in a wide variety of contexts. For instance, to return to one of the originating impulses outlined at the beginning of this chapter, I have already begun using a variation on this blogging method to experientially document the reenactment of one of Allan Kaprow’s early ephemeral artworks, Push and Pull: A Furniture Comedy for Hans Hoffman, 1963 (Ihlein, Keys and L’Orange 2009). When used as a tool for exploring ephemeral art from the past, bilateral blogging can focus attention on the nuances of aesthetic experience, which such artworks produce, allowing us, through our re-enactment, to make a richly described deposit in the art historical archive.

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Blogging can thus create a reflexive document of value to the development of ongoing knowledge of the history and methods of art practice. Furthermore, the dialogical nature of blogging offers a tool for contextualizing and reanimating traditional methods of archiving experience, such as photographic and video documentation. Building up a variety of annotated archival deposits – whether of everyday experiences in specific locations (Bilateral Kellerberrin and Bilateral Petersham), of cultural phenomena (Bon Scott Blog) or of ephemeral artworks (Push and Pull) – could allow multiple iterations of a single situation to be compared with each other, taking into account different cultural, temporal and geographical contexts. This could be the beginnings of what aesthetic experience researcher Lizzie Muller has called ‘an oral history of media art’ (Muller 2008). In other words, as a new research tool, bilateral blogging might begin to operate as an expansive resource for research into some of the hidden corners of everyday, popular and avant-garde cultures.

Notes 1 2

See Lacy 1995; Bourriaud 2002; Kester 2004. In Ihlein 2009a, I more thoroughly develop the concept of an ‘attention framework’ and its ability to transform one’s experience (Ihlein 2009a: 62–87). See also Ihlein (2010) for further exploration of the relationship between blogging and attention.

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3 ‘Conversations Before the End of Time’: Re-futuring Applications of a New Media Praxis Keith Armstrong

In reflecting upon what my 45 or more creative outputs over the past 18 years might have ‘achieved’, my thoughts at first alight upon a central question that I am regularly asked by members of the public who have experienced my interactive works for the first time: ‘What is the “use” of this [particular interactive work]?’ ‘What is it FOR?!’ Whilst this question is not unexpected – especially from individuals who may be less versed in contemporary, new media practices – this frequent request to identify the ‘real’ applications of my work raises a gamut of serious questions that beg careful consideration. Throughout this chapter I will seek to tease out my responses around these ideas, working initially from what I consider to be the most obvious question: Do my works suggest new ways that we might interface with computer systems and therefore new applications? I then turn towards the more opaque, but arguably most potent question: Can my works create experiences that may assist in triggering a more ‘world-sustaining’ ethic?

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A central feature of many of my large-scale interactive works is the use of novel forms of human-computer interfaces which create experiences that are often highly unfamiliar for users. Intimate Transactions (Armstrong et al. 2005–8) asks audiences to literally climb on board a piece of furniture called the ‘Bodyshelf ’, which then registers the movements of their feet and back via sensors and moving elements, thereby allowing them to control avatars within a networked virtual world. Knowmore (House of Commons) (Armstrong et al. 2009–10) uses both the physical position of several people standing around a circular table and the way in which they all choose to spin and touch its fluidly moving top as the means for directing its interactive script. Shifting Intimacies (Armstrong et al. 2006–8) responds to the position and pace of a single person walking across the space of an entire darkened theatre, each individual in turn controlling all subsequent image and sound. Finitude (Mallee: Time) (Armstrong et al. 2010–12) includes a horizontal, semi-transparent touch screen interface accessed by a prone user from underneath to activate an image and kinetic sculpture composite. All of these works’ experimental interfaces avoid the traditional mouse and keyboard in order to focus upon body sensitization, perceptive process, space and immaterial form. This approach resonates with the discipline of Ubiquitous Computing (Milner 2006) that seeks to seamlessly embed computing within the fabric of everyday physical places and objects (for example, computation embedded within vehicles or the sensory fabric of the urban informatic landscape). It is therefore not unexpected that the public would routinely associate a ‘use value’ of my artworks within the broader domain of Human-Computer Interface design and, given the very particular nature of body placement and interaction within these works, their specific application in rehabilitation practices also has clear veracity. I will therefore begin by examining these potential applications for my work. In the mid-2000s I began to investigate how my work might become an instrumental input into other disciplines: for example, during 2004 and 2005 I developed two Australian Research Council Linkage grants in collaboration with our university’s School of Human Movement. Our aim was to develop visual and audible ‘rehabilitation encouragement’ systems – initiated through a central question: ‘Is there a better way to interface computers with humans in the context of improved

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Figure 3. Keith Armstrong et al., photograph of the dual-site interactive work Intimate Transactions, 2005–8, Bodyshelf interface

rehabilitation outcomes?’ The Artistic Biofeedback Environments for Health and Physical Activity research project (Armstrong, Kerr and Brereton 2004) aimed to significantly inform strategic thinking around the use of ‘multimedia’ in order to increase the success rates of preventative public health care programmes. This study was formed around the investigation of key health strategies for the prevention of chronic diseases (such as obesity) as well as new strategies for reducing the frequency of falls amongst an increasingly ageing population. The public trialling of these findings would be undertaken via ‘artistic productions’ throughout Australia in order to create ‘unique and inspirational experiences’ for the public, giving them first-hand access to innovative Australian research culture. This work would be driven by and inspired by the multimodal interface/furniture being developed at that time for the Intimate Transactions project (Armstrong et al. 2005–8), with the aim of creating interactive rehabilitation and exercise environments for both public and private scenarios whereby patients could incorporate physical exercise and collaborative feedback within familiar 52

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and yet stimulating environments. During that time I also instigated some preliminary investigations with a team of participatory designers, dancers and ergonomists with the intention of designing a series of performative scenarios to aid in the training of clinical dentists. I drew upon my disciplinary understandings of embodied interaction and interactive engagement strategies as an informing input into how trainee dentists might understand surgery practices, layout of facilities and optimal practitioner-patient relationships. Much of this applied arts investigation can, in retrospect, be seen as a precursor to domains of praxis such as arts-and-health, arts-and-business management, arts-andpublic space, arts-in industry, arts-and-personal development and artsand-social development, all of which have their exemplars and have consequently garnered significant new income streams for practising artists. These early approaches resonate with the work of a recent cocollaborator, artist and designer Natalie Jeremijenko whose X-Design1 (extended, participatory design projects) specifically aims to structure public participation as a central modality. Jeremijenko describes her research as engaging with ‘structures of participation in the production of knowledge and information, and the political and social possibilities (and limitations) of information and emerging technologies – mostly through public experiments’ ( Jeremijenko 2010). This participatory, public way of working was further developed and synthesized through the recent Remnant Emergency Artlab project (Armstrong et al. 2010–12). For the second of five international ‘lab-style events’ we engaged with Sydney-based bat conservation and advocacy groups to present the Bat Human Public Event as part of the Investigating the Bat/Human Problem project (Armstrong et al. 2010–12) in Cook and Phillip Park, Sydney in 2011. This applied project sought to highlight the plight of 22,000 flying foxes that would subsequently be forcibly relocated from Sydney’s Botanic Gardens. This event was established not simply as a creative protest, but rather as a dialogue between the disjunctive parties and their respective ideological and pragmatic positions. Through staging a public debate between conservationists, architects, Botanic Gardens staff and project artists, opportunities were given for each party to present a point of view, an approach that garnered significant press and community engagement. This modality of participative and dialogic practice is described by Pat Hoffie (2009)

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Figure 4. Keith Armstrong et al., photograph of interactive digital media work, Knowmore (House of Commons) 2009–10

in the Knowmore (House of Commons) catalogue essay, prepared for the work’s premiere showing at the State Library of Queensland. In it she observes my focus upon deep collaboration in the process and making that also ‘invites collaboration as an integral aspect of experiencing it’ (Hoffie 2009). This approach also underpinned an invitation I received in 2005 from the Australasian Creative Industries Network (ACIN), a research concentration of the former Australasian Cooperative Research Centre for Interaction Design (ACID). At that time a research agenda was established around the communication potentials of a low-latency high-bandwidth network called GrangeNet and the Access Grid teleconferencing technology. I was amongst a group of artists, technology specialists and curators invited to work together to explore a range of related design, process and technical questions. By centralizing the production and exhibition of experimental artworks within this study through collaborations with both The Australian Centre For the Moving Image [ACMI] Melbourne and the Human Interface Technology Design Lab in New Zealand, we were able to provide a new context to investigate the efficacy, transference and reach of these technical systems in the public and university sectors. In this context my networked new media installation Intimate Transactions 54

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Intimate Transactions when viewed as an example of CSCW, is a work that explores how two people in different locations can interact with each other via embodied interaction devices (Bodyshelves) in a virtual environment where they transact with each other as well as the environment’s population of on-screen creatures. (Madden and Viller 2007: 98)

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became a central case study through which we developed several lines of investigation2 – one key example being within the domain of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work [CSCW], which has a special focus upon networked collaboration and awareness. Writing in ‘Am I the lighter one? awareness in a dual-site networked installation’, Madden and Viller state:

A key aim of the Intimate Transactions project (Armstrong et al. 2005– 8) was to focus upon forms of embodied and tacit communication that moved beyond basic video and audio streaming. With this aim in mind, whilst the two remotely-situated participants were unable to see or hear each other during the process, they were instead able to intimate the effects of each other’s actions, being broadcast across the network, through a range of alternate indicators, such as the local accumulation of objects or the relative movement qualities of their respective avatars. From a CSCW perspective this unconventional approach was seen as an experiment in the abstract and ambient nature of ‘awareness information’ with the authors stressing that a noteworthy contrast between Intimate Transactions (Armstrong et al. 2005–8) and mainstream CSCW technology is that ‘it involves the impact of knowing or not knowing who is at the other end of the interaction’ (Madden and Viller 2007: 104). A further example of a pedagogical ‘application’ arising from my artwork emerged through the invitation to be scholar-in-residence for three months at the central Californian university Cal Poly, in order to present, teach and extend upon my work, particularly in light of its electromechanical interface, the ‘Bodyshelf ’. This professorship underpinned a key part of that institution’s push to initiate a Master’s programme straddling the liberal arts, engineering and architecture with Intimate Transactions (Armstrong et al. 2005–8) being used as a critical exemplar of the field. 55

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Such cross-fertilization of disciplines – between science (in its many forms) and media arts (in its many forms), for example – has historically been of significant allure to practitioners within my field, particularly for applied or embedded roles where the possibility of practice informing industry outcomes rather than vice versa is countenanced.3 This has offered numerous possibilities in art-science, artist-in-labs, artist-inindustry-style programmes that have been widely funded over the past decade and beyond. One notable example has been the Swiss Artists in Labs programme, developed in collaboration between the Zurich University of the Arts, Institute for Cultural Studies in the Arts ICS and the Bundesamt f¨ur Kultur BAK. The aims of the organizations involved are to broaden the dialogue, generate ideas and raise awareness of the contributions both artists and scientists can make to the larger challenges of our time, to be achieved through providing a research environment where these experiments can take place as part of a ‘quest for interpretations of nature, matter and human desire as well as the interest to comprehend, explore, reveal, sustain, create and build’ (Scott 2010). Here in Australia the InterArts Board of the Australia Council4 has similarly encouraged this approach, both through residency programmes and the Synapse Art-Science5 link initiatives. In this regard I was recently awarded an ANAT-Synapse Art-Science Residency that I devised with Australia’s largest private conservation organization, the Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC), working with their mobile field ecologists across a variety of remote southern Australian properties.6 In response to the fact that Australia now has the highest mammal extinction rate in the world (since settlement), the AWC purchases high-value ecological land, establishes sanctuaries and actively manages the land using science-based evaluative and quantitative strategies. This necessitates the corresponding thorough implementation of feral animal control (especially of cats, foxes and rabbits), weed eradication, appropriate fire-management strategies and ultimately, when all this is in place, the translocation of threatened species. The aim of this applied, art-science collaborative project, entitled Reintroduction (Armstrong and Hayward 2012–13), is to collaborate with the AWC’s South-West Region Chief Scientist, Matt Hayward, to explore ways of shifting human cultural thinking, in ways that better generate

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broad-based actions. In this way the applied common aim is to seek new ways to assist in reversing the decline of Australian habitat health and diversity. This type of ‘embedded’ relationship, working in the field with the ecologists, was far more appropriate to my skills and abilities, having ‘escaped’ in the 1980s from a career as an electronic engineer and information technology professional. For this reason the idea of being literally embedded within a technical lab environment, or indeed developing creative processes that might further corporate technological or public relations agendas, had much less appeal – a fact that undoubtedly also blinded me to many of the potential technical or pragmatic application of my works. However, since the mid-1990s I had resolved that my projects would be developed as vehicles for the examination of theories of ecology, following an approach consistent with Estelle Barrett’s categorization of ‘practice’ as a process that moves between what is known (theory) and the unknown or the yet to be revealed – in a way that transcends and extends that theory (Barrett and Bolt 2007). From a scientific perspective, ecology refers to the diversity and symbiosis of living systems, but it is also a domain of critical philosophical theory (Hay 2002; Merchant 1996, 2004) with a discourse initially inspired by the ethical dimensions of ecological-scientific findings. I have long employed a descriptive term, ‘ecosophical’, to foreground my creative process (Armstrong 2009). ‘Ecosophy’ is a term that mixes the words ecology and philosophy and its early Greek derivatives oikos and sophia are literally translated as ‘of the dwelling’ and ‘wisdom’. It was originally defined by Arne Naess through the Deep Ecology movement as a way of acting in the world based upon a personally situated ethic (Naess 1995). Another strong referent within this framework of praxis is ‘The Sustainment’, an ontological position described by its inventor Tony Fry (2003) as an aspirational design framework that veers away from approaches based on ‘business as usual’ towards a fundamental rethinking of the relationships between the social, political, economic and cultural conditions that frame our worlds. From this theoretical basis I focus my thinking upon four profoundly relational ecologies, with my work then seeking (in many different ways) to draw focus upon these concepts. The first and most widely

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comprehended of these ecologies is that of the biophysical, and this is the one that tends to predominate in popular parlance. This frames my current project Reintroduction (Armstrong and Hayward 2012–13) in that my host, the AWC, pursues practices of both bush regeneration and rare mammal introduction. However, this ecology is deeply intermeshed with the second ecology of the artificial (that is to say, all of the technologies that we design and bring into being) – a fact that reminds us that ‘we’ are therefore always the designed as well as the designers. Here the use of chemical poisons or broad-scale bush and animal destruction technologies has historically established many of the problems that the AWC confronts today. Therefore in this sense it is ‘us’ that constitutes the central problem of ecology, in that all environmental problems we have now created are a symptom of this relationship. Fry describes these first two ecologies as a composite he calls the ‘naturalized artificial’, reminding us that our understanding of our technologies has now become metaphysics and as such has become innately embedded in us as a ‘naturalized’ way of knowing. The third ecology I draw upon in my work is that of the sociocultural, framed by the principle that we cannot exist as a singularity given our deep dependence upon human and non-human others. Here again the work of the AWC becomes inflected, supported or impacted through necessary broad-scale integrated management processes that bring its work into contact with the ideas and practices of neighbouring landowners or local indigenous custodians. The fourth ecology that influences my work is that of the ‘image’. Fry states that we see nothing without a ‘televisual’ pre-layering – a situation that inspires our ‘autonomic technocentrism’: ‘Effectively, we can only comprehend technology’s agency by the production of alienation from it (which the means that brings it to presence as that which is known)’ (Fry 2010). This suggests that everything we perceive is pre-imaged by historic and contemporary literary and visual sources, and so the rethinking and reworking of what those ‘images’ might now become frames the central project and application of my research. Interrogating the ecology of the image was an overriding aim of the Remnant Emergency Artlab project (Armstrong et al. 2010–12). When conceptualizing the project at its outset I wrote:

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This multifaceted approach to understanding ecology arguably gives my work a broader scope and application than that of many other artists in the ‘art and ecology’ arena who have traditionally mostly focused their works predominantly upon ecology’s biophysical dimensions (Goldsworthy and Riedelsheimer 2004; Polli 2007). However, in recent years a fuller understanding of what creative practice within this domain might become has emerged – an understanding based in the recognition that the crisis we face is a ‘crisis of us’. One example of this expanded understanding is the Danish exhibition ReThink (2009–10), curated throughout major Copenhagen galleries at the time of the high-profile international climate change conferences of 2009, which included streams called ‘Rethinking Art’, ‘Politics’, ‘Social life’, ‘The Implicit’ and ‘Relations’. The stated goal of this exhibition was to ‘help’ provide politicians attending the meeting, as well as the general public, with new perspectives on some of the complex human issues stemming from global climate change. This approach was evidenced by works such as those of Canadian artist Bill Burns who presented his playful Safety Gear for Small Animals:7 a range of items such as safety vests, buoyancy aids, helmets and protective eyewear scaled down to the size of birds, frogs and rodents. Cascade8 by New Zealander Janine Randerson used sound and projection on a number of ethereally-floating discs originating from scientific mapping software to suggest the impacts of climate change on both Arctic animals and the ecosystem. Consistent with this exhibition’s approaches, my ecosophical practice gels with my own ongoing journey to become a more sustainable and sustaining citizen – something that I believe all of us must confront as we move uneasily within our post-Copenhagen world. The Excellence in Research Australia (ERA)9 assessment exercise suggests such an ‘applied’ focus through its definition of research as

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Together we assert that today’s environmental crisis is underpinned by a deep cultural crisis – and so to get our ‘house in order’ we urgently need to create better and more powerful participatory ‘images’ of what a ‘citizen-led’, sustainable world might be. Our ArtLab’s core aim is therefore to understand how to further develop and create such ‘powerful images’. (Armstrong 2010)

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‘the creation of new knowledge and/or the use of existing knowledge in a new and creative ways so as to generate new concepts, methodologies and understandings. This could include synthesis and analysis of previous research to the extent that it is new and creative’ (Australian Research Council 2012: 12). In this vein, Paul Carter’s investigations into place, collaboration, work, material and intention offer a cogent example in that he sees his own work’s ‘application’, as I do, as being ‘the articulation of a field of relationships implicit or incipient in the present situation and its materials but hitherto unrecognised or unvalued’ and therefore having the ‘capacity to make symbolic connections, that is, ultimately to make a fuller sense of things, that allows the future not to be a repetition or an intensification of the present’ (Carter: 2010: 2). This thinking is evidenced in my recent work Finitude (Mallee: Time) (Armstrong et al. 2010–12) which was inspired by a series of visits and residencies in the South-West Victoria Australian Mallee country. The work was envisaged as an evolving ‘personal topography’ of place-discovery. By contrasting and melding readily available generalizations of the Mallee regions’ rational surfaces, climatic maps and ecological systems with what Carter calls ‘a fine capillary system of interconnected words, places, memories and sensations’ (Carter 2010: 3), I generated through my own idiosyncratic research processes a ‘dark writing’ of place through my outside eyes – an approach that avoids concentration upon what ‘everyone else knows’ (Carter 2010: 3), to imagine and develop, instead, a sense of how things might be. This basis in re-imagining and reinvention became the vehicle for the work’s more fundamental intention – a meditative re-imagination of ‘time’ (and region) as finite resources. Towards this end, every object, process and idea in the work is rethought as having its own ‘time component’ or ‘residue’ that becomes deposited into our ‘collective future’. Conceived this way, Finitude (Mallee: Time) suggests the poverty of predominant images of time as ‘mechanism’ to instead envisage time as a plastic cyclical medium that we can each choose to ‘give to’ or ‘take away from’ our future. In this sense time has become finitude. In light of these ‘applied intentions’ within my works, I will now draw on writings and reviews of my works from a range of disciplines to discuss ways in which others have considered it to have applications beyond the field of the creative arts. For example, design futurist Tony Fry observes that many of my works

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‘CONVERSATIONS BEFORE THE END OF TIME’ Figure 5. Keith Armstrong et al., a detail from digital media work, Finitude (Mallee: Time), 2010–12

specifically ‘confound views of detached objects available for critical scrutiny’ in that they remain ‘unfinished works until realised through user interaction. Observation is thus denied by the primacy of enacted and individuated experience (looking is displaced by acting)’ (Fry 2008: 1). This is true of works such as Intimate Transactions (Armstrong et al. 2005–08) that exist only as limited objects for external observation, but rather require commitment in terms of a 20-plus minute duration of ‘play’, embodied interaction (through engaging with the work’s interface that detects back and feet movements) and also engagement with the work’s simple gaming processes, all of which becomes a precursor for both understanding and experimenting with the work’s ecosophical metaphors. In a similar regard critic and academic Jillian Hamilton (2006) touches on what she calls ‘this articulation of a field of relationships” when she states that Intimate Transactions fosters ‘relationship with someone thousands of kilometres away wrapped, libidinally, into this intensely intimate, embodied and suspended space’ (Hamilton 2006: 124). Here Hamilton suggests a design for the experience in that it is able to successfully move a new viewer into a critical, embodied and 61

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perceptual relationship with an unknown other, creating an expressive, contextualized scenario for reflections upon ecological space and relationship. In this sense the work becomes positioned to assist in the aim of triggering a more ‘world-sustaining’ ethic. Fry goes on to suggest that the intention of this work is to reflect upon ‘the experience of our being relationally connected as a collective body. The form of its materiality functions as a means towards this end’ (Fry 2008: 3). This commentary is consistent with my intentions, which were to make participants gradually aware of the ramifications of their ‘consumption’ (and that of the other participant), so that they might use this knowledge to guide their subsequent actions. Towards that end we designed conditions that required each party to enter into a transaction with the other and work collaboratively with them. This guaranteed a context in which distinctions between participants would dissolve as they began to interact and transact, integrating and exchanging component elements of the works with the other participant, cooperating to ‘restore’ their own/shared environment. In order to further encourage this possibility I have long pursued forms of work that emphasize the integral place of social relationships within ecological systems and fosters an approach to art practice that foregrounds collaboration and interactivity in terms of both producing the work and designing how it will be experienced. In this sense, works like Intimate Transactions (Armstrong et al. 2005–8), Shifting Intimacies (Armstrong et al. 2006–8) and Knowmore (House of Commons) (Armstrong et al. 2009–10) resituate audiences as performers who engage with ecological issues through their interactions with the artwork and other participants. While this approach of combining ecological concerns with collaboration through co-production and experience is subtle and non-didactic, it ultimately governs every aspect of my works. To promote this approach I have previously chosen to deploy recognizable tropes of gaming and a sensibility of body movement and response designed to initially lull participants through a welcoming front door into a sense of apparent game ‘purpose’ before gradually introducing a lingering question of whether the outcomes being achieved are in fact as desirable as initially implied. My strategic aim is that the participant will leave the work in a reflective and activated state whilst also recognizing the critical importance of the context surrounding the work, which may be provided by writing, speaking

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As such, rather than being understood within the genre of ‘art and environment’ it arrives in the more adventurous domain of ‘art as environment.’ Moreover, as an environment it has its own created immaterial ecology (an ecology of the image). (Fry 2008: 3)

However, Fry leaves us with a hanging question, which goes to the nub of the issue: whether the best intentions of the artist and the embodied, relational design invocation would have the capacity to hit the applied mark:

‘CONVERSATIONS BEFORE THE END OF TIME’

and other forms of applied acting. Critically, Fry makes the following statement about Intimate Transactions (Armstrong et al. 2005–8):

The question that now arrives is: Does the work have the ability to actually prompt a user’s reflection on experience beyond the subjective? (Did I enjoy it? How did it work? What kind of relationship did I have with my partner?) This question begs to be left open for each user to answer. (Fry 2008: 3)

This is a key challenge and application for my practice and yet one that lies, for the present, beyond the scope of my formal locus of research activities. (Details of informal interviews with audience members discussing a range of responses can be seen in the video documentation at www.intimatetransactions.com.) Ultimately, however, it remains my intention to develop works with this potential: to prompt users’ reflection upon experiences beyond the subjective as a means for asking them to then question their own understandings of ecology, something also implicitly corroborated within Hamilton’s (2006) analyses. Thinking more broadly about other applied outcomes for my works, sustainability scientist Liz Baker eloquently reflects upon the limitations of her discipline as she perceives it and points to the further pedagogical applications of my work, suggesting that ‘the ways in which ecology is traditionally taught and the contexts within which it is learnt do not support the development of an ecological consciousness’ (Baker 2005: 1). After collaborating with me on the early stages of several works, she wrote: What was interesting for me, too, was the ways in which these ideas were discussed using the language and symbols of other disciplines. As a scientist interested in sustainability I might approach the question

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of energy flows by looking at systems, whereas here I was asked to consider how changing energy flows might sound, or how to express through movement an awareness of energy inputs and of synergies through time and space.

What subsequently evolved through our collaborations was a different sort of ecology; a simplified system of inputs, interactions and feedback loops using visual, aural and kinaesthetic means of communicating the idea of existing within systems of energy flows and their consequences. It provides an opportunity for a person to become aware of existing within a simplified version of a complex system of which they are already a part and, perhaps, to understand something about what ‘being a part of ’ means (Baker 2002: 1). Baker’s words again concur with my aim of allowing participants to make a fuller sense of things set within a context that suggests the future as something other than a repetition or intensification of the present. This approach was also evident in the third ‘lab’ of the Remnant Emergency Artlab project (Armstrong et al. 2010–12) conducted in New Zealand where we devised a work with Maori artist Jo Tito called Remnant Breath (Armstrong, Barclay and Tito 2011). This work invited an acute sensitization to a local river walkway, its ecology and its ecological layers of cultural history and significance. The experience was predominantly activated through the often ignored senses of sound, using the vehicle of a 20-minute blindfolded sound walk. The intentions behind Remnant Breath were to reveal remnant sonic layers of this environment and explore stories of water, breath, place and environmental action. The initial stages of the work involved a series of loudspeakers placed in the bush on either side of the track visible to people passing by, mixed with the local sounds of river water and aided by the quietness of the evening air. The event culminated in a high fidelity sound presentation and live performance by Jo Tito. Here the intensification was achieved through the dulling of sight and the tension of a blindfolded group experience and local and augmented sonic compositions. The future was drawn through the eyes of Tito’s traditional and contemporary synthesis of her aeonian traditions, writ large in the context of that urban waterway corridor. Returning now, in conclusion to my central question – can my works create experiences that may assist in triggering a more

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The Intimate Transactions project is not only a highly engaging interactive artwork but also a multidimensional educational tool that can serve many different functions from providing hands-on teaching about sustainability issues, to teaching about intercultural communication, to demonstrating how the human body creates its own form of language through movement and collaboration. (Gillette 2007)

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‘world-sustaining’ ethic? – I would like to draw again upon the words of Cal Poly Liberal Arts and Engineering Professor David Gillette (2007) to give a further exemplar of success in this regard. Gillette writes about his experience of hosting the work Intimate Transactions (Armstrong et al. 2005–8) in California within the context of his faculty of engineering and liberal arts. He charts the subsequent effects that he observed the work to have had upon students, faculty and the general public and draws attention to the most potent application for my works in that he centrally situates and understands them as a form of ecosophically, ecopolitically activated praxis:

Whilst here he at first highlights the more regular instrumentally educative or ‘use’ value for my works, Gillette also begins to sense the more fundamental educational prospective for the work, speaking of being ‘surprised’ by the discussions participants had with him and others and with each other after they experienced the work. He goes on to say that ‘The depth of their emotional and intellectual reactions to the work of the Transmute Collective was often quite profound’ (Gillette 2007). In this way I sense Gillette as tacitly highlighting the most satisfying success (or ‘application’) of my work in the context of eco-cultural activation, in a way that meets Fry’s challenge of prompting ‘a user’s reflection on experience beyond the subjective’ (Fry 2008: 3) Gillette goes on to state: Discussions about the work quickly diverged from the practicalities of the immediate experience (which were, in themselves, essential discussions), to much deeper conversations about the human connection to our environment and how we’re all also connected to each other in subtle and often neglected ways. I was glad we had these discussion in our classes as we connected students and faculty to the project, but I was even more heartened to hear these impromptu

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discussions between young children and their parents after experiencing the project, and between strangers from diverse social and linguistic backgrounds who were meeting each other for the first time as a result of visiting the American Intimate Transactions shows. (Gillette 2007)

This account further suggests how work from within an arts discipline can have tangible, ‘external’ significance and application – in this case within the domains of both engineering pedagogy and applied critical ecology. Furthermore, what Gillette poignantly speaks to here is the triggering of local conversation after the fact, something fundamental to fomenting a synthesis and potential activation of ecological positions. In all of these ways, by shifting the conception of ‘application’ for my new media art works far beyond the technically instrumental, I have been able to initiate a potent approach to praxis that engages participants in experiences that allude to profoundly ‘real-world’ problems of our era – and that also asks them to then reconsider their subsequent responses.

Notes 1

Available online at: www.environmentalhealthclinic.net [accessed 2 May 2010].

2 3

Much of this work was documented in Hamilton (2006). Amongst numerous examples, the work of the tissue culture lab at the SymbioticA Centre of Excellence in Biological Arts (UWA) is significant. See: www.symbiotica.uwa.edu.au [accessed 2 May 2012].

4

Available online at: www.australiacouncil.gov.au/grants [accessed 2 May 2012].

5 6

Available online at: www.synapse.net.au/ [accessed 2 May 2010]. Available online at: www.anat.org.au/2012/03/2012-synapse-artscienceresidencies-announced/ [accessed 2 May 2012].

7

Available online at: safetygearforsmallanimals.com/SGSA.html [accessed 2 May 2012].

8

Available online at: www.janineranderson.com/installations/014/index .php [accessed 29 May 2012].

9

Available online at: www.arc.gov.au/era/default.htm [accessed 2 May 2012].

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4 Multimodal Research Applied to Decision Making by Incident Controllers on the Fire Ground Valerie Ingham

My background involves practising as both an artist and as a lecturer in emergency management. My experience has led me to connect these two previously disparate fields and shaped my research. In this text I aim to demonstrate the multimodal research approach, which I developed and applied to a study of recently promoted inspectors within a large Australian firefighting organization. In the original study (Ingham 2009), 12 participating inspectors were interviewed. In this instance I present excerpts from the analysis of one incident, the Glass Factory Fire. In my study, I investigated how incident controllers apprehend a fire ground and consequently make decisions in an attempt to determine the relationship between risk perception, decision making and aesthetic and somatic forms of awareness in this context. My method – the multimodal research approach – and the theory that I developed as a consequence, that of multimodal decision making, can best be introduced with the following brief account of one incident, which I have called ‘Fire in a Panel Beating Shop’. 67

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Fire in a Panel Beating Shop This incident took place while the participant interviewed as part of my study held the rank of Station Officer. Having already attended one fire in a panel beating shop earlier in the day, in which his focus was to prevent an oxyacetylene cylinder from getting too hot and exploding, the participant was once again the first arriving officer. Panel beating shops typically contain many flammable substances, such as decanted petrol, thinners and paint, as well as cylinders of oxyacetylene gas, which is used in the welding process; oxyacetylene gas is highly explosive and extremely unstable. In the following incident all the workers had been evacuated when the participant entered the shop with his partner and a fire hose: It wasn’t that big a fire, but it was right down the back of the panel beating store, probably maybe 30 or 40 metres in. So we were inside and we were starting to put the fire out. Anyway, there was this almighty BANG from about 20 metres. Big bang, big fireball, everything starts to rock and carry on. And I turned and looked at it and thought Oh, that’s not acetylene, that’s LPG (Liquid Petroleum Gas) and just kept on doing what I was doing. Didn’t move. And I turned around, and the other bloke’s bolted . . . He got sort of three quarters of the way out and realised I wasn’t behind him and thought I’d got hurt, so he turned around and came back in to try and find me, ’cause it was all pitch black with smoke and he sort of said “We’ve got to get out, the acetylene’s blowing up!” And I said “No, it’s LPG” and he went “ok” and so we stayed. Now I really don’t know why I thought that it was LPG other than I knew that it was . . . And I don’t know why I knew that it was LPG other than the fact that I’ve seen it and it was in my subconscious what LPG must look like as opposed to what acetylene bangs look like . . . So without thinking I made a decision as to what it was and I didn’t perceive there to be a particular danger in that . . . But I can only put that down to the fact that I had seen it go ‘bang’ and whilst I didn’t register consciously that “that bang is LPG” I just kind of knew that it was, and I don’t know why, but all I can say is that intuitively, whether it was the way the flames looked or whether it was the percussion I got from it, I don’t know. (Ingham 2009)

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In this excerpt from our interview, the participant attempts to understand how he knew that the explosion was not acetylene, but LPG. He tries a number of avenues, such as pattern matching – he’s seen both explosions before, in training and on the fire ground. He tries the visual dimension – perhaps it was the way the flames looked? Perhaps it was the sound, the percussion of the explosion? Throughout his musing he consistently invokes the involuntary dimension – “without thinking”, “I didn’t register consciously”, “intuitively”. He concludes: “I don’t know”. In trying to analyze his decision to stay after the explosion he has taken a linear approach, looking at each somatic response, trying to pick up on one perception in particular, but is unable to decide between them. As a consequence of incident data such as this, I developed the theory of multimodal decision making, which understands the participant’s somatic awareness to be simultaneous, holistic and inseparable – as this participant demonstrated by his inability to separate out one particular cause of his unwavering conviction that it was safe to stay. In the practice of an artist, spatial awareness may take the form of encompassing multiple images with one sweeping glance, or a concerted ‘look’. There is a sorting and comparison between patterns, objects and movement, some of which will appear in the image under construction and some which will not. This capacity to compare and sort elements of images in parallel, resulting in a selection and an understanding of contrast, is comparable, I argue, to the process of sizing-up a fire ground for an incident controller. In size-up, not only are visual pieces of information placed side by side and meanings ascertained, but conflicting verbal reports are also visualized and reviewed in a fraction of a second. In essence, this is how I would also describe multimodal research in that, rather than examining the incident decision points individually (as in the current theories of time-pressured decisionmaking), I wanted to appraise each entire incident as an integrated whole.

Why Multimodal Research? ‘As Talleyrand once remarked, if we go on explaining, we will stop understanding altogether.’ (Rose 1980: 213)

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In conducting my study, I approached the data analysis in an artistic, holistic and multimodal way in an effort to mirror what I supposed I was going to find in the incident controllers – that is, with an awareness of aesthetic judgement in a domain previously conceived of as a ‘science’. A fire ground is dynamic, constantly changing and sometimes unpredictable. These are the conditions incident controllers must negotiate, while holding in tension the lives of their crews, possible victims and the built and natural environment. I propose that the way we understand art and aesthetics is vital to our risk perception and decision-making processes, but that because this contribution is as yet unrecognized, it is devalued. When considering these issues, and trying to enlarge upon the existing theories of time-pressured decision making, I found that the positivist-scientific paradigm did not provide an adequate platform. Although categorizing and coding exposes important information, it also has an impact on the outcome in such a way that the intuitive element largely escapes from the dissected data ‘body’, like blood running unnoticed onto the ground. Multimodal research (and indeed multimodal decision making) recognizes that there are features involved in the recognition process which are non-verbal and aesthetic in nature and which resist being isolated and removed from the whole for examination. Multimodal research is about relationship, structure, harmony, discord, context; it is therefore well-suited to the study of the complex, the multifaceted, the indivisible whole. I argue that, despite the ways in which these relationships are logically and rationally articulated in the science of firefighting and consequently understood as ‘facts’, without aesthetic judgement they cannot even begin to be apprehended. In this text I will not be concentrating on the multimodal decision making theory I developed, but rather I aim to demonstrate how a creative multimodal research approach can be employed in the investigation of a socially constructed ‘scientific’ practice, such as firefighting. If you are researching a live practice of some sort, for example nursing, council work, hairdressing or some other practice, please just read your particular practice or role into the context whenever you read ‘firefighter’ or ‘incident controller’ and see if there is something here that works for you; something that you can adapt, adopt or apply to your own creative research context.

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Before I detail the multimodal research approach I developed, travel briefly with me through the assorted perspectives I explored, so that you can see the integration and assimilation of familiar theories and concepts and thus, hopefully, recognize how you too can synthesize a research approach appropriate to your situation. To begin with, in a study of this nature, the theoretical stance taken towards art needs to encompass art and aesthetics as both a practice and an experience. I drew on the work of John Dewey in his educational capacity, who understood art as experience (1934). More recently, Richard Shusterman has taken up the work of Dewey and developed a pragmatic aesthetic which incorporates an understanding of bodily awareness and which he terms ‘somaesthetics’ (Shusterman 2008; 2009. Somaesthetics provides a tangible method for understanding the aesthetic and somatic dimensions of decision making on the fire ground. I also drew on the art educator, Elliot Eisner, who writes: Any practice whatsoever can have aesthetic or artistic qualities. This includes three-year-olds building castles in the sand as well as surgeons engaged in a life-sustaining operation. (Eisner 2002: xiv)

In my research I adopted Eisner and Powell’s definition of aesthetic experience, that is: ‘forms of experience that possess an emotional quality that is both feelingful and satisfying’ (Eisner and Powell 2002: 135).

Research in the Social Sciences

MULTIMODAL RESEARCH APPLIED TO DECISION MAKING BY INCIDENT CONTROLLERS ON THE FIRE GROUND

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Various approaches can be employed in ‘visual’ research. In the following section I examine two approaches located in the social sciences: visual culture and social semiotics. I then move to arts education and arts-based research in an effort to find a suitable approach for connecting aesthetic realizations and decision making on the fire ground.

Visual Culture Within the social sciences at the present time, visual research is generally conducted by those working under the umbrella of visual culture, which has emerged as a new academic field. The definitions of ‘culture’ 71

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and ‘visual’ are contested (Barnard 1998; 2001) and in my research I leaned towards Mirzoeff ’s (1999) understanding of ‘visual’, in which he argues that what is peceived visually is by no means the only somatic response intended by the ‘visual’ in ‘visual culture’. Visual culture is interdisciplinary, incorporating a postmodern understanding of art and tending to focus on the individual and the community and where they fit together, rather than the image and its meaning. Transposing this concept to the fire ground, the incident controller deals with images holistically, viewing them as a contextualized social phenomenon and acknowledging the various potentials for resolution. Gillian Rose (2007: 33) encourages researchers to regard the breadth of visual materials open to them, but she does not mention a live practice of any sort. Her list of possible sites for research includes ‘contemporary exhibitions, galleries, magazines, cinemas, TV shows, videos and web pages; historical archives and museums’; it is my contention that this kind of inventory needs to expand and include explorations into live practice, by which I mean images which cannot be rewound, recorded or preserved in their original integrity. Visual culture writers and researchers are positioned within the social sciences or humanities and what they ‘miss’ is the working artist. That is, their work may be easily taken up by researchers within the social sciences and media studies, but working artists researching through the visual arts are rarely discussed. Thus, on its own, visual culture did not provide the holistic framework I was seeking.

Social Semiotics Social semiotics is concerned with the way images make meanings: At its narrowest, it is merely a codification of the symbols offered us by our culture, and the formal description of how those symbols are usually combined, be they words, gestures, graphics, food or clothes. At its most general and most powerful, it is the analysis of how we deploy our cultural resources for making sense of the world: language, depiction, and action. (Lemke 1994: 76)

As a methodology, social semiotics is ideally suited to the investigation of decision making on the fire ground, as it does not prioritize 72

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quantitive analysis, especially when examining a text; this means that the frequency with which a particular term is mentioned does not determine its importance. Semiotics is more concerned with relationships within a structural whole and the worth that readers give to the signs within a text. Rather than using the visual and somatic as a means of gathering and interpreting data only, I moved towards understanding ‘the arts’ in a broader sense, more as a set of practices – that is, a shared experience of mutual understanding in which being able to participate indicates inclusion within the community. In terms of decision making by incident controllers, it means being so integrated within the environment of the fire ground that being able to ‘see’ means more than a visual understanding; it carries the connotation of embodiment, a relationship with the characteristics of the fire ground. It means an aesthetic experience, by which, in this context, I mean the way an activity of perception is organized and informed by unspoken, but shared, principles for recognizing fire features and characteristics. The ability to share these principles helps with the building of identity. I propose that incident controllers have been through a mostly unrecognized process of somatic and visual training in which they have been enculturated with a distinct way of seeing. It is this way of seeing that marks their inclusion and participation within their community of practice. In summary, a number of recent texts focusing on methodologies for incorporating visual research into the social sciences have argued that the visual has been neglected in the mainstream social sciences until fairly recently (for example, Pink et al. 2004; Kress and van Leeuwen 1990; Rose 2007; van Leeuwen and Jewitt 2001; Sturken and Cartwright 2001). Common to these authors is a concentration on critiquing the image, rather than the actual creation of it. Because I was investigating a live practice, I felt a missing dimension and so moved on to examine art education.

Research in Art Education Firefighting has predominantly been defined in terms of technical and pragmatic procedures, policies and guidelines. There is very little written on firefighting with respect to training aesthetic judgement and recognizing its importance in the decision-making process. Aesthetic 73

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judgement is a focus for researchers in both art education and artsbased practice. The moment of sensing the rightness of fit, of seeing the solution which was always there but never quite in focus, is a function of aesthetic judgement. Aesthetic judgement is the place where disciplinary boundaries melt and new connections and networks electrify in an instantaneous moment of insight, which may or may not have been anticipated or brooded over for microseconds, hours, days or perhaps even a lifetime. It is the split second when everything comes together into a cohesive point of understanding. For scientists and aestheticians alike, this is the ‘aha’ moment (Eisner and Powell 2002; Wechsler 1978) when the seemingly disparate threads of a problem drop into an arrangement which solves a piece of the puzzle. Today there is an increasing sense of enquiry around decision making and knowledge in terms of somatic and aesthetic response. Eisner and Powell write: It may be that somatic forms of knowledge – the use of the physical body as a source of information – play an important role in enabling scientists to make judgements about alternative courses of action or directions to pursue. It might be that qualitative cues are difficult to articulate, indeed cues that may themselves be ineffable, are critical for doing productive scientific work. (Eisner and Powell 2002: 134)

That is, sometimes the physical body is used as a source of information and, at times, it is difficult to express in words how this happens. The central artery connecting writers and researchers within the social sciences and art education is the significance of the soma, the body, and aesthetic appreciation for the experience itself, rather than the singular focus on a work of art: There is a domain of thinking where distinctions between conceptions in art and science become meaningless. For here is manifest the efficacy of visual thinking, and a criterion for selection between alternatives that resists reduction to logic and is best referred to as aesthetics. (Miller 1978: 73)

Dewey, and subsequently Shusterman, hold the ‘dynamic aesthetic experience’ in much higher regard than the actual art object created. 74

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With this privileging of aesthetic process over product, art is redefined as ‘a quality of experience’ rather than a collection of objects or a substantive essence shared only by such objects; the aesthetic experience thus becomes the cornerstone of the philosophy of art. (Shusterman 2000: 25)

My decision to explore arts-based practice, which focuses primarily on the artist and the site of production, was the next logical step.

Research in Arts-Based Practice I embraced aspects of arts-based practice because it enabled me to discuss two separate issues, which may otherwise have become confused. One is the actual ‘performative doing’ of the practice of art or firefighting; and the other is the reflection that happens afterwards in the interview. The participating inspectors related their incidents within the structure of an interview, and this formed a reflection after the event, but I was investigating what actually happens during the event. This meant that the participants generally employed a rational, logical and chronological approach to relating what happened in a timepressured situation in which rational logic was not a major player. I was keen to capture the multimodal and holistic essence of the scene in its entirety, and arts-based practice enabled me to do this through its emphasis on the artist as both practitioner and researcher. Within art education it is the teacher and the pupils who are at the centre of the research; in the social sciences it is the researcher through whom the data is mediated. By placing the incident controller in the position of artist-practitioner I come closest to their first-hand view of the scene.

MULTIMODAL RESEARCH APPLIED TO DECISION MAKING BY INCIDENT CONTROLLERS ON THE FIRE GROUND

Their emphasis on experience means that it is not only what is produced that is important, but also the activity that produces it. Shusterman writes:

Multimodal Research Framework The preceding discussion of multimodal research is displayed diagrammatically in Table 1 on the following page. 75

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Goal

Usefulness for investigating the Incident Controller on the fire ground

The terrain

The human element

The individual and the community and where they fit together The Incident Controller deals with images holistically, viewing them as a social phenomenon and acknowledging the various potentials for resolution. Decode or translate visual data into verbal data

Visual Culture The researcher as the consumer of art

Successful interpretation of the signs by the Incident Controller

Seeing is not believing, it means interpreting how meanings change and are changed in use (Rose 2001: 77)

Social Semiotics The producer and the consumer; artist and audience How images make meanings

Create and appreciate visual data, including the performing arts

Can adapt/adopt strategies from Art Education and apply to Incident Controller training

The art classroom

Art Education The teacher and the students

Achieve a resonance not possible using only written data

Aesthetic and somatic perspective of the image of the fire ground leading to a paradigm shift in the understanding of how decisions are made

The image and its meaning

Arts-based Practice The artist as theorist and practitioner

Table 1. Summary of methods as they apply to the research of decision making by Incident Controllers on the fire ground

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Multimodal Data Analysis Multimodality is distinguished from formal rationality and informal sense-based rationality in that art, science and practice are approached as an irreducible whole. The remnants of Modernism make themselves felt in the strong impulse to study artistic expression through establishing types, looking for precepts and repeating patterns and measuring effects. Multimodal Research deeply embraces somatic and aesthetic experience in an holistic way, much like a three-dimensional laser light show requires more than one dimension for the full visual effect, as individual highlighted points are deemed distorted and meaningless on their own. It would have been much simpler to employ previously established forms of qualitative data analysis, the most common following the sequential process of coding the transcripts, developing categories and eventually linking the categories into major themes. This, however, would have been counterproductive and detrimental to my aim of retaining the integrity of each incident as a whole and to examining each one as an integrated structure. Had I employed a qualitative data analysis instrument such as NVivo to codify the interview transcripts – looking, for example, for instances when the incident controllers mention the colour of the smoke, their reliance on their sense of smell, sound and so on – I could have written a chapter on each of these ‘elements’ or ‘characteristics’ and said, no doubt, something meaningful. This would not, however, have been a holistic approach, as the bonds of intuitive experience which hold an individual incident together would have been severed.

MULTIMODAL RESEARCH APPLIED TO DECISION MAKING BY INCIDENT CONTROLLERS ON THE FIRE GROUND

Synthesizing various aspects of the social sciences (visual culture and social semiotics), art education and arts-based practice into a workable framework proved quite a challenge. Although there is plenty to read about (for example Duncum 2002; Barrett 2003; Kindler 2003; Efland 2004), not many writers are explicit in terms of how they undertook their research and the actual practicalities of it. As a result, I synthesized my own understanding of multimodal research in relation to other research methodologies such as phenomenology, ethnography and grounded theory, illustrated in Table 2 on the following page.

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What are the methods of data collection?

What is the nature of the research process?

What is the purpose of the research?

To understand how images function in a broader cultural sphere and how looking practices inform our lives beyond our perception of images per se (Duncum 2002); to inform practice Studies images and live experience Approaches the composition of an image or incident as a mutually linked, irreducible whole Focuses on how meaning is made out of the visual, aural and textual world (Sturken and Cartwright 2001: 3) Draws from interviews, observations, historical records, news media and other images and artefacts

Multimodal Research

In-depth unstructured interviews Purposeful sampling of 5–10 individuals

Studies individuals Focuses on lived experiences

Phenomenology (Leedy 1997) To describe an experience from the participant’s points of view

Table 2. Multimodal research in relation to other approaches

Participant observation Structured interviews with ‘informants’ Artefact/document collections

Studies sites Focuses on naturally occurring processes/change

Ethnography (Leedy 1997) To understand the relationship between behaviours and ‘culture’

Draws from historical records, interviews, observations Variable, multiple ‘units’

Studies ‘process’ Focuses on interactions

Grounded Theory (Leedy 1997) To derive a theory that links participants’ perspectives to general social science theories

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How are the findings communicated?

What are the methods of data analysis?

Thematic narratives Use of literature, film, art, word origins

Meaning-oriented Search for themes and patterns across participants Open, tentative, intuitive

Holistic descriptions of everyday events Assertions Analytical vignettes

Event-oriented Structured indexing, coding Constant comparative method

Analytical story

Concept-oriented Open, axial, selective coding Constant comparative method

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Includes intuition and personal experience as data Includes live performance; conduct of work Multimodal and holistically-oriented Open, tentative, intuitive Reflective-rich portrayal of participants’ views, including the author Synergetic interactions Comparisons Social Semiotics Personal, synthetic interpretation Follows the development and maturation of a problem or issue Image construction Holistic descriptions and explanations Reflective vignettes

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In my final thesis I grouped 16 major incidents, unevenly as it turns out, into four categories: 1) 2) 3) 4)

Something is not quite right; I would have done it differently; Something just clicked; Complex incidents.

Given that grouping the incidents, filing them under categories, entailed identifying and prioritizing features in common, thus defeating the purpose of a holistic approach, how – and why – did I do this? I do not have a definitive answer to this question. I chose to obey an intuitive impulse which told me that the overriding characteristic of certain incidents did have something in common, so I suppose in some way this is a meta-theme decided very subjectively by myself. There is no other way around it. In another sense, though, I had lived and breathed, read and dreamed, listened to and studied these incidents for rather a long time. I knew them inside out and back to front, sometimes ‘better’ than the participants themselves. In some ways I can claim to have built up an experience of these incidents and the participants, and in some ways I can claim that my experience, with the action of reflection, has resulted in enough expert knowledge of these incidents to be able to say something meaningful about them when they are grouped in certain ways according to my perception. I analyzed each incident by reading, thinking and ruminating and then leaving them alone. I came back and repeated the exercise until I was almost so tired of some incidents I could not bear to look at them for months at a time. Then, triggered by some catalyst, I suddenly thought, “Now is the time” and away I went. Each incident was well known, but fresh once again. I saw things I had not seen before and made connections that I had not previously made. I reignited old, almost forgotten connections and I started to write, in the form of a stream of consciousness, about each incident. I could not help but keep the face of the participant before me, as I knew them reasonably well. I imagined their reaction to what I was thinking. I decided to send each of them the account of their incident with my analysis; for triangulation, but mostly out of curiosity. Most were pleasantly surprised, as they were not expecting quite what they received. The description of the incident was well known to them, but in my explanations their decision making, 80

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This way of treating information resembles the work of a critic who cannot know in advance which particular qualities a specific work of art or literature, or music, or dance might display, yet is responsible for recognising what is important in the work and justifying his or her judgements if asked. (Eisner and Powell 2002: 136)

MULTIMODAL RESEARCH APPLIED TO DECISION MAKING BY INCIDENT CONTROLLERS ON THE FIRE GROUND

previously a subconscious understanding, was now explained from an aesthetic point of view. I was expecting they would find it amusing and highly theoretical; rather, they found it marvellously liberating to read in words what they had always known intuitively, but could never actually verbalize for themselves. These were great moments of triumph, motivating factors encouraging me to continue on with my analysis. We are so used to ‘perception’ as meaning understanding the elements of the whole, rather than taking in the whole, that this kind of data analysis may feel like a bit back door, not quite ‘ridgy-didge’ (for non-Australians, not quite authentic, not quite above-board) to you; however, in reality it is what each of us does every day of our lives in our ordinary and not so ordinary decision-making activities. It is like a recipe, in which varying amounts of calculated odds and gut feeling are weighed against each other, the balance finely-tuned to our life experiences, character and the situation itself. Art criticism, according to Nelson (1977), is a function of our experience: ‘We see what we are looking for, what we have been trained to see by habit or tradition’ (1977: 11). I used my own judgement to offer explanations. Eisner claims that ‘[i]f researchers have no consciousness of what is significant in a setting, it is unlikely that anything subsequent will occur that is of interest’ (1998: 230). As I had no idea what I would find in the data, I had to let it speak to me. My role was to recognize what was important and be able to justify why:

Case Study: The Glass Factory Fire Firefighters learn to read visually because it is an important means through which they assess risk and communicate with one another. It takes energy to read the intensity of the heat, recognize the smell of various burning substances, look for points of entry and visually measure various relationships such as depth of field, height and the 81

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make-up of construction materials. In the artistic domain this is called aesthetic awareness and it is recognized that aesthetic awareness involves every part of the human being (Eisner 2002). I liken aesthetic awareness to the firefighting term ‘sizing-up’. In the incident of the Glass Factory Fire I investigate the application of artistic practice to the analysis of the incident, and introduce the concept of an expert as someone prepared to break the rules.

Incident Description During the day of Christmas Eve a transformer in a glass factory explodes. The incident is responded to by the local fire brigade’s day shift. They work all day then leave, assuming that the pumps, which push water through, the thermoses to keep things cool, are still working. In fact, they are not. The emergency power had not kicked in and the thermoses were not being cooled. Consequently, by 10:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve the thermoses exploded. Molten glass raced out of the pipes and into two-metre deep basins, which were specially designed for this sort of thing, but by the time the glass factory inspector arrived the basins were overflowing and the basement was rapidly filling with molten glass. Later, after the application of water by the firefighters, it also became apparent that the pumps that push the cooling water out of the basement and into a dam were not working either. The basement began to fill with water, which started to rise through the floorboards and into the factory itself. Ultimately it took five crews (approximately 20 firefighters) two and a half hours to bring the situation under control. They worked in rotating shifts. The conditions were extreme, although I have inferred this through two references made by the glass factory inspector. These concern the reluctance of the firefighters to participate, and the speedy rotation of the crews using breathing apparatus. The conditions were not elaborated upon in great detail by the inspector. Rather, his concern lay with the lack of enthusiasm for engaging with the task demonstrated by the firefighters: ‘And other guys are saying “I’ve just come out” [from fighting the basement fire] and that was like an hour and a half ago; well, they just

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He replied: ‘Yeah, way hot. It was like honey. So WG was the first Inspector there and I was the second. I pulled up and I said “What do you want to do?” and he said “We are having a few problems getting blokes.” And one thing that shitted me there, we had – and this happens a lot – is the motor drivers on pumps say, “I’m the motor driver, I can’t do anything” and their pump’s just parked.’ (Ingham 2009)

In his retrospective account of the Glass Factory Fire, we see the inspector focusing upon one element of the scene, which is the lack of cooperation he received from the firefighting crews. They were ‘bludging’ and neither he nor the crews were happy, and the greater part of the interview is devoted to crew problems. The inspector appears not in the least overwhelmed by the scale or proportion of the incident. Like many participants, he was completely focused on the present; in his recollection he appeared unconcerned with the molten glass: ‘The glass plant? No, it was not a problem – it was just that two hundred tonnes of molten glass filled up the basement.’ This incident brings to the fore the level of confident expertise possessed by the glass factory inspector when it comes to large incidents. He appears relatively unconcerned by the molten glass, which topped the basins and began to fill the basement. He is more concerned with personnel problems and getting firefighters to fulfil roles which differ from their original designation. For instance, in their job description pump operators are supposed to stay with their pumping appliance and not depart from this designated role. This ‘shitted’ the inspector, as he could see things that needed doing and a competent person virtually standing idle. This inspector was willing to break with protocol for the sake of an expedient and effective response, deeming it safe for the pump operator to abandon his or her post for a more active role. The pump driver appears to have refused.

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sit around bludging [avoiding work].’ I studied him. If you pointed to him on the street and asked ‘What does he do for a living?’ I would say an occupation that demanded authority, physical strength and a military-type haircut. His demeanour was that of someone used to being obeyed, who demanded to be approached with respect. I said, “So it was just like molten hot glass?”

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Figure 6. Jan Davidsz de Heem, La Desserte, 1640

Incident Analysis Within multimodal research, each incident is described and then analysed and discussed as a whole, without relation to the other incidents until perhaps the debriefing end to the incident or chapter. What follows are brief excerpts from my combined analysis and discussion of the Glass Factory Fire.

Spaces Between Words Expertise may be exhibited in composed cool-headedness and a purposeful demeanour when there is limited time to accomplish a feat, whether it be the drying of the plaster in a fresco or using watercolours on a warm windy day, or when faced with a basement full of molten glass; expertise is exhibited in a composed approach to the timepressured situation. This does not necessarily mean a slow reaction, but rather it means a mediated response untinged by panic. I suggest that what the glass factory inspector sees when he surveys a fire ground is comparable to what Matisse saw when he looked at the seventeenthcentury Dutch still-life painting by Jan Davidsz de Heem (Fig. 6). 84

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Neither Seized nor Subdued In La Desserte, de Heem employs the background depth of darkness to guide the viewer’s eyes towards the contrasting images of lute, fruit and cloth. Matisse is neither seized nor subdued by any of this and in his abstraction of de Heem’s work he leads the viewer’s gaze to the very edges of the canvas, exposing the true balance of the compositional lines of perspective, making it obvious to the viewer just what holds the structure of de Heem’s image together (Fig. 7). This is what the inspector does when he takes in the scene at the Glass Factory Fire. With burning molten glass the central image, heat and lack of breathable oxygen the sensation, he takes us to the edges of the image and exposes the true reality of what is holding it together, the bare elements, stripped of their camouflaging finery or horrific heat. Undaunted by the majesty of the imposing (the realistically painted still life or the immediacy of the fiery molten glass), the glass factory inspector draws us to the very core of the problem, which for him at this moment is inadequate available personnel. The glass factory inspector sees into the deep recesses of the incident, that it is easily controllable (that is, easily diagnosed by his experienced eye; an easily understood painting despite the complex interrelationships of balance and design). He sees to the heart of the matter and strikes out for a solution that is unpopular because it breaks the rules. The action of abstraction is displayed in the decision making of both the glass factory inspector and Matisse, in that they are selecting the

MULTIMODAL RESEARCH APPLIED TO DECISION MAKING BY INCIDENT CONTROLLERS ON THE FIRE GROUND

Matisse did not see the photo-perfectionism, he was not sidetracked by the realism and he disregarded the traditional values and rules of representational painting. Instead he cut to the core, went straight to the stark outline of the incident and exposed the composition’s true structure. In a kind of selective vision that focuses in on the lines and the raw elements of the image, undeterred by the awesome splendour of 200 tonnes of molten glass, the glass factory inspector sees through to the structural elements and wants to go into action with a plan that nobody feels very motivated by – he wants the pump driver to forsake his safe post and get into the action where his skills will be put to greater use; in essence, the inspector wants to break ‘rules’.

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Figure 7. Henri Matisse, Still Life after Jan Davidsz de Heem’s La Desserte, 1915

bones, the framework of the image, and in a sense discarding anything else that is just ‘window dressing’ and there to look pretty. They are allowing us in, as viewers, to understand the workings behind the scene, the balance and arrangement of the still life; the arrangement of the personnel at the glass factory. It is not difficult to see how the concept of abstraction applies to decision making by incident controllers on the fire ground. Bombarded with information from all fronts, they are constantly reducing and selecting the pieces of information to which they will attend and discarding those which will not contribute to the resolution of the incident.

Incident Debrief Incident controllers must constantly analyse and make judgement calls on the risks inherent in both the fire ground situation and their planned 86

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Conclusion A linear approach based on a systematic analysis headed by sections such as line, shape colour, perspective, form, light and so on would reflect a linear progression of data analysis and defeat the purpose of a holistic multimodal research approach. The impulse within us to categorize, sort and delineate is exceptionally strong, but it is counterproductive to an investigation of aesthetic experience because it is not possible to separate and measure non-verbal information inputs such as somatic awareness and aesthetic judgement. Multimodal research provides a way to holistically investigate a practice, such as decision making by incident controllers on the fire ground.

MULTIMODAL RESEARCH APPLIED TO DECISION MAKING BY INCIDENT CONTROLLERS ON THE FIRE GROUND

actions. These risk analyses are considered ‘scientifically’ verifiable by their organization – that is, they are verifiable numerically in measurements such as size, capacity and dimension: how much water, how many hoses, how many appliances. My contention is that if an incident controller cannot articulate a rationale for his or her decision, this does not mean that it is an irrational decision. The lack of measurable vocabulary is not justification for dismissing a decision as irrational. I argue that firefighting is not a disinterested, dispassionate activity; rather it is suffused with emotion and therefore an aesthetic experience. The supposedly discrete areas of cognition and aesthetics are mutually linked and actually cannot be separated. The understanding that one can exist without the other, or that one can study only a part without considering the whole, is an example of the reductive nature of the positivist approach to enquiry.

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5 Newspaper Printing Sites and the Spoils of Creative Research Deborah Beaumont

To Begin . . . For nearly a decade I have been collecting from The Chronicle, Toowoomba, newspaper print detritus such as used newspaper printing plates, and ‘spoils’ – a newspaper industry term used to denote the incidental and accidental prints created during the course of newspaper printing or during the clean-up of the press. These objects are usually destined for recycling, but it is my engagement with the phenomenon of local newspaper printing that created the context for practice-led research and the fulsome studio-based exploration of the repetitions central to print processes. Phenomenology allows the encountering and study of a phenomenon – newspaper printing for example – to be based on the researcher’s experiences and perceptions and it permits a deep personal interest and emotional and intellectual engagement with the topic (Leedy 1997; Dall’Alba and Hasselgren 1996). In order to elucidate how knowledge has been made through this engagement with the site, materials and personnel of local newspaper printing I will begin by giving an overview of the localized context that provided the condition for creative research through which the birth of an

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NEWSPAPER PRINTING SITES AND THE SPOILS OF CREATIVE RESEARCH

Figure 8. Deborah Beaumont, printer-machinists Brett and Aaron check the spoilspaper, 2009 photograph

artwork known as a ‘spoilspaper’ became the physical manifestation of an innovative idea. As it is a new art form, it is important here to introduce the concept of the spoilspaper. Spoilspapers take their name from spoils: the flawed and unsaleable newspapers that reveal much about the idiosyncrasies of printing. Spoils are the monotypes of a machine, the newspaper web-offset printing press, and to borrow Walter Benjamin’s (1999) phrase, they are ‘works of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’.1 The spoilspapers were produced by photographing spoils and sitebased imagery and giving the photographs as digital files to the platemakers and printer-machinists in order for them to be (re)printed on the newspaper press and (re-)emerge as tabloid-format artworks. Early informal visits to site were followed by fieldwork that, through observation and discussion, revealed industry-specific processes and problems including the phenomena that informed the direction of the research into the repetitions and continuities of print. I will elaborate on the function of these visits and how they led firstly to an artist-inresidency then to the use of site as decentralized studio – all critical to research outcomes. As a researcher I was ‘up close and personal’, 89

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a phrase Lippi (2001) uses to indicate the centrality of the researcher to the research and as an acknowledgement of the research-enriching value of subjectivity. My practice was embodied: responsive to the phenomenon of printing and printmaking through the articulation of a personal aesthetic. I will describe how and why this subjective method of working gave me insights into the slippages of printing that have provided openings into the participatory nature of the reproduced reproduction. But further to this, my arts practice was embraced by the local newspaper industry; staff witnessed works in progress, viewed resolved works and eventually became co-practitioners of parts of the research. Through a collegial and collaborative atmosphere the spoilspaper was borne, creating a co-ownership of local history-making, story-making and innovation.

On Site, Up Close In 2006, after some years as a practising artist visiting The Chronicle in Ruthven Street, Toowoomba, a town in Queensland – the site of local newspaper printing – I was told that the Harris N845 weboffset newspaper press was to be sold and a new press housed in a new press centre would produce newspapers with greater accuracy and less spoilage. The accidental and incidental prints (spoils) that I had been using in my visual arts practice, along with the used newspaper printing plates, are some of the detritus that preserves a record of the time, place and technologies of local newspaper production, and they were about to become history! It was like telling an oil miner that the well was spent. My need to research into the historical context and technologies of local newspaper printing, and how these might be integrated into my art-making, intensified. Fieldwork began with fortnightly visits to the site, which are best described as unobtrusive observation: data collected quietly and conveniently by the researcher with a minimal amount of disruption or interference (Kellehear 1993). This included a gathering of print detritus that materially informed my study. These visits became semiweekly until in 2007, after nearly six years of informal observations and discussions, I became artist-in-residence for a week and set up a temporary studio in a small room adjacent to the 30 metre-long newspaper printing press. Staff had previously watched with some fascination and 90

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bemusement as I left with armfuls of their rubbish and they had seen some of my works in photos but few first-hand. Occasionally they had put spectacular spoils aside for me: the excessively and expressively inked sheets of newsprint produced on the press. During the residency, scooped fresh from the recycling bin, I collected The Chronicle’s used newspaper printing plates and thoroughly explored their materiality and that of the inks used for printing. Now, in my makeshift studio behind the wall of newspaper print-production, staff timidly ventured in to see ‘what the heck’ I was doing. Extensive discussions with them yielded, for me, much information about the newspaper printing process and, for them, provided some insight into the practice of a visual artist. By the end of the week in residency, the mutual respect that had steadily been growing over the years, between printer-machinist and printmaker, had more fully evolved. The residency was over all too quickly for me, and so I asked if I could continue to work on site periodically. Permission was granted. Thursdays were the most fruitful time for my visits as it was on a Wednesday afternoon that I found plates particularly to my liking and I would put them aside to work with on Thursday mornings when the press was dormant and I would not impinge on the frenetic and timesensitive activity of newspaper printing. Because staff didn’t arrive for work until early afternoon I was able to experiment without getting in their way and I was afforded some quiet contemplative space for my studio practice: more unobtrusive research. The works explored at these times were ones that would have been impractical or impossible to explore in my personal studio – for instance, I needed access to ‘authentic’ newspaper ink, blanket wash (solvent), an industrial-sized sink and copious amounts of scrap newspaper or spoils. Sometimes, knowing I’d be in to work, the staff would place some of my favourite types of plates in the back room for me, thus tacitly indicating their willingness to participate in my research, the conditions of which were made clear through ethical clearance required for fieldwork. Considerate behaviours (Marshall and Rossman 2006), collegiality (Clandinin and Connelly 1998; Baily 1996) and collaboration and reciprocity (Creswell 2003; Pink 2001) are all desirable and ethical behaviours for fieldwork as they encourage the gatekeepers of the site, for example print managers and workers, to allow the researcher continued access. The site of local newspaper printing had

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begun operating as a studio for me and continued to do so until it ceased being a site of print production following the making of a series of spoilspapers on 15 May 2008.2 The studio, Graham Sullivan has stated, is ‘not an isolated place’, ‘not bounded by walls, nor removed from the daily grind of everyday social activity’ (Sullivan 2005: 26, 81) and although the site of newspaper printing exemplifies such a ‘daily grind’ it was, for me, a space in which the magic of production and reproduction became engaging. It was my frequent visits and day-long residencies that permitted intellectual and material responses to the phenomenon of local newspaper printing. During my residencies I continued to explore the used newspaper printing plates; I acid-etched, scratched, washed-back with water and/or solvents and overlaid various types of inks. I printed on and with them and used them as sculptural material. These investigations, which were documented in my visual arts journals, assisted in the development of a good working knowledge about the grain and surface qualities of the plate and inks. This, along with a photographic documentation of the site – recounting repetitions and surfaces of printing – informed the imagery chosen for studio practice and the direction of works for a forthcoming exhibition. The aromas of newspaper inks and solvents are wrapped around my visual arts journals. These were used during fieldwork and studio practice to document the machinations of newspaper printing and to note the successes and failures of material practice (they did this, I did that). But the journal served a greater purpose than this as a research tool. It was used in order to work through the research problems and the questions that arose during the observations and practice (for example: Why did the press do this? How could I express that?). A journal is a way of reflecting, clarifying, reinterpreting and defining; ‘a type of member check of one’s own thinking done on paper’ ( Janesick 1999: 12, 7). ‘[G]ood art theory must smell of the studio’ (Arnheim 1974: 4). Spaces of production such as the art studio need not be structured based on the modernist trope of the anguished genius artist working in isolation; so says Caroline Jones in her text Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar American Artist (1996). She identifies this as a romantic and outdated notion of the studio. Jones observes that following World War II, the degrees of hands-on art-making varied

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considerably in artists’ practices; for instance, work could be delegated as Warhol did in his Factory and Frank Stella did in his role as ‘ideator-executive’ ( Jones 1996: 141). She notes that studios are now recognized as possibly being dispersed or decentred, and can be spaces of social interaction and collaborative production ( Jones 1996: 363). The site of local newspaper printing certainly operated for me in this manner. Through this engagement with the site I strengthened my understanding of the index (or characteristics) of the print, which begins with the adaptable preparatory work that occurs when printmaking technologies are combined. It consequently includes the transfer of image from matrix or other surface and recognizes qualities of repetition that encompass minute differences and slippages between manual and mechanical prints and processes between and even within an edition. These discoveries led to the development of the spoilspaper – a printed work that borrows its technique, form and erroneous imagery from the tabloid newspaper. As Edwards (2006) observes, art-making can be enriched by the accidental, incidental, coincidental, serendipitous, explorative and intuitive; and it should, according to Sullivan (2005), be adaptive and inventive. I was thinking by doing – a valid way of thinking creatively (Sullivan 2005, Edwards 2006); I was acquiring material and technical knowledge and in the process of making I was inspired to stretch materials to their limits. But to read these site-based, up-close material investigations as merely physical would be to minimize the way in which they were concurrently informing the theoretical concerns of my studio practice and my developing idea of ‘repropriation’ – a neologism I coined to indicate a working methodology by which the (index of the) reproduction is appropriated and reproduced. Here, space restrictions preclude an in-depth description of the methodology of ‘repropriation’, the subject of my dissertation;3 suffice it to say that it provides a theoretical overview of tautologies of the original/copy, it operates through the mode of repetition, it is concerned with what Wollheim (1995: 388) might term ‘continuity-conditions’4 (prior and consequent states) and it denies the passivity of the reproduction. Some of these theoretical concerns will, however, be touched upon in this chapter, in order to demonstrate how knowledge was made through the subjective research process. This knowledge is intellectual and also resides in the (material and processual) fabric of the spoilspaper

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production. It is evidenced, too, by the subsequent body of prints that evolved from the spoilspaper and were developed for exhibition.

The ‘Continuity-Conditions’ of Print and Print Research So, exactly how was knowledge being formulated in a range of studio contexts? Sullivan rightly asserts that the ‘art product is an outcome of artistic thinking and therefore is a site for answering questions about how art knowledge is acquired and represented’, but what further conditions determined the spoilspaper as site of knowledge (Sullivan 2005: 125)? And how did the print production site become a place of innovation and creative collaboration? In an attempt to answer these questions, let us take a step back to the development of the printing press for a moment. Elizabeth Eisenstein, author of The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (1979), duly noted the social, political and cultural value of widely disseminating printed material. William M. Ivins also saw this value and deemed that the press enabled the production of an ‘exactly repeatable pictorial statement’ (Ivins 1969: 3), thus removing the ‘degradation and distortion’ of the handmade copy (Ivins 1969: 40, 173).5 The goal of each successive generation of technology is to eliminate craft (Cost 2005: 10) and this is evident in changes in local newspaper printing presses that have become increasingly computerized. But while Olmert asserts that the printing press ‘does only what you tell it to do’, and ‘operates with leaden precision’ (Olmert 1992: 175), the print slippages of newspaper production, for example, would suggest otherwise. Eisenstein also notes that the press is responsible for the illusion that the errata of manuscript practices were eliminated, but she claims that in fact the errata were standardized, occurring equally across all copies of the one edition (Eisenstein 1979: 10, 80–81). However, this too is a fallacy for there are differences, sometimes minute or imperceptible, between copies. An observation of the nature of newspaper printing via the matrix of the lithographic web-offset press has led to a thorough theorization of repetitions of reproductions and their exactitudes. The processes, technologies and massive volume of prints created during newspaper and spoilspaper print-runs provided the ideal mechanism with which to examine the continuity-conditions of print. The body of prints that evolved from the spoilspaper furthered this quest.

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According to Gilmour (1986: 77) and Ivins (1969: 113–114), lithographic web-offset, the spoilspapers’ method of production, has been largely neglected and denigrated in art-making because of its conflation with mechanical processes and the lack of the artist’s hand. However, the ‘operation’ of making newspapers excited my imagination and revealed, as master-printer Stanley William Hayter might say, ‘images or ideas hitherto only latent’ (Hayter 1962: 75). It was Walter Benjamin who observed that lithography allowed graphic art to illustrate everyday life, keep pace with printing and virtually imply the illustrated newspaper (Benjamin 1999: 213). How true this is for the spoilspaper. Therefore, the making of spoilspapers through the use of an industrial lithographic web-offset press, not generally a mode of printmaking, challenges notions of print and print media hierarchy.6 By using the newspaper printing press as a method of production the spoilspapers are to my knowledge the first artworks that employ in their structure the index of newspaper printing and the tabloid format. Following Griffiths’ definitions of the ‘reproductive’ print as one that comes, for example, after a painting and the ‘non-reproductive’ print as one made through the expressive intent of the artist (Griffiths 1996: 10), the spoilspapers fulfil both these functions. They are appropriative, that is prints after misprints (reproductive), and were originated with innovative intent (non-reproductive). The individualistic and the mechanistic need not be antithetical and the spoilspaper explores this parameter. These discoveries were made possible through the very specific conditions of this research process: the use of the press site as decentralized studio and the employment of the printing press for the production of artworks.

Getting An Ink(l)ing of Spoilspaper Production as Research Process Now it takes a leap of faith for a pressman to see the press as a tool for creative and innovative research because ‘leaden precision’ (Olmert 1992) is indeed an aim of newspaper printing, but Australian Provincial Newspapers [APN] Print Toowoomba, printers of local, regional and industry newspapers at The Chronicle, have been generous in opening their doors to me. To mark the end of an era, on 15 May 2008 the Harris newspaper press, operational for nearly 30 years, completed its 95

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final print-run: the production of my spoils-originating, tabloid-format artwork – the spoilspapers.7 Two spoilspapers have been made: one by the title of Twofold on the Harris N845 press, and another titled Fourfold, on a new and more computerized Manugraph Cityline Express press. These spoilspapers were created during a major transition in the technologies of local newspaper printing – the change from one press at one site to another. Their form therefore embodies these modes of production. The spoilspaper is a type of work that originates in newspaper production and is self-referential: it references its origins in the print site, it includes the working evidence of the printing process such as imagery from the print detritus and spoils and through the same method of production as a normal newspaper, it reiterates the tabloid format. A good deal of recent local newspaper printing technology and history has been encompassed in the spoilspapers. ‘Local invention’, as Paul Carter states in Material Thinking: The Theory and Practice of Creative Research, ‘is always an act of exquisite timing’ and it ‘give[s] back to time its materiality’ (Carter 2004: 14, 10). It was indeed fortuitous that APN management were open to the idea of a collaborative production of the spoilspapers during a time of significant technological transition and much demand on the time of the printer-machinists. Newspapers remain a marvellous record of their era: their style and content reveal much about politics, industry, commerce, leisure and the events of the day. Spoilspapers, although free of much of this content, are nevertheless imbued with a deep sense of their own material history and the conditions of their production. Between making the first and second spoilspapers there were significant discoveries elucidated through my research, including the simultaneous doublings, halvings, folds and erasures that occur through the reproduction of the print (particularly when they originate from the failed reproductions of newspaper spoilage) and the temporal and material slippages encompassed in print production. As well, the works made material the concept of the ‘photomechanically mediated authorial appropriation’ (Coulter-Smith 2002: 137) which is embodied by the engagement with the newspaper printing press as print matrix. There is too much to cover in this course of this chapter and so it is Twofold, printed on the Harris press, which I will use as my exemplar of art practice as research.

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Ever since I became awestruck with the industrial sublimity of the Harris press it had been my dream to create an artwork using its technologies and materials.8 My desire to make spoilspapers began long before they had a name, and it was through careful and politic negotiations with the gatekeepers of the site that they came to fruition. Through my engagement with site and materials, and by asking many questions, I gained a working knowledge of the technological requirements of newspaper printing. The creation of the spoilspapers could not have happened, however, if I was operating independently, so the printing was a collaborative process between the printer-machinists and me. Williams observes that appropriation ‘provides an ideal context for collaboration, so that just as a “readymade” image [such as a spoil] can be appropriated, a readymade skill, mechanical process, or alternative model of production [such as those of computer-to-plate processing and the use of the industrial press] can also be appropriated [re-produced]’ (Williams 2004: 81). Collaboration is a ‘technique for making sense of the gaps, interruptions and unpredictable crossovers’ (Carter 2004: 3). Carter too, acknowledges that collaborative practice allows new knowledge to become part of local history and as such moves beyond nostalgia (Carter 2004: 10). Spoilspapers embodied this function. The making of the spoilspapers enabled me to enact a ‘readymade resistance’ – a term used, in response to the readymade, by Mcelheny (2007) to describe an adaptation of modes of production. I have purposefully accessed and manipulated some of the industrial processes and materials of local newspaper production (my subjectivity cannot be denied) and have incorporated a discourse of these technologies in the reproduction of newspaper slippages. In other words I have appropriated re-printable and repeatable printing processes and reproduced them. By ‘stealing’ and adapting an industrial process and inventing new relationships to the territory of (newspaper) production, that is, by resisting the readymade (Mcelheny 2007), the newspaper page was released from tradition. Leslie (2000: 146) affirms that this is one of the roles of technology. Spoilspapers reclaim a territory of production by utilizing the means of production for purposes for which the technology of the press was not intended, that is, to repeat the incidental and accidental prints created during newspaper production. The engagement with these technologies revealed to me the possibility

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of the coexistence of, as outlined below, the Duchampian theory of the ‘infra-thin’ (Naumann 1999: 17), which could simply be defined as similarities. Disparation, which we might define as differences, was also evident. It fuelled my focus on print as continuum. The infra-thin is a theory of Duchamp’s which appeared in 1937 in regard to his readymades and is described by Naumann as ‘a subject that concerned itself with the subtle, sometimes imperceptible differences that exist among things, not only objects, but even concepts that are assumed to be similar or identical’ (Naumann 1999: 17). The infra-thin is adjectival (Ades, Cox and Hopkins, 1999: 183). This is important as it defines an enactment of the movement from one state to another and an appreciation of repetition where change is not always immediately evident. Newspapers within an edition would be one such example as they may appear identical but could contain extremely minor and unnoticeable flaws that developed during the print run. By integrating this knowledge with other ideas on repetitions (Benjamin 1999, Deleuze 2004, Fer 2004), doublings (Rorschach 1951)9 and folds (Deleuze 2006) my new knowledge of the index of the print and my developing theory of repropriation was greatly enriched. On the day of printing the first spoilspaper, Twofold, the difficulties were many. The Harris press had been dormant for some months and this necessitated some emergency maintenance. As all of their tools had been transferred to a new site the printer-machinists, who volunteered their time to print the spoilspapers, needed to call in a favour from a local car yard in order to borrow tools for running repairs. Water needed to be scooped from the ink trays in order not to clog the works, and there were frequent glitches as the very dry newsprint web broke several times. Although unfortunate from the printer-machinists’ point of view, these observations gave me additional insight into their expertise and the machinations of the press. The difficulties in printing also had the added benefit – for me – of producing even more spoilage than normally occurs in a newspaper print-run, thus providing fodder for studio-based discoveries, as follows. Could these conditions for research have been situated elsewhere? I think not. ‘In the unpreconceived perception of phenomena lies the question of the original idea which is fundamental to the appearance’ (Hammond, Howarth and Keat 1991: 2) and fundamental also to the direction and outcomes of my research. For my studio practice, in the phenomena

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NEWSPAPER PRINTING SITES AND THE SPOILS OF CREATIVE RESEARCH Figure 9. Deborah Beaumont, sorting the Twofold spoilpapers, photograph, 2008

of newsprint detritus or spoils lies the question of the multiplicities and repetitions inherent in print. When sorting through approximately 3,000 copies of the Twofold spoilspapers immediately following their production, my engagement with the material and process became a site of knowledge construction. For instance, although I was aware of the slippages that caused spoilage (or spoils) before, during and after print-production, I was unprepared for the subtleties that I witnessed, for prior to this participatory moment in the print-run I had only collected the most spectacular of spoils. As I sorted the spoilspapers back in my personal studio I realized that the subtle gradations of tone and colour, the continuum, prohibited me from making a clear distinction between the print-perfect spoilspaper and the spoilage/spoils of the process and I quickly appreciated the fruitlessness of trying to force this distinction. At this point I also began to notice minute differences in every second spoilspaper that I handled. The spoilspapers were 99

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printed on two different but identical towers, with two different but identical sets of plates. They were printed simultaneously. It took the sorting of approximately 1,000 spoilspapers before these ‘liminal’ changes became evident to me, but it was critical to my understanding of the print as simultaneously ‘infra-thin’ (Ades, Cox and Hopkins 1999: 172) repetition and as continuum. Every one of the thousands of spoilspapers, therefore, was in a unique state. This discovery may not have been made had it not been for the sheer numbers of prints handled – again, another condition of research caused by the situation and site of newspaper/spoilspaper production and its position in studio practice. It would have been a travesty to have discarded the spoils of Twofold; not only were they intrinsic to the mechanism of my ‘readymade resistance’ (Mcelheny 2007), but they were in some instances more interesting than the print-perfect spoilspaper. Initially I had planned to keep the spoils separate from the print-perfect spoilspaper, but as can happen in studio practice in a moment of revelation, of being ‘adaptive’ (Sullivan 2005), I decided to couple the two types of spoilspaper into one work. The pages, which could be deemed spoilt, have been inserted into the good, or unspoilt pages (and vice versa) in order for a dialogue to exist between the two. The good version and the spoilt are both originals, although they existed in prior states; yet both are copies of each other. One has to leaf through the publication to see the repetition. The spoilspaper as an appropriated and reproduced print simultaneously operates as a self-contained copy and a self-contained original. This permitted a theorization of the discourse of the copy and contributes to my concept of print as continuum. The production of spoilspapers enabled me to appropriate and reprint the ‘failed’ print reproductions using the machines designed specifically to avoid slippage in print. Spoilspapers employ the repetitions inherent in the regenerating image. Folded within their structure are the slippages of the mechanical gesture, the standardized errata and the self-referencing reiterations and doublings that occur as the images and pages physically and metaphorically turn back on themselves. This is the nature of my methodology of repropriative practice and it was through fieldwork and the associated use of site as studio that spoilspapers became the ideal research vehicle to explore the participatory nature of the reproduced reproduction. In the process of their production, prints

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NEWSPAPER PRINTING SITES AND THE SPOILS OF CREATIVE RESEARCH Figure 10. Deborah Beaumont, Twofold, 2008, spoilspaper with inserted spoil

appropriate themselves (for instance, by referencing their own matrix), thus participating in their own becoming; in the process of operating as a self-contained copy and a self-contained original, spoilspaper prints also participate in their own reproductivity. This idea of the potentially incidental nature of appropriation in print, when combined with the hand of the artist and the mechanical, permits, even encourages, the serendipitous reproduction of printmaking to be celebrated. These are the dialogues that are permitted by the participatory nature of the reproduced reproduction and this need not be a passive process nor does it necessarily remove the creative input of the artist. As Edwards states, practice-led research is a ‘kind of enquiry whose next question, whose next step, will reflect upon, but is not solely dependent upon, the last stage of the research . . . at all times subject to the influence of chance discoveries’ (Edwards 2006: 4). Hyde too observed that for ‘chance to “favour the prepared mind” 101

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means, first of all, that chance events need a context before they can amount to anything’ (Hyde 1996: 25). Without the prepared mind Senefelder might not have discovered lithography (Henshaw 2003) and without the prepared mind Rauschenberg’s Accident (1963), printed from a shattered lithographic stone, might have been relegated to the rubbish bin. My prepared mind remained open to evolving possibilities in studio practice and through ever-expanding academic and field research. Happy accidents and unexpected discoveries fed my knowledge base and motivated my art-making. Without my prepared mind the standardized errata and print detritus of my study, ‘the fold of circumstance’ as Deleuze (2006: 34) would have it, would not have been elevated beyond its lowly status. Inadvertently, APN Print created the artefact that has led the investigation and in addition they provided the scope, resources and context for creative research – an opportunity to generate knowledge grounded locally but applicable more broadly. I have been able to observe, celebrate and participate in some of the significant changes to local newspaper printing and to bring to light some of the history that might have been lost had such a collaboration not occurred. Carter has stated that ‘collaboration is not simply a pragmatic response to increasingly complex working conditions; it is what begins to happen wherever artists talk about what they are doing’ (Carter 2004: xiii). It was through visits to site that a collegial atmosphere eventuated between the printer-machinists and I, and the subsequent production of spoilspapers created for us something of a bridge between the mysteries of newspaper printing and the creative pursuit of art-making. I am there, literally sometimes, in the newsprint of their publications: in the stories about their history, in the articles revealing my research and visual artworks and in exhibition reviews; and they are with me in the production of visual artworks: fabricating artworks for me and with me and creating and collating new local history.10 I am the ‘newcomer’ written into local history (Carter 2004: 2). In the creation of spoilspapers, I have used the page, as Lynne Bell might say, ‘as a site of public memory to re-vision what is erased, ignored or camouflaged’ (Stoicheff and Taylor 2004: 257).11 Spoils were ignored as waste product, hidden in the back room of the print-production site ready for pulping but through the production of spoilspapers I re-visioned spoils from waste to objects of aesthetic value.

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By exhibiting my spoilspapers locally and more widely, I have created awareness of local newspaper printing histories and broadened the scope of the function of the newspaper printing press. This has generated much discussion, for instance, between artists, printmakers, academics, members of the public, printer-machinists and those working in the newspaper industry here and abroad. The spoilspapers and body of artworks that emerged from their production permitted revelations of local newspaper printing technologies and practices largely unknown beyond the print-production area.12 Even journalists and other staff of the newspapers printed on site had rarely if ever ventured to watch the print-run.13 The Harris N845 printing press (now removed from site, sold for scrap metal) appears rudimentary in comparison to the new Manugraph Press (housed at a new printing site) and it ran the risk of passing into history with very little notice. Instead, spoilspapers embraced this moment in time and used the extinction of the Harris press to explore print that could be simultaneously reproductive and non-reproductive, in Griffiths’ (1996: 10) definition, and exist also as contemporary art object and cultural artefact.

Articulating the Research In arguing the need to articulate art-making Jarvis (2007) states that reflective practitioners enrich the relationships between artist, artwork and viewer. He suggests that an expression of work processes and practices, which can be evident in the work itself, demonstrates an artist’s responsiveness to situations and actions and through this revelation we can understand and analyse the discoveries of artistic research ( Jarvis 2007: 211). Jarvis makes this point clear: In responding to the indeterminate and difficult areas of one’s practice, one can open a reflective conversation with the materials of their craft and practice, thereby remaking a part of their practice world and thus engaging with the usually tacit process of world making which underpins their daily practice. ( Jarvis 2007: 206)

Chamberlain notes that ‘it is not only the artist that reaches out to the world but also the world that passes through the artist and onto the 103

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canvas’ (Chamberlain 2003: 218). My perceptions of and engagement with the phenomenon of local newspaper printing have therefore been approached through my personal aesthetic. Clive Cazeaux has observed that the question of how knowledge is made in artistic enquiry should be answerable by the inherently interdisciplinary nature of art. He claims that the negotiations, tensions, resistances and possibilities between the domain of subjects and disciplines (such as those that occurred when visual arts practice met the newspaper printing industry) effects an emergence of ‘artefacts or commentary’ (Cazeaux 2008: 129). This, he claims, is the value of research related to practice. In the case of spoilspaper production, both artefact and commentary evolved through the interdisciplinary research of printing and printmaking. There are many ways that the knowledge gained through research can be shared, such as professional and collegial discussions and the presentation and publication of papers, but the exhibition and public distribution of the art object also fulfils this role. Research is little more than personal interest if not shared in some manner. Spoilspapers are a research outcome. Embodied in their form is the expression of the artist, situated within a robust investigation of the theoretical concerns that inform personal visual arts practice. Will this be evident to all those who encounter them? No. But it is not the aim of my research for the spoilspapers to be all things to all people. It pleases me that they will be apprehended in a variety of ways. I have designed spoilspapers as artist’s books, to be read and handled, and I prefer that this occurs without the white gloves of gallery conservation practices that disallow skin contact, for I feel that this denies a sense of democratic access to my tabloid-format artwork. They have been given away to artists, friends, colleagues, galleries and those in the newspaper trade here in Australia and overseas. Twofold has been distributed at my Print Chronicles exhibition at Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery (24 March–16 April 2010), so that visitors could collect and take home a little of their local newsprint history. This work does, after all, mark a significant juncture in local newspaper printing history, but importantly, it is also an innovative artform. Fourfold, the second spoilspaper, was selected and exhibited as an artist’s book by Fremantle Arts Centre as part of the 2009 Fremantle Print Award. There is no set expectation of how any of the spoilspapers should be treated. Even Fremantle Arts Centre was only given suggestions as to how Fourfold might be

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Figure 11. Deborah Beaumont, Twofold, 2008, spoilspaper presented on wall with its cognate (spoil).

displayed and handled although I noted my dislike of the white-glove approach. The spoilspapers could therefore be pulled apart and line a wall, they may be viewed, folded and stored, or they could just end up lining the kitty-litter tray. Their fate is secondary to the possibilities and considerations prompted by their distribution. One copy of Fourfold disappeared from the Fremantle Print Awards – its fate unknown. Spoilspapers were an unlikely product created in an environment that strives for precision and uniformity in print; the newspaper printing site. In this context mechanical reproduction is dependent upon accurate iterability, variations are abhorrent and sometimes expensive; causing what the pressmen might call ‘downtime’. Spoilspapers have bridged the gap between printing and printmaking and, through the processes of research described in this chapter, industry has met creativity and disparity head-on. They are an artform that concludes an era in local newspaper printing and reveals that industrial printing processes are not necessarily anathema to the creation of visual art. As Anne Kirker notes, artists’ books ‘have become synonymous with the contemporary postmodern environment where hierarchical value judgements are impossible to sustain’ (Kirker 1996: 13). Spoilspapers as mass-produced 105

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web-offset prints on newsprint paper stretch this parameter. The use of an industrial printing press to create the spoilspapers yielded a material research outcome which demonstrates the idea of print as continuum and the value of the participatory nature of the (re)produced reproduction with all its twists and turns. Perhaps prints as embodiments of the infra-thin (and therefore the continuum) will cause further questioning of the uniqueness of the editioned (and assumed identical) print. Perhaps instead of focusing on and championing the number of prints in a limited edition, we will enjoy instead the ‘continuityconditions’ (Wollheim 1995: 388): the states and incarnations of the print. Perhaps prints and proofs of all kinds and stages that are currently discarded and sitting at the bottom of many a printmaker’s plan press will be raised from their depths and exhibited. Perhaps they will proudly be shown as part of the continuum of an edition – the aspects of printmaking process that are admired rather than neglected. It would seem to me to be a possibility that this continuum of print can constitute a studio practice resulting in bodies of work in which appropriated prints might originate from a limited reference of imagery. Perhaps this is the new limited edition? I leave you with Deleuze and Guattari’s description of a book, which seems to me an apt description of the nexus of the spoilspaper and a nice metaphor for the research process enfolded by it: A book has neither object nor subject; it is made of variously formed matters, and very different dates and speeds [. . . ] To attribute the book to a subject is to overlook this working of matters, and the exteriority of their relations [. . . ] In a book . . . there are lines of articulation or segmentarity, strata and territories; but also lines of flight, movements of deterritorialization and destratification. (Deleuze and Guattari 1988: 3)

Notes 1

In Walter Benjamin’s essay ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’ (1999), Benjamin posits that authenticity and uniqueness are markers of authority, author and presence. He observes that around the turn of the century technical-mechanical processes of reproduction gained a recognized position among artistic processes, but that this potentially threatened the ‘aura’ of a work. This has been a useful essay to read in

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democratically-distributed, unique artworks. Particularly good discussion on Walter Benjamin’s essay is to be found in Andrew Benjamin’s text Walter Benjamin and Art (2005), London: Continuum. 2

The Twofold spoilspaper was the last thing printed on the Harris N845 newspaper printing press at the site of The Chronicle, Ruthven Street, Toowoomba, on 15 May 2008. The press was removed from the premises in July 2009 and was sold for scrap metal. Some of its parts have entered into my collection of newspaper print detritus.

3

My PhD dissertation, ‘Print as Continuum: Repropriation and the Spoils of Multiplicty’ (University of Southern Queensland, 2010) explores the parameters of the reproduced print.

4

See Wollheim’s continuity-conditions in ‘Minimal art’ in G. Battcock (ed.) Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, Berkeley: University of California Press: 387–399.

5

In his 1969 text Prints and Visual Communication William Ivins ( Jnr.) writes with enthusiasm about the worth of the ‘exactly repeatable pictorial statement’ that is made possible by mechanical printing. He cites as problematic

NEWSPAPER PRINTING SITES AND THE SPOILS OF CREATIVE RESEARCH

regard to the use of an industrial printing press for the mass-production of

any trace of the artist’s hand in a reproduced image, particularly when the reproduction is needed as a source of accurate information. 6

Contemporary print suffers less from the idea of technical and technological hierarchies than was evident in 1936 when Walter Benjamin wrote his ‘Work of Art’ essay. It was in the late twentieth century that many artists seriously attended to ideas of coalescing printing techniques and/or combining them with non-print media, using non-traditional means of printmaking including those that are digital, as well as considering the possibilities of print as a three-dimensional medium (Benjamin 1999).

7

The Harris N845 web-offset printing press commenced production at The Chronicle, Ruthven Street, Toowoomba on May 22 1979 and ceased production after the printing of my spoilspaper Twofold on 15 May 2008. The site was owned by Toowoomba Newspapers Pty., Ltd, one of the companies in the network of Australian Provincial Newspapers [APN]. APN Print, Toowoomba operated the Ruthven Street printproduction. They have now moved premises and operate with a new Manugraph Cityline Express press at Industrial Avenue, Toowoomba. This new press prints essentially the same publications, however, due to a number of improvements in newspaper printing technology, the more fully computerized Manugraph creates significantly less spoilage than

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the Harris. Therefore the extensive collection of spoils that inform my practice can be considered cultural artefacts; evidence of a now-passed era in printing. 8

Caroline Jones’s texts Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar American Artist (1996) and Painting Machines: Industrial Image and Process in Contemporary Art (1997) have provided much information about industrial aesthetics and sublime, and artists’ engagement with the mechanthropomorphic arts.

9

Herman Rorschach devised the Rorschach test for the purpose of using it for psychodiagnostics. Patients would be analysed based on their responses to the butterfly-like ink-blots, hence it commonly being known as the ‘ink-blot’ test. The technique has been championed or pilloried since Rorschach wrote about it in 1951.

10

An exhibition of artworks, the Make-ready exhibition held at Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery, 24 March–17 April 2010, evolved from the spoilspaper project. This led to a newspaper article in The Chronicle about my practice. Consequently, a long-retired printer-machinist met with me and gave me a copy of the first edition of The Chronicle printed on the Harris press, thus contributing to my ongoing research into the historical context (people, places, time and technologies) of local newspaper printing.

11

In their text, The Future of the Page (2004), editors Peter Stoicheff and Andrew Taylor draw together a number of essays that provide good insights into the function of the paper page, its evolution and state of flux.

12

The production of spoilspapers served as a starting point for my Makeready exhibition. In this exhibition the photo-polymer newspaper printing plates have been imaged with enlarged colour-separated copies of some spoilspaper pages, thus making the plates both readymade print/ reproduced spoils-image and a substrate for overprints of its own image.

13

As noted above, the new Manugraph Cityline Express press is no longer housed in the same building as the one in which the journalists work. Few staff members other than those who printed, delivered, or wrapped the newspapers had seen the Harris in operation and now that the new site is half the width of the city away, the chances of them encountering the new press in production mode is negligible. Some of the staff who have only ever worked at the new site have made some discoveries about the technological and physical changes in printing via my photodocumentation of site and processes.

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6 The Riches of Ambiguity: Art as a Site for the Senses Jo-Anne Duggan

Despite the ‘pleasurable’ ambiguity of creative works, images and objects have long been identified as vehicles for the transmission of various forms of knowledge. They have been key players in the discovery and production of knowledge since the earliest cabinets of curiosities. Institutions like museums rely on artworks, objects and visual and material culture as primary sources of information (across various fields of study: scientific, historic, political, anthropological and so forth) and its communication. Regardless of their ambiguity, artworks can facilitate new understandings, as Sullivan contends: ‘Images operate as texts, artefacts, and events [ . . . ] embody cultural meanings’ (Sullivan 2005: 110). Nevertheless, while image- and object-making are customary processes through which artists express ideas that flow from research, the open-endedness or ambiguity created by an artwork makes the nature of the knowledge received by individual viewers difficult to untangle. Ambiguity ‘rears its head’ in connection with art and art-making of any period; it lies ready to beguile and perplex those who are willing to invest sufficient time in viewing. Furthermore, when art is judged within the confines of contemporary academia – where the making of art is the investigative component of a project, or its outcome, or both – the

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terms ‘research’ and ‘knowledge’ become loaded and problematic. The idiosyncratic nature of art-making involves countless methodologies, approaches and outcomes that have called into question its scholarly credentials and knowledge-bearing capacity, especially because any readings or interpretations are invariably coloured by potentially endless contexts. However, it is precisely because viewing art and art-making can be so excruciatingly complex and ambiguous that this type of creative research activity in an academic setting is so vitally important. As Engels-Schwarzpaul implores, there are, or at least should be, ‘alternative models of academic rigour’ (Engels-Schwarzpaul 2008: 2). By considering several broad studies relevant to visual art, this chapter addresses the complexity of viewing art. At the same time, it seeks to illustrate that creative research, through its methodologies and outcomes, can be a rigorous, reflexive and critical practice that productively contributes to knowledge both inside and outside an academic context. Firstly, however, through a discussion of my own practice as a photomedia artist, this chapter offers an example of just one of the possible configurations that creative research can assume, a configuration that necessarily involves sustained critical thinking and reflection, the development of a precise methodology and a definite momentum towards a completed outcome.

Traces of Sight For more than a decade, the projects I have undertaken have been concerned with site-specific work in museums, archives and depositories – and with the machinations of cultural institutions. These projects have particularly referenced Italian history, culture and identity; they have investigated the nature of experience in a number of Italy’s historically charged locations, and explored new ways of visually communicating something of Italy’s iconic, historic culture with the desire to reinvigorate conventional perceptions and engage a new audience. By creating images I have aimed to reconsider our engagement with art, objects and history; to better examine the intricacies of seeing and, more broadly, to examine the sensorial experiences evoked by visual and material culture and its environment. The central premise linking these projects is that all understanding of art is affected as much by the physical architecture as by the cultural contexts in which artworks 110

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are found, and that the circumstances that influence the interpretation, reception and perception of art are constantly shifting. Working on location in museums is but one component of an investigative process that thinks through the spaces, the objects and artworks in order to formulate a plan for visually conveying something of the experiential qualities that are most affecting in the museum environment. This empirical research is tangential to the scholarly research undertaken in a range of areas, including art history and theory, historiography and the interdisciplinary fields of museum and cultural studies. Both modes of research are also enriched by interviews and discussions – on diverse topics from dust to politics – with all manner of curators, historians, archivists, museologists, conservators, art handlers, guides and guards. Being on location enables a different kind of thinking; a visual, spatial, sensorial thinking. This is at once a visceral and an intellectual process that allows preliminary images and concepts to be drafted – ideas that will be taken back to the studio to be further developed and refined. As discussed by O’Riley (2005: 94), in the studio, this visual thinking considers the conceptual approach and ‘artistic precedents’. It examines the aesthetics, more specifically my aesthetics, in relation to those of other artists working in similar environments; it involves thinking, rethinking and constructing from within the rules of my artform (photography itself is such a complex medium with a multifarious nature). The artists Sophie Calle, Louise Lawler, Thomas Struth and Karen Knorr, in particular, express similar interests and in some cases address subject matter or themes similar to my own. Calle’s subjectivity of viewing and memory; those images by Lawler that identify the contextual frame; Struth’s juxtaposition of audience and Italian museums, combined with the Becher school’s exquisite production values, as well as Knorr’s advocacy for slower viewing: all are elements that my art strongly identifies with. Hence these artists assist me in addressing the fickle habits of viewing. Like me, these artists are stirred by those parallels and incongruities that are found in the framework of the museum; they often layer the viewers with their surroundings, and the art with museological devices, to depict the interaction of institutions and audiences and question the function of art in museums and galleries. Yet the images in my projects remain intrinsically different. My images

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embrace museum architecture and describe it with acute attention to detail, searching for traces of the past and for those that have inhabited the gallery spaces long ago. Making images in a museal environment enables reflection on the intricacies of artworks and objects that no reproduction can possibly foster. It lends itself to thinking differently about historical and theoretical research, producing new understandings and an ‘other type’ of awareness. All this rumination, this scholarly, empirical, visual and creative research, leads to making art. It is wedded to the practice of photography as an embodied way of thinking: initially I think through the complexity of the circumstances of viewing to more acutely consider the interweaving of time, knowledge, experience and memory; then, finally, I consider colour, light, composition, angle of view, the configurations of depth of field and exposure times, format, film stock, grain structure, paper surface, image size and manner of display, in order to make visible the spatial relationship between objects and architecture and to bring to light peripheral or obscure details that contribute sensorially and experientially to viewing art. Through photography the viewer is able to recall, savour and reconstitute the museum experience in another time and place. I rely on photography’s documentary ability – fully cognizant of the breadth of practice that ‘documentary’ can designate – in pursuit of not an objective representation of the world, but the creation of a representation that is invested with my own subjective thoughts, desires and interpretation. My photographic images transform objects that exist in the world into something other than that which was intended by their first maker; the objects circulate anew as traces of another vision. Photography, with its discontinuous, fragmenting nature enables new juxtapositions, new contexts and new associations. As such, beyond the aesthetics of my photographs, history is made evident. The images portray not only a physical subject but what lies implicit in that subject. For example, a detailed image of baroque fabric upholstery represents much more than its pattern and colour: it shows the place of the fabric and alludes to the hands that wove it, the industry that produced it, the aristocracy that commissioned it, the aesthetics and taste that designed it, the history that it has witnessed, the culture (both now and then) that supports it, the people that have taken private and public pleasure in it and the populace that has gazed at it.

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Not a conventional approach to history or art, these methodologies of art practice and theoretical research alternately respond to and inspire each other; their entwining is an integral part of the process. Mine is not a theorized art practice but an integrated one, where the creative and practical undertakings are inseparable from the empirical and theoretical research. In a sense, the focus of this work constitutes a double articulation; that is, while it describes the complexity of viewing art and material culture, and ways of making meaning from it, it also comments on the complex nature of art-making. A research-based art practice is an ideal way to confront, explore, examine and interpret the museum environment and the experience of the objects it holds. The outcomes are most appropriately visual, as images have the power to create a corporeal awareness for the viewer and can very effectively communicate the phenomena of encountering and representing experience that can be difficult to articulate. The production of exhibition material also recognizes that visual elucidation of research makes possible a wider dissemination of information than most academic work, and a different impact. With greater exposure to gallery audiences from innumerable social backgrounds and positions, my work ‘folds back’ into the real world. One particular body of artwork, titled Impossible Gaze, demonstrates the interplay between research, writing and creative practice. It examines the experience of Italian museums and the multitude of histories (the histories of the art, those of the museum, those of the viewers) that collide in the context of viewing Renaissance art. The following ideas – amongst others – were significant in the formulation of this exhibition.

Impossible Gaze To consider art’s complexity it is necessary to skim the surface of a multitude of studies – sacrificing any profound reflection in this brief paper – in order to identify the sheer breadth of the physical and material environment and the personal, social and cultural conditions that contribute to the whirlpool of changing circumstances that construct meaning for the viewer. Furthermore, the experience of art is influenced by an intricate layering of historical and contemporary contexts, from historiography and museology to architecture and 113

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Figure 12. Jo-Anne Duggan, Impossible Gaze # 1, 2004–5, chromogenic photograph

tourism, and interweaves concepts of time, aura, the gaze, experience, liminality, reproduction and technology. However, ultimately it is the agency of the viewer, with her or his sensorial, embodied engagement and varying interpretative propensities, that permits art to speak of something that may be entirely intimate or of a wider cultural significance – or both. Governed by a multitude of contexts and frameworks, from the personal and individual to the broadest sweep of contemporary society’s engagement with art, the viewing experience is formed at the intersection of many cultures and histories, the past and the present and the subjectivity of the viewer’s own gaze. It is a physical, sensorial and temporal experience that remains something of a mystery. In an attempt to analyse this complexity, Impossible Gaze drew on the extraordinary visual art of the Italian Renaissance as a case study in order to consider some of the rich histories and diverse theories that come into play at the moment of viewing Renaissance art in a museum environment. The concerns that guided this study are relevant to the 114

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experience of art of any period, in any gallery or museum, in any country. Beyond the extraordinary artworks themselves, the museums that house Renaissance art exhibit a dense visual culture that provides an enriched viewing environment. In these museums and galleries there is an enormous exchange that occurs in the tiny space between artwork and viewer, where often the audience has little choice but to devour multiple messages, instantly sifting through them in an immediate and osmotic exchange. As Prior notes, this is ‘a space of tension between the realms of the visible . . . and the invisible’ (Prior 2002: 74). Wandering through a museum is a labyrinthine event composed of history, the collection and furnishings, where art cannot be extracted from the context in which it is viewed. The cultural institutions, the museologists and historians that erect the framework for the viewing experience (from the exhibition space, its architecture, signage and mechanisms of displays, to the institutional infrastructure) are influential and instrumental in creating awareness, meaning and any form of understanding for the viewer. All viewing is movement, caught in the vortex of changes in perception and understanding, continually evolving as new studies come to light and new ways of representing cultures take place in the social and political spheres of museums and nations. The museum is an enigmatic vessel that channels all these subjectivities to a single point in time and space, located in the presence of art. In Italian museums historic artworks are continuously interwoven with the preceding and succeeding styles of furniture and ornamentation – a means of reaffirming that each period is not a break with the past nor a single entity, but part of a continuum that is embodied by its surroundings. Impossible Gaze portrays the interiors of Florence’s Palazzo Pitti, richly layered with textures and patterns on every surface, from the elaborate wall-coverings, carpets and curtains to the frescoed ceilings. Presented amongst the palazzo’s baroque decoration, each artwork and object is afforded no separate space for contemplation; rather it is immersed in the interior decoration. This visually saturated environment is an extension of the medieval aesthetic horror vacui, the ‘fear of empty spaces’. As Gombrich observes, horror vacui is the ‘urge which drives the decorator to go on filling any resultant void’ (Gombrich 1972: 80). A particular aesthetic style, in a sense, horror vacui leaves no architectural space free of design, decoration or ornament.

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As such, in the Palazzo Pitti, the painted grotesques of earlier periods are accompanied by Renaissance tapestries, baroque silk wall-coverings and Mannerist paintings. In these rooms mirrors are skilfully placed to reflect endless repetitions of symbolic, religious and allegorical motifs. Here the changes from one artist to another and one period to the next mark the social and artistic continuity of inseparable pasts that reflect the discernment of successive generations of art collectors. Furthermore, historiography, while being subject to the prevailing attitudes and prejudices of the scholar’s time and predisposition, infiltrates the museum environment and influences how museums think and what they exhibit. It lays the foundation for the way art is presented by museum curators – who have their own idiosyncrasies, taste and discrimination. The writing of history – even though its presence in the museum may only be evident in the labelling, the guides and catalogues – can facilitate appreciation, understanding, popularity or even repulsion of individual artworks. Historiography relies on a variety of sources (surviving collections, archives, correspondence and inventories) to evolve new theories. Historiography can complicate the viewing experience, furthering the turn to critical theory that envelops other interpretive disciplines: semiotics; hermeneutics and psychoanalysis; powerknowledge relations; deconstruction and philosophies concerning the gaze; feminist, Marxist, post-structuralist and post-modern readings – all add an inexhaustible number of prismatic layers through which art can be interpreted. Contemporary cultural tourism also has a profound effect on the viewing experience, notably when it results in historic centres like Florence, with a population of almost 400,000, needing to cater for over nine million tourists each year. Drawn by the phenomenon of the past and the renown of the Renaissance, the crowds of multinational visitors become part of the spectacle. Mediated by the milling crowds engaged in the activity of looking, albeit to varying degrees, the individual viewer can rarely focus on one thing. The pace of expeditious cultural pilgrimages set by the flag-bearing tour guides is militant and the increasing tendency to move quickly through museums has become endemic. Hence, the museum experience is paradoxically both a collective encounter and a solitary one, one of curiosity, confusion and contemplation that can simultaneously elicit a sense of

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lightness, rejuvenation, exhaustion and loss. Given the complexity of the museum, with its densely coded messages, endless contexts and the fleeting viewing periods, meaning for a diverse population of visitors is difficult, if not impossible, to pin down. Moreover, the tourist’s quest for ‘authenticity’ (a problematic term in itself, with its numerous dimensions involving time, context and creation), or the desire to experience the ‘original’, is often bound to the viewer’s longing to understand or reaffirm her or his place in the world, perhaps more easily located amongst the recognizable material evidence of the past. In the words of Leader, the museum experience is ‘a vast congregation of people searching for a tiny object that offers some unspoken, enigmatic promise’ (Leader 2002: 5). And this leads to the viewers themselves. How art is seen, received, intuited, questioned, interpreted and remembered is relative to an individual’s subjectivity. The experience of art has a basis in the individual, a person embedded within her or his own traditions, personal knowledge, past experience, various interests and cultural beliefs; it is also and relatedly based on the wider societal and institutional practices of a particular time. The meaning of artworks is transformed for each new viewer as her or his appreciation and values of taste and beauty are interwoven with the notions of time, aura, authenticity and the liminality that often accompanies viewing. The artworks are imbued with the sum total of the viewer’s own experience, encumbered by the myriad of eccentricities that govern individual engagement and response. Visitors enter museums and galleries with their own predilections for any number of reasons (education, entertainment, escape) and ultimately inscribe their own meanings. Furthermore, the meaning of art shifts from viewer to viewer and from one encounter to the next, granting limitless possibilities for experience and interpretation. In addition, the viewer’s culturally-shaped and predisposed ways of seeing have been progressively moulded by the infinite changes in society’s habits of viewing, habits that, as described by Crary (1999: 5), are continually being shaped by new knowledge, communication, technologies and media. Thoroughly conditioned to the flickering of images and messages across screens and billboards, vision is forced to keep pace with the proliferation of images and their omnipresence, necessarily adapting to faster viewing regimes that have become fractured, superficial and diversely juxtaposed. The endless reproductions

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and prevalence of visual culture creates a cloud through which the viewer must peer in order to see original artworks. The much-theorized activity of vision and the different modes of engagement involved in viewing are critical to the experience of art. Bryson (1983, 1988), Jay (1996) and Crary (1991, 1999) among numerous others have interrogated vision, its optical, internal and social construction and the distinct modes of looking and seeing. More than a cerebral exchange, the experience of vision, as Foster (1988: ix, xiv) writes, ‘involves the body and the psyche’ and may ‘be located in the unconscious [ . . . ] in the past [ . . . ] or in the non-West’. In addition, Jay draws distinctions between ‘scopic regimes’ that are culturally, racially or politically specific, founded in gender, class, science or technology, or based in the theories of the ‘panoptic’, ‘virtual’ and ‘mobilized’ gazes (Jay 1996: 3). The multiple directions that studies of vision take offer different theories that at times compete to analyse the same object or experience. In the museum no single ‘scopic regime’ or model of vision dominates the heterogeneous audience. Therefore, viewing art presents a platform where these multiple theories intertwine, each informing, blending and rubbing against the other. When looking at art or negotiating the space of the museum the process is intuitive and idiosyncratic, at once conscious and subconscious. Vision occurs in a stream of continuity constantly pulled between proximity and distance and oscillating through the gaze, with its focus of attention and contemplative state, and the glance’s superficial interest and detachment. The glance – made up of incessant ocular movements that consume the veneer of a multitude of objects, mapping architecture, walls, moving through rooms and between works of art – works in opposition to the gaze, which consciously punctuates this movement. As Harley (1999: 32) suggests, this ‘mobilized vision’ is a ‘multi-sensorial experience’, where the effects of looking while moving involve ‘the body in panoramic perception’. The works in the exhibition Impossible Gaze were both inspired by and a reflection on the visual aspects of this study and represent the more transient, ephemeral and ambulatory features of the glance in a museum environment. They play with photography’s insistence on mimicking the physiological qualities of vision and trace what lies in the path of the viewer’s glance as she or he traverses the museum. Constricted by the confined spaces or guided pathways,

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viewers are often forced to look at artworks from obscure angles with tilted heads and craning necks. This work expresses something of the dynamics of this vision with its vertiginous and disorienting optical illusions. Through the use of acute camera angles and close-ups that are intended to impress the proximity of the object upon the viewer, these photographs assimilate looking in the museum environment and dislocate the frontal viewpoint generally associated with viewing art. They arrest the otherwise elusive details of an ephemeral experience, isolating, enlarging and reordering them. While not reconstituting the original event, these photographs archaeologize the artworks and architecture of the museum to remake it with new emphasis. They represent an ‘impossible gaze’ by virtue of the ever-flowing tide of museum visitors that in real time would obstruct the viewer’s field of vision and make concentration for any duration practically impossible. Beyond vision, viewing is an inclusive sensorial, embodied engagement. It is dependent, as Marks (2000: 23) comments, on the viewer’s ‘own sensoria’, employing all the senses – including aural, olfactory and the desire for tactile experience – to navigate the museum and to viscerally experience the artworks themselves. And to further individuate this encounter, as Sobchack explains: Our capacity not only to hear, but also to touch, to smell, to taste, and always to proprioceptively feel our dimension and movement in the world [. . . is] informed by the full history and knowledge of our sensorium. (2000)

It is perhaps the total sensorial experience, the feeling of art, that will be most affecting: the visual profusion of artworks and decoration in the museum, the hushed tones of other visitors and their shuffling feet, the shrill beeping of infrared sensors, the feel of stone floors worn smooth, the weight of the timber beneath the gilded frames and the plushness of the velvet upholstery, the smell and taste of a mixture of scents, of ancient pigment mixed with oil and the age-laden air and the icy cold or stifling heat that can engender the viewing experience. Museums and the artworks they house create a site for sensorial engagement and the transference of various forms of meaning and tacit knowledge. They enable fluid interconnections between experience, the senses and intellectual understandings. While the encounter with art 119

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may unfold in a few fleeting moments, it can be a seductive experience beyond intellectual bounds, an instinctual response, an inarticulable communion. Derrida writes of the ‘indeterminacy, the indefiniteness [. . . when] faced with an essentially sensory experience’ and how it may exist between the limits of ‘comprehension’ and ‘apprehension’ in the moment of transition between the knowledge of the everyday and the overwhelming appreciation of the extraordinary (Derrida 1987: 102). It is a liminal experience that fully resides in the senses, an exciting feeling of almost understanding. There exists an incongruity between the contemporary viewing experience and the historic environment of Italian museums. The guides, tour groups, audio-tours, CD-ROMs and virtual tours propel the viewer towards sensory overload. The horror vacui of medieval aesthetics has moved through the visually dense baroque decoration exhibited in Impossible Gaze, to the present bombardment of the senses by modern technologies. Now there is no longer the fear of empty decorative spaces but the temptation to smother every experiential possibility, to overwhelm the senses with more and newer technologies of display. Although these technologies open the possibility of other forms of encounter, they are at present designed to occupy the mind in a ‘meaningful’ way. Spoon-feeding the viewer risks neutralizing her or his experience, making it predictable rather than wonderful. In the age of ‘retail therapy’, museums offer a form of ‘cultural therapy’ that can too easily appease the viewer’s appetite. The museum saturates the viewer with information, like the shopping arcade that feeds and entertains the masses with more options for distraction. And like the shopping arcade it is easy to become sidetracked, overwhelmed, exhausted and ultimately desensitized and detached. While the minutiae of dates and facts are rarely evident in my images, the knowledge of exchanges, influences, theories and developments do contribute to the cognitive construction and intentions of the exhibitions. They aim to provide a different way of understanding how we understand the Renaissance and the particular circumstances of architecture, installation and history that influence what we remember and value of art. By making images about Renaissance museums my intention is to shift the viewer’s perception, to entice and persuade her or him to enjoy the intricate and layered pleasures of iconic artworks in a more leisurely and reflective fashion. This work offers audiences

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THE RICHES OF AMBIGUITY: ART AS A SITE FOR THE SENSES Figure 13. Jo-Anne Duggan, Impossible Gaze # 2, 2004–5, chromogenic photograph

another way of thinking about the visual, about history, about the past, about people and culture and about themselves. And to comprehend the complexity, if not the specifics, that have been considered in its making.

Complex Encounters Given the extraordinary level of indeterminacy of viewing iconic Renaissance art, of the fluidity and contingency of meaning just described – and this without considering the artists’ intentions – how can art, in all its diverse practices and qualities, possibly contribute to understanding and knowledge? Numerous authors such as Sullivan (2005), Davey (2005), Biggs (2005) and Barrett and Bolt (2007) have eloquently theorized art’s capacity to generate knowledge; how it is contained, constructed, presented and transferred in artworks and how the viewer’s experience 121

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is central to any understanding. Sutherland and Acord (2007:135) contribute to this discussion by stating that ‘understanding knowledge and its production comes to mean understanding it as an embodied, tacit and contextual phenomenon that is as varied as its participants and as subjective as human existence itself’. Furthermore, Tormey and Sawdon argue that: An ‘emerging theory of interpretation’ needs to acknowledge its fundamentally different dynamic of doubt, differentiation and ambiguity, if it is going to establish different and valid forms of knowledge. It needs to accommodate an attitudinal shift that understands knowledge as something fluid and not easily contained. (Tormey and Sawdon 2008: 9)

Both viewing and making art have the potential to open new worlds of thought that are not always, or not necessarily, articulated; rather these new worlds are sometimes a sensual realization or embodied experience, sometimes liminal or subliminal – thought that may trigger tangential responses to the ideas presented and become ‘grist for the mill’. Ambiguity is both ripe and fruitful in this encounter as creative works offer different ways of thinking by providing a space for alternate and multiple interpretations. As Renshaw writes, for the artist and the art viewer: Artistic processes can [. . . ] be transformative. They can open new doors, extend personal boundaries, enable us to see past traditions in new ways and provide opportunities for us to redefine who we are. (Renshaw 2005: 101)

Viewing art allows the mind, as Kemp and Jones explain, to ‘map’ connections’, a process that ‘results in the construction of a new awareness – a new knowledge – that is brought about by the cognitive blending of fictive and real, present and past, personal and shared’ (Kemp and Jones 2009). It is the richness, the potentiality of meanings abounding in ambiguity that is positively intriguing; the ability to see and experience from multiple viewpoints and adopt different interpretive attitudes can only enhance wider access and broader understandings. As Biggs 122

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explains, ‘ambiguity allows the mirroring of the complexity of our lived experience [ . . . ] both within and outside the realm of authority belonging to academic knowledge’ (Biggs 2005: 196). Ambiguity is to be celebrated as a desirable quality, for it is ambiguity that drives artists and scholars to undertake research. Making art is a curious practice that stretches philosophical enquiry in diverse directions; it is a different way of thinking, inside and outside disciplines and between them. It takes unconventional approaches and alternate perspectives in order to question, invigorate and critique without the sole objective being clarification, definition and conclusive evidence. As encapsulated by Morgan, ‘it does not deduce, [. . . but] endlessly proposes’ (Morgan 2001: 14). Creative research has highly significant implications for imagining possible new strategies in established disciplines, and for helping to advance and deepen the perception of knowledge itself. By encouraging critical and rigorous practice-based research to flourish within the realms of academia there is the potential to develop a more profound understanding of art, to move closer to what art can mean. At the same time, because of its interdisciplinarity and interpretive sensitivities, creative research discovers and rediscovers ways in which art can contribute to broader understandings, within academic institutions and beyond, on a wider societal scale. Indeed, given the ubiquity of the visual image and its crucial role in contemporary life, as well as the thirst for innovation, the diversity of creative research and all of its provocations are increasingly invaluable.

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7 Real Fiction: Theatre and Creative Research Scott Welsh

The very idea of theatre as research seems like a strange and alien concept in the current discourse and is often met by resistance from both the theatre and academic establishments. Even Peter Brook, in his earth-shattering The Empty Space: A Book about the Theatre: Deadly, Holy, Rough, Immediate, deals almost exclusively with form, in terms of theatre, and says very little about content (Brook 1968: 40). He tells us that any social encounter, anywhere, can be conceived as a stage. It follows that any conversation, anywhere, can become a script. Brook says that theatre makes the invisible visible. I argue that it also makes the unspeakable speakable. In the course of this argument, I will consider my work as a playwright, which I call ‘real fiction research’, with specific reference to my play The Biography of a Battler (Welsh: 2009). Theatre has a long history of breaking taboos. In times when witches and homosexuals were burned at the stake, they were freely permitted onto the stage. Shakespeare is full of such characters and it should be remembered that Oedipus appeared on stage a long time before he resided on the therapist’s couch. On stage, we are permitted to do that which is forbidden in daily life. However, this privilege is conditional. We must entertain. The taboo, in the theatre, is what Brook calls the ‘Deadly Theatre’: real fiction research attempts to balance the transfer of knowledge with this requirement to entertain. Brook, does at one 124

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Entertainment Whilst Brook seems not to like the notion of theatre as entertainment, he provides a key to understanding and reconstituting entertainment in his discussion of Shakespeare when he says: Four hundred years ago it was possible for a dramatist to wish to bring the pattern of events in the outside world, the inner events of complex men isolated as individuals, the vast tug of their fears and aspirations, into open conflict. (Brooke 1968: 40)

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point, deride entertainment as an illegitimate form of theatre. He says it’s fine, but that it doesn’t do anything. In this chapter, I will reconstitute what is meant by entertainment so that it can be embedded into my creative research, which I call ‘real fiction’.

An understanding of ‘entertainment’ that adheres to Brook’s lofty standards for the creation of live theatre (as opposed to ‘deadly’ theatre) can be found in psychoanalysis. In 1995 Earl Hopper published an article in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, in which he speaks of the intravenous drug user or injector entertaining homosexual fantasies while injecting. This use of the word ‘entertainment’ is common to psychoanalysis and yet, it seems, this understanding of the word does not translate well into theatre discourse where the idea of entertainment brings to mind an external sensation, a lightness, a freedom from the very internal thoughts to which Hopper refers. Real fiction seeks to bring together the psychoanalytic and theatrical senses of ‘entertainment’ because the audience is observing a social phenomenon from outside the theatre and this is the source of their enjoyment in the same way that Hopper’s injectors source their enjoyment from (inner experience) fantasy, rather than the physical act of injection. In theatre, the insinuation is always that the stage is the site for entertainment and the audience is being entertained. However, Brook’s description of Shakespeare, the translation of a ‘pattern of events’ into ‘open conflict’, provides a key to understanding ‘entertainment’ in the brave new world of post-television theatre (Brook 1968: 40). Indeed, today the theatre not only needs to compete with television, but also with new technologies that have affected the task of creating theatre. 125

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However, beyond Brook’s assessment of the post-television audience (he was writing in 1968), the post-internet world with its iPods and array of contemporary technological and communicative advances have seen an audience willing and able to engage and learn. In the contemporary era of ‘infotainment’, everyone is a researcher. The contemporary theatre audience is accustomed to acquiring information as a form of recreation but usually do this alone in front of a computer. However, despite the idea of theatre as a dull social activity, current practice has the potential to bring it back to life. What Brook called the ‘Deadly Theatre’ has become a theatre that can give life. In this cold and contemporary age in which alienation seems to be the only way of being, the theatre provides a social, conversational form of gathering knowledge as part of a live audience rather than as a virtual participant. Real fiction and theatre practices like it take this idea a step further, providing audiences with reference points from outside the theatre, revelations about contemporary social life couched in a collective knowledge-gathering experience. I consider my creative research, the play – which is the outcome of the research that takes place within the context of the theatre – and the way in which it provides a form of entertainment as being akin to Hopper’s understanding of the term. Both the view of the play as research and this understanding of ‘entertainment’ disrupt the conventions of theatre. Also, I want to refer to my current play as research, a play that explores incest and paedophilia.

The Biography of A Battler : The Issues My work deals with the ‘Other’, the socially alienated human subject. It is from within this context of social alienation that I sought to write this play. Questions of authority haunt the process. I wrote this play sleeping on the couch of a patient deemed mentally ill by the establishment. I had no authority to observe and record the movement of the speech patterns that unfolded before me. I did so nonetheless, against the will of the prevailing authority. In this context, I was not permitted to speculate on the issues I have raised in this chapter. Now, as a researcher, my role has changed considerably. I have been granted authorial authority to break taboo on the subjects I have considered above. 126

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In the language of the psychotic, the word ‘paedophile’ appears to be common. My only source for this information is empirical experience, the phenomenological research method leading to the presentation of ‘real fiction’, outlined above. I created a psychotic character in The Biography of a Battler, based on a real, toothless street person, a friend of the main character whom he met in the course of his involvement with the mental health system. He used the word ‘paedophile’, sometimes as a way of saying ‘I hate you’. Sometimes it was an affectionate term; he said ‘paedophile’ with an accompanying expletive in much the same way as you or I might say ‘my friend’. Therefore, his greeting may be something like, “Pleased to meet you, you low-life paedophile!’ I played this character in the performance of the play and the question arose in rehearsal as to whether the main character should have some internal reaction to the mutterings of his friend. That is, ought the mutterings of this ‘fool’ inspire some more serious contemplation because of the nature of the subject matter, because the main character really is a (suspected) paedophile?1 My answer, of course, was ‘No’. But the question raised serious misgivings as to the convention of theatre in which the director is considered to be ‘God’. Had the theatrical convention prevailed, these two distinct social comments, one on paedophilia and incest and one on psychosis, might have been united and the results of the research project ruined. Brook’s claim that theatre can make the invisible ‘visible’ has also aged with the advent of new technology. Nothing is invisible now. We can watch people starve to death on the other side of the world over the internet. We no longer need theatre to make the invisible visible. What we need theatre to do is to speak the unspeakable in its unique live context. With this in mind, I have sought to create a form of drama that emphasizes the potential for theatre as a site for research. This involves disrupting the established structures of theatre. Brook claims that ‘few men are as free as the playwright’ and of the director he states that ‘he does not ask to be God and yet his role implies it’ (Brook 1968: 60). If the director is God, and the playwright, by implication, is subject to the authority of God, then surely Brook is overstating the freedom of the playwright. In Ancient Greece, the playwrights were called poets and considered to have a sublime knowledge of the gods. Literature and theatre had a rock-solid marriage. The playwright, if not a god, mingled with the gods, went to Hades and

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Heaven and was considered to have some special knowledge by virtue of his crafting of words. I argue that this special knowledge is in fact attained by a form of creative research. I depart from Brook by claiming that theatre is the outcome of creative research. The director is not God and the playwright is as bound as any person to an obsolete structure of authority that keeps theatre from reaching its audience in a responsive age. I will outline a theory that views the process of theatre creation as research in a communicative reality. This theory is based on my practice as a ‘playwright’. It is my sincere hope that by the end of this chapter the reader will view me not as a playwright but as a creative researcher whose outcomes are expressed in the context of theatre. I will now turn my attention to the form of creative research I practice, what I call ‘real fiction’ and what has been called by others ‘plays’ or ‘theatre’. What I do could also be called a ‘theatrical phenomenology’. It always relates to my direct experience of someone else’s experience. It is their experience as I perceive it, in sound and speech rhythms. The play, then, is largely a report of my findings. I directed my own plays for many years and even with the current one (which we will get to in a moment) I was fairly intimately involved in the casting. I am explaining this because my form of casting has never been based on the skill of an actor, but always on whether the actor brings to mind the real experience. In that sense, it is a phenomenological form of casting. I am concerned with the human being and the potential of his or her body and voice to house the character. You might respond to this by saying that I am merely rewording the objectives and methods of the conventional casting process. I’m not, and the evidence is in the many non-actors who have appeared in my plays because I have seen something in their bodies or heard something in their voices that takes me back to the real experience. Within this context, the transfer of knowledge is central to the acting. Where Brook describes the empty space, I am speaking of the empty body, into which the speech rhythms of the character (sourced from my experience of the other) might be easily inserted. The Biography of a Battler (thankfully) has a director who has sometimes met my outlandish ideas with considerable resistance. This is because, for director Kylie Gral, the play is not merely the outcome of research but the making of a performance, a play inside a building called a theatre, which periodically

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doubles as a political institution with goals and objectives all its own that has nothing to do with my work. For me, the play is an outcome of creative research based on phenomenology and the actor is a piece of ‘data’, as is the character – always sourced from real experience. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s description of phenomenology as the theory of inescapable experience, the inevitability of subjectivity formed by our being in the world, is significant here in the way in which we think about theatre and its creation and production (Merleau-Ponty 1945: 2). The play, as I have stated, is an outcome of real fiction research. Examining my current ‘play’, I will now outline how it constitutes the outcome of my real fiction research. The play is written from an original short street publication, which was in turn written after closely observing the mentally-ill character’s life. His daily routine was excruciatingly repetitive. Psychiatric nurses would arrive at his door daily to administer his medication. Then his mother would call immediately afterwards, asking: ‘Did the nurses come?’ In observing the speech rhythms and the story that unfolded before me, I came to an understanding about the operation of the mental health system. The script, for me, is not merely a tool for the production of a piece of theatre. It is a social document, a reflection of my phenomenological research. Here is an example in the current script from Scene 10: M1 stands silently in a white hospital gown. The Doctor and the two nurses form a committee. This section is described in considerable detail in the book. There are several sections of the mental hospital that allow it to perform all its functions simultaneously: social, psychiatric and judiciary. The judiciary section of the hospital is incredibly elegant and contrasts the stark white of the treatment area. This is where the patient is judged and the heavy weight of authority makes its presence felt like a court room or something. The treatment area has broken the patient[s] and they walk, barefooted, drugged and fresh from electric shock treatment into this elegant room polished pine and marble and inhabited by all manner of immaculately dressed intelligentsia who acquire the power of a police force and the authority of a High Court judge merely by virtue of their existence here. (Welsh 2009: 20)

This extract seems to have no practical purpose. It appears in the script as a stage direction. It has the same font as other stage directions. It 129

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is formatted as a stage direction. And yet it does not tell anyone what to do. You could say, perhaps, it is a direction in terms of setting, but there is no attempt to describe the stage or formulate how this particular moment might be actually represented. I would argue that it is a piece of social commentary, contained in the social document of the theatrical script, representing the outcome of my creative research. It is curious that theatre has no place for it. In the recent performance of this play, I and the director chose to put this extract from the script in the programme. Thus, my creative research begins to litter the theatrical convention. Whilst the script here is already written, the writing continues throughout the rehearsal and performance process; the performance and conventions of presentation (such as the ‘programme’) are integrated into the outcome, which is a piece of social research. A similar example can be found in the work of Melbourne theatre practitioner Lloyd Jones, with whom I have worked on many occasions in recent years. Jones’s work involves an ensemble cast approaching social issues ( Jones 2012). A recent example is The Privilege Gene (2012), in which Jones questions the British heritage of Australia and, through his theatrical processes, incorporates social comment on issues such as homelessness and racism. In the foyer, prior to the performance, he has black and white beggars approaching the audience for small change. This form of social comment comes through working with the actors in the theatre, workshopping ideas rather than using a script. My work uses similar foundations, but the script is paramount. The example above represents a moment in the script unable to be represented directly on the stage, so the programme contains this extract and is used as a vehicle of expression and social comment.

Acting The actor sees this stage direction and throws his arms in the air, demanding: ‘What am I supposed to do with this?’ My answer is: ‘Understand it.’ The creation of a play is not comprised of a bunch of actors called a ‘company’ taking a book or some pieces of paper called ‘the script’ and trying to represent it on stage. Rather, I see the process as a series of communications, what John Shotter would call a ‘conversational reality’ (Shotter 1993: 1). The writer is engaged in a 130

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conversation, real or imagined, with the director. This is what the script is: a list of directions or correspondence from the writer to the director. When the writer conceives of a theatrical script sourced, according to my theory, from social reality, he is conveying to the director what he sees in the world and what he imagines on the stage. The director then is engaged in conversation with the actors and the actors are engaged in conversation with the writer, the director and, ultimately, the audience. In terms of my work, the phenomenological research contained in the script, in ‘real’ experience, is communicated to the director and the actors simultaneously and the objective for all of us, of course, is to deliver it to an audience. In the most recent piece, I was fortunate enough to play a small role, so reflection upon the real experience represented in the play was a constant source of work in ‘rehearsal’ and was also the subject of conversation among audience after the performance. This work took place in the form of conversation. In the early part of the twentieth century, Brecht, in his various dialogues on theatre, began to revolutionize what we mean in the theatre when we say someone is acting. John Willet, in Brecht on Theatre, quotes the playwright as defining this, the ‘scientific age’; he also says his actors do not act ‘badly’, they act ‘wrong’ (Willet 1978: 26). Brecht describes acting as a demonstration of knowledge, ‘of human relations, of human behavior, of human capacities’, and says that this ought to be demonstrated ‘consciously’, ‘suggestively’ and ‘descriptively’ (Brecht in Willett 1978: 26). Brecht’s precise meaning here can be seen in his description of how he says actors ‘do it’ (demonstrate ‘knowledge’) at the time of acting. This also applies at the time of writing. Drawing on Brecht, Willet explains that by means of hypnosis, actors go into a trance and take the audience with them. He goes on to describe what is seen by the observer as an ‘erotic process’. Brecht explains further what it ought to be like: Witty. Ceremonious. Ritual. Spectator and actor ought not to approach one another but to move apart. Each ought to move away from each other. Otherwise the element of terror necessary to all recognition is lacking. (Brecht in Willett 1978: 26)

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by viewing itself as research (in spite of the fact it takes place in a theatre), attempts to impart knowledge consciously, descriptively and suggestively; knowledge contained in the speech rhythms of the script, sourced from experience. This departs from the form of ‘hypnosis’ to which Brecht refers. I am suggesting that knowledge of human relations, human behaviour and human capacities can be found in the throes of conversation and that this conversation can be transplanted from social reality onto the stage, with the conventional craft of acting, which Brecht describes as ‘hypnosis’. What I hope is becoming apparent in this account is the constant reassignment of every element of the theatrical convention. This reassignment and reinvention (the utilization of the ‘stage direction’ as a social comment and the casting process as a form of testimony) is all directed towards emphasizing the creative research component of my work. The actor, in this process, performs the role of model, a container for the ‘data’ of speech rhythms and tones, sourced from social reality. The actor is engaged in a process of social representation and has the potential to make social commentary himself, through the enactment of the character/writer/director social encounter that is performed and represented. In Jones’s work, mentioned above, the absence of a conventional written script means the actors have an almost absolute ability to engage in their own social commentary. However, despite Jones’s own claim that there is no written script ( Jones 2012), members of his ensemble can confirm an enormity of written communication – previously in the form of letters to cast members, now in e-mails. Whereas the theatrical script is ordinarily directed towards the production of theatre, my scripts are directed towards documenting the outcome of my creative research. It disobeys the theatrical convention and, partially for this reason, has often provoked passionate reactions from theatre practitioners. My work is often seen as transgression, which Lacan defines as ‘trampling Sacred Laws under foot’. (Lacan 1964: 200). I would argue that it is in fact a transgressive jouissance; that it is transgressive only in relation to a law that prohibits it. That law is the law of the theatre. By reassigning the theatrical convention, I am breaking the unwritten law (of theatre), but I am not breaking that law because I like breaking laws, or I hate theatre, or because I want to destroy or bring down the establishment. It is quite the opposite. My

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work is directed toward a conception of the theatre as a location, a context for the presentation of the outcome of my creative research, called ‘real fiction’. This differs from conventional theatre because the primary events that form the work do not take place inside the theatre. The writer is not a playwright but a being in social reality, carried away by the tide of conversation, taken in and out of the rhythms of his characters. Where the conventional playwright is writing for the theatre and the director and actor are performing an artifice for an audience, the real fiction theatre consists of a series of social encounters, including those between the writer, director, actor and audience, but it is contextualized and imagined in its raw social form. I believe this contributes to, rather than detracts from the contemporary practice, indeed the Establishment, of theatre. I said earlier that my plays come from close observation of speech patterns. The character’s speech patterns govern the movement of the play and the social commentary I seek to create. The rhythms of the play, the craft of the director, are borne from the social reality of their origin. A pertinent example is my play Barcode 30!!7 307 (La Mama Theatre 2002–3) in which my experience is blended into the speech rhythms of, primarily, the main character: But that’s nothin’ to do with anythin’ when you’re inside. I’ve been inside a few times. I been outside meetin’ mates from the inside. I’ve been in graveyards. [Begins laughing] I’ve been the fucking gravedigger. Some fucker from the inside told me there was something fucking Shakefucking spearian about being the fucking gravedigger. He’d been inside seventeen years. He never saw the graves being dug. But then you never done a CBO, did ya? A CBO’s a community based order. It’s society’s way of sayin’ you’re fucked cunt! and I’m too dumb to respond [to specific audience member] Not stupid. Deaf and dumb. So anyway, I can’t speak. I can’t say one word. I can’t even whisper because all I wanna say is ‘Where can you get me some firearms?’ . . . . . . not that I ever dug shit with me bare hands or nofin’. No I just had to push the green and red buttons. That smart bastard from the inside told me green was a symbol of life and red was a symbol of blood, pain. I love pain. I love the feeling of pain. (Welsh 2002: 23)

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[Sits in chair] I’m getting a tattoo. I don’t like it. I don’t like it because I love it. The pain, it gives me an erection. The woman’s face, it’s as red as a traffic light. It’s as red as blood. AND THE PAIN MAKES ME HIDE THE ERECTION AND THE THE BLOOD FLUSHES OUT HER FACE AND IT FALLS ON THE FLOOR BECAUSE . . . . . . .. PEOPLE ARE SO MEANINGLESS I CAN’T EVEN SEE THEIR FACES THEY JUST LOOK LIKE TRAFFIC LIGHTS LIKE WOUNDS . . . . . . YOU SEE I’M FIVE YEARS OLD AND I’M WATCHING MY FATHER STUFF A STEAMING FUCKING POTATO CAKE IN AND AROUND MY MOTHER’S MOUTH BLISTERING HER CHIN SO THE FLESH DRIPS LIKE TOFFEE AND I STAND UNDER HER LIKE SHE’S A DRIPPING TAP AND I TASTE THE TOFFEE BECAUSE TOFFEE’S A SPECIAL TREAT . . .

In this extract, the blending of voices occurs in the conversational research. In short, the little boy is me and the criminal is the character sourced from social reality. The question, then, is where did I gather the information for a later play, exploring incest and paedophilia? The answer to this question is in the process I have outlined. However, curiously in this case, it was a kind of manipulation or nuance in the creative research process that created an approach to this subject. That is, I didn’t set out to explore the issues of incest or ask questions about paedophilia but the process delivered these issues to me. In other plays I have written, the starting point has always been the contemplation of an issue. Whilst this may appear to deem it ‘documentary theatre’ (a form that also seeks to explore an issue, using real words from real events to create a script, as I will discuss later in this chapter), the element of ‘real’ experience might also deem it ‘phenomenological theatre’. This built-in dichotomy requires a new category and is the reason why I call my work ‘real fiction’. In this play, the starting point was the voice of the character; the issue I was contemplating was a man in the mental health system. The incest was something of a distraction from the primary exploration but occurred 134

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as a consequence of observing the speech rhythms of this man in his world. For example, There’s a Naked Man in My Loungeroom (Welsh 2001) began as an exploration into mental illness and the family. Then I sought out characters, sounds and stories from real experience that contributed to the creation of the script. Similarly, Barcode 30!!7 307 began as an exploration into domestic violence and criminal behaviour. I had initial questions prompting my creative research, driving my desire to seek out particular speech rhythms from characters in reality to reflect on the issues I had identified. With my most recent play, The Biography of a Battler, I thought I was revisiting the issue of mental illness, which is still a concern in the play. Then my research took an unexpected turn. I discovered in the real character (upon whom I based the fictional one) momentary thoughts of incest and paedophilia. I could not leave these unexpressed. However, this revelation represented a significant change of direction in terms of the subject of my creative research. This change of direction is represented in the play in terms of a theatrical twist. The audience’s experience of the work reflects my experience of reality. This emphasis on experience is the catalyst for the term ‘phenomenological theatre’, the outcome of my real fiction research, which has grown out of the experience of a real character. The extract below illustrates this flow of experience as it emerges in the character’s musings and memories: Mother: . . . Now, as a school-boy you had moved pianos but your habits had made you weak at this time so I thought the only way you could contribute to the family was to look after the two little girls while your brothers and I worked moving pianos. M1: That’s right. I’d listen to Bach every afternoon while the girls were. . . . . the girls were. . . . Mother: The girls were all I had after the heart-ache you had brought me so it was a privilege that I trusted you and you let me down, Theodore, you let me down very badly! (phone rings) M1: Mum! Voice: Not quite. Graham Johnston. I’m from the Western Sydney branch of the Australian Labour Party. Just making a few calls, doing the rounds to invite all the local members to a barbie on Sunday. Are you free?

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M1: No. (hangs up phone) I am not free. I know nothing of freedom. Freedom belongs to others. I am imprisoned. A prisoner of this flat, of the mental health system, my mind and my memory. I am an Indian Chief. I run free around the camp fire with two little Indian girls. I stare into the eyes of the beautiful innocence before me. Mother’s voice: . . . . I always thought you were very good to the girls and loved them but you’re a very strange man, with strange ideas, just like your father. Once the issues of incest and paedophilia emerged, I had to find a way to intertwine them into the play, for if I left them unexpressed, then I would not have fulfilled my research charter as outlined above. This proved deeply problematic in terms of maintaining the quality of entertainment. What happens when the empty body of the character is filled with speech rhythms that contain a tone and a subject deplorable and despicable to the creator? The answer to this question became the subject of the play. Having come across this question, I included it in the play (which I view as the outcome of my creative research), attempting to evoke in the audience the very sensation I experienced in interactions with real characters and people. I asked this question of the audience using the theatrical convention of ‘the twist’, so that the play concealed this information from them, just as it had been concealed from me. In the theatre, this would be conceived as the crafting of a clever plot. However, this was never my intention. I wanted to find a way to deliver my experience to the audience, using my established methods of creative research, using the notion of ‘real fiction’. To consider the theatre as a site for creative research disrupts a plethora of theatrical conventions. In this chapter, I have shown how viewing theatre creation as research both questions and enhances the process of theatre-making. It questions the observation by Brook that the director is ‘God’. It questions established methods of theatre creation such as casting and the crafting of plot. However, it ultimately enhances these conventions with reference back to the ‘real’ of phenomenology rather than the structured establishment of theatre. To conceive of theatre in this way advances the practice whilst simultaneously questioning it.

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I said at the outset of this chapter that I wanted to explore the possibilities of theatre to make a social comment. I have maintained throughout that I view theatre as a form of creative research and that this view disrupts established views on theatre, even those proposed by Brook, who himself was seen as somewhat of a revolutionary. I have spoken about my creative research and how it led me, inexplicably, to the issues of incest and paedophilia. I now want to spend just a brief time speaking about how this form of phenomenological research was translated to the audience. That is, how the audience’s experience mirrored the real experience. A major component of this undertaking was to invite audience feedback in the form of a discussion forum. At the end of the play, the audience was encouraged to offer comments and questions that responded to the play. A forum discussion of this kind in relation to a play of this nature radically alters the nature of the entertainment. Hopper’s notion of entertainment, that is, entertaining homosexual fantasies while injecting, involves a thought process, constitutes reimagining the world for the purposes of the individual’s will. A similar process is undertaken by including a forum for discussion into a piece of theatre. The audience is not merely force fed entertainment, but must entertain ideas and engage with issues for the theatre to be complete. This element of the presentation allows a response to new technology from the Dead Theatre. A comparison between theatre and film provides a pertinent example. In film, we cannot work with, anticipate or investigate audience reaction. We also cannot utilize the audience/performer dichotomy to manipulate or fragment the issue of fictional time. In the theatre two or more articulations can be made simultaneously, using stagecraft and the context of performance being a stage in front of an audience:

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Results and Outcomes of Creative Research

PRELUDE IN FOYER Father: For Christ’s sake! Mother: What? Father: I came here to see my daughter’s play. Mother: Alright! Father: What? 137

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Mother: ‘I came here to see my daughter’s play.’ Father: Bitch! Mother: What? [Pause] What did you say? Father: Nothing. Mother: (Not) oh (but between oh and ah) no. You did this to me last time and I swore, ‘Never again. I’ll never let you do that to me.’ [Father stands and yells very loud] Father:

I am not doing anything to you! [Points his finger to his head] You got that, thicko? You got that [Pause] . . . . .? Bully-boy

[Father knocks mother’s drink aggressively] Mother: What? Father: Bully-boy. Mother: Stop it! Father: Bully-boy. (Welsh 2002–3: 1) This extract occurs in the foyer of the play, the ‘parents’ acting as audience, and illustrates how the social reality of being inside the theatre can be mingled with the creative process of communicating the ‘play’. In the most recent production of ‘real fiction’, I created a forum for post-play discussion. This was primarily invented to explain the origins of the incest in the play and to encourage formal discussion on this taboo subject. The outcome was fascinating. The audience was as haunted as I was by the theatrical twist, which involved the aforementioned exploration of the incest subject and many said that it ruined their experience of the play. Whilst many may see this as a disaster for a piece of theatre, it perfectly reflected my experience in terms of ‘real fiction’. The twist, which occurred both in the writing and performance of the play, involved the reference to incest; a subject I had not planned to approach but which came to me through the creative research process. So the audience is watching a play about the mental health system, the outcome of conversational research and quite suddenly the issue of incest emerges in the story of the main character. This is a record of what occurred in my conversations with the subject of the research who became a character in the play. Whilst the real, conversational reference was less explicit than the description in the 138

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I am an Indian Chief. I run free around the camp-fire with two little Indian girls. I stare into the eyes of the beautiful innocence before me. Mother’s voice: . . . I always thought you were very good to the girls and loved them but you’re a very strange man, with strange ideas, just like your father. M1: So that’s what this is about. The sins of the father! As if he didn’t suffer enough in life under your constant surveillance! Now you have to crucify me for what you seem to believe he did!

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play; the effect on the researcher is recorded through the twist as the character discovers the ‘truth’ of his past, not unlike Oedipus:

The plaited hair like rope falls easily into the palm of my hand. Then come the cowboys on their horses with their guns and make war with the innocent Indians. A cacophony of pain, the sound of a universal deflowering echoes to the ends of the earth. (Welsh 2009: 23)

In the play, the perpetrator of the incest commits suicide and the victim, his sister, feels guilt over this, prompting her, at one moment, to apologize to the dead man and seek forgiveness. This elicits a passionate response from audience members. It made many angry, one even claiming it lacked realism, that it was wrong for her to apologize, that it lacked authenticity. I think that there was an understandable confusion among all concerned: actors, writer, director, audience. The confusion was regarding the distinction between genuine sorrow and guilt. In the conventional theatre, this might be considered an error and the play a failure. In terms of real fiction research, we managed to reflect the real experience perfectly in the fictional form of the play and its reception. The audience does not need to enjoy themselves to be ‘entertained’. Indeed, entertainment, considered in terms of ideas, images and thoughts we might entertain while masturbating or injecting, is often a harrowing experience. What I believe the audience expressed in the forum was a form of misdirected guilt for their love of such an ugly character. Drawing on the work of Victor Burgin and Sigmund Freud on the theatre of desire, Estelle Barrett explains that in states of abjection or revulsion, the demarcation between viewing subject and object of the gaze collapses. The viewing subject can be 139

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simultaneously in the audience and on the stage and can occupy the role of both the aggressor and the victim (Barrett 2011:103). The potential of cross-identification further complicates audience response. Through the form of the interactive forum and the process of real fiction, the audience became the sister, simultaneously loving and hating the brother, experiencing guilt expressed as sorrow. It is significant that I played the aforementioned character because I believe this is what distinguishes my form of theatre, that is, real fiction theatre or phenomenological theatre from the popular and much talked about ‘documentary theatre’. The distinctions may be slight but they are significant and they are connected to notions of social judgement, which brings us back to the concerns of the play. Consider the article by Meg Arader entitled ‘The diverging paths of documentary theatre’ (2009), in which she argues that, in what is called ‘documentary theatre’, the separation between the signifier and the signified is imperative. Should the authorial voice lose his or her authority, the art loses its meaning. She continues, ‘While documentary theatre is limited as a factual document, its powers lie in the ability of the art form to delve into the emotions, issues or lessons behind the facts’ (Arader 2009). It is important to note the authority with which the author divulges these ‘facts’ regarding ‘documentary theatre’. An even more poignant example exists in Rachel Ann Johnston’s ‘Habitat: A Documentary Theatre Project’ (2009) which explores homelessness but takes great pains to separate the ‘homeless’ from the ‘homeful’. The practice of attempting to document the ‘real’ words of the homeless raises significant ethical questions. The issue of ethics and ethical clearance are concerns that become evident within this chapter and raise a number of questions: How ethical is it to use the others’ experience for the purposes of representation whilst remaining alienated from such an experience? How possible is it to delve into the emotions, issues or lessons behind the facts without having experienced those ‘emotions’, ‘issues’ or ‘lessons’ using the documentary theatre method? These issues are directly related to my coining of the term ‘phenomenological theatre’ to describe what I have called the ‘real fiction’ process. I will now endeavour to distinguish what I call my ‘phenomenological theatre’ based on ‘real fiction’ research from the somewhat

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long-standing institution of ‘documentary theatre’. Certainly, I am engaging with social issues (such as the treatment of the mentally ill by the mental health system, incest and paedophilia). However, this engagement is not deliberate or contrived. It occurs in the throes of conversation, in the endless nuances of experience and this is why I made earlier reference to Shotter’s conversational reality. The script is not a manuscript of a particular conversation, but an imitation that follows its rhythms and our responses to them. This diversion to a conversational reality engages phenomenology in the theatre, necessitating the absence of the authorial voice omnipresent in the practice of documentary theatre. In documentary theatre, the data collected may be untouched, but the representation has been handled by the creator. The creation may be a truth gathered from the world, but the fingerprints of the creator have sullied it. Phenomenology, on the other hand, implies an experiential dimension absent from the ‘documentary’ model. In terms of my work, I propose that experience can be, and indeed is, recorded in the individual’s speech patterns and rhythms. The script, then, is not transcribed from a conversation that occurred outside the theatre – in ‘reality’ – but is translated from the social reality to theatrical context through close observation of the speech rhythms. The Laramie Project, a play by Moises Kaufman and members of the Techtonic Theatre Project (2001), is a poignant example of ‘documentary theatre’ and it is significant in terms of a discussion of theatre and social comment. Indeed, as the title implies, the social comment it makes and the theatre it creates are indistinguishable. The play draws on hundreds of interviews interrogating people’s reactions to the murder of a gay student in Laramie, Wyoming. It has become a symbol of gay rights and transcends itself as theatre. The theatre of The Laramie Project exists as much in the scenes from the talk shows in which gays stood up for their rights, the discussions and all-night vigils that took place on the streets, the vigilante Christians and the vigilante gay-rights activists who wept, screamed, abused and hunted one another, as it does in the theatre in which it was produced. The theatre was not merely about the performance, but what motivated the performance, who attended the performance and why, the real events from which the script was sourced and the real community into which it became contextualized.

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My method of real fiction theatre extends on this form as it goes beyond the scripted words of participants by adopting a phenomenological approach. Katherena Eiermann (1997 tells us that the founder of phenomenology, German philosopher Edmund Husserl, defined phenomenology as ‘the study of structures of consciousness that enable consciousness to refer to objects outside itself. This study requires reflection on the content of the mind to the exclusion of everything else.’ The question of what is being communicated by a practice that calls itself ‘phenomenological theatre’ is compelling. I have used this term to describe my practice because it is the term that comes closest to what I do. However, it is manifestly inadequate to describe what I call ‘real fiction’ research. Hence, I have incorporated the idea of John Shotter’s ‘conversational reality’ into my description of the process. This notion of conversation is important to both the process of collecting data and the practice of conveying that data to an audience, for it is in the throes of conversation that the speech rhythms, the tonal quality of being, become apparent. Whilst the script involves some crafting, the theatre represents an attempt to stay true to ‘what happened’ in the conversation. The best example of this is the way in which incest became enmeshed into The Biography of a Battler, a play about the operation of the mental health system. This denotes a ‘conversational’ phenomenon at work in the writing process. In an article entitled ‘ Methods for a new dramaturgy of digital performance’, Jodie McNeily refers to a question posed by Melissa Dunne: ‘How can I access, document and distil experience?’ (McNeilly 2011: 1). This question is the very essence of my work and it is fundamental to the issue raised at the beginning of this chapter regarding resistance from the establishment. I would answer Dunne’s question by saying that, certainly, the creation, distillation and repetition of phenomenological theatre is a possibility (as explained above). There is a further question, however: Is that possibility desirable, achievable or indeed ethical in the social surroundings of both the creation and presentation of a work? Using the example that has been the subject of this chapter (The Biography Of A Battler), a number of questions can now be raised. Do I want to engage with the issues raised by the writing of the play (incest and paedophilia)? Does an audience want to watch it (that is, can it be conceived as entertainment)? Finally, is it ethical to undertake such a project?

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I believe I have answered the first and second of these three questions through my description of the process. The final question is a curious one and one that haunts the process of creative research. My creative research is almost an unconscious process. The power of agency is absent in the writing and listening until I make it so by crafting the script according to the issue I seek to address. So the listening process involves recording the rhythms of the characters’ speech. Once these rhythms are captured, a conscious process of inserting my own ontology and vision of the world occurs, but I am confined to the aforementioned rhythms. That is why my process is distinguishable from what is called ‘documentary theatre’. It is also partially why I said at the outset that my method and project is met with resistance from both the academic and theatrical establishments. No ethical clearance can be granted for something that occurs randomly, without warning and often unwillingly. These concerns make my research deeply problematic and the conversational nature of the representation does not lend itself to the authoritative structure of the theatre. This is an issue that has been of great concern to theorists in the contemporary practice (or theory?) of creative research. In the publication, Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry, Barrett comments on the often unquantifiable nature of ‘studio outcomes’: Because of the complex experimental, material and social processes through which artistic production occurs and is taken up, it is not always possible to quantify outcomes of studio production. (Barrett and Bolt 2007: 24)

Particularly when the author of such a work sees himself as conducting research rather than creating ‘entertainment’, both the idea of the research and the studio production encounters specific and profound difficulties in the theatre. There is the issue of the contested freedom of the playwright who is subject to the authority of the director (see my earlier discussion of Brook’s conceptualization of the director as ‘God’). There is the emphasis on ‘entertainment’ and there is the difficulty, identified by Barrett, of quantifying ‘studio’ outcomes. When the studio is a theatre, with actors, directors and various contributors to the ‘production’ of the outcome, the possibility of quantification of the theatrical production of research is almost inconceivable. 143

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When viewing a play of mine, it is my sincere hope that audiences will not be too drawn into the plot, characters or indeed the form presented in this script. This is the task of the director, actors and audience with regard to this piece of theatre. Rather, I hope audiences will examine the work as a social document, imagine the context of its creation and consider it in terms of ‘real fiction’ research. This way of understanding theatre and its etymological reassignment provides it with possibilities beyond the stage. Rather, it becomes a sociological and educational project. Its performance is not constrained to the stage but exists in social reality where it comments, criticizes and performs in its social surroundings.

Note 1

I should point out that the main character is not or was not in fact a paedophile. Rather, this was an issue that emerged out of the conversation. The context of this conversation was that the subject was very heavily medicated and made comments to the effect that he would like to marry his eight-year-old niece. When I questioned him on this, he referred to Middle Eastern arranged marriages between relatives. It is from this that I inserted the plot development in the play where the main character is accused of molesting his sister.

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8 Practice as Method: The Ex/centric Fixations Project Bree Hadley

In the past decade, scholars have proposed a range of terms to describe the relationship between practice and research in the creative arts (see, for example, Gray and Malins 2004; Sullivan 2005; Smith and Dean 2009), including increasingly nuanced definitions of practice-based research, practice-led research and artistic research. In this chapter, I consider the efficacy of creative practice as a research method, concentrating specifically on its applications in the performing arts, using own of my own recent projects, The Ex/centric Fixations Project (2009), as an example. The primary material of The Ex/centric Fixations Project is a 20-page performance text, which was written with the aim of investigating the way spectators perceive and interpret human experiences – especially those of difference, marginalization or discrimination – depicted onstage. In particular, the performance text aims to investigate the way post-modern or ‘postdramatic’ (Lehmann 2006) performance writing strategies, and the presence of performing bodies to which the experiences depicted can be attached, affects spectators’ perceptions and interpretations. It is part of a broader research project, entitled Staging Difference: Disability, Spectatorship and the Public Sphere. This broader project uses a range of research methods, including observation, interviews, textual analysis and 145

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discourse analysis, together with the creative research that characterizes The Ex/centric Fixations Project, to examine the performance practices of artists with disabilities. The project focuses on the way artists with disabilities use ideas, images and media drawn from the public sphere to stage interventions in that sphere (in many cases, in public spaces), in order to deconstruct the way their identities are defined in the dominant cultural imaginary. The objective here is to draw spectators’ attention to their own complicity in constructing the disabled body as ‘other’. The project is thus concerned with the way the spectator becomes co-performer or co-author in such performance practices, and the performativity of spectatorship. It intervenes in emergent debates about performance, ethics and spectatorship (see, for example, Grehan 2009; Ridout 2009) in the context of ongoing debate about whether the live interactive encounter with body in performance is a privileged site for the emergence of an ethical face-to-face encounter with the other. It also examines how live performance practices and strategies may or may not create the conditions of possibility for this ethical encounter. Using The Ex/centric Fixations Project as an example enables me to engage with the concept of creative practice as a productive, material intervention in cultural practice on two levels. On one, it is about the way performing arts practices can make a productive, material intervention in the public sphere, enabling marginalized subjects to speak back to dominant ideologies, discourses and social formations At a second level, it is about the way creative practice as a research method can make a productive, material intervention in the study of such performing arts practices, providing a site for knowledge-making, ideas and innovations that would not otherwise emerge. Using the metaphor of the M¨obius strip, a strip of paper in which a figure-eight twist allows inside to flow into outside and back into inside again, I examine the way the practice embodied in The Ex/centric Fixatiosn Project – as a method as well as output – has informed, influenced and problematized the broader research project. I suggest that using the metaphor of the M¨obius strip assists in understanding how the tensions that arise when using creative research in this way can become productive, providing new ideas, research questions and the language to articulate these.

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As mentioned, The Ex/centric Fixations Project is part of a broader research project, entitled, Staging Difference: Disability, Spectatorship and the Public Sphere, which analyses the performance practices of artists ‘marked,’ as Peggy Phelan (1993) would put it, by corporeal or cognitive difference and, more specifically, by a range of visible and non-visible physical disabilities. The project aims to identify, document and describe the sorts of performance practices artists with disabilities use to intervene in the way disability is produced, or constructed, through daily performances in the public sphere – for instance, on the street, in social and medical institutions and in the media. As Sharon Synder and David Mitchell argue in Narrative Prosthesis (2000; see also Synder and Mitchell 2001), the way we ‘do’ disability, and the way we ‘do’ relationships with disabled people, is based on a cultural script which offers disabled people a limited range of socially determined personae or identity positions – the monster, the corrupt, the charity case, or the brave sufferer – which are replayed again and again in the literary, dramatic and filmic cannons as well as in daily life. These personae frame and inform the way we perform disability in the public sphere, whether as, or with, disabled people. Paradoxically, the roles and relationships the daily social drama of disability prescribes are designed to tell us not what it means to be disabled, but, rather, what it means to be able. These roles are, as Fiona Kumari Campbell says, ‘not simply comparative, but rather co-relationally constitutive’ (Kumari Campbell 2008). Dominant figurations of the disabled body function to define the margins that confirm the centrality of the able self in social and symbolic systems (Hadley 2008). The disabled body is, as Snyder and Mitchell put it, ‘a metaphor and fleshy example of the body’s unruly resistance to the cultural desire to enforce normalcy’ (2000: 48); an example of what is not normal that confirms what it is to be normal. Artists with disabilities are aware of the way these narratives, in drama and in daily life, perpetuate the power relationships that underpin able-oriented social and symbolic systems. Accordingly, they tend to abandon the conventional narrative structures that, as Synder and Mitchell suggest, are complicit social and symbolic systems that see

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the disabled body as ‘Other’. Indeed, my research (Hadley 2008) has revealed that artists with disabilities are often drawn to Live Art1 paradigms as a means of intervening in the daily social drama of disability and the discursive and ideological frameworks that underpin it. Many of the artists I have observed and/or interviewed – including Mat Fraser (UK), Noemi Lakemeier (UK/Austria), James Cunningham (Australia), Aaron Williamson (UK), Kathryn Araniello (UK), Ju Gosling (UK), Liz Crow (UK), Alison Jones (UK), Backto-Back Theatre (UK) and Bill Shannon (USA) – have produced guerrilla-style performances which take place in public spaces or, at least, outside of conventional theatre spaces. Moreover, many of their performances ask spectators to respond in an active way, so that they move from a position of passive spectator to one of witness, participant or co-performer.2 Such practices are seen to have greater potential to motivate spectators to re-enact, recognize and reflect on their own complicity in the cultural construction of people with disabilities – as monstrous, defective, corrupt, or in need of care – than do conventional performance practices. These work of these artists typically operates in the paradigm HansTheis Lehmann (2006) has termed ‘postdramatic theatre’ and, more specifically, in post-modern performance, performance art or live art. Postdramatic theatre does away with – or, in some cases, deconstructs – story, characterization and staging elements designed to prevent the intrusion of the real into the dramatic world and, in the process, ruptures or relinquishes the stability of a closed fictive cosmos (Lehmann 2006: 30–31). It avoids representing the world via a true-to-life mimicry that seems so recognizable, so real, so un-challengeable, that we start to think of the roles and relationships it presents as natural, normal universals, even if we don’t necessarily agree with them (Lehmann 2006: 48). Instead, postdramatic theatre uses appropriation of cultural signs, symbols and tropes, repetition, fragmentation and a significantly altered relationship between performer, performance and spectator to make meaning in new ways (Lehmann 2006: 34). Working within this paradigm, the artists I have studied use appropriation, repetition and an altered relationship between performer, performance and spectators to deconstruct the cultural script – replicated in daily life, as in the dramatic, literary or filmic canon – that defines them as ‘Other’. Most

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begin with some basis in what Deirdre Heddon calls bios or life story (2008: 7). However, their work is not based on a simple, or an authentic, autobiographical narrative. Instead, they pick moments – in medical or social institutions, sideshows, streets, homes or the media – that capture the stereotypes by which others see them, and by which they are forced to see themselves. They present these images or moments in a more or less exoticized, exaggerated or abstracted form. That is to say, there is artifice embedded in their staging of ‘self ’, and it can be difficult for spectators to distinguish between the fictional and the real (Lehmann 2006: 137). In this sense, their works operate in the paradigm Rebecca Schneider (1997) calls ‘the explicit’ in performance. Whilst Schneider coined this term to describe the work of women performance artists who replay the sexualized, animalistic characteristics with which they are symbolically aligned back across their own bodies ‘with a voluble, “in your face” vengeance’ (1997: 100), it can be applied to the performance practices of other marginalized subjects. What these marginalized subjects share is a tendency to replay their culturally assigned identities back across their own bodies in order to show these as constructs, exposing what Schneider calls ‘the sedimented layers of signification themselves’ rather than ‘an originary, true or redemptive body beneath’ (1997: 21). For example, in Sealboy: Freak (2001), Mat Fraser reappropriated the historical persona of sideshow performer ‘Sealo the Sealboy’ – in fact, performer Stanley Berent, who shared Fraser’s condition of phocomelia (foreshortened arms) (Hadley 2008). In Resistance on the Plinth, presented as part of Antony Gormley’s One and Other public art project (2009), Liz Crow sat atop the Forth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in her wheelchair in a Nazi uniform for an hour. The counter-position of two opposing images – the wheelchair associated with ‘others‘ and the Nazi uniform typically associated with eugenics and a desire to eliminate ‘others’ – aimed at encouraging passers-by to ‘stop, look, think’ in order to try to make sense of the strange image in front of them. In Back-to-Back Theatre’s Small Metal Objects (2005), spectators wearing headphones sat in a seating bank in a public mall and watched two intellectually disabled characters caught up in a drug-deal gone wrong in the crowd and, in the process, had the opportunity to think about who is positioned as productive and useful in society.

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Other artists go further, replaying their culturally assigned identities as invisible or guerrilla theatre in public space and thereby challenging passers-by to spontaneously re-perform their habitual relationships to disabled bodies. In Aaron Williamson and Kathryn Araniello’s Assisted Passage (2007), for example, passers-by were asked to sign a petition to ‘help’ get permission for Katherine (a wheelchair user) to fly to Zurich to be euthanised. In his ‘gesture of help’ works, Bill Shannon performed tasks which others perceive to be difficult for him (as a crutches user) in order to see the sort of responses this would elicit from passers-by. In each case, these artists re-mobilized stereotyped roles, relationships and stories – sometimes in an exaggerated way, sometimes in an almost invisible way – to create the indeterminate relationship between the fictional and the real that can, according to Lehmann (2006), prompt spectators to recognize and reflect on their own complicity in the cultural construction of the disabled body as ‘Other’. Whilst the research has revealed the theatrical and performance strategies these artists use to produce complex, compelling, yet clearly non-authentic, deconstructive stagings of ‘self ’ as ‘Other’, it has also highlighted the risks associated with this sort of practice. One major risk of applying the bios within a practice-based context is that engagement with personal experience, even if it is not personal or is fictionalized, can all too readily be interpreted as a narrowly framed, narcissistic portrait of individual circumstances, without connection to broader political coalitions (Heddon 2008: 4). This risk is perhaps particularly acute for artists who bring their own ‘corporeally suitable’ body into the performance of cultural stereotypes. The presence of a body that seems ‘corporeally suitable’ to its culturally assigned identity can allow spectators to perceive the stereotypes involved in the work at surface level, applying a reductive, ready-made reading which fails to result in further reflection (Hadley 2008). As Heddon says: Some performance might well ‘fail’ to communicate, or ‘fail’ to move us, teach us, inspire us, challenge us. Some might prescribe to essentialist notions of self and identity, thereby further repressing or constraining us. Some might speak ‘for’, rather than ‘as’, while others might be appropriated in unexpected ways. (2008: 6)

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If works such as those I have described are constrained within readymade categories of meaning, they can again close off the artists’ subject position (see Hadley 2008; Hadley, Trace and Winter 2010). The work can be read as part of the phenomenon it is trying to challenge, as an individual problem that raises few ethical questions, or, as Carrie Sandahl (2004) has so eloquently argued, as part of a phenomenon of voluntary ‘enfreakment’ in which people adopt the signs, symbols and tropes of disability as a metaphor for their own desire for difference, self-determination and sovereignty over their own mode of being. Indeed, this latter phenomenon – in which nondisabled artists use the signs, symbols and tropes associated with the disabled body to express their own experience of ‘otherness’ – has emerged clearly as part of the research to date. In Marie Chouinard’s bODY rEMIX / gOLDBERG vARIATIONS, for example, ablebodied dancers use a range of prostheses associated with the disabled body (canes, crutches and walkers) – and used by disabled dancers such as Bill Shannon – to examine their own experience of ‘becoming Other’ as their body morphs and changes during the bodily demands of ballet training. In my most recent work in this area (see, for example, Hadley et al. 2010), I have argued that the risks associated with these modes of practice are due, at least in part, to the fact that at the most basic level the discourses available to depicted lived experiences of otherness – experiences of difference, marginalization or discrimination – fail to offer a language to see, think or speak about bodily differences in anything other than normative, ableist terms. They fail to express its experiential texture, and this means any attempt to express nonnormative experience is always compromised by lies, half-truths and deceits forced upon us by discourses designed to perpetuate ableist ideologies. This means artists have to work with the gaps and moments of indeterminacy that exist inside these dominant discourses – inside ableist signs, symbols and tropes – in order to challenge them, and show their deceits. However, because spectators – as Lehmann (2006: 106), along with other scholars such as Helen Freshwater (2009: 5) and Helena Grehan (2009: 4), has argued – are a collective of individuals who bring their own worldview, memories and histories to a performances, it is unlikely that any one sort of theatrical strategy

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or style will always ensure that all spectators see the inconsistencies to which the artists are drawing attention (Hadley, Trace and Winter 2010). In other words, whilst scholars such as Phelan (1993) suggest live performance may be a privileged site for the ethical face-to-face encounter with the ‘other’, others – including Nicholas Ridout (2009: 54, 60–66) and Grehan (2009: 14) – are correct in cautioning that whilst live performance may be a site for an ethical, perspective-changing encounter, it is not possible to predict which performance strategies will have this effect, or to presume that all spectators will be effected in the same way. What is most interesting to me, then, is tracking the variety of spectatorial responses to specific performance strategies to see how they impact on the interpretations spectators make. This process, which accepts the unpredictability of spectatorial interpretations, and investigates spectators’ interpretative processes in a practice-led context, is one I have sought to engage with quite explicitly via the The Ex/centric Fixations Project.

The Ex/centric Fixations Project In this project, I experimented with the way the gaps, silences and failures embedded in any effort to capture or convey experiences of otherness can be productive. As I have said, The Ex/centric Fixations Project is a 20-page performance text. Whilst it does have a loose basis in bios – in particular, in my own experience of walking with a cane for several years – it is, like the work of the artists described above, not bound to autobiography in any conventional sense. It is certainly not bound by any attempt to present an authentic or accurate picture of my experiences. Indeed, the text itself is drawn almost entirely from quotes (or misquotes) of public discourses – the lies, half-truths and deceits language offers us to describe our experiences – decontextualized both from my circumstances, and from the circumstances in which they most commonly appear. The main driver of The Ex/centric Fixations Project is a metaphor or motif of short-sightedness, used to literalize the shortening of perspective that comes when limited mobility leaves one spending too much time in small rooms, but also apt as a metaphor for a number of other experiences. The main intertext is the story of William Horatio Bates, an early twentieth-century eye doctor who said short-sightedness 152

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was caused by stress, or by lack of a calm, centrally-fixed vision, not by physical problems with the eye and could be remedied by relaxation exercises (Bates 1920). Bates argued that remembering the colour black, or a black period,3 was a better anaesthetic than cocaine, and on this basis began performing surgeries without anaesthesia (Bates 1920: 202– 203). Bates appealed to me because his pseudo-scientific theory jarred somewhat heavily with his tendency to disappear from his regular life for periods of years at a time in fugue states described in his obituary as ‘a strange form of aphasia’ (New York Times 1931: 13). I speculated that Bates’s ‘aphasia’ was akin to the somatization of stress symptoms he said he thought was causing his over-anxious patients’ problems. Interpreted this way his pseudo-scientific theories could seen as an attempt to construct his own story, his own cure, fraught with instability as his diagnostic model started to unravel in the face of the fugues that in the end became the most remembered element of his own life story. This instability that provided rich possibilities for textual play: Tuesday 2nd September 2008, 2.52PM. A little over a year ago now. All I remember is feeling ill. [Simultaneously] All I remember is feeling ill. Nothing. It’s nothing really. A late night, a lot of wine. One eye open, red, and tingling. I don’t know how I got here. [Almost simultaneously] I don’t know how I got here.

Speaking through a fictionalization of Bates’s persona in this way, this snippet of text begins to suggest some rich possibilities for exploring themes of identity, isolation, the ‘medical model’ of disease, diagnosis and the idea of expressing a sense of self through a language that cannot quite capture its experiential texture, all of which are embedded in The Ex/centric Fixations Project. The work also involved exploring these themes in both textual content and textual form. Accordingly, the persona of this strange man Bates was split into three parts, fictionalized and transposed into a modern context. It came together with quotes (or misquotes) of public discourses drawn from medical and pop cultural accounts of isolation, illness and fugue states sourced 153

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everywhere from Bates’s own book to self-help websites, unsolicited ‘spam’ emails seeking assistance from strangers and stage auditions to create the Ex/centric Fixations text, the voices in it and the (largely futile) attempts to describe an indescribable experience with the tools language provides. Dramaturgically, the Ex/centric Fixations text works with what Lehmann (2006: 17) calls a ‘textual variant’ of the postdramatic paradigm ‘in which language appears not as the speech of characters – if there are still defineable characters at all – but as an autonomous theatricality’ (2006: 18). The extract below is an example of this: 2 1 2 1 2 3 2 3 2 3 1 3 2

1 3

Have you ever woken up and decided today is the day you’re going to start on the right foot? Right, then. The right foot. You know, get things together. Get some sunshine. Get some perspective. That’s what you want to do. No more distractions. A smell. A sizzling smell. Like baking. Or burning. Or burning hair. I want you know I’m not a bad person. It’s just . . . What’s the word? I wish I’d been born at a different time. One that wasn’t so . . . Wired. The clock is ticking. The whole world is ringing. There aren’t enough minutes in the hour, aren’t enough hours in the day. Not enough time to waste on all the little obsessions I live for. Baking? Burning? An allergy, that’s all. Running eyes, raw nose, lines looping slowly round the surveys of my skin.

As this segment shows, the text relies on what Lehmann, following Julia Kristeva, calls a ‘polylogue’, which presents multiple voices at once in order to break away from ‘an order centred on one logos’ (2006: 32, original emphasis) or one legitimized way of telling a tale. Using short, truncated snippets of text in this way, the text violates what Lehmann 154

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3 o’clock. 6 o’clock. 9 o’clock. 12 o’clock. TV. CD. DVD. OCD. An accumulation of facts, ideas, impulses. A bright blur, black and blue and red. It hurts a little. It happens a lot. More and more all the time. My head pounds, my vision blurs, my ears ring, my chest heaves, my belly cramps, my hands begin to shake, my legs can’t bear the weight.

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calls ‘the established norm of density’ because ‘. . . [t]here is either too much or too little’ (2006: 89) of everything. In this case, there tends to be too many voices, too many emotions and too many obsessions, with too little context, making it challenging for spectators to process meaning (2006: 89):

Although this polylogous text disrupts normal plot-based approaches to narrative in which characters speak to each other to progress a clearly defined scenario or situation towards their own preferred ends or objectives, the text does still have structure, texture and theatricality. This is because it also works with the musical concept of a fugue, typically defined as a counter-position of several voices. In a fugue, a theme appears in one voice, then the next voice, then the next voice in turn, creating rolling layers of the same refrains repeated in different voices. In this text, the three voices – 1, 2 and 3 – variously represent Bates in the moments before, during or after his disappearance into a psychological fugue, or, alternatively, a doctor, patient and disease in a diagnostic interrogation about ‘what is wrong’ in which they do not quite manage to communicate with each other: 1 2 3 2 3 1

Saturday 6th September 2008, 11.51PM. Saturday. It happened on a Saturday. I think. [Overlaps] I think. This is hard. I don’t know how to start. Midnight. 155

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2 1 3

It’s as good a place as any. As good a time as any. I remember.

At the same time, each of these voices also start to weave into a single, if fragmented and strange, story of disease, diagnosis and the impact it has on a person: 3

2 3

2 3 2 3 2

1 2

The hard trills and hissing of hospital machinery, and the Technicolour retchings of TV monitors. Fragmentary reminders of a world that offends the eye with its cacophony of demands. Just beyond the reaches of what I can see. Erratic relay of envelopes and specimens. Lashes flutter, lips race, heads body, shoulders swing. Blood runs down sweat-soaked heads, and arms, and hands and legs. Fingers twist rings on worried hands. Worried hands wipe furrowed brows. Bodies dance rapidly around solitary despair. The scene is set. The story begins. The hem of the hospital gown against my hip. The chill of the stale, stagnant air closing in around me. Nauseating stench. My strength wavers. I clutch at a wall. My eyes narrow, as I think of the walk to come. I resist the temptation to close my eyes. To fall . . . We’re ready for you now. A strangely melodious voice that might once have been my own interrupts my silent reveries

As these segments demonstrate, each of the voices in the text follow their own trajectory, as a sort of direct address of stream-ofconsciousness thoughts with some coherence despite gaps and leaps in what a voice seems to be ‘thinking’ about. For instance, if the trajectory of 1 in the early part of the work is read alone, it starts to seem like a doctor inviting a patient in for an examination – an appointment at ‘3 o’clock, 6 o’clock, 9 o’clock’, where they read the person’s symptoms, then tell them they want to ‘Get some sunshine. Get some perspective. That’s what you want to do’, because ‘It’s nothing to worry about’, ‘It 156

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happens a lot’, or is simply part of ‘some maladjustments’ the human body tends to suffer from. If the trajectory of 2 in the early part of the work is read alone, it starts to seem like a post-fugue patient feeling nervous and exposed as they enter an examination where a doctor starts to question them about how they came to be found dishevelled and confused. ‘I don’t know how I got here,’ this voice says. ‘All I remember is feeling ill.’ ‘There aren’t enough minutes in the hour, aren’t enough hours in the day,’ the voice recalls, and there’s too many ‘distractions’. If the trajectory of 3 in the early part of the work is read alone, it starts to seem like a patient stuck right in the middle of a moment of physical suffering, totally wrapped up in the sensation: ‘The beat of my heart, the hitch of my breath, the bright halo of colours and chatter and footsteps closing in around me, making it harder to gather my thoughts.’ The themes of diagnosis, exposure and suffering that characterize these early sections of the text recur in other voices as the text progresses. Over time, the doctor turns into the patient or the disease and the patient turns into the doctor, with topics and timeframes continually shifting from confusion to clarity to confusion again. This fugue-like flow allows the text to function not just as three voices but as a whole, an autonomous tale over, above and in addition to the three texts that come together to create it. The interwoven voices seem almost to connect, almost to respond to each other, almost to be telling – or challenging each other’s telling – of the same story. This, ultimately, is what gives the text its own autonomous theatricality on top of the three individual voices, views and ideas in it. This is also what gives the text the ability to open up multiple strands of meaning as spectators interpret it in terms of an individual voice (and the looping fugue-like trajectory it takes) or an overall voice (and the tensions within it) or both at once. Throughout its 20 pages the text of The Ex/centric Fixations Project draws on experiences of cognitive and corporate difference, of diagnosis and the discourses available in the public sphere to describe these phenomenon. It uses complex, discontinuous and at times contradictory verbal exchanges to destabilize the experiences depicted and develop a staging of ‘self ’ that is recognizable in an experiential rather than a literal, expository or stereotypical sense. It offers something spectators do not automatically recognize or relate to, but, due to its language,

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it still feels like something they can relate to – moments when they too have felt ‘cold’, ‘discomforted’ or ‘on display’ and had to resist a temptation to collapse, walk or run away, even if it is not in the same context of bodily difference represented here. Operating this way, the text tries to jolt those who encounter it into a sense of being inside someone else’s experience of the world, a foreign experience; where they can relate to the feeling, though they may never find out what caused the feeling, and if they did they might not think it was normal, or that they as a normal person might want or be able to relate to it. It aims to create a recognition that, whilst we only have a partial grasp of other people’s experiences – in this case, whatever condition might have put the character or characters on to a medical merry-goround – they are not so out-of-the-ordinary that they can be dismissed, denied or marginalized as totally foreign to able-bodied spectators. Operating in this way, the text also clearly bears some affinity to a range of other ‘textual variants’ of postdramatic theatre, including Samuel Beckett’s Play (1969), Sarah Cane’s Crave (2001) or Martin Crimp’s Fewer Emergencies (2005), all of which tell a story through multiple undefined voices sharing a sometimes discontinuous narrative. The hope throughout the process was, of course, that this unstable, shared structure might enable spectators to engage the text at an experiential level, without necessarily being able to reduce the material to a single story, or the problems of a single, recognizable protagonist, embodied in a single actor. The Ex/centric Fixations Project both touches on and thwarts spectators’ expectations about how a performance text makes meanings. On the one hand, spectators may try to piece together coherent characters, and a coherent plot, from what 1, 2, and 3 say – and, indeed, try to link the story to the characters to me as author, or to the actors – to pursue expected interpretative paths. On the other hand, whatever interpretations they make this way are not going to feel clear, confident or decisive, and this undecidability may cause a combination of engagement and estrangement. To find out more about how this type of text engages and/or estranges spectators, in 2009 I staged a rehearsed reading of the text with three actors and asked the spectators to provide feedback via an anonymous survey.

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In their responses to the text, some spectators identified general themes in the text, suggesting it was about ‘brain activity, [a] medical condition, [a] mental disorder’, about ‘[p]eople’s experiences’, about ‘[s]omeone with obsessive/compulsive habits, their fixations’, or about ‘[l]osing one’s mind’. Others identified more specific themes, suggesting that 2 and 3 were patients and 1 was a doctor. One spectator said it was about ‘a young woman struggling sometimes with living, surviving, [the other character] being maybe a doctor, friend’, or ‘someone to talk to’. Another said: ‘I thought that there was a patient, a doctor or psychologist of some kind trying to figure out her problems, and then the third character was a manifestation of the [first] character’s mind.’ For some spectators, the staging decisions the actors made helped to construct characterizations. The actions/stances of the actors, however ‘off the cuff’, demonstrated three emergent points of view. Others were not sure whether a particular character emerged for in a physical state. Rather, there was a strong sense of confrontation, determination and indecision – all of which ‘became’ characters. Whether they saw the characters as people in conflict, or emotions in conflict, the spectators did typically acknowledge that the voices were three sides of one personality, acknowledging the fugue-like relationships, repetitions and connections between the three voices that inspired the open, and open to interpretation, dramaturgy of the text. The spectators’ responses indicated that the critical issue, working in this mode of performance writing, may be to create hooks, rhythms and resonances in the text and, in doing so, to consider the degree to which the fragmentation can be carried before the text becomes so estranging it undermines the possibility of experiential identification. In general, spectators thought The Ex/centric Fixations Project struck that balance. One spectator commented that the writing style certainly helped the reader’s interpretation of the piece. The spectators recognized that the text invoked stereotypes and accumulations of mainstream collective thinking about suffering and illness, and thus created a composite character of stereotypes and titbits of a personality. They also recognized connections, disconnections and conflicts in these cultural discourses. The moments in which there was a sense of connection between the three, or the moments in which the characters provided contradictory attitudes, were considered engaging.

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The rhythm was critical to the text’s ability to achieve this autonomous theatricality. Their comments demonstrated that many of the spectators felt that the fugue-like structure enabled enough repetition, resonance and rhythm for the text to coalesce into a collage of an identifiable emotional landscape and to open up distinct and tantalizing possibilities for creating extra meaning, offsetting a deliberate limitation on clear character, plot and context. Hence, it was possible to identify with specific ideas without fully identifying the ideas in the text. For some spectators, the fact that near-revelations were not answered in the text itself lead them to look for meaning outside the text. For instance, one spectator said they felt identifications with similar experiences of hardship in its many different forms. Another commented: ‘I felt I identified with the idea of a lone person in debate.’ For another, it was about a person reconciling. One spectator said: ‘[W]hat I took from the work-in-progress screening [sic] was that everything is easy and at the same time difficult. As humans, we choose our joys and sorrows long ahead of experiencing them. No one can help us unless we first help ourselves.’ This sentiment, expressed in different ways by different spectators, provided perhaps the firmest evidence that the writing was working – at least for some – allowing them to enter into an unfamiliar fictional landscape and find enough familiarity that they did not instantly dismiss the disability content as irrelevant to them, an affliction for a group of poor unfortunates who can be pitied but ultimately are nothing to do with them, or with broader issues of identity, culture and community. The spectators acknowledged that the ability to identify, and identify with, the work depended on the audience’s personal experiences and what they bring to the work.. In this sense, the snippets of diagnostic discourse, discontinuous, layered and non-linear narrative, contradictory verbal exchanges and multiplied presence of performing bodies did interrupt the spectator’s ability to reduce the text to a single person’s story, drawing attention to the inconsistencies and contradictions in the discourses. The lack of answers in the text let spectators look for meanings outside it, including in their own lives, and in some cases, led them to acknowledge the way society and their own subjectivity impacts on interpretation.

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The Ex/centric Fixations Project broaches ideas, questions and challenges embedded in a broader research project without the translation from one modality to another – from the creative to the academic – that, as Brad Haseman notes, accompanies the analysis of creative practice in formal academic discourse (2007: 148). It allows me, as a researcher, to shift positions and develop my own strategies for drawing ideas, images and media from the public sphere; to stage an intervention, deconstruct the way identity is defined in the dominant cultural imaginary and draw spectators’ attention to their own complicity in the cultural construction of identity. It also allows me, as a researcher, to develop data on spectator response beyond my own response to other artists’ work. It has produced new ideas, and to some degree a new set of languages for talking about issues relating to stagings of ‘self ’, and spectators’ perception and interpretation of stagings of ‘self ’, that contribute to the broader research project. It has provided concrete examples of the way specific performance strategies can succeed or fail in their deconstructive agenda in a way that observations, analysis and interviews could not have done. It has also highlighted the fact that, whilst my analysis of other artists’ work has thus far focused almost solely on non-text-based works and on body-based works, textbased works also hold promise that is worth further pursuing. Most critically, it has drawn my attention to hitherto neglected questions of what Lehmann (2006) calls significatory density in both non-textbased and text-based works. This has emerged as a primary driver in The Ex/centric Fixations experiment and spectators have identified it as key to their ability to both engage and reflect on the work. Without this practical, material intervention, I would not have thought to apply this sort of language or theorization to the works addressed in the broader project, or, if I had, I would not have had a basis on which to begin the new set of enquiries which will follow this particular intervention. In light of the complexity that continues to be embodied in these varying definitions and as I progressed with the project, I sought terminology that would allow me to describe, rather than simply define, the relationship between the practice and the research, and

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¨ Practice As/And Research? A Mobius Model

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the way in which the tensions that arose between the two were in fact the most productive thing in terms of providing the new ideas, language and research questions I was looking for in using practice as a method. The metaphor of the M¨obius strip suggested itself. This metaphor has been applied to the relationship between practice and research before, though not frequently. In their analysis of the relationship between research and practice goals in the development of a digital video library, Gary Marchionini, Barbara Wildemuth and Gary Geisler argue that the way one set of goals feed into another is ‘akin to walking along a Mobius [sic] strip in which a locally two-sided survey is actually part of a global one-sided world’ (2006: 162). In their field, information technology, the relationship between research and practice is typically two-phase (2006: 163) – research, then application – and doing both at once creates tensions because motivations, outputs and rewardmechanisms for researchers and practitioners differ (2006: 162) and in their context practical, commercial outputs are privileged (2006: 162). The M¨obius strip signals the need for research and practice to feed back into each other. This is useful, as the M¨obius strip captures the feedback between idea and thing, or what Haseman (2006: 6) characterizes as the relationships between ‘the knower and the known’ in creative research. It is a relationship that implies an unfinished process in which practice and research will always continue to contribute to each other. However, Marchionini, Wildemuth and Geisler use this metaphor to talk about ‘discovering ways’ to minimize or even capitalize on these ‘tensions’ (2006: 162) between practice and research, and cast the M¨obius strip as a closed circle in which tensions can be resolved. I doubt this: a closed circle, in which practice and research are completely complementary, would be a preferred model for most scholars in the performing arts, where, as I have said, the opportunity to shift positions and shift discourses is part of the value of the process. However, the metaphor is more useful, I think, if we consider what happens when one works with a M¨obius strip – cutting it so it becomes a single loop with a couple of twists, then two interwoven loops, two interwoven feedback systems, and so on and so forth. As Gilles Deleuze says, the M¨obius strip represents the hermeneutic cycle of sense-making not as a closed circle, but as ‘the coexistence of two sides, such that we past from

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The M¨obius strip is a processual figure: a topological figure. It cannot be intuitively understood by sight along, on only by combining sight and touch over time, with and act of the imagination. Grasped as a processual figure, it is geometrically unbounded. (Massumi n.date: n.pag.)

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one to the other by following their length’ (1990: 22). Sense exists in a seemingly closed circle, as ideas pass into things and back into ideas, suggesting a stable, causal, or at least causative relation between the two. But, for Deleuze, it is only by breaking open the circle as in the case of the M¨obius strip, but unfolding it lengthwise, by untwisting it, [that] the ‘dimension of sense appears’ (1990: 20). It is by folding, unfolding, doubling and duplicating the M¨obius strip, breaking it apart, bringing parts of it that wouldn’t normally touch into new proximities, that the possibilities immanent in it emerge – not on the side of ideas, or on the side of things, but in the liminal threshold space between the two (Frichot 2005: 76). Understood this way, Brian Massumi says:

The M¨obius strip as an open, processual metaphor more accurately characterizes the productive indeterminacy between idea and thing, knowledge and practice, in creative research in the performing arts generally and in The Ex/centric Fixations Project specifically. In static terms, ideas have flown into practices then back into ideas. But, in processual terms, this has been achieved not by passing from one side to the other as I follow the length of the M¨obius strip, but by folding, unfolding, doubling and duplicating the M¨obius strip so that I can bring things together in new ways. The productive new possibilities – new ideas, new languages, new knowledges and new questions – have not emerged on one side, or on the other, but in a liminal space somewhere between the two. The productive element in this exercise of doubling, duplicating and refolding the twists and turns of the M¨obius strip in creative research as method lies not in resolution, but, rather, in irresolution and ambivalence, as the needs of a text like The Ex/centric Fixations Project as method and as material output are negotiated in tandem. Whilst the term ambivalence can have negative connotations, it can, as Helena Grehan has suggested, be used to describe an active physical, 163

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emotional and intellectual engagement with and estrangement from an object, which keeps us wondering how we should respond to it (2009: 22). It is in this sense, I think, that traversing the M¨obius strip is characterized by irresolution and ambivalence. Creative practice, as research method, breaks into the relation between research, other people’s practice and one’s own practice, complicating rather than confirming, reducing or demonstrating seamless connections between them. It reconnects the researcher with questions that can otherwise disappear in the space between ideas and things. Which, in turn, allows for a material intervention that productively engages, rather than just demonstrates, knowledge in action.

Notes 1

Live Art is a term used to describe a range of practices – including performance art, body art, activist art and site-specific performance – which move beyond the boundaries of traditional theatre, preferring instead to explore an expanded range of possibilities for live, interactive events. As Live Art Development Agency (UK) Director Lois Keidan says, ‘Predominantly used in the UK, but increasingly adopted elsewhere, the term Live Art is not a description of a new artform or discipline, but a cultural strategy to include experimental processes and experiential practices that might otherwise be excluded from established curatorial, cultural and critical frameworks’ (Keidan 2007: 127). Accordingly, Keidan continues, ‘[s]ome may experience Live Art in a gallery, others in a theatre, and others still as an occurrence in some unusual location or a process in which they are involved’ (Keidan 2007: 129). What the practices share, above all, is a desire to speak back to or subvert social norms (Keidan 2007: 129).

2

As Lois Keidan says, ‘Live Art practices are concerned with all kinds of interventions in the public sphere and all kinds of encounters with an audience’ (2007: 129). As a result, one of the defining features of performances in the Live Art paradigm is their tendency to position spectators not as passive bystanders, but as active witnesses, participants, co-performers or co-authors (Hadley, Winter and Trace 2010). ‘A witness,’ as Karine Schaefer says, ‘is a spectator whose morality of system of judgement has been pricked by a performance’ (2003: 5). The artists I study, like most Live Art practitioners – and, indeed, most practitioners of postdramatic

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witnesses and to respond to a performance in moral, ethical or political terms. 3

When he speaks of a ‘black period’, Bates is referring to a full stop, though the term clearly has a broader and more poetic set of resonances.

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performance – are trying to provoke spectators to think, feel or react as

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9 Poetic Documentary and Visual Anthropology: Evoking the Subject Cameron Rose

The ability of the moving picture to represent reality has long fascinated filmmakers and audiences. From the actualit´es screened by the Lumi`ere Brothers in a Paris salon in 1895, to the ghostly night vision of the war in Iraq, the moving image can amuse, disturb, shock and arouse. Consider the effect of television news footage of civilian casualties (‘collateral damage’) in a theatre of war, or the ramifications of a video showing white police officers beating Rodney King in Los Angeles in 1992. However, film and video can do more than just document reality. A documentary can evoke the subject, immersing the viewer in a sensory environment that augments the reportage of events or the representation of other cultures. Visual anthropologists have used film for over 100 years to record the lives of different peoples around the world, but recently many have questioned how effectively a film can represent the experience of living in a different culture and society, and have argued for a more sensual form of cinema (Grimshaw and Ravetz 2005, Pink 2006). The poetic mode of documentary as identified by Bill Nichols (2001) emphasizes the sensual aspects of life through images that focus on formal aesthetics such as colour, tone and texture. The poetic documentary will linger on a shot giving the viewer time to 166

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absorb the physical nature of the subject, for example Godfrey Reggio’s Powaqattsi (1988) which shows the dark sweaty skin of a young labourer in an open cut mine, or the dust swirling through the air as an enormous truck accelerates past a small child by the roadside. This chapter argues that the poetic documentary uses techniques that can create a sensuous image as advocated by visual anthropologists, and will describe how these findings have been applied in documentaries that represent people with an intellectual disability and ageing carers. More broadly, as visual data is often collected in many areas of social research, I argue that this data would be more informative if complemented by poetic and affective images.

The moving image archive is a knowledge base, evidence of life as lived. But what kind of knowledge does it constitute? How can it be read? The word as text is easier to conceive of as a sign. The word ‘tree’ denotes a type of plant that we could generally agree upon, but what about a film of a tree? More than just referring to a certain kind of tree-ness, a film shows a particular and actual tree, at that time and that place, as it will never be again. This would seem to indicate a formidable authenticity. Now imagine the film cuts to another tree, with the same level of specificity, so it is just as effectively reproduced; but what do we know of this tree relative to the first? Is it in the same forest, the same area, or even the same hemisphere? Was it shot at the same time or 50 years later? The simple edit demonstrates the power of montage, building associations and meanings not necessarily present in actuality. Joris Ivens and Mannus Franken’s Rain (1929) is a short poetic documentary of rain sweeping through Amsterdam. In film time it appears to occur over one day, but in fact the film is constituted of various shots compiled over two years (European Foundation Joris Ivens). It is the viewer who ultimately decides on the interpretation of narrative, and it is this slippery language of film that often affects a common agreement on its interpretation. The moving image is easily experienced, but viewers’ opinions may differ on its meaning. As the French film theorist Christian Metz suggests, ‘A film is difficult to explain because it is easy to understand’ (Metz 1974: 69). Theories of spectatorship and reception 167

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theory suggest that a viewer’s understanding of a film is a combination of unconscious psychological and signification processes filtered by the viewer’s sociocultural context (Mayne 1993, Storey 2003). The challenge for the documentary filmmaker is to distill filmed actuality into a coherent experience that may be interpreted in a number of ways, but remains truthful to its subject. This challenge becomes more significant when representing a contentious issue or an experience or culture unfamiliar to the audience as in the production of visual anthropology.

Documentary and the Anthropology of Experience Anthropology, the comparative study of human societies and cultures, has strived for a methodology that can authentically represent the experience of the other. It compares the strategies communities use to organize and understand their society and the latter’s place in the world. It can reveal common human themes of love, endeavour, family and survival. Alternatively, it can delineate differences, as in the rights of women, an acceptance of violence, or an alternative morality. Anthropological methodology involves extensive fieldwork and direct contact with the group under investigation. Detailed transcriptions of activities are made, objects and artefacts catalogued and quantified. Film was initially seen as a welcome scientific tool aiding the techniques of the anthropologist. Alfred Cort Haddon’s expedition to the Torres Strait Islands in 1898 recorded the rituals and activities of its inhabitants in a way never before possible. However, throughout the twentieth century an emphasis on a scientific method of observation and statistical analysis resulted in a more text-based form of representation as the dominant mode of anthropological data collection and representation. Social and cultural anthropology rejected the subjectivity of photography and film, preferring visuals such as graphs, charts and maps to synthesize and objectify knowledge (Pink 2006: 8). This trend began to reverse from the late 1950s with the advent of more mobile film-production equipment, synchronous sound recording and an observational style that suggested authentic representation. However debate continues regarding visual anthropology’s methodology and how its information can be translated into anthropological knowledge (Grimshaw and Ravetz 2005). 168

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Since the 1980s anthropologists have been considering the epistemological grounds of their representations arguing for an ‘anthropology of experience’ (Pink 2006: 43). However this pursuit of authenticity, this experimentation with the moving image as representing lived experience, results in a project that questions the ability of film to capture some form of reality. It examines the ability and motivation of the director to orchestrate filmic sequences that translate otherness to an audience experientially. These issues are also relevant to documentary filmmakers in general, but in particular when the subjects of the film would not be considered part of normative society and lack the ability to communicate in a way that is easily understood. The poetic documentary is often not intent on communicating the facts of an event (time, place, names), but on sharing the experience of that event. American philosopher and psychologist John Dewey distinguishes between science and art when he wrote, ‘Science states meanings; art expresses them’ (1934: 84). Consider the scientific description of water as H2 O; this is a chemically exact explanation but does little to communicate the experience of water when viewing a fountain, waterfall, or swimming in the ocean. Dewey continues: ‘The poem, or painting, does not operate in the dimension of correct descriptive statement but in that of experience itself ’ (1934: 85). Dewey’s Art as Experience (1934) concerns itself with re-linking fine art with lived experience, through its construction, historical use and reception by the viewer, and he regarded cinema (along with the comic strip and ‘jazzed music’) as the art form with the most vitality for the general public (1934: 5). Dewey did not engage significantly with the aesthetics of filmmaking, perhaps due to the overwhelming commercialism of the movies of the time and the medium’s susceptibility to propagandizing (Seng 2007), but two films produced in 1929 would have elegantly supported his water/H2 O analogy for the art/science dichotomy: Ivens and Franken’s Rain and even more particularly Ralph Steiner’s H2 O (1929), a poetic montage of water coursing through channels, the shimmering surface reflecting light through ripples and movement. These poetic documentaries evoke the substance of water by emphasizing shape, texture and tone. H2 O is especially concerned with experimenting with the formal qualities of water, and forgoes any narrative in favour of an abstract and hypnotic exercise in the play of light and the rhythm of motion. Rain has a simple narrative that tells the story of the streets

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of Amsterdam before, during and after a rainstorm, but is also mostly concerned with the formal and aesthetic qualities of the image. Dewey writes about how these kinds of aesthetic compositions construct their own meaning: ‘Certain relations of lines of lines and colours become important, “full of meaning”, and everything else is subordinated to the evocation of what is implied in these relations, omitted, distorted, added to, transformed, to convey the relationships’ (1934: 87). Rain frames many of its shots to emphasize shape, often truncating a figure or more recognizable object in favour of a line that cuts through the frame, or reducing the roofs of the houses to a pattern of ceramic tiles. Most camera angles in Rain avoid prosaic eye-level photography. Instead it prefers low-angle shots where birds, planes and clouds cut across the sky, and high-angle shots that reduce the residents scurrying with umbrellas to dark polygons bumbling awkwardly about in groups. These poetic documentaries de-familiarize the subject, and in the absence of a more traditional narrative (protagonist, conflict, resolution) the viewer must look for other clues to stitch together their own experience of the screen image. In the case of Rain the film suggests to the viewer it is a rainy ‘day in the life’ of the people of Amsterdam (when in fact production took two years). Similar to fiction genres, which give the viewer some expectation of the kind of film experience ahead (consider the difference between a horror film and a romantic comedy), the poetic documentary encourages the viewer to assume a particular attitude to negotiate meaning. In the absence of explicit story or narration, the viewer must assimilate the images into a less specific narrative and adopt a more contemplative approach to viewing. As in our everyday life where we use our perceptions to make sense of the world, the poetic documentary reduces our experience of the subject to the elements including line, shape and colour, organizing what is perceived into patterns of information. This is not to suggest that the viewer is completely devoid of preconceptions or points of reference, but that the poetic documentary, through lack of narrative and emphasis on the senses, provokes a more immediate and fundamental response from the viewer. This is similar to actual experience that is often unscripted and requires one to use one’s senses to understand what is occurring. The poetic documentary approach may therefore be useful when trying to subvert preconceptions or traditional narratives that surround

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Kew Cottages History Project In the Kew Cottages History Project (2008), documentary video was central to telling the stories of five residents at the Kew Children’s Cottages. Kew Cottages was Australia’s largest and oldest institution for people with intellectual disabilities. This institution closed in April 2008 and most of the site will be demolished and redeveloped into an expensive housing estate. My role was to create a multimedia installation that told the stories of residents who were unable to communicate their own stories verbally. The resulting exhibition consisted of five documentaries, an historical video montage, artefacts from the Kew site and an archival photograph explorer. Each element of the exhibition was designed to evoke an impression of not just the lives of the residents, but also the institution which they inhabited. One of the most contentious issues surrounding the exhibition was with the representation of an intellectual (and in many cases physical) disability.

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a subject. This is particularly relevant when representing the lives of people with an intellectual disability, where common narrative themes of tragedy and ‘triumph over adversity’ have long been dominant on screen.

Representation of Intellectual Disability The issues surrounding the representation of people with intellectual disability are many and various. For example, there is no universal agreement on how people with an intellectual disability should be described. In Australia we will identify an individual as a person with an intellectual disability. However, in the USA the term ‘developmental disability’ is used, whilst in the UK ‘learning disability’ is the preferred option. In other countries you may also find the term ‘cognitive disability’. This equivocation demonstrates the power written language has to affect perception of groups in society – or indeed to create the perception that a discrete group exists. To adequately cover the extensive issues and competing ideologies that surround the representation of disability is beyond the scope of this chapter. Instead the main issues identified for this project will be briefly discussed before considering the particular methodology utilized for video production. 171

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Historically, physical or cognitive impairment has often been regarded as a sign of a flawed individual. In the Bible there are many occasions where a person with a disability is cured by having demons driven from their body. John Swain and Sally French write that in the Bible disability ‘is linked with uncleanliness, sin, and possession by devils’ and they describe this phenomenon as the tragedy model, which ‘portrays disability as a biological condition and a limitation . . . something to be avoided at all costs’ (2008: 7–8). Evidence of the continuance of this trend can be seen in Shakespeare’s deformed and evil Richard III, Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame (1894) and, more recently, evil but disabled supervillains such as Darth Vader in the Star Wars series. There is also a long tradition of presenting people with a disability as an object for public scrutiny or spectacle. The ‘freak show’ of the circus or carnival was a popular form of entertainment until the 1940s and cinema has the ability to gratify the same transgressive desire to reveal to the viewer what normally remains hidden. Violence, nudity and sex have been staples of film culture almost since its invention. Sharon Snyder and David Mitchell write that ‘to a great extent, film’s seduction hinges on securing audience interest through the address of that which is constructed as “outside” a common visual field’ (2006: 158). They also argue that a kind of voyeuristic visual pleasure is achieved ‘by allowing viewers to witness spectacles of bodily difference without fear of recrimination by the object of this gaze’ (2006: 157). However they note that it is the lack of visibility of people with disabilities in the media that creates this sense of otherness; ‘that which is created as off-limits in public spaces garners the capital of the unfamiliar’ (2006: 158). The implication is that it is not the mere presentation of disability in film that is at issue, the more ubiquitous these images, the less otherness or exotic capital they attain. Consequently, the more significant issue is how the person with a disability is represented. Narrative and style in media also have an impact on the portrayal of disability. Firstly, one unfortunate consequence of disability advocacy campaigns of the past few decades is the representation of a person with a disability as a victim. Images of disability associated with these campaigns are often designed to evoke pathos in the viewer to convince the viewer of the worthiness of the cause. Margaret Taylor (2008) argues that charity advertising reinforces many of the stereotypes that surround people with a disability. She refers to ‘stark, grainy, black and

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white photographs taken with deep shadows . . . in a world drained of the color used to signify the richness and vibrancy of experience that the rest of society can anticipate’ (2008: 33). Secondly, a common theme in cinema is the ‘triumph in adversity’ scenario as found in films such as My Left Foot (1989), Shine (1996) or A Beautiful Mind (2001). In these films disability is seen as something to overcome, with the protagonist succeeding against the odds. It is not that these kinds of stories shouldn’t be told – indeed, many are based on true stories – but rather that the prevalence of this trope works to suggest that any film featuring a person with a disability as a protagonist must necessarily involve them overcoming the disability. Why can’t a character simply have a disability without it being central to the narrative? As G. Thomas Couser suggests, it is possible for disability can be represented ‘as a condition that is affirmative rather than destructive, defining rather than confining’ (2002: 117).

Production Style in the Kew Cottages documentaries In response to these issues a particular style of representation was adopted in the Kew Cottages History Project documentaries. Firstly, it was decided to implement a high-key approach to the production values. ‘High-key’ refers to a style of filmmaking often found in the musical or comedic genres. Instead of the lurking shadows and chiaroscuro of drama or film noir, musicals and comedies are bright and colourful productions. These bright colours suggest a happy, active – if somewhat escapist – world. It is a style that celebrates action and relationships, creating an environment of rich experiences and possibility. Secondly, in the Kew Cottages documentaries low-angle or eye-level camera angles which diminish any sense of voyeurism and spectacle were preferred. Though a variety of shots were necessary for aesthetic and narrative reasons, these camera angles were utilized wherever possible to empower the subject visually and to reduce the feeling that the viewer was gazing down on the subject. Thirdly, the participants in the documentary were filmed being actively engaged in their lives. The documentaries focused on their abilities, whatever they were or however humble the viewer might regard them to be. These abilities may involve something as simple as participating in an excursion. For example, the documentary on Robyn Phillips shows her travelling to 173

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a reserve full of colourful and noisy birds. Robyn is shown singing on a bus, going to the shops for a cappuccino (or as she calls it, a ‘boccacino’) and engaging with the carers who supervise the outing. Alternatively, the focus could be on musical ability, such as the piano playing of John Stow and his large repertoire of songs including ‘Danny Boy’ and ‘Edelweiss’. These strategies were designed to counter some of the major concerns with the representation of disability as outlined earlier. However, there was still a problem when it came to allowing the subject of the documentaries to tell their own stories. The participants in the documentaries made for the Kew Cottages History Project use mostly non-verbal communication to navigate their daily lives. Consequently the challenge was to present their stories without telling those stories for them. A certain style of documentary was required that revealed the subjects’ lives without relying on the traditional interview or narrative voice-over.

Documentary Modes Bill Nichols (2001) identifies six documentary modes, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but are useful in identifying different approaches to the documentary subject. The documentary modes identified are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Expository Poetic Observational Participatory Reflexive Performative

The most familiar form of documentary is the expository mode, which presents its subject as a lawyer would argue their case. This includes techniques such as the use of archive film as evidence, expert testimony and often an authoritative ‘voice-of-God’ narration. History and science documentaries often use this mode as well as news and current affairs. The observational mode, in its purest form, regards its lens as a dispassionate eye, which reveals the truth of the subject. It is characterized by long takes and minimal editing and has proved a 174

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popular format, from the direct cinema of Robert Drew’s Primary (1960) and the Maysles Brothers’ Gimme Shelter (1970) to reality shows like Big Brother (1999–) that filter the tropes of cin´ema-v´erit´e through a CCTV aesthetic. Filmmakers such as Nick Broomfield and Michael Moore have popularized the participatory mode, where the filmmaker becomes a protagonist in the documentary subject. Documentaries in the reflexive mode foreground the act of making the film itself, referring to the filmmaking process to reveal the artifice of its presentation. Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989), directed by Vietnamese-American filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha, places the words of Vietnamese women into the mouths of VietnameseAmerican actors, reflexively questioning the authenticity of its subject and the process that reveals it. The performative mode is discovered in documentaries such as Feltham Sings (2002), a musical performed by the young inmates of an English prison, and more abstractedly in the animated form of such films as Waltz with Bashir (2008) and Chicago 10 (2007). The poetic mode, unlike the expository mode, does not attempt to convince the viewer of a certain version of reality. Nichols writes: The poetic mode is particularly adept at opening up the possibility of alternative forms of knowledge to the straightforward transfer of information, the prosecution of a particular argument or point of view, or the presentation of reasoned propositions about problems in need of solution. This mode stresses mood, tone, and affect much more than displays of knowledge or acts of persuasion. (Nichols 2001: 103)

In addition to Rain and H2 O, mentioned above, examples of the poetic documentary would include ‘City Symphony’-style films such as Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929), or Walter Ruttman’s Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927), which consist of poetically edited images of Moscow and Berlin respectively. These films also concentrate on the formal aspects of the image, often reducing their subjects to abstract geometric forms, rhythmic patterns of light. The images of Berlin resonate in particular as they contrast with the audience’s privileged knowledge of what will follow in Germany in the decade to come, with the rise of Hitler and the National Socialists and the subsequent war and destruction. By defamiliarizing the subject through abstraction and the normalizing narrative of a day in the life 175

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(a popular theme in poetic documentary), the viewer is given space to negotiate their own meaning more freely. Jack C. Ellis and Betsy A. McLane write in A New History of Documentary Film (2005): Berlin may have more value as a document than do those documentary films made with more explicit social biases and programs. Though composed according to artistic insights and intuitions and the requirements of form, what it offers essentially is a visual description. From this film we can learn a great deal about the appearance of life in Berlin in 1927. (Ellis and McLane 2005: 53)

More recently, Godfrey Reggio’s Qatsi trilogy, made in the 1980s and 1990s, explored the clash between the First and Third Worlds, tradition and modernity, accompanied by Phillip Glass’s soundtrack. The images shot by cinematographer Ron Fricke emphasize shape, colour and texture but provide no social, political or even geographic context. The films are not designed to promote a singular cause or predicament, but instead stir the emotions and arouse interest in larger issues of how progress shapes the world and the lives of those in it. The films’ success relies on the ability of the images themselves to describe the lives of others, and perhaps this forces the viewer to engage more thoughtfully, more actively with the image onscreen in order to create meaning. As Carl Plantinga argues, the subjects in poetic-style documentaries are not regarded as objects to be scientifically analysed, but as ‘aesthetic objects and events’ which emphasize ‘not the dissemination of factual information, but the sensual and formal qualities’ (1997: 173). The viewer then assimilates these sensual and formal experiences into what they already know about the subject to create their own narrative. The poetic mode of documentary proved useful in the Kew Cottages History Project as it presented the residents and their lives with colour and emotion, but without an obvious narrative that explained their lives for them. The films were designed for the audience to experience the residents’ lived reality, purposefully avoiding the foregrounding of their particular disabilities and the concomitant associations. While the poetic mode can be criticized for its lack of content and consequent requiring the viewer to interpret too much of the story presented, this criticism may be rooted in the conditioning of viewers to the expository mode, meaning that they expect narrative and context to 176

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be accessible – even spoon-fed – to them and are discomfited when a film does not oblige. Film historian Dave Saunders suggests that the rise of television journalism and its originally low-resolution image resulted in documentaries that relied on talking heads to provide context and meaning, but that these techniques ‘led to an overwhelming lack of visual, rhetorical and narrative imagination on the part of journeyman non-fiction filmmakers that pervades to this day’ (2010: 58). In the case of the Kew Cottages History Project the surrounding installation (text, artefacts, archival video and photography) was designed to give some context to what the subjects’ lives might have been like in the institution. However, it was also decided to challenge the audiences’ desire to know more about the subject. The viewer is so familiar with the documentary subject being revealed for their viewing pleasure, each layer unpeeled until the soft or hard centre of truth is exposed, but if the residents were not able to clearly communicate their stories, why should it be assumed that the film should fill in the gaps for the viewer? The poetic documentary style would, instead, encourage the viewer to focus less on the common disability narratives of tragedy and adversity and instead vicariously experience the lives of Kew residents at a more elemental level of the senses; through the images on the screen stressing light and shade, shape and texture, harmony and rhythm. It needs to be made clear that a purely poetic mode is not the only form of documentary appropriate for representing intellectual disability. Films for specialist purposes may need to include a precise medical history, as in the case of health education – but might they not also include images that evoke the lives of those whose condition is being represented? A person with an intellectual disability is more than just that disability, in the same way that a person should not be merely identified by their race or gender. Anthropologist Stephen Tyler argues that postmodern ethnography should be a ‘fantasy of identities, a plurivocal evocation of difference’ (1987: 102). In the case of the Kew Cottages History Project, the videos were one part of an exhibition that was itself just one part of a larger history writ in text and broadcast on radio. This enabled the documentaries to be more poetic in style as the other media involved in telling the history (which have their own issues of representation to consider) could provide alternative types of information and epistemologies.

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Figure 14. Cameron Rose, John Bates, 2008, video still from the Kew Cottages History Project

The poetic mode as applied in the Kew Cottages History Project resulted in videos that were mostly similar in form and approach. They consisted of an animated montage of family photographs (where possible chosen by the participant), inclusion of any artworks or objects produced by the participant and poetically-shot footage of the participants’ activities. The documentary on John Bates also included an animation of his artwork combined with historical photographs of Kew Cottages (Fig. 14). These historical photographs were selected through a process where John was asked to view the photographs on a computer one at a time, then click a mouse to view the next image. The amount of time he viewed each photograph was measured, and the images included in the animation were the ones he regarded for the longest time. Christine Hodges selected photographs from an album, indicating her preference with particular hand movements to communicate yes, no and maybe. Poetically-edited footage of her participating in a jewellery-making workshop was combined with animations of her artworks, which she had also selected. John Stow was filmed attending a daytime activity involving craft and music-making. 178

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Music is central to John’s life and recordings of his piano playing provided an appropriate soundtrack for his documentary. For some residents a strict poetic mode proved difficult. As an orphan, Patrick Reed had no family photographs, and there were no artworks that he had produced. Instead the documentary concentrates on Patrick’s transition from the old to the new residences, contrasting his life before to what his life will become. This documentary used a limited amount of text to give the viewer at least some signposts to his life story, and consequently deviates the most from the poetic documentary mode. However, the video has no voice-over and relies on the images and editing to evoke his story. Patrick is shown visiting staff in the office building that is later seen being fenced off in preparation for demolition. We also see Patrick in his new location, leaning on the bonnet of a car and looking back to where he had lived for many years.

Poetic Documentary, Visual Anthropology and What Next? It was whilst reviewing the poetic documentary mode and its relation to the humanities and social sciences that an overlap with the field of visual anthropology was noted. In the last decade visual anthropologists have been keen to respond to the ‘crisis of representation’ (Pink 2006: 13), increasingly looking for alternatives to simply reading culture as text. Grimshaw and Ravetz argue that the ‘task is to transcend the limitations of logocentrism, with its hierarchies of reading and seeing, text and image, mind and body. It requires an acknowledgement of the distinctiveness – indeed the intelligence of sight’ (2006: 6). This desire for alternative modes of expression to describe our experience of reality is manifest across the social sciences and the humanities, with a ‘sensory approach becoming increasingly important’ (Pink 2006: 41). The ‘affection image’ as described by Laura U. Marks offers a ‘variety of ways of knowing and representing the world’ (2000: 1). Central to this is the notion of ‘indexicality’, or how these images relate to the profilmic actuality; or, to put it another way, the question of what kinds of truth the image can represent. Marks considers how the use of indexicality varies ‘from evidentiary truth to mere ghostlike traces of the profilmic real’ (2000: 93). It is striking how these questions resonate with the Kew Cottages History Project in particular and poetic documentary more generally. 179

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Where poetic documentary and visual anthropology appear to converge is on notions of the body, phenomenology and experience. The poetic documentary foregrounds the emotional and experiential, developing a vocabulary that may construct an ‘affection image’ deemed useful by visual anthropologists. Marks writes that affection-images ‘invite a bodily response’ – a ‘shudder’, ‘grief ’ or ‘agitation’ (2000: 74). Philosophical investigations into cinema identify the affectionimage as one which the viewer responds to bodily and emotionally, and also as somehow removed from its spatio-temporal context (Deleuze 2005: 89–114); or one which, as portrayed by theorist Geoffrey Sykes (2003), represents ‘a dimension of material semiosis of film often overlooked by studies of culture and signification’. However, American anthropologist and novelist Paul Stoller writes that although ‘Deleuze’s cogitations on the cinematic image are intellectually breathtaking, they describe the unique sensuousness of the cinema abstractly’ (1997: 76). It is not suggested that poetic documentary is the only mode that creates the affection-image, for it is found in many films, both fiction and non-fiction. Perhaps a simpler way to understand the characteristics of the affection-image is to consider films of the body genre, which are, specifically, films that intentionally provoke a physical response (Snyder and Mitchell 2006: 159). A horror film, for example, is designed to shock an audience, creating suspense and anxiety. The melodrama strives to induce romance and pathos. Pornography at its simplest provokes a sexual response. Poetic documentary also provides great examples of sensuous and affective image-making, so how might these be included in films that are less strictly poetical? For example, where the subject of a film is able to tell their own story, could their narrative be augmented by a poetic sequence? Indeed there are other disciplines that collect information from individuals for social, psychological and medical purposes; might not these also benefit from engaging the senses and emotions? One example where this may be useful is in the field of narrative medicine where clinical practice is informed by patient stories in an attempt to improve the effectiveness of care. Beyond just a basic medical history, narrative medicine promotes a more holistic understanding of the patient; ‘when doctors take a medical history they inevitably act as ethnographers, historians, and biographers, required to understand aspects of personhood, personality, social and psychological functioning, and biological and physical phenomena’ (Greenhalgh and

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What Next? Ageing Carer Documentaries After presenting the Kew Cottages documentaries at a seminar on disability history, I was approached by Commonwealth Respite Carelink Centre/CarerLinks North (CRC/CLN), a respite service provider for carers in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, to produce a series of documentaries. The videos would focus on the lives of ageing carers whose children will soon go into community housing or state care. The poetic approach was identified by CRC/CLN as an appropriate vehicle for the potentially sensitive subject matter. However, the ageing carers were keen for their voices to be heard, and an exclusively poetic approach would have denied them this voice. The question then became: How might the documentaries include a poetic style to augment their personal testimony? Potential participants in the project were contacted by CRC/CLN and a community worker discussed the project and gave them an explanatory statement outlining the project’s aims and method. The participants were shown the final edit of the video before public release. Production involved an interview filmed in the participant’s own home and family photographs were selected for inclusion in the edit. The participants were also informed that the filmmaker would record additional footage in and around their home. These images would be poetically edited to support their narrative. In the expository documentary, as exemplified by television journalism, footage is obtained to function as ‘B-roll’, footage that covers up the edits between discontinuous speech and enables ellipsis. Standard television convention normally results in banal footage of the subject walking towards the camera, close-ups of the subject’s hands and ‘cut-aways’ to a nodding interviewer or other news crews. In a poetic style, these additional images can function more effectively. One of the aims of the What Next? project was to tell the story of the ageing carer’s life without focusing on their child’s disability. However, the bedrooms of the child being cared for was filmed (with their

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Hurwitz 1999: 49). Narrative has also become an important part of social work practice (Riessman and Quinney 2005), so how might a poetic mode of documentary contribute to social work and health practice?

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permission) to evoke their presence. This footage included shoes under the bed, soft toys, porcelain figurines, collections of baseball caps and Australian football paraphernalia. These can be regarded as ‘recollection objects’ as identified by Marks (2000: 82) in Rea Tajiri’s documentary History and Memory: for Akiko and Takashige (1991). The film relates the story of the filmmakers’ Japanese-American family, imprisoned in an internment camp during the Second World War. One of the recollection objects in the film is some tarpaper from the roof of the internment camp. It is an object to provoke memory and associations in both subject and viewer. Marks also calls these objects ‘fossils’ and compares them to photography and cinema, concluding that ‘fossils are created when an object makes contact with the witnessing material of the earth’ (2000: 84). In Hilda (2010), footage of objects in her daughter Glenda’s room included porcelain fairies, a Humpty Dumpty doll, family photographs and an overhead fan that would be seen by Glenda as she lay in bed. This footage was edited together to the soundtrack of Hilda remembering life with Glenda when she was a child. Additional filming of the house and its surroundings with Hilda and husband Kevin in the backyard reveals a life beyond just the issue discussed in the interview. In Anna, Anastasios and Arthur (2011), images of a turning rotisserie and onions hanging in the shed suggest family activities filled with Greek food and home-grown vegetables. Lynn, Peter and Paul (2011) contains close-up shots of presents under a Christmas tree that speak of a life still full of ritual and happy events. This type of footage can then be used poetically to complement the personal narrative. In Lynn, Peter and Paul, the Christmas tree footage accompanied an amusing anecdote about a failed attempt to explain Santa Claus to their child (after patiently explaining to their child that Santa is a fiction, the child is asked who brings the Christmas presents, to which the child replied, after some thought: ‘The Easter Bunny!’). In Anna, Anastasios and Arthur footage of the rotisserie turning like a wheel is presented in split-screen next to a ramp that provides wheelchair access (Fig. 15). Even the small rituals of afternoon tea as shown in Hilda, white-bread sandwiches cut into triangles and cream-filled biscuits on a plate, adds to a sense of the subjects’ historical and cultural background. Ethnographer Peter Loizos writes that the strength of life-story films lies ‘not in the precision of a conceptual message conveyed, but rather an insight, evocation, sympathy, a sense

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of person and places, and the cultural styles in which people speak, move and perform’ (1993: 88). The rhythm of edits and music is another important feature of the poetic mode as clearly indicated by the ‘City Symphony’ films. It groups content into meaningful ‘verses’ or sections, separating information into discretely rendered passages. In Powaqqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1988), the second film of the Qatsi trilogy discussed above, activities and locations are divided into movements, as is the accompanying Philip Glass soundtrack. Similarly, the What Next? films use an original soundtrack that denotes different passages, such as when the subject recalls the experience of discovering their child has an intellectual disability, their memory of the good times shared as a family, or their concerns for the future welfare of their child. Care was taken that the music did not dictate the emotion to be associated with the narrative. Music that was excessively emotive, particularly if it was ominous or overly melancholy, was avoided and a more minimal soundtrack was selected. Location sound was also recorded, and some instances incorporated into the soundtrack musically (such as the wind chimes in Lily’s Story). Music can subtly change to indicate that the subject is responding to a different question. It also provides a rhythm for the edit, grouping related images together, providing spaces for pauses in information and giving the viewer time to reflect and process what they have just seen and heard (it is interesting to note how frequently, in propaganda and advertising, a frenetic pace of editing denies this space for contemplation).

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Figure 15. Cameron Rose, Anna, Anastasios and Arthur, 2011, video still

Distribution of the What Next? films The subjects of the films were given a private screening to obtain approval for wider release. They were content that films accurately 183

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portrayed their experience and were a good representation of their lives. Subsequently the films have been presented at seminars and workshops, and form part of CRC/CLN education and outreach. The videos are available as a DVD and are now in the collections of libraries and community organizations. A website (www.whatnext.org.au) has been established to make them easily available to the public. The films have become a practical tool for use in the field, training staff and raising awareness.

Video and Social Science and Health Research The production method outlined above was of particular use when representing people with an intellectual disability and the issues faced by their ageing carers. However, as I have begun to show, the poetic mode could be useful in a broader range of disciplines such as research in health and the social sciences. This is not to advocate a purely poetic approach in which content is abstracted beyond recognition (though this may also have its uses), but to argue that a production style that includes these poetic aspects adds a contextual and experiential dimension to the subject. A video can easily record an interview, or capture an event observationally, but when a film includes features such as attention to aesthetic form, the use of allusion and metaphor, rhythm, music and time for contemplation, the viewer gains further insight and understanding. The International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches published a special issue on the video method in social science and health research in 2009. In the introduction Forsyth, Carroll and Reitano recognize: How video data can capture much of the messiness and concomitant richness of social life. This in turn reminds us of the highly contextual nature of the type of research we do and the way that it is impossible for instances of practice and individuals’ experiences to be divorced from the context in which they occur. (Forsyth, Carroll and Reitano 2009: 216)

Conclusion There are many issues surrounding representation of intellectual disability on screen and no singular approach will answer all the questions 184

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raised in a debate that still continues. Major issues identified included representing intellectual disability as a tragedy to be overcome, as opposed to an aspect of the individual’s life that merely defines them without diminishing. I contend that a poetic mode of documentary along with high-key production values and a focus on the abilities that a subject which an intellectual disability does have provides one framework that can express their lives (without confining their story to their disability alone). Visual anthropology is concerned with translating the lived experiences of others, particularly of those who are outside the common experience of the audience. However many visual anthropologists have argued for a sensuous form of scholarship that more uniquely expresses how people live. This correlates to John Dewey’s assertion that art expresses meanings whereas science states them. Films such as Rain exemplify how a poetic documentary can reveal something closer to the lived experience of phenomena through its use of aesthetics and montage. The de-familiarization of the subject forces the viewer to negotiate meaning in a similar way to how we negotiate everyday life. The poetic mode of documentary was applied varyingly to the Kew Cottages History Project and What Next? documentaries. The Kew Cottages films evoke the lives of the residents through the inclusion of self-selected photographs, artworks, activities and music. Even though these films forgo any description of the subject’s actual medical condition, the intention was not to suggest that this information should never be revealed, but rather that it should be countered with a mode of expression that adds a sensual dimension to the lives of these people. Similarly, in the What Next? films the direct address and personal testimony of the ageing carers is a relevant means of accessing their memory of their lives and the issues they confront now and in the future, but a poetic influence augments their story with images that evoke their lives beyond the challenges they face. It achieves this by combining images of their homes and belongings (‘recollection objects’) to situate their predicament in a larger portrait of their lives and culture, and groups elements of story through image, rhythm and music. Unlike the expository mode of documentary, it allows time for contemplation of aesthetics, image and narrative. More broadly, this research suggests that films that utilize a poetic approach could supplement research and practice in medicine, health

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and the social sciences by evoking the experiences of individuals under their study and care. Firstly, such films can reveal a part of experience (background, culture, emotions) that is not present in quantitative and simple qualitative data; secondly, these films defamiliarize the subject through formal aesthetics provoking the viewer to appraise the subject more sensually and, thirdly, the rhythm of the documentary encourages the viewer to negotiate meaning more reflectively and affectively.

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10 Marking Exchange: Life-Drawing, Methexis and Intersubjective Praxis Margaret Mayhew

The look of love is not a passive enamoured gaze, it is an active practice that embraces the discomfort of not knowing, not recognising and not being able to master or control the other. Looking is an artistry and it is work. The way one looks is an ethical choice: one does just not perceive, one chooses how to perceive. ( Johnston 2009: 215)

In this chapter, I give an account of my research on life-drawing (also known as figure drawing) and how the findings have influenced my subsequent interdisciplinary research. My life-drawing research was not a practice-based thesis, but a text-based humanities thesis. However, the methods and findings of my research were grounded in my own practice of modelling and drawing, and in the experiences of other lifedrawing practitioners. This is partly a story about a shift from creative arts practice to academic research practice, and partly an exploration of research as a practice and how it is presented and reframed and articulated in contexts beyond creative practice. The creative practices explored in this chapter are based around looking and drawing, and how these are constituted within heterogeneous spaces. The shifts in my personal practice, between artist and 187

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model, model and researcher, artist and academic, all occurred within sites of practice, where the tensions between multiple roles within a single site constantly rubbed up against each other. The constant shifting between subject positions, the cross-affiliations, the discomfort and dancing between roles has allowed me to view practice and research as situated within heterotopias; complex spaces where multiple identities aggregate and de-aggregate, iterate, irritate and perform. The encounters in such heterotopias are precisely where the imaginative ‘self ’ and ‘Other’ come unstuck and move around, allowing new states to emerge. This chapter explores practices of encounter, of what happens when we ‘look’, and how we look to and look at the others in our fields of practice. Life-drawing is the departure point for an exploration of how looking and marking can trace a critical reflexivity across multiple sites of research. Critical re-examination of the practices within the heterotopias of the life-room, where looking marks the difference between subjects, may suggest a methodology for the heterotopias of research in interdisciplinary collaborations and cross-cultural sites of ethnographic fieldwork. The practices of looking as a creative encounter, linked to practices of marking-making that are performative rather than mimetic, can indicate a praxis of immersive, complex, open-ended research. The material thinking of my research and practice of life-drawing challenges the notion of a singular ‘subjectivity’, and accompanies an increasing interest in intersubjectivity and collaborative forms of knowledge creation. This chapter examines the development of an intersubjective account of life-drawing that challenges the conventional view of life-drawing as a mimetic practice of representing the naked model. The view of life classes is best articulated through the account of methexis described by Barbara Bolt and Paul Carter, where creative practice is envisaged as a collective performative encounter between a range of subjects and materials, and where the distinctions between artists, model and materials blur. I define and discuss methexis a little later, and describe how it can articulate the productive encounters that may occur in collaborative research as well as creative practice. I want to start with a brief overview of my own transformation from practitioner to researcher, as a way of articulating the situatedness of the methods and findings of my research on life-drawing and their applicability to other areas. This is followed by a discussion of

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methexis and its use in challenging ‘representationalist’ accounts of art practice and life-drawing. The bulk of this chapter discusses some of the major findings of my research on the practices of spectatorship in life-drawing classes, and their relationship to other writings on ethical spectatorship, witnessing and subjectivity. I describe the spectatorial practices of life-drawing as ‘looking’, as it evokes the viewing practices by artists and models, as well as the practice of modelling itself; constituted by and through the anticipation and awareness of looking by others. Researching the practices of spectatorship, occurring between all participants, has facilitated a powerful articulation of looking as a profoundly destabilizing encounter, particularly between bodies and subjectivities marked by social, gendered and power differences. Although conventions of the life class have largely operated to contain these intersubjective shifts within the polarized positions of passive viewed model and active viewing artists, accounts by models and artists suggest that the practices of looking, of being looked at and of how the mark-making of drawing mediates the encounter between marked differences produce a range of encounters and exchanges that disturb the boundaries of what subjects consider as ‘self ’ and ‘Other’, as mastery over the other, or even as self-agency. I claim that the latter aspect, the challenge of drawing practice involving the notion of mastery or control over what is produced, when linked to practices of spectatorship of a human being marked as a vulnerable other but encountered as something quite different, enables the cultivation of a praxis of ethical spectatorship and encounter. Such an encounter does not seek to represent or contain the other, but to engage with bodies, sensations and materials in profoundly creative ways. I return to a discussion of my own practices of research in order to articulate how the ethical praxis of intersubjective spectatorship has enabled collaborative research and dialogue in interdisciplinary and cross-cultural settings.

From Practice to Research: Doing a Research Thesis on Practice. I completed a PhD on life-drawing, popular culture and contemporary art education within the fields of gender and cultural studies. It involved an ethnophenomenographic investigation of life-drawing in which I undertook 60 interviews with artists, drawing teachers and models about the experiences of art practice; of posing, of looking and of 189

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drawing. It was a purely written thesis with no practical component per se, however I was interested in how the intimate knowledge of creative practice could be translated and applied to a cross-disciplinary setting. The decision to shift disciplines away from art history and theory into a more reflexive area of academic research was a conscious one. Cultural studies and feminist theory are both acutely aware of their own disciplinary practices and methods, and I was interested in how these research methods and critical approaches could be opened up to include the embodied knowledges derived from creative practice. Before undertaking my PhD, I had studied life-drawing for all three years of my undergraduate fine-arts degree, and for four years afterwards I supported my studio practice by working as a life-model for an average of 20 hours per week, with some 30 hour weeks. Modelling increased my interest in life-drawing as a practice, and I was fascinated by the myriad of settings in which life-models were employed. I quit modelling when I started my thesis; however, I continued to participate in life-drawing classes, and ran a life-drawing sketch club in Sydney. I used this practice largely as a form of participant observation when I was undertaking my research, as it allowed me to recruit interview subjects and also to gain an enormous amount of detailed and intimate information about how models and artists behaved, how they modelled and drew, what it looked like, what it felt like and how they described it. The cluster of descriptive components above does not appear to provide a particularly clear explanation of what it was that I was researching. While it is tempting to extract particular components in order to delineate a clear path of enquiry, this would falsify the way in which my research was conducted. My thesis started with a bodily sense of irritation, acquired in the long hours of modelling, of catching myself viewing others and catching the eyes of others watching me or, most frequently, not. The irritation was occasionally punctuated by fleeting moments of sheer immersion and engagement, when I felt drawn into the pencils or charcoal of others, or when I found myself drawing not so much a figure on a page as invisible threads between my eyes, hands, body, graphite and the gestures and movements of the model in front of me, and also the sighs, scrapings and shifts of other drawers in the room. Almost none of these threads of energy, of sensation or memory or delight are legible in the thousands of sketches stored in my studio, and yet they were what drew myself and other artists and models together

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on a weekly basis or more for over decade. My thesis was an attempt to draw these threads of memory and sensation into a representative form, through a process of allowing the other participants to translate their own life-drawing experiences into spoken words, which I recorded, transcribed, selected and edited. I have presented my research as a type of ethnography, in which the goal is to translate the experience of practice into written form. However, to represent it as such occludes the muddiness of grounded research, and the aporias in any work of translation or representation. I began my research with a series of sensations, I collected a lot of voices in order to find words for those sensations and I gathered a vast amount of primary material that exceeded any attempt to represent or contain it. The dilemmas of my research on life-drawing appeared to reflect an ontological dilemma concerning creative practice itself; that it is messy, process-driven and largely impossible to represent. My founding irritation with sustained posing as a model was compounded by my initial forays into research as an art historian. The attempts to research life models or life-drawing through the analysis of its representations (that is, figurative art) seemed to exclude an enormous amount of information about life-drawing as a practice. Indeed the frustration with ‘representationalism’ is what initially drew me to the work of Barbara Bolt, who in Art Beyond Representation (2004) examines the ontology of creative practice. It is here that she gives an account of methexis in relation to an intersubjective collaboration between artists, their materials and the emergent creative work (Bolt 2004). This understanding of creative practice as a collective exchange between a range of part-objects/part-subjects offers profound possibilities for considering life-drawing from a productive and ethical position. To appreciate the work of creative practice as a performative collaboration, rather than a mimetic mastery, allows for practices of looking to be reconsidered as a way of challenging identity and subjectivity.

From Mimesis to Methexis Many aesthetic accounts of life-drawing emphasize a mimetic model, whereby it is described as a form of representing either the ideal nude, or the naked artist’s model. Both accounts confine the ethical imperative and creative agency to the artist, and the spectatorship, 191

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participation and agency of the artist’s model in collaborating or facilitating this representation is ignored. Using Bolt’s work in Art Beyond Representation (2004) I argued that the only way in which this emphasis on the agency of the artist can be disrupted is to move away from an emphasis on life-drawing as a way of representing the nude, the figure or the model, towards considering it as a mutually constituting practice, an exchange of gestures, looks, glances and marks. Bolt’s concern is with the performativity of materials and the art image, rather than the complex negotiations between artists and models. However, her account of the dynamism of materials and the performativity of the ‘tools’ of art-making can also be applied to life-drawing, and the ambiguous subjectivity of artists’ models who pose for life-drawings. Bolt has applied Martin Heidegger’s critique of representation in a number of publications, and situates his ethical account of phenomenology within the imperative of creative practice. Thus the human subject/material object split is realigned into a mutually constituting relationship between entities, each encompassing a certain level of agency in bringing forth new entities and indebtedness to the entities or substances from which they have emerged. Bolt extends Heidegger’s account of the collaboration of materials, entities and subjects to develop an account of material handling based on participation. She cites the theatrical concept of methexis or ‘working together’ to explain the performativity of materials and of art praxis. Bolt’s reference to methexis is derived from Paul Carter’s discussion of the constitutive performances of desert sand-dance painting among the Aranta peoples of Australia’s Northern Territory (Bolt 2004: 137–138). Carter distinguishes the performativity of indigenous mark-making practices from European representation, claiming that the former is based in movement and an active and constituting relationship to the world, rather than a response to or imitation of it. The dance of marks is not in response to the world, but a means of encountering it, sensing it and remaking it, and Bolt repeats Carter’s description of the indigenous belief in the practices of sand-dance painting, as producing ‘real effects both on the human and the divine plane’ (Bolt 2004: 140). Like Carter, Bolt sources her understanding of methexis from Francis Cornford’s discussion of the mystical roots of ancient Greek philosophy (Bolt 2004: 135). Cornford claims that Pythagorean mathematics were originally

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developed through the collective practices of an ancient ‘Orphic’ cult, based around mathematics and the principles of the divisibility, unity and harmony of all things. The methexic practice of Pythagorean mathematics was not as an abstracted code, seeking to represent a distinct and separate material reality, but as a collective, concurrent production of reality, an exploration of harmony and analogy between numbers and entities akin to the playing of music and a reiteration and performance of the passage from the human to the divine (Cornford 1980: 205). This account of methexis resonates with music practice and contemporary collaborative creative practice (and may even account for the appeal of life-drawing sketch clubs as a type of ‘jam session’ for artists). However, it has more direct implications for visual arts, and particularly life-drawing. Cornford’s discussion of methexis suggests a revisionist account of Plato’s doctrine of ideal forms, which was the central account of why life-drawing played such a central role in European academic art education in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I have discussed this elsewhere (Mayhew 2010), noting that Bolt also uses Cornford’s analysis of Plato to challenge conventional accounts of art as representation, rather than art as productive practice. I discuss the changes to life-drawing instruction under modernism shortly, and note how representationalist or mimetic accounts are particularly limited in explaining contemporary life-drawing. For now, I am interested in how methexis allows for an account of life-drawing that is performative and collective; one that acknowledges the agency of concurrent acts of mark-making and spectatorship as going beyond the spectatorship of the artist. I do not propose that methexis characterizes all life-drawing classes per se; merely that the practices within life-drawing classes may facilitate particular situations or states where a methexic encounter, even a fleeting or fluctuating awareness of one, may occur. It is this particular practice of watching and marking that allows the ‘Other’ of the artwork to emerge as unspoken for. I argue that it is the particular practices of spectatorship between artists and models, and the myriad of glimpses, glances and gazes moving throughout a life-drawing class, that may constitute a methexic encounter. It is the cultivation of spectatorship as an ethical praxis that has applicability for other forms of collaborative research.

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Looking and Marking, Practices of Life-Drawing There’s a clich´e in press articles on art education that life-drawing died or vanished from art schools in the mid-to-late twentieth century. My research indicated that life-drawing classes were sustained in the majority of art schools until very recently. However, its status within professional art education altered from being at the centre of academic instruction in the nineteenth century to being offered as an elective, or often only at foundation-year level. From the mid-twentieth century life-drawing underwent a substantial proliferation in recreational and amateur art circles. While far more people are participating in lifedrawing classes generally, the status of life-drawing in relation to professional art practice has shifted. Aside from the developments in modernist art (development of abstraction and non-object art, expansion of creative media, etc.), the changing status of life-drawing is linked to the altered status of figurative drawings from the model, as well as the types of drawings that lifedrawing students are encouraged to produce. The appearance and status of drawings produced in the majority of life-drawing classes has changed considerably from recognizable images of figures to a variety of semi-abstract and frequently stylized marks. The shift in the status of life-drawings is linked to the change in practices and the increasing amount of time, within educational life-drawing classes, devoted to the croquis or short drawings based on unresolved, rapid gestural scribbles. In the majority of art schools, at least half of the life-drawing session is spent on sketches that are usually discarded at the end of the class. Visiting life-classes at the Ecole Nationale Sup´erieure des Beaux Arts in Paris, I saw students drawing on blackboards for the entire duration of the life-class, erasing their drawings before leaving the room. Thus the emphasis on art school life-drawing has shifted from the production of life-drawings to the practice of life-drawing as an experience of seeing and responsive mark-making. Although it has emerged from sketching exercises in the nineteenth century, observational drawing came to dominate modernist drawing education in the twentieth. Drawing instruction at the Slade School in London and the New York Studio School extended practices of the observational sketch into sustained observational drawing, also referred to as ‘objective’ drawing, lasting for hours, weeks and even months. Among teachers and practitioners,

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life-drawing is largely equated with and defended as observational practice, and for the development of manual skills, rather than for any aesthetic merit of the resultant drawings. This latter emphasis on ‘observation’ in life-drawing is problematic for a number of reasons, and suggests that life-drawing in tertiary art institutions is still predicated upon a profound displacement away from the troubling encounter between the bodies of observing students and teaching staff and the exposed, silent and still bodies of the models. Observation functions largely as a pretext to reduce life-drawing to a dry exercise in ‘look and put’, as if the hands and eyes were not connected to the bodies, the loins, the minds and the desires of students, or the more complex forms of observation and non-observation performed by models and even teaching staff. The multiple paradoxes inherent in the project of objectively seeing a naked human subject involve an enormous amount of contrived blindness to the sexual implications of nudity, to the likely discomfort of the models, to the power differentials in the room and to the affective and physical responses an admission of these conditions is likely to evoke. The tacit excision of the interpersonal relationships upon which lifedrawing is based is effected through sidestepping the social ambiguity of deliberate spectatorship of naked bodily display, and the even more troubling implications of the power differentials between the ‘observers’ and the naked, silent and still models who are frequently in physical discomfort if not actual pain. The disquieting fact of physical pain and the ways in which it is not ‘seen’ formed a significant component of my thesis and the critical analysis of ‘observational’ drawing within it. The starting point for this was my familiarity with the pain of modelling, and the awareness of watching other models in pain while I was drawing them. The complex entanglements of coercion, awareness, ignorance, silence, compliance and consent effect a type of blindness in artists and models, which I wanted to examine further. In teasing apart the notion of ‘observation’, I examined the relationship between witnessing, spectatorship, subjectivity and power through the work of Jonathan Crary, Elaine Scarry and Kelly Oliver. As noted by Crary, the etymological roots of the word observe have connotations of servitude to an external entity (Crary 1990: 6). Whereas observation is frequently associated with objectivity, Crary links the practices, technologies and discourses of observation to specific historical and

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social relations of European modernism, arguing that the social and technological changes in the nineteenth century produced a shift in the link between subjectivity and vision, such that ‘vision itself became a kind of discipline or mode of work’ (Crary 1990: 18). Crary explores modernist optics as a field of practices and technologies across a single surface, discussing an array of optical devices as well as painting (Crary 1990: 20–23). Crary’s argument enables modernist life-drawing to be understood as a particular, historically situated social discipline, contiguous with other contemporary practices and based on a mode of optics that detaches vision from the other senses and the bodies of practitioners (Crary 1990: 19).1 Within this modality of observation, the paradoxical projection of objectivity upon naked living human beings (surely the most empathically compelling subjects imaginable) serves to reinforce the emphasis of rigorous observation as profoundly de-corporealized. However, this argument may also serve to deny the rich field of encounters and experiences within which life-drawing has proliferated as a modernist practice. It possibly serves to cloak the troubling ambiguities of how issues such as sexuality and suffering are (albeit awkwardly) managed in contemporary life-drawing. Life-drawing has proliferated in a variety of settings which indicate an active desire on behalf of all participants to explore sexuality, desire, fantasy, as well as subjection, pain and suffering. Modernist observation is not a hegemonic practice, but one predicated on the complex and continuous movements between obeisance and disavowal among all participants. While not trying to deny the tendencies of objective drawing towards a discomforting association with sadism and exploitation, I am more interested in exploring the complexities and paradoxes of objectification than in reinforcing an apparently intractable divide between subject and object or oppressor and oppressed. Although the arguments by Oliver and Crary are based on an examination of relationships in blatant and deliberate forms of cruelty, they are useful for my examination of the tacit levels of suffering that do occur in the life-class and their links to subjectivity. According to Oliver’s formulation, models’ accounts of suffering and the painful experiences of objectification produce the paradoxical effect of articulating their status as an object, while simultaneously enunciating their subjectivity. Oliver explores the paradox of bearing witness to one’s own suffering, arguing that the fact of witnessing contradicts

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the silence of objectification, that the process of witnessing involves sensing and admitting the shame and pain of objectification and, finally, that the experience of being an object cannot be articulated precisely because it involves the experience of becoming inarticulate and unable to witness (Oliver 2001: 99). Arguably, the movements between the status of subject and object, articulated by life models, suggest that the status of ‘subject’ is not a fixed position, but a series of continual movements, performances and exchanges among groups of people seeking to regulate and contest the fragility of their ontological experience. Verbal accounts from models and artists, on the topic of observational drawing, frequently evoke bizarre images of cross-affiliation. One interviewed subject, an artist, gave a personal and embodied account of how objective spectatorship is subjectively experienced as a movement away from the self and the pains and responsibilities of subjectivity. She described drawing with intense menstrual cramps and how her immersion in the practice of observational drawing led her away from her body, into a type of trance, in which, as she claimed: ‘I wasn’t even there’. However, she had also left the model in the same pose for two hours without a break (normally models have two breaks per hour). The model had apparently remained in the pose without protest due to her own fascination with the intensity of the trance-like state of the artist, claiming that ‘I could feel your eyes crawling all over me’. Another model also described the feeling of being drawn ‘as if ants are crawling over my body’, poetically distinguishing his comfort with being observed in a life class as due to ‘eyes clothed by pencils’, rather than ‘the naked stare’. A number of models who are also artists admitted that modelling did involve ‘turning yourself into an object’, however, their descriptions implied a kind of oscillating presence and absence; objecthood was not a singular or static condition of modelling, but a fluctuating tendency that shifted within each pose, across the glimpses between artists and models, between the quiet breaths and signs and slow dribbles of sweat that dissimulated an impression of stillness. Observational drawing can be arduous for artists as well as models. I know this from having watched the strain and fatigue of those drawing, as well as my own memories of participating in intense observational drawing exercises. The experience of eyesight depends physiologically on stochastic saccading movements of our eyes, flitting and darting

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around a room, gathering impressions into a composite image (Ings 2007: 44–45). Modern practices and pedagogies of ‘objective’ drawing are concerned with mediating this saccading movement, either through the sustained practice of delineation of forms in space, or by training hands to match the scanning and darting movements of eyes across a visual field, whereby forms become visible through the accumulation of marks that represent a continual return of the eyes to particular points. The training of eyes and hands involves the training of bodies to stand or sit still, to maintain an awareness and control over arms and torsos and to discipline minds into a practice of sustained, focused ‘seeing’. This studied practice of looking as observation excludes the bodily desires to move, to look away, to talk or sing, to walk or dance or to stop drawing. The silent and still model also ‘models’ the silence and relative stillness of the drawers. Possibly it is this denial of the self that is at the heart of the allure of the denial of the other on which objective drawing is arguably based. Alice Neel described her experience of drawing as ‘it’s as if I leave myself and feel as though I have no self ’ (Neel, quoted in Collischan Van Wagner 1989: 105). Although this is easily read as an empathic encounter with the subjectivity of the other, it may also be a moving admission of the objectification within herself, necessary for intense observational drawing. In denying the presence, subjectivity and suffering of the other before them, the observers in a life-class are able to deny their own bodies, their own subjectivity, their own discomfort and to be not even there, but somewhere else or even something else. This may hint at the appeal of objectification for models as well: the imaginative flight away from the discomfort of stillness and the discomforting implications of silence into an identification with the artists, their observation and their objectives. To observe is, therefore, to serve something outside of ourselves, and to leave ourselves in order to do it. This account of vision as absence is reminiscent of this quote from Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Vision is not a certain mode of thought or presence itself; it is the means given to me for being absent for myself, for being present at the fission of being from the inside – the fission at whose termination, and not before, I come back to myself. (Merleau-Ponty 1964: 187)

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Merleau-Ponty’s account of perception from a phenomenological perspective offers considerable potential for a critical consideration of the subjective experience of looking, or how looking constitutes and de-constitutes subjectivity. It is worth noting that the experience of subjective mobility – the movement from a sense of self to one of an absence of self, promoted by the immersion in vision – has considerable resonance with the experiences of looking occurring in life-drawing classes. The cluster of cross-affiliations, of shifts in subjectivity and objectivity within and between models and artists, suggests that the looking practices within life-drawing are profoundly intersubjective, constituting a space where the identity boundaries between self and other, our bodies and materials, other bodies and images enters a state of flux. By using Kelly Oliver’s work on witnessing in order to grapple with the painful and problematic practices of life models often being in a state of excruciating pain while being observed, I explored how practices of ‘looking’ could offer a challenge to the distancing elements of observation, articulating the multi-directional shifts occurring within and between subjects, the multiple glances and glimmers, the gazes that are averted as well as the gazes that are held. However, it has been through my own cross-disciplinary interest in ethnography that I have found a link to how practices of drawing can work to sustain forms of spectatorship based on encounter and witnessing. In his recent book discussing his fieldwork notebooks, anthropologist Michael Taussig explores what could be called the graphic moment; the almost involuntary ‘graph’ acts of scribbling and jotting that, he argues, coincide with particular types of witnessing what could be described as ‘incredible’ phenomena (Taussig 2011). Taussig argues that the gesture of drawing, of rapidly scribbling a physical trace of what is being watched, also serves as a speech act, to swear and to declare, as in the title of the book, I Swear I Saw This. His articulation of practices of drawing as acts of mark-making responsive to particular situations of ‘incredible’ spectatorship is reminiscent of the witness accounts explored in my own thesis, and possibly reflects on the relationship between modes of spectatorships and mark-making in practices of ethnographic research more generally. Taussig’s book consists of a meditation on the sticky encounters between drawing,

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drawings, vision, writing, visions and the iterations embedded within and between all of these practices. He questions why and how sketches, rather than photographs or written accounts, embody a particular type of encounter that is part of the uncanny praxis of ethnography itself. Taussig’s initiating moment of incredulity is similar to the starting point in Oliver’s account, where a viewer is called upon by an incredible subject to enter into an extraordinary relationship of witnessing. Whereas Taussig links this to a bodily urge to scribble and sketch the encounter, Oliver develops an account of witnessing that does not seek to represent, contain or comprehend what is observed, but to ‘bear witness’ – or to undertake a type of labour or carry the weight of seeing something that often cannot be understood and, most often, cannot be articulated. Oliver explores the phenomenology of bearing witness to trauma and to testimonies of trauma given by survivors of genocide. From this she develops an account of ethical witnessing as an epistemological practice; of being present with the unbelievable, the incomprehensible and the unbearable. This involves opening ourselves up to the fundamental difference of the world, without trying to deny, enclose or merge with it. Oliver explores an ethics of looking as the practice of an intersubjective encounter where we honestly and openly face the strangeness of ‘the other’ without seeking to contain or separate it from ourselves, or absorb it (Oliver 2001: 87). There are many affinities with Oliver’s account of witnessing, and with practices such as mindfulness meditation, which call for a conscious presence and awareness of presence, outside of the familiar cloaks of language and conceptual frameworks. Jay Johnston explores Oliver’s praxis of witnessing in relation to spiritual practices and traditions that cultivate an experiential awareness of intersubjectivity and knowledge of the other that is not a mastery over it ( Johnston 2010: 260). It is possibly the lack of mastery that allows for the sketch, in Taussig’s account, to function as a type of mobile mark where looking is not trapped into a fixing gaze, but where marking and looking both embody a series of continuous reactive movements and shifts. A number of writers cite a detachment from mastery as an important component of ethical praxis of research. Cultural theorist Judith Halberstam goes so far as to suggest that the anticipation and embracing of failure is a key component of genuine critical scholarship

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(Halberstam 2011). Halberstam’s provocative championing of failure, of forgetting and ‘dumbness’ in art, popular culture and critical praxis offers a radical challenge to discourses of mastery promoted within traditional disciplinary formations. It also offers a guide to negotiating the heterotopias of contemporary art, Pixar animation, academia and queer politics in a reflexive and ethical manner. In the heteropic spaces within practice and research, and between creative practice and interdisciplinary research, this call to move away from disciplinary mastery draws a refreshing link between both components of my ‘field’. My personal shift from practice to research has given me a profound sense of the possibility and value of a practice of attentiveness without mastery of a critical research endeavour. In advocating interdisciplinarity, I do not wish to deny disciplinary practice. Indeed I wish to reconceive discipline as practice, a continuous practice aimed not towards a competent mastery over something, but at a condition where practice enables an immersion within it. In my shift from practising artist to academic researcher I was able to bring to the latter a very intimate knowledge of art-making as a practice and as a discipline that changes the practitioner as she/he engages in and with it. Furthermore, my studio experience gave me a very clear sense of what it is to be investigating or creating something that I cannot understand, represent or control. Artists frequently describe the confounding experiences of delving into dumb matter, spending time in an (often painful) awareness of the edges of their own capacity or understanding, in a mute but deeply sentient and contemplative encounter with materials. This dur´ee occasionally allows the fleeting moments of alchemical magic to occur, where the art object takes shape as an entity that is of, and not of, the artist and both of, and not of, the contemplative viewer. It is in this particular practice of making as methexis that looking becomes a witnessing that allows the ‘other’ of the artwork to emerge as unspoken for, as a self-conjured entity that is linked to but not controlled by the artist. This experience of disciplinary praxis as methexis – that is, predicated on the cultivation of intersubjectivity, of profound deterritorialization, of intense flux – is a useful way to consider the practice of interdisciplinary scholarship. The deterritorializing qualities of the methexic encounter suggest that methexis may be a useful way of describing critical praxis within all heterotopias. Rather than trying to

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contain or represent differences, possibly they can be encountered in a mutually deconstituting practice. Possibly the intersubjective creation of methexis is the precondition of any genuine interdisciplinary enquiry; where the soft edges of our consciousness and knowledge brush up against something utterly unfamiliar and in that encounter, and interchange, a mutual co-creation occurs.

Beyond Practice: Methexis in Interdisciplinary Research I have evoked the heterotopias within life-drawing, and described the multiple roles I inhabited as model and artist, and then model and researcher, as well as artist and academic. These categories were constituted by particular spaces, and my slipping between roles felt like a continuous awkward shifting. My practices of looking and of encounter were shaped by my own sense of the de-constituting aspects of creative practice and research, as well as the limitations of my own immersion in a particular practice. Throughout the course of my PhD my attention shifted from the practice of life-modelling to the practice of observing and drawing. I sustained a very active practice in lifedrawing throughout most of my PhD, however, when I moved into the phase of writing up my PhD I stopped attending sketch clubs, and slowly stopped drawing, packed up my studio and became a fulltime writer/researcher. Although I continued to engage in and exhibit performance and soft sculpture, these activities haven’t constituted a continuous practice. Despite a number of tentative attempts to experiment with looking and marking in academic conferences and university teaching, these have not been substantial enough to claim any findings. However, the insights of creative practice have changed how I practise in the heterotopic spaces of fledgling academia, particularly through a reflexive awareness of looking as an ethical praxis. After completing my PhD, I worked for two years with a multidisciplinary team undertaking participant action research with communities in Melbourne. The heteropic spaces of research were characterized by linguistic as well as disciplinary differences. The research team spoke 13 languages between us, and we worked with community groups defined by cultural and linguistic difference, with most sharing languages and cultural identity with one member of the research team. In this variegated setting of multiple differences, I found that the ethical 202

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praxis of cross-cultural and interdisciplinary research had surprising resemblances to some aspects of creative practice in life-drawing. These included a detachment from a representationalist mode of enquiry; seeking to describe or define the ‘others’ in our fields, and a particular practice of immersive presence, whereby our professional and personal identities were able to shift and we could allow for a collaborative and open-ended engagement with each other and the ‘subjects’ of our research. Research on human subjects is an intensely fraught process, where the constitution of ‘researcher’ and ‘subject’ is dependent on and exacerbated by differences in power, social capital, cultural capital and language. It is also frequently tied to the representationalist imperatives of funding acquittals and research reports. The research project I collaborated on was not immune from these issues; aspects of it were highly problematic, particularly in the imperatives of some team members to gather data that could ‘represent’ the communities with whom we were working in a reportable fashion. However, the spaces of encounter, where researchers and community members met and collaborated, managed to facilitate the practice of other forms of what is called in Spanish intercambio or interchange. A large part of this productive encounter consisted of the reflections made by researchers on our own positionality and relationships with communities and with each other. Many of these interchanges reflect the descriptions of hybrid spaces and identities described by writers such as Gloria Anzaldua, Homi Bhabha and Sarah Ahmed. All three authors interrogate identity by moving away from the individual subject that may be fixed into a particular description, into describing the liminal spaces between East and West, North and South, colonizer and colonized where identity shifts around and becomes unstuck, where language is hybridized and national spaces are heterogeneous and constantly moving. This focus on heterogeneous spaces allows the question of cultural identity to move away from what an individual ‘is’ to what they ‘do’, or what they could or could not do in a particular cultural, social or economic ‘space’. It works well with the discussion of the phenomenology of miscegenation, and how multiple identities feel and are produced and repressed and submerged across a myriad of sites and zones described by Sara Ahmed:

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You can feel the categories that you fail to inhabit: they are sources of discomfort. Comfort is a feeling that tends not to be consciously felt, as I suggest above. Instead, you sink. When you don’t sink, when you fidget and move around, then what is in the background becomes in front of you, as a world that is gathered in a specific way. Discomfort, in order words, allows things to move. (Ahmed 2006: 154)

Ahmed evokes how imposed cultural identity is ‘felt’, while Homi Bhabha articulates the shift from the imposition of cultural identity to how it may be deployed and negotiated. In Borderlands Gloria Anzaldua writes extensively and poetically of the skills required by people marginalized by colonialism and living on the edges of identified cultures and cultural zones, speaking bastardized dialects and halflanguages and wrestling with multiple identities. This emphasis on the skills and practices of living in heterotopias has considerable value for researchers trying to negotiate a critical praxis of intercultural enquiry, where differences move rather than staying fixed in particular positions or roles. Quite possibly, the ethical praxis of witnessing offers a useful way in which researchers of disciplinary as well as cultural and linguistic difference can approach the otherness between researchers and the subjects of our research. Rather than trying to fix cultural differences into particular identities, it is potentially more useful to consider how researchers and subjects of research can productively negotiate the changing borders of our professional and personal spaces. Researching in the borderlands (between disciplines, ethnicities and languages) may be best approached not through trying to map or model cultural difference, but by the deliberate and continual work of trying to look at, listen to and work collaboratively with the ‘others’ we encounter in our research, rather than interpreting and representing them. This involves attentiveness to the ‘others’ within us, being mindful of our own identities and privileges and transparent with and respectful of the boundaries between and connections to the communities and colleagues around us. Some of the most productive research in this area involves the cultivation of research as the practice of participation; as an open-ended, immersive, process-centred work with communities marginalized by more conventional research approaches.2 204

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The material thinking of creative research on life-drawing, as a collection of practices of looking at, looking to and being looked at, allowed for the development of an account of spectatorship as an ethical praxis, where the detached eye of observational drawing is re-drawn within a field of connections between bodies, gestures, materials, immersed in a myriad of glimpses, glances, stares and scratches, sketches, traces and smudges. It also allowed for the appreciation of subjective shifts within any heterotopic space, where identities aggregate and come unstuck and where practices and sensations come to have a life of their own. This chapter has presented a stochastic image of drawing as practice and drawing as research. It is as an accumulation of smudges, scratches and scribbles, sprawling over several fields of enquiry and practice. A more disciplined approach would seek to draw these mark-making practices together into a representative account. However, I am more interested in practices that promote an ‘undisciplining’ of enquiry, those that facilitate the fidgety movements of critical discomfort and that force us to sit with the aporias of inchoate enquiry and allow other encounters to emerge.

Notes 1

Crary expresses this as: ‘The loss of touch as a conceptual component of vision meant the unloosening of the eye from the network of referentiality incarnated in tactility and its subjective relation to perceived space’ (Crary 1990: 18).

2

Some of the most productive work in this area is conducted by indigenous researchers in Australia. See Adams, K. (2010) ‘You can only know your own story: the precarious position of the action researcher’ paper presented to the Participatory Action Research and Action Learning 8th world congress, Melbourne Australia, available online at: wc2010.alara.net.au/ Formatted%20Papers/3.1.1.DEC.1.pdf [accessed 17 July 2012].

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11 Making Sense: Exploring Materialist Pedagogies Through Imagination, Collaboration and Criticality Carole Gray and Gordon Burnett

The Making Sense research programme,1 which is the central focus of this chapter, is an exploration of ways of knowing generated through practice and reflection in craft. It attempts to address the bold epistemological question: ‘What can be known through making that could not be known by any other means?’ (paraphrased from Barrett 2007). First proposed by Gordon Burnett in 2000, the concept has been a vehicle for collaborative research that resulted in 2004 in a major international conference, Challenging Craft, and a related online project, Connectivity. In 2007, a new phase of research was initiated through a practice-led research project, a dialogue between two makers – Burnett and Carole Gray – that attempted to question experiences of making and their value as a form of knowing through reflective and active methods. In late 2009, Burnett and Gray brought together practitionerresearchers from arts and health care to explore the possibility of forming an experienced interdisciplinary research team to investigate the

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concept of ‘well-being’ from multiple perspectives, aimed at engaging with the elderly. Our contribution to this book is a ‘material invention’ – a visual route-map that lays out a transferable framework to stimulate creative enquiry. This is a graphic distillation (see Fig. 16) of our understandings to date. This chapter is in three parts. It begins with the story of our genesis project (2008) in which we explored this difficult question through collaborative creative enquiry, involving ‘understanding through doing’ (Dewey 2005), ‘material thinking’ (Carter 2004) and ‘reflective practice’ (Sch¨on 1983); it continues with an account of a series of workshops (2008–11) that tested the pedagogic relevance of Making Sense, contributing to the processes of what Barbara Bolt (2006b) has termed ‘materializing pedagogies’. The chapter concludes with an outline of seven principles drawn from our findings and suggestions about how the Making Sense methodology as a creative participatory activity might operate well in other contexts, for example with the ageing. Finally, we discuss the potential for its broader application.

What is Material Invention? In considering this chapter we asked ourselves what might be a ‘material invention’? Our position acknowledges ‘making’ as ‘poiesis’ – as a ‘leading into being’ (Whitehead 2003), the invention of a concept or artefact. To do this we need ‘materials’ – anything made of matter with which to explore ‘matters of concern’ (Latour 2008). Carter considers collaboration as an important method of creative practice and enquiry – ‘passing the shuttle of creative vision back and forth’ (2004: 5) through the give and take of dialogue. Richard Sennett in his book The Craftsman (2009) suggests that making things generates revelations about ourselves and this might help us to think about how to ‘conduct life with skill’ (Sennett 2009: 11) – surely a key function of learning and education. So now we understand a ‘material invention’ as something made that matters. It is crafted from experience, resulting from people working constructively together woven within a creative and critical context, for the purposes of learning and living skilfully. 207

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Making Sense : Initiating the Enquiry Although experienced art practitioners, educators and researchers, we seek to question continuously the nature of artistic practice, learning and creative enquiry, and their relevance and value. Working in higher education for many years we both sought independently to explore and extend the student learning experience in art and design. Our eventual collaboration was fused by the concept of ‘making sense’ in response to Estelle Barrett’s ambitious epistemological question, sparking an ongoing artistic enquiry. Since 2007, we have been engaged in exploring key concepts relevant to understanding through making – the experiential, the reflective, the constructive. In 2008 we set about mapping a strategy for a project, a creative experiment. The purpose of this investigation was twofold: to explore practice-led research methodologies and methods; and to consider how this might infuse pedagogy with the spirit of creative enquiry towards different ways of learning and understanding. To initiate the enquiry we established an open framework for investigation – one that was sufficiently structured (with agreed milestones and time-limited) yet that encouraged intuition and welcomed serendipity. We feel it necessary to outline our project now, as some degree of detail is needed in order to clarify how our experience was later carried forward into subsequent student learning workshops. When reflecting on how to communicate this work clearly to peers (at the Crafticulation conference, September 2008), we came to realize we had used a ‘set of methods’. These had emerged through the process of artistic enquiry as a result of our ‘inhabiting the discourse’ and through the dialogue between ourselves and with our colleagues. We were able to identify 11 creative, visual and/or dialogic research methods. A detailed elaboration of each is provided to fully explain their meaning, application and place within the enquiry.2 These are articulated here to provide an insight to others should they wish to try them out and/or grasp the opportunity to adapt them for different contexts; for example, other arenas in the arts (performing arts), pedagogy (social science disciplines), and various community sectors (working with the elderly). The latter are elaborated in the final part of the chapter. See Figure 16, a graphic distillation of a transferable framework to stimulate creative enquiry. The 11 methods are presented now in the sequence

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MAKING SENSE Figure 16. Carole Gray and Gordon Burnett, a framework for a ‘material invention’, flow chart, 2012

they were used in the project (though acknowledging that some are iterative).

Method 1. ARP – Art as Random Process (Watson 1992) We used a database that generates by ‘choice’ and/or ‘chance’ diverse instructions and ‘ingredients’ for action (words, phrases, numbers) from eight initial categories (‘substance’, ‘time’, ‘sense’, ‘place’, ‘quantity’, ‘method’, ‘quality’, ‘mind’). We knew that it would challenge us creatively and stimulate ideas for new work, as well as being a tool by which to analyze previous work, encouraging both critical reflection and generative action.

Method 2. Shared Analysis We had a reflective conversation about our previous work in order to establish common ground for dialogue, and familiarize ourselves with each other’s values, thinking and working methods. The conversation was focused by a set of criteria – four of ARP’s categories: ‘place’, ‘substance’, ‘quantity’ and ‘method’ – through which to analyze our previous work. 209

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Method 3. ARP We used the database again for a very different reason – its capacity to surprise and disorientate. It provided us with ‘chance’ stimuli for new work, prompting the active making part of the project from unpredictable starting points. For example, Gray’s ‘ingredients’ for making in this project were: ‘elliptical’, ‘The Milky Way’, ‘limestone polypody’, ‘B5’. The decision to embrace unexpected, dissimilar, random stimuli was taken to shift us out of our comfort zones and familiar ways of initiating creative practice. The database could be substituted with any form of random generation, for example, Scrabble letters or words, phrases or images pulled from a hat.

Method 4. Research Logs As a means of visualizing thinking, we bought identical sketchbooks to capture and track our thinking, store information and references on our ingredients and for envisioning speculative ideas. We used them at different points before, during and after the making period. They acted as a focus for dialogue.

Method 5. ‘Photography-in-Action’ To document the progression of ideas, as well as extending visualization, photography is used as a generative tool for experimenting with scale, location, position; it encourages selectivity and critical observation through framing, helping to alter perceptions and further understand the nature of an idea, its potential and its realization. Within this method, Apple’s iPhoto software is an important tool for reviewing and sequencing images, encouraging an understanding of the development of ideas through a visual narrative.

Method 6. Informal Conversations These took place throughout the project as a means of sharing progress, exchanging expertise and experience, internalizing discourse, giving critical feedback, extending thinking and anticipating action. We were ‘reflecting-in-action’ (Sch¨on 1983) and telling ourselves ‘stories about 210

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ourselves’ (Steier 1991). Conversation – with ourselves and/or others – is a crucial element in dialogic development and reflexivity. Active conversation can challenge perception and stimulate step changes in idea development.

Method 7. ‘Approximations’ As the project centred on making – working three-dimensionally in various materials with various processes and techniques – testing was essential to see what might be physically possible or not. The neologism ‘approximation’ is meant to convey a kind of rapid three-dimensional sketching enabling fast reaction and change in response to our project briefs. Neither of us used ‘models’ or ‘maquettes’ as this presumes we had already exactly worked out viable forms. Potential forms for both of us emerged in the making.

Method 8. Making For two and a half days we immersed ourselves in active exploration in the ceramic and metal workshops. The short timescale forced quick thinking and decisive action. Drawing on prior knowledge of materials and making methods, intuition and invention were applied to plaster casting and metal manipulation. Throughout we were reflecting in action – in ‘handling’ – interspersed with what we described as ‘pingpong’ conversations, seeking advice, checking ideas, getting feedback. The eventual outcomes were an unexpected surprise, having evolved throughout and emerged from the making process. They were not fully resolved, in the usual sense of ‘artworks’, rather having the status of ‘research objects’ – keeping open new possibilities for further exploration.

Method 9. Extended Analysis of New Work with Another Maker In order to capture the freshest version of our making experience we had a conversation (prearranged) with sculptor, educator and ARP inventor Allan Watson immediately after completing making at lunchtime on the third day. The timing of the conversation elicited ‘gut’ responses, giving a ‘raw’ insight into our emerging understandings. 211

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Watson devised a set of incisive and insightful questions to structure our shared reflective analysis. He was able to ask questions3 that we could not have asked of ourselves. This additional informed perspective from an experienced maker expanded our understandings of the project and its outcomes.

Method 10. ‘Photography-in-Reflection’ It was important to have the new work professionally photographed in studio conditions (simply as part of good working practice). However, in the process of positioning and framing the work we became aware of really getting to know what we had made. This was intensified later by reviewing and manipulating selected digital files. In having to save each file we were compelled to name them. This naming was a crucial part of coming to know the true nature of the work. As the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire says, ‘The naming of the world, which is an act of creation and re-creation, is not possible if it is not infused with love’ (Freire 1996: 70).

Method 11. Public Presentation of Research Disseminating our research involved a range of methods: we were first prompted to make a condensation of our project experience, an abstract for the Crafticulation conference. We then constructed a highly visual concise narrative of it, a set of PowerPoint slides with minimal text and a movie and finally we arranged for extensive academic treatment through refereeing, the pre-final draft of which had critical constructive feedback from two key references within it – Alan Watson (1992) and Estelle Barrett (2007). Subsequent opportunities for public dissemination helped us to focus and synthesize our understandings, testing the relevance, value and contribution of the research to the field.4 To sum up, we might call this 11-method set a ‘bricolage’, described by Denzin and Lincoln as: A pieced-together, close-knit set of practices that provide solutions to a problem in a concrete situation, a complex, dense, reflexive, collage-like creation that represents the researcher’s images, understandings, and interpretations of the world (Denzin and Lincoln 1994: 3). 212

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We return to our difficult epistemological question, ‘what can be known through making that could not be known by any other means?’

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What Did We Learn from this First Making Sense Project?

Experience/Embodiment By undertaking this project we had acquired experiential knowledge (Dewey 2005) – understandings about ‘making’ though creative enquiry. Such understandings are embodied in the making. As Dewey observes, ‘The artist has his problems and thinks as he works. But his thought is more immediately embodied in the object. . . . The artist does his thinking in the very qualitative media he works in’ (Dewey 2005: 15). This is artistic thinking, thinking through ‘making’ (in its broadest sense), through manipulation of materials, where the artwork/object embodies thinking. Such artefacts have been named by the sociologist Knorr Cetina, in her studies of the interactions between particle physicists, as ‘epistemic objects’ (Cetina 2001: 181). Epistemic objects are characterized by the ambivalence of their ontological status as knowledge-bearers, being both stable and mutable at the same time. They are stable in the sense that they comprise what the artist/maker currently knows so far; and mutable in the sense that they are incomplete and ‘open’, allowing for further exploration by the creator and/or others towards new knowledge-making.5 What we named ‘approximations’, research logs, photography-inreflection and the material outcomes from this genesis project, Burnett’s Biolight and Gray’s Worlds.6 We now know that these are ‘epistemic objects’. The epistemic object acts as ‘a materialized “log” of the making process’ (Bamberger and Sch¨on 1991: 192)

Reflection/Resonance Through engaging in shared analysis, informal conversations, extended analysis with another maker and public presentations throughout this project, we knew we were furthering our existing skills as ‘reflective practitioners’ (Sch¨on 1983). However, through our complete 213

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immersion in the project we recognized what Mey refers to as the reconceptualization of reflection into ‘resonance’: As the established notion of ‘reflection’ fails to fully capture the four-dimensional ‘lattice’ of multi-directional and fluid receptive and responsive interrelations and becomings, it might be more apt to apply the term ‘resonance’. (Mey 2011: 97)

This idea is also articulated by Sher Doruff in her article ‘Artistic res/arch: The propositional experience of mattering’. She explains ‘res/Arch’ as a practice that ‘constructs a port of entry to a matter of concern’ and names practice as ‘that vibratory in-between of process and product’ (Doruff 2011: 17). What emerges from both these contributions is the importance of entering into an enquiry with full engagement and immersion; that within this, practice (as the vehicle of enquiry) is a kind of ‘agitator’, probing and shaking up things that matter – a key function of the disruptive nature of ARP; and finally, there is a shift from the specular to the somatic7 – towards understanding matters of concern through full sensory engagement. In our project we, as artistic inquirers, were using our entire ‘sensing bodies’ for both generative action and critical analysis of that action. This ‘resonant’ critical analysis involves resounding, reverberating and resonance as felt through the body, contributing to ‘sensuous knowledge’.8

Connection/Construction By undertaking this project we came to understand what Mary Belenky calls ‘connected knowing’ (Belenky et al. 1997), an epistemological position characterized by relationship – in which personal (tacit) local knowledge (as proposed by Carter 2004) becomes shared knowledge through the acts of conversation, forbearance, attentiveness, listening and ‘connected criticism’. This is a result of dialogue – both between ourselves and what Haridimos Tsoukas (2009), working in organizational management, calls ‘quasi-dialogues’: talking to ourselves and to absent others (through reflection); and, most interestingly, quasi-dialogue with artefacts (drawings, ‘approximations’, material tests and objects). We knew intuitively that our project ‘artworks’ were 214

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exploratory and open to further development. However, we did not have the language to conceptualize this understanding until we came across the notion of ‘the epistemic object’ (Knorr Cetina 2001). This corresponds exactly to Tsoukas’s quasi-dialogue with artefacts, a ‘conversation’ with an ‘epistemic object’. The potential mutability of these open ‘artworks’ resonated with our embracing of principles of chance and having to deal with the unexpected. So by the end of the project we had experienced something of what Sch¨on describes as: An epistemology of practice implicit in the artistic, intuitive processes which some practitioners do bring to situations of uncertainty, instability, uniqueness, and value conflict. (Sch¨on 1983: 49)

A key aim of our project was to explore how our learning about practice-led enquiry and its creative methods might inform and further develop our own pedagogic practices. Acknowledging that we were already working as academics within a constructivist learning framework (Bruner 1996), the idea that learning is ‘constructed’ resonates with ‘making’ and ‘making sense’. Within this framework, learning is forged in response to each individual’s lived experience and prior knowledge; occurs through active exploration, probably through a structured project (or series of ) as a vehicle for enquiry; finally, learning happens within a social context where a learning community (students, practitioners, any other constituency) engages in formal and informal interaction. This context provides the opportunity for ‘coreflection’ (extended now to ‘co-resonance’?), towards shared learning and ‘connected knowing’ (Belenky et al. 1997), at the heart of which is the capacity for empathy. Within the constructivist framework, learning and teaching can be seen as experiences that have been made.

Methodology As for methodology, we came to realize through reflection and dissemination that this genesis project offers an accessible, transparent and to a large extent transferable framework for others involved in enquiry through practice. In declaring an artistic enquiry to be a programme of research, creative methods, derived from practice, become subject to critical use and analysis. This leads to increased understanding by 215

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ourselves and others. The framework of artistic enquiry enables creative methods to shift from the idiosyncratic – as private and separate – to the democratic – as public and connected – becoming agents of intentionality.

Making Sense: Applying Creative Research in the Higher Education Context Using Workshops We believe that it is important to engage students (as aspiring practitioners and educators) in ongoing research programmes in order that they become familiar with research as a process of creative and critical enquiry. In designing the Making Sense learning experiences as workshops, the intention was to create a physically open space where all activities were visible, promoting strong engagement and momentum in a conducive environment for ‘serious play’ (Schrage 2000) in which judgement can be suspended. We now outline the iterative sequence of Making Sense workshops;9 the first was initiated in 2008, critically revised for 2009, refined, adapted and explored with arts and health practitioner-researchers in 2010, with further adaptation in 2011 for an interdisciplinary workshop involving students from sculpture, occupational therapy and threedimensional design. In 2008, with our genesis experience fresh in our minds, we quickly devised the first exploratory student workshop, with ourselves as facilitators, which took place over 11 days in December 2008. We used ARP to generate for each of the 13 pre-final-year threedimensional design students a wordset for action – ‘ingredients’ to stimulate creativity from four of ARP’s eight categories: ‘place’, ‘quantity’, ‘substance’ and ‘method’. The students worked in their usual studio, also using metal and ceramic workshops and opted to employ related techniques. Students embraced the experience, in their words, with initial ‘bewilderment’ and ‘curiosity’, eventually expressing a sense of accomplishment at having worked with their diverse ingredients to arrive at ‘satisfying’ outcomes. The analysis of this project prompted a revised format for 2009. In the 2009 workshop, reflective strategies were introduced and we tested an extended set of sensory stimuli, which included a small personal object, a five-second sound composition and a small clipped 216

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ambiguous image, as well as the linguistic element (using ARP) to generate a ‘method’. Random selection was used to allocate each student’s ‘ingredients’. Again the students were working in threedimensional design and had not entered their final year. They were linked in pairs to encourage shared dialogue, yet each was required to create an outcome. To enhance students’ reflective and analytical skills, they were asked to keep a research log to capture their explorations, then share their findings through a concise four-slide PowerPoint presentation summarizing their 11-day workshop experience. An ‘evaluation star’10 was used to find out to what extent the workshop had affected participants’ learning. Used before and after the project, this device helped students to self-evaluate achievement against stated learning criteria: ability to work collaboratively; level of professionalism and open-mindedness. Of note were the significant increases (over 25 per cent) in self-confidence, creativity and critical ability levels – features any learning project would wish to achieve, but that would normally remain obscured by the traditional focus on outcomes rather than the learning experience. The overall student response had similarities to the first workshop, but the additional refinements and mechanisms for reflection – research logs, PowerPoint presentation and star evaluation – provided a richer learning experience. This workshop shed light on the potential to adapt the understandings to other contexts. In late 2009 we brought together practitioner-researchers from arts and health care to explore the possibility of forming an experienced interdisciplinary research team to investigate the concept of ‘wellbeing’ from multiple perspectives, aimed to engage with the elderly – the ‘ageing well’. The project’s title is Making Sense of Well-being: Creative Interventions Engendering New Understandings of Ageing Well. Its key research question was ‘What role might “art” play in exploring well-being in the ageing population?’ The importance of creative participatory activity is acknowledged within various studies,11 and was also the focus of Cohen’s work at The Centre on Ageing in Washington DC, discussed in his book The Creative Age (2000). In order to further the collaboration and establish common ground, we all agreed to participate in what we called a ‘creative intervention’ – a workshop similar to the Making Sense projects we carried out with students but using generic stimuli to assist future transferability. In

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April 2010 eight practitioner-researchers – four from art and four from health (three other participants worked remotely) – were involved in an intensive three-hour workshop. A new evaluation method was tested: coloured labels were used to capture immediate reactions before, during and at the end of the workshop and hung on an ersatz tree branch. We named this means of sharing individual responses to the Making Sense experience an ‘evaluation tree’.12 There was a high level of interaction, a willingness to engage with openness and trust in the value of the collective experience and progress towards a greater shared understanding of our potential capacity to move forward as a research team. Making Sense had bridged a territorial gap. Developing on from the Creative Intervention staff workshop, a new interdisciplinary collaborative workshop involving 17 pre-final-year students in arts and health was facilitated by us over one structured day in March 2011. Six students participated from each of the three subject areas of sculpture, occupational therapy and three-dimensional design. They were formed into teams comprising one student from each subject.13 Appropriate multi-sensory stimuli ‘ingredients’ were offered to each team for random selection (as in previous workshops) including an extended range of everyday materials for ‘making’ (to avoid inferred artistic bias). Star and tree evaluations were also used. In this particular project four mechanisms offered opportunities for interaction: the workshop space, research logs, ‘objects’ (outcomes of the making experiences) and peer evaluation. The space, with its circular layout of tables, allowed for all activities to be visible and encouraged verbal and physical interaction across the room. Although we mooted the idea of research logs in the 2009 workshop, we did not insist on their use. So in this interdisciplinary workshop we decided to promote this method in order to encourage reflection-in-action and on-action. For commonality students were given an A4 plain paper booklet in which to keep their research log. The terminology is important. The term ‘sketchbook’ is loaded, creating assumptions about draughtsmanship and artistic capability. In fact we could not distinguish between disciplines when reviewing all the logbooks. They created a usable ‘space’ for individual notations and visual exploration of stimuli, a means to start discussions, capture speculative thinking during ‘quasi-dialogues’ (Tsoukas 2009)

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and a way of finally organizing thoughts and responsibilities for team presentations. The teams created a diverse range of artefacts or outcomes – now recognized as ‘epistemic objects’. Acting as ‘a materialized log’ of the making process, these embodied the shared understanding of the team at that moment. The objects were the focus of attention during each team presentation. The ensuing discussion around each object provided the opportunity for individuals to reflect and compare experiences of ‘making sense’. A new feature of the workshop was peer evaluation, complementing the ‘private’ self-evaluations of performance using the star pro forma. This interactive form of evaluation promotes deep engagement with one’s own learning and that of peers by encouraging listening, attentiveness and understanding of various levels of achievement. This had the effect of keeping everyone engaged, simultaneously considering standards and generating discussion about learning. Feedback from the students (evidenced in their research logs) revealed the value of interdisciplinary working, a positive feature of the workshop being seen as the opportunity to interact with others/new people. Methodologically this was thought beneficial: ‘We fed off each other’s ideas to develop our end result.’ We considered this workshop the most successful to date, having the richest content, the most robust structure and, having benefited from iterative rigour applied to its construction, being of the greatest value. Bernadette Spendley’s logbook exemplifies visual and transformative thinking and the use of annotation to reflect and critically analyse emerging understandings. Examples of the outcomes from the interdisciplinary teams are shown in Figure 18. The workshops were an attempt to structure and evaluate what Bolt in ‘Materializing pedagogies’ (2006b) has termed ‘materializing pedagogies’.

So What Did We Learn from the Making Sense Workshops? Underpinned by the theories of Heidegger, Bolt calls for the development of an ‘alternative pedagogy to the conceptually and contextually driven one that currently dominates art education’. Bolt proposes an approach that grounds understanding in ‘material thinking’ that 219

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Figure 17. Bernadette Spendley, photographic detail from logbook exemplifying visual and transformative thinking (sculpture practice), 2011

emerges as a result of the interaction between two intelligences – that of material itself, or the ‘materials of a situation’, and that of the artist’s creativity. According to Heidegger, we come to know the world theoretically only after understanding it through active use, through

Figure 18. Carole Gray and Gordon Burnett, Making Sense workshops, 2011, photograph of diverse outcomes from three different interdisciplinary teams 220

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manipulation – through ‘handling’. In championing ‘handling’, Bolt is not suggesting a return to a skills-based pedagogy, but rather that the ‘human-tool relationship’ should be re-conceptualized.14 She concludes by suggesting that material thinking is ‘the logic of practice’. Tantalizingly the paper stops short of proposing exactly how these ideas might be realized in curricula, and this was the starting point for our pedagogic explorations with students. We believe that the Making Sense workshops were a different kind of learning experience for our students. Usually, undergraduate projects (especially in UK design and craft) would focus on a theme/topic for personal interpretation. Such projects would last between four and six weeks, with wide-ranging group discussions at mid- and endpoints of the learning experience, the emphasis being on the resolution of individual finished work. Although assessment criteria would be brought to bear on performance and output, no explicit means of student self-evaluation would usually be employed. By contrast, the Making Sense workshop experience immediately engages students with a disorientating, unpredictable starting point for enquiry, with given, yet disparate, sets of sensory stimuli but no theme. The requirement to work collaboratively within a highly structured timescale and a short making period challenges familiar individual creative strategies, prompting students to generate alternative ways to begin creative action. The requirement to work through dialogue allows the trading of different perspectives to extend perceptions and widen interpretations revealing greater possibilities. The requirement that teams share understandings, through ‘telling the story’ of their experience, promotes critical reflection towards making sense. This Making Sense learning experience has echoes in Ray Land’s ideas on ‘threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge’ as a transformational approach to learning. He says: ‘Engagement by the learner with an unfamiliar knowledge terrain and the ensuing reconceptualization may involve a reconstitution of, or shift within, the learner’s subjectivity, and perhaps identity’ (Land 2011). In this process, the learner enters into a state of liminality – ‘in-betweenness’, neither here nor there – uncertain and dislocated. In crossing this threshold and leaving this state the learner may understand things differently with an altered sense of self.

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The pre-and post-project self-evaluation stars based on observation of processes and outcomes, were used as previously. These revealed how the Making Sense experience had affected key capabilities and self-perceptions. Due to the nature of the project, we might have assumed that the main shift in self-perception would focus on increases in creative capabilities. However, interestingly, confidence emerged as the most enhanced factor, consistently evidenced from the 2009 and 2011 workshops. We suggest that being confronted with uncertainty and having to deal with it rapidly, then emerging from the process having made some sense of the initial chaos, appears to have increased the participants’ belief in their individual abilities. This exemplifies the importance of ‘what the process of making concrete things reveals to us about ourselves’ (Sennett 2009: 8). The practitioner-researchers participating in the Creative Intervention workshop acknowledged the experience as an opportunity for ‘serious play’ (Schrage 2000). Notwithstanding the challenges of working across disciplines (arts and heath), encountering difference, a high level of improvisation and suspension of judgement, the most striking feature of this workshop was how each participant wholeheartedly engaged in ‘story-making’ as a means of developing understanding and in ‘storytelling’ as a public sharing. This first interaction with health practitioners helped to highlight how our approach differs from art therapy, in which focus is on psychotherapy; a trained professional employing art-based assessment methods as ‘a primary mode of communication towards healing’ (British Association of Art Therapists 2012). In contrast, Making Sense seeks to encourage learning through creative participatory activity, initiated by practitioner-researchers. Finally, four years of enquiry (still ongoing) might be called a ‘slow enquiry’15 in the sense of: being mindful of detail, valuing the history inherent in reusable materials and putting time into creating small items. The practice encourages the maker to be naturally meditative as they create. ‘Slow’ ends up being a way of being. This approach contrasts with ‘action research’16 in pedagogy that relies upon a shorter cycle of implementation, reflection and subsequent action. From this enquiry, grounded in iterative learning experiences, we have a strong basis for developing new Making Sense workshops in new contexts – for example, with the ‘ageing well’.

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We return to a key question of this book: ‘What are the inventions of creative research?’ In response we offer the inventive contributions of Making Sense as a springboard for consideration and application by others.

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Drawing Out Principles

Creative Enquiry as a Means of Questioning and Transforming Practices The Making Sense research programme has given us as makers the opportunity to extend our own experience of creative enquiry. This we would characterize as immersion, and through this we have become key ‘instruments’ of exploration, constantly attentive to and ‘tuned in’, as a whole ‘sensing body’, to the possibilities of enquiry. As educators we need to be continuously challenged – through practice and teaching – and attuned to change and new pedagogic thinking in order to be the best educators we can be. Engaging in the Making Sense creative enquiry and sharing that first-hand experience and its outcomes with peers and students has strengthened our credibility.

Engaging Students in a Research Programme to Which They Actively Contribute A key strength of Making Sense is that it is conceptualized and realized as a research programme – an intentional and publicly declared creative enquiry. As a formal programme it invites in explorers and values their distinct contributions. In the higher education context we believe that students need to be introduced to concepts of artistic inquiry at the beginning of the higher education process – research is not solely a postgraduate activity. To this end we have deliberately engaged undergraduates in the programme and value their contributions to it. Here they will encounter collaborative, dialogic and participatory working and different perspectives on being, knowing and doing; they will be exposed to the discourse of creative inquiry. Here the seeds of a new generation of creative enquirers might be sown. 223

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Making Sense – A Form of Critical Pedagogy Making Sense has allowed us to engage in developing a kind of ‘critical pedagogy’ (Freire 1996). In asking students to grapple with random, unexpected stimuli, we are exposing them to an uncomfortable yet radical learning experience. We are implicitly asking them to question what learning could be and how it might be achieved. We are giving students the opportunity to be free to explore, to reject their usual learning methods – to unlearn, but to take responsibility for whatever emerges as long as it ‘makes sense to me’. Involving other educators (health, creative practitioners) presents opportunities for challenging our own preconceptions of teaching and learning, and by extension revitalizing – even reinventing – pedagogies.

Cross-Weave of Thought – A New Conversation We would agree with Carter (2004) that creative research is best done in collaboration, as this requires a certain amount of explicitness and, as Belenky (1997) has observed, it also involves ‘connected criticism’. Making Sense has created new opportunities for collaborative learning experiences in and across disciplines. In engaging both students and other practitioner-researchers from different disciplines (health) and in other cultural contexts (Australia, Finland) the enquiry has been extended and enriched, demonstrated in particular by the work of Barbara Bolt. Within collaborative, interdisciplinary and cross-cultural learning experiences lie opportunities for developing new approaches to co-reflection/co-resonance in practice and research.

Making New Connections in the Contextualization of Creative Enquiry The Making Sense enquiry has drawn together classic and contemporary thinking on experience, reflection and learning, contributing to the ongoing contextualization of creative enquiry, especially material practices and pedagogies. New links have been made between creative practice and other disciplines, for example the recognition of Knorr Cetina’s (2001) ‘epistemic object’ as what artists or designers would know as ‘approximations’ or prototypes respectively. This suggests that 224

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we need to search well beyond comfortable disciplinary boundaries for ideas that might have resonance and extend the language to express tacit knowledge.

Meaningfulness’ and ‘Indelible Impressions’: Developing the Language of Creative Enquiry In gauging the validity of creative enquiry perhaps we need to be very inventive – first of all with terminology. Social scientists replaced validity (a scientific term) with ‘trustworthiness’ – more suitable and nuanced to their human context of enquiry. In creative enquiry the notion of meaningfulness could be said to be a version of ‘making sense’. Does this enquiry and its outcomes make sense to you? Does it resonate, resound, reverberate? Can it be taken forward by you into new creative investigations? In considering the term ‘impact’, can this hammering, noisy word be replaced with something more poetic like ‘indelible impression’ in the sense of a strong, favourable or remarkable effect, incapable of being erased or obliterated?

Creative Enquiry as a Means of ‘Inhabiting’ The Discourse Only through engaging in creative enquiry ourselves did we begin to experience and then recognize aspects of the discourse, for example Sch¨on’s ‘epistemology of practice’. This might have remained merely an intriguing phrase for us had we not actually come to understand it through immersion in creative enquiry. This process of realization leads us into ‘inhabiting the discourse’ (Born 1997).

Making Sense : Applying Creative Research in Other Contexts We return to our ‘material invention’, a transferable framework to stimulate creative enquiry through imagination, collaboration and criticality (see Fig. 16). The visual distils and embodies what we currently know about the Making Sense methodology, thus representing the stability of an epistemic object. However, we offer it up as a mutable thing – a framework open to testing in new contexts. Depending on the context of operation, the framework can include its own ‘constellations’ of relevant references to key thinking and practice. Therefore it is ripe for 225

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further development and creative transformation, as we think it can be applied in a range of other contexts: pedagogy, social and organizational well-being and growth.

Making Sense: Engendering Imaginative Learning Strategies Taking the Making Sense methodology as a starting point, Bolt’s projects with art students in Melbourne in 200917 and Helsinki in 201118 have extended/adapted and confirmed that the underlying research and the Making Sense project structure has real transferability. We are therefore confident that the framework can be used in other creative and performing arts learning situations such as dance and drama, and at higher degree levels, in which a significant level of creative and critical abilities and self-confidence are expected. Having worked closely with colleagues from health and social care disciplines again, we are convinced that the framework could be effectively adapted and re-contextualized to stimulate new creative learning strategies in which dialogue and empathy are central, for example in nursing education. It would be interesting to test the framework in science and technology disciplines, in which methodologies of enquiry are largely established (and often unchallenged) and bodies of knowledge are the bedrock for learning. Serendipity has historically played a part in the discovery of new knowledge through the accidental and unexpected. The Making Sense framework, with the principle of chance at its core, might ‘agitate’ the questioning of established working practices, opening up different ways of enquiring and extending reflexivity. Within what might be called ‘public pedagogy’, the International Futures Forum have developed a kitbag19 to ‘support inner growth and help people deal more effectively with today’s unprecedented challenges’ and ‘develop capacity for real learning, growth and healing’. This is an interesting initiative in the context of well-being from a psychological perspective, giving the individual an accessible means of personal development. Whilst this is an aim of Making Sense, the framework also encourages interpersonal development through collaboration within a social context. This could be valuable for community groups, who may want to improve interpersonal skills towards building

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the capacity for cooperative working, through a non-hierarchical and imaginative activity. In this context Making Sense contributes to the notion of lifelong learning.

Making Sense: Possibilities and Potentials of the Ageing Well As a champion of the possibilities and potentials of the ‘second half ’ of life, Cohen claims: Creativity and its effects may be a solo experience in which we develop a new attitude or facet of self- understanding, and by doing so, fundamentally alter the way we approach and experience life, relationships and activities. (Cohen 2000: 12–13)

We believe the Making Sense approach to creative participation can expand Cohen’s assertion and counter the general assumption that ageing brings inevitable decline. Drawing from our collaborations and dialogue with colleagues from health, who have extensive experience of working within the elderly community, the following protocols have emerged for creative participation with this constituency:

r Building trust through dialogue with participants (a maximum of r

r r r

ten, including facilitators) electing to willingly engage with a new experience; Presenting the aim of the project – stimulating confidence, selfreliance, resilience – in an atmosphere of informality, emphasizing that facilitators are equal participants in the activity of ‘serious play’; Being confronted by three randomly selected sensory stimuli, for example a personal object, an enigmatic image and a short soundscape (evocative audio clip); Participants respond using everyday materials, prompting creative connections; Finally, working in pairs as ‘buddies’ for mutual support in dealing with inhibition and uncertainty through creative participation, working towards new understandings, new possibilities and potentials – both personal and social. 227

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Making Sense: An Agent for Change and Growth From this point on we can only speculate as to the value of the Making Sense framework in organizations. However we suggest that it may have a role in developing the capacity to imaginatively deal with transformational change, in which performing more efficiently and effectively with fewer resources is key. Entrepreneurship – a holy grail for most organizations – can be defined as ‘the process of discovering new ways of combining resources’ (Sobel 2007). With its challenge to be imaginative and critical in bringing together minimal, disparate and sometimes disruptive stimuli, understandings that have emerged from Making Sense could play a role in engendering entrepreneurial skills towards innovation. Organizations are also concerned with providing a ‘healthy workplace’. Many existing approaches to this are hierarchical and instrumental, geared towards the productivity and profitability of the organization rather than the intrinsic well-being of the individual worker20 (Public Health Agency 2006). A more productive approach to understanding a ‘healthy workplace’ might be to start with the individual and their quality of life. This has been defined as ‘the degree to which a person enjoys the important possibilities of his or her life’ and explored through a conceptual model linking ‘being’, ‘belonging’ and ‘becoming’ (Quality of Life Research Unit, Toronto University 2012). Drawing on individual ‘being’, working through dialogue and collaboration to achieve ‘belonging’, moving towards personal and organizational ‘becoming’ and nurturing individuals’ enjoyment of possibilities is a good starting point from which to imagine and grow one’s role and responsibilities within the workplace. In acknowledging the autonomy of the individual, yet requiring creative interaction and sharing with others, Making Sense could play a role in creating a healthy workplace through encouraging the imaginations of the most precious resource of the organization.

Conclusion To summarize, we state that the invented framework for creative inquiry is valuable beyond an art and design-learning context. Our ‘material invention’ is a methodology that aims to stimulate capacity 228

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for imagination, critical reflection and collaboration by learning to engage with and resolve matters of uncertainty and complexity towards developing resilience through ‘serious play’. Seeds of resilience from this experience may be carried over into new situations of instability and challenge. Its value has been recognized internationally within the arts sector and has tentatively been tested with health practitioner-researchers. We have also speculated on its contribution to other pedagogic territories, possibilities and potentials for the ‘ageing well’ and healthier workplaces. We consider the Making Sense methodology – emergent through artistic inquiry – to be adaptable and therefore transferable where principles of chance and dealing with the unexpected might open up the doors of creativity to anyone who might wish to enter. The ‘material invention’, Making Sense: A Transferable Framework for Creative Inquiry, offers a means to cross the threshold.

Notes 1

This research and related publications since 2007 are archived on the web resource www.makingsenseresearch.net [accessed 30 July 2012].

2

Elaborated in a refereed DVD presentation, 2nd International Visual Methods conference, Open University, 15 September 2011. For access to the DVD, please contact the authors: [email protected].

3

Questions and prompts such as: ‘Describe what you feel about what you have created’, ‘Can you express what you understood about your intentions before you began to make the work?’, ‘Is your history of understanding “smoothly consistent” or were there pivotal moments when clarity of understanding occurred?’.

4

Presentations include: University of Helsinki, Finland; Gray’s School of Art, RGU, Aberdeen, Scotland; Glasgow School of Art, Scotland; Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town, South Africa; New Media Art, University of Liepaja, Latvia; Open University, Milton Keynes, UK.

5

For a detailed analysis of ‘epistemic objects’ in architectural design see Ewenstein, B. and Whyte, J. (2006) Knowledge practices in design: the role of visual representations as ‘epistemic objects’, EBK Working Paper 2005/06, Innovation Studies Centre, Tanaka Business School, Imperial College London.

6

See www.makingsenseresearch.net/MSgenesisprojectwork.html [accessed 30 July 2012].

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7

‘ ‘Somatic’ (Greek ‘somatikos’, soma: ‘living, aware, bodily person’) which means, pertaining to the body, experienced and regulated from within. The concept of soma posits that neither body nor mind is separate from the other; both are part of a living process. Many of the approaches in the field of somatics address the body-mind split endemic in Western culture and body-mind integration is a common goal. Freedom from restrictions in body and mind is another goal, so that the individual functions and thrives with full potential with self-regulation and independence within the environment in which he or she lives. A fundamental principle is that growth, change, and transformation are always possible at any age.’ Extract from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatics [accessed 25 October 2011].

8

A conferences series called Sensuous Knowledge is hosted by the Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Norway. These important conferences develop discourse on artistic research. See sensuousknowledge.org [accessed 16 July 2012].

9

All workshops took place at The Robert Gordon University, Scotland, UK. Details and visuals can be found on our web resource – makingsenseresearch.net/MSlearningprojects.html

[accessed 16 July

2012]. 10

See makingsenseresearch.net/MSlearningstareval.html [accessed 16 July

11

For example, Coughlin, MIT AgeLab, 2009; UK Arts Councils, 2007

2012]. and 2009; ongoing CAHHM project, Durham University; Health and Arts summary report, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2008. 12

See makingsenseresearch.net/MSlearningrevauationtressl2011results.html [accessed 16 July 2012].

13

One sculptor did not participate.

14

A more detailed discussion of this is provided in Bolt (2006a) ‘A non standard deviation: handlability, praxical knowledge and practice-led research’ in Speculation and Innovation: Applying Practice Led Research In the Creative Industries Conference RealTime Arts Vol. 74 (special issue) AugustSeptember, Queensland University of Technology, Australia.

15

Extract from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow Movement#Slow Art [accessed 25 October 2011].

16

For examples see ERIC Educational Resources Information Centre

17

Using the Crafticulation paper as a key reference, Bolt undertook a

eric.ed.gov [accessed 20 September 2011]. Making Sense project with 25 pre-final-year undergraduate students at

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level of contextual and theoretical input and was interlaced with seminars, tutorials and workshops. Students’ response to the project was summarized by Bolt as ‘bemused but always ready for a new adventure’.

MAKING SENSE

Melbourne University. The project lasted 12 weeks, included a high

See union.unimelb.edu.au/georgepaton/archive [accessed 21 September 2010]. 18

Bolt conducted a student workshop at Helsinki Academy of Fine Art, Finland. Ten students (undergraduates and postgraduates) participated over two and a half days. The brief: ’Produce a series of investigations that shed light on your situated experience of Finnish light.’ Four ARP categories were used: substance – light (given); method (emergent); place (local situated knowledge/experience) and time (two and a half days). Students’ initial reactions were again of bemusement. Bolt’s facilitation of the workshop was started by a discussion of her own situated experience of light and its influence on her art practice. She increased the level of interaction and dialogue between students, for example by structured ‘response’ stages throughout the workshop. This Finnish workshop’s adaptation of her 2009 project demonstrates a critical and iterative development process, tailored to local conditions.

19

See www.internationalfuturesforum.com/iff kitbag.php [accessed 16 July

20

This is borne out by our own experience of management training as

2012]. academics within a university, in which a non-participatory facilitator delivers known content, with expectations towards known solutions, resulting in convergent thinking.

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12 The Effective and the Evocative: A Spectrum of Creative Practice Research Jillian Hamilton and Luke Jaaniste

In the emerging body of literature on creative practice research, art and design often appear as undifferentiated terms. They are bracketed together (art-and-design), referred to as interchangeable terms (art/design), or nested together as if one discipline encompasses the other. While it may be that some authors assume that the research approaches of their own discipline can simply be extrapolated to another field, this conflation can largely be traced back to the mid1990s and early debates on the nature of ‘practice-led’ research (see, for example, Newbury 1997). Then, focusing on shared principles and presenting a unified field was institutionally and politically valuable to a creative sector seeking recognition of its research activities in an academic context where the sciences and humanities have traditionally defined the nature of research. This tactical advantage has come with associated costs however. Eliding important distinctions between disciplinary research objectives, methodologies, processes and outcomes can be confusing and disorientating for higher research degree students. Moreover, by understating the diversity of creative practice research, we can inadvertently constrain the invention and innovation that arises from an expanded field. 232

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So far, little work has been done to map and differentiate the research approaches of art and design. A number of edited volumes have brought together multidisciplinary case studies (for example, Bourke et al. 2005; Barrett and Bolt 2007; Brien and Williamson 2009), with a range of exemplars serving to illustrate disciplinary approaches. Also, quite early in the framing of practice-led research, Stephen Scrivener wrote a paper entitled ‘Reflection in and on action and practice in creative-production doctoral projects in art and design’ (2000). In it, he sought to explain the differing approaches of his crossdiscipline postgraduate research students by distinguishing between ‘technological research projects’, which he broadly associated with problem-solving design research, and the ‘creative-production research projects’ that he associated with art practice. In this chapter we will take up this work of mapping creative practice research. Like Scrivener, we do not distinguish between research approaches in strict disciplinary terms. Neither do we adopt his categories, however, for we would argue that research in art and design embraces technology and creative production in equal measure. Instead, we will argue that the differences in creative practice research primarily arise from the goals of the research, which in turn impacts on the research methods, intentions invested in the resulting ‘artefacts’ (creative works, products, events, techniques and so on) and the knowledge claims made for the research outcomes in the writing/reporting. We will use the terms effective practice research and evocative practice research to encapsulate the spirit of these differences in research intent. In broad terms, what we call effective practice research can be associated with (but is not restricted to) design practice. It pursues a solution (or resolution) to a specific problem that is important to a particular community, and it incorporates practice with the intention of producing an artefact that effects change – hence the term ‘effective research’. The research process involves first investigating and understanding the problem, its contexts and its stakeholders; then establishing principles, strategies and processes to develop and implement a solution which makes a situation, product or process more efficient or effective in some way. While the artefact that is produced as an outcome of this type of research may engender an evocative dimension, it can be evaluated – because the principal research goal involves problem-solving – in terms of its elegance as a solution and the artefact can be tested in terms of

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its efficacy (how well it has effected the intended change). Empirical evidence may therefore serve to validate the new knowledge that is invested in the artefact. Evocative practice research is often associated with (but is not restricted to) art practice. As Scrivener points out, this type of research (which he describes as ‘creative-production’ research) is usually driven by individual preoccupations, cultural concerns or an aspect of human experience (such as memory, social issues or values, perception or emotion). In broad terms, the research goal is to generate artefacts that produce affect and resonance through evocation – hence our term, ‘evocative practice research’. This evocation cannot necessarily be measured and evaluated in specific terms because the artefact may have no direct ‘application’ but instead may be purposefully poetic and irreducible in its meaning. However, its research outcomes can be documented qualitatively and reflections upon the artefact (by audiences, peers, critics and the researcher/s themselves) can be drawn upon to consolidate and enrich the research findings. In this chapter we will detail these attributes of effective and evocative research. Then we will go on to illustrate the distinctions we make by describing research projects that exemplify the differences. By distinguishing the impetus, approaches and outcomes of effective and evocative research in this way, we establish that creative practice research is not a unified or undifferentiated field. It is important to note at the outset however that it is not our intention to establish a dichotomy between effective and evocative research; instead, we acknowledge that both research paradigms may engender attributes of the other. The differences we describe are a matter of intention and emphasis. We refer to a spectrum of research possibilities and, after first illustrating the poles of the spectrum, go on to describe projects that occupy positions in between. These research projects are not presented as partial, undifferentiated or intermediate practice. Rather, we argue that they arise out of, or through, an effective or evocative research intention and integrate aspects of the other paradigm in distinctive, deliberate and purposeful ways. As hybrid examples, they serve to illustrate ways in which a transmutation between effective and evocative research unfolds in practice, and its impact upon the resulting artefacts and research outcomes.

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There are number of common traits in creative practice research. Both effective and evocative modes involve creative processes and aesthetic judgement; both produce artefacts of some kind and may use similar technologies, fabrication and materials in doing so. However, beyond these attributes, fundamental distinctions can be made. These distinctions can be understood under three broad categories: differences in the forming contexts of the research (the research impetus, questions posed, research aims and objectives and the role of the artefact in relation to them); differences in practice (methodologies, methods of research and of production and sequencing) and differences in outcomes (the function of the resulting artefacts, forms of evaluation and ways of evidencing new knowledge).

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The Effective and the Evocative as Distinctive Research Approaches

Difference in Forming of Contexts (Impetus, Questions and Aims) A fundamental difference in creative practice research arises out of its forming contexts, by which we mean the impetus, motivation or trigger for the research project. The forming context is what gives rise to the types of questions asked and the research aims and this, in turn, inflects the approach and role that the resulting artefact plays in the research outcomes. Differences in forming contexts therefore play out throughout the entire research project. Effective practice research (often associated with design practice) pursues a solution or, as Rittel (2010) and Sch¨on (1983, 1987) put it, a ‘resolution’1 to a known problem, which is related to a particular community and a specific context. Because of this impetus, it might be described as ‘problem-based research’. The primary aim of the research is to effect change (make some situation or process more efficient, effective, suitable, usable or sustainable in some way) and the questions that are asked relate to how to this might be achieved. In pursuit of this goal, the researcher must gain a detailed understanding of the problem, its context and stakeholders in order to establish principles and processes to design and develop a solution. New knowledge arising from this research process is then invested in a resulting artefact (an object, 235

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process or communication) which functions as a purposefully designed and innovative solution to the problem. The research outcomes (design principles, methods and processes) that constitute the new knowledge are embodied in this concrete instantiation, which means that they can be verified in situ before being generalized to other, related situations or problems. On the other hand, evocative research (often aligned with art practice) is driven by individual and wider cultural preoccupations and concerns. As Scrivener (2000) notes, the forming context of this type of research (which he calls ‘creative production research’) usually arises out of the researcher’s existing practice, which remains central to the research process. The research aim is not the pursuit of a specific ‘problem’ per se, and it does not endeavour to provide a solution. As Scrivener writes, ‘[The] topic of interest . . . and creative objectives . . . resist, throughout the programme of work, reduction to single problem and its solution’ (Scrivener 2000: 3). The resulting artefact may have no obvious function as an object. Instead, it provides insights into, and contributes to, human experience more broadly. It relates to an aspect of human experience (for example, memory, emotion, socio-political concerns, relationships, phenomenology, perception) and the goal of the research is to produce affect through evocation and resonance. This means that the artefact’s evocativeness cannot be empirically measured, for the poetics of the artefact make it irreducible in its meaning.

Differences in Practice (Methodologies, Methods and Sequencing) Distinctions between forming contexts, research intentions and the role of the resulting artefact lead to differences in how and when questions and topics arise and they impact on the methodologies that are employed, the research processes that ensue and, importantly, the sequencing of the practice. As noted above, effective practice research projects involve determining a research question related to a particular situation and a particular community and then determining what is needed to solve the problem. This can only be achieved through a thorough analysis of the context; gaining an understanding of the stakeholders and determining 236

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the purpose of a solution. Such an investigation requires a pragmatic, empirical analysis. The researcher may employ ethnographic or social science methods (such as observations, interviews or focus groups) for this analysis, or a participatory research methodology to involve the input of stakeholders. Analysis of information gained from this empirical analysis (along with an understanding of established disciplinary norms and practices derived from a literature and contextual review) provides a foundation for developing a set of guiding principles and processes for developing the research outcomes. It is only when this substantial process of contextual research and planning has been conducted that the practice is initiated, and this may be as far as a third of the way into the project timeline. The role of the practice is to produce an artefact that, as an instantiation of the initial research findings, will be employed to enact or enable a solution. After the artefact has been produced and implemented, it is tested in context (using quantitative and qualitative methods) to evaluate its impact on the problem. This is how the new knowledge arising out of the investigation is substantiated. In evocative practice research, on the other hand, the term ‘practiceled’ is a much more suitable description of the research process. As Bolt (2004) and Barrett (2005) have established, the research question arises in and through the materiality and advent of the practice. That is, it is through an ongoing dialogue between the practice, theory and topic that the research focus begins to make itself clear and the shape of the research project gradually resolves. Gray (1993) refers to an expansive synthesis, and Barrett (2007) describes a dynamic interplay of understandings and experience drawn from theory, practice and the researcher’s situated knowledges, which form an emergent relationship with the artwork. This means that the research intentions may remain relatively fluid for a substantial part of the research process, and the research question may remain open-ended for some time. As Scrivener notes, ‘[G]oals and the priorities given to them may change as the work progresses [and] new issues and goals may emerge in response to the work in progress’ (Scrivener 2009: 216). This is because the research process is speculative and experimental and the project resists reduction to a single, specific problem. (Indeed, this is perhaps a precondition for the resulting artefact’s irreducible meaning.) It is expansive rather than deductive; practice-led rather than problem-based; more akin to ‘pure’

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than ‘applied’ research and more closely related to philosophy than to pragmatism. These fundamental differences in the research process mean that effective and evocative research unfold against a very different timeline. The research question is formed in advance in an effective practice project, while it may remain open for some time in an evocative practice project. And, while the practice may commence at the outset of an evocative research project (being practice-led), it is not until a substantial amount of research has been undertaken and a detailed plan and set of methods has been established that the practice commences in an effective practice research project. This helps to explain why those of us in combined faculties sometimes see higher research degree students at milestone presentations a year into candidature who do not yet have any practice to show, while others may have produced a substantial body of practice, but are as yet unclear about their research question. To those looking through the lens of the alternate paradigm, this state of affairs can seem perplexing but it simply reflects the sequencing of the research paradigm that the student is operating within. It is important to add some qualifications here. Firstly, it should not be assumed from the differences we have described that we are arguing that a key distinction between effective and evocative practice research is between the analytical and the intuitive. While the analysis of the problem and context tends to precede production in an effective research project, as in all research it is intuition and judgement that leads to investigation and innovation. And, while evocative research may evolve intuitively through the interplay of theory and practice and the situation of the creative practitioner, this is rounded out and resolved in practice through analytical insights. That is, both paradigms involve balancing tacit knowledge and analytical thinking. The differences are a matter of timing and emphasis. Secondly, it is important to note that both approaches involve reflection and iteration, albeit in different ways. Donald Sch¨on’s (1983) theories of reflective practice and principles of ‘reflection in and on action’ can be brought to bear in both effective and evocative paradigms. However, the type of feedback that informs the reflective process and the form of the iterative cycles that emerge from it diverge. In effective practice research, an iterative design process might take the form of an action research model for example, where prototyping

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(paper prototype, rapid prototype, functional prototype and so on) allows interim trialling and testing by a representative group of end users (through quantitative or qualitative surveys, interviews, observations). The purpose of this testing is to gauge the artefact’s functionality, usability and efficacy as it is developed. It is used to inform substantive changes in each iterative cycle, in the interests of refining the elegance of the solution and increasing its efficacy. On the other hand, an artist or performer working within an evocative approach might stage a number of preliminary exhibitions or performances, the purpose of which may not be to gather ‘data’ or to obtain successively closer approximations of a solution. Instead, they form part of an explorative process. Feedback from colleagues, peers or audience members tends to be gathered in a relatively informal setting, and it is likely to be qualitative rather than quantitative in nature. The purpose of gathering feedback is to allow the artist to reflect upon the project and its affect through the insights of others, and to shed new light on unfolding possibilities. That is, while researchers working in both modalities might seek feedback from experts, peers and audiences to inform the process of reflective practice, the purpose of the feedback and the degree of formality involved in its staging, as well as its form, give it different inflections.

Differences in Outcomes (The Artefact, Evidence and New Knowledge) The production of new knowledge (new to the world and not just to the individual researcher) is fundamental to all research projects. Without it there is no research, only replication of existing knowledge and practices. When reporting on research, both effective and evocative practice research projects present the artefact as a research outcome and frame it within an exegesis, an explication of its situation within its field, the methodologies used to realize it and the new knowledge produced by it. However there are marked differences between effective and evocative approaches in how the artefact functions as a research outcome, how it is framed as research, how it is evaluated and the way in which new knowledge is evidenced. Scrivener’s (2000) article helps to establish some differences. In it he argues that in ‘design technology research’ the artefact is an 239

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instantiation of a solution to a problem the researcher set out to solve. Implementing the artefact in context therefore allows the researcher to test and measure its efficacy, and thus to evaluate (and validate) the new knowledge that has been produced. He goes on, however, to conclude that ‘knowledge embodied in the artefact is more important than the artefact’ (Scrivener 2009: 216). That is, the new knowledge must be applicable and able to be generalized to other situations and similar problems if it is to constitute a knowledge claim. We would extrapolate this to say that when evaluating an effective research project, we can test the knowledge claim by considering how efficacious the artefact is in dealing with the named problem (how well it solves the problem, improves something or makes something more efficient or effective), but we must also consider the potential of the project’s broader research outcomes (such as analyses, new methods, design principles or conclusions) to be applied to other contexts. That is, while effective research could perhaps be described as ‘applied research’, it is the new knowledge that is applied in the artefact that constitutes the research claim. While the implementation of the artefact (in situ) is what allows the new knowledge to be tested, the knowledge invested in the artefact is larger than this single instantiation, and so is the primary contribution to new knowledge. There are a raft of other research contributions that might result from an effective research project – such as knowledge about the problem itself; insights into the community for whom the problem exists and methods of production or testing the artefact – but it is the knowledge that is invested within the artefact that is central to new knowledge claims. That is, to evaluate such a research project we must consider whether new knowledge is evident in the artefact, the efficacy it provides in relation to the stated problem and, importantly, whether the new knowledge can be generalized beyond this instance (as well as, of course, how effectively all of this has been understood, distilled and communicated). Scrivener sharply contrasts the capacity of the artefact in the formation of knowledge in ‘creative production projects’. Indeed, the title of his 2002 article ‘The art object does not embody a form of knowledge’ (2002) might lead us to conclude that Scrivener’s criteria for new knowledge is that it must be conclusive and measurable. We agree that the embodied experience and insight produced by

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an artwork is not necessarily consistent and that it therefore cannot be measured, so asking whether it has produced a specific effect in an individual audience member or group cannot provide a form of validation. But we would argue that the value of the evocative artefact lies not in whether it triggers a particular, reducible or measurable affect or resonance, but in its capacity to open up possibilities, experiences and insights for its audience. Expectations of deductive, evidencebased claims are associated with axiomatic and empirical traditions, and propositional arguments based around the capacity to know-that. But evocative research does not arise from such traditions and we must therefore seek to understand its knowledge claims in other ways. Scrivener’s explanation of what he thinks artworks do contribute provides a valuable lead. He writes that ‘[artworks provide] deep insights into emotions, human nature and relationships, and our place in the world . . . we experience these insights as possibilities rather than conclusions’ (Scrivener 2002: 1). He goes on to expand this point: ‘[A]rt making is concerned with providing ways of seeing and ways of being in relation to what is, was, or might be’ (Scrivener 2002: 12). This elegant phrase describes another kind of knowledge. To understand it as such, we must first concede that knowledge is not only rational and empirical but can be philosophical, poetic and experiential. That is, the term is broad enough to include a knowing-of the world that can be experienced through evocative artefacts (and this might extend beyond an artwork to other creative forms such as music, performance and so on). This understanding of what constitutes new knowledge and how it is invested within an artefact means that evocative research and its knowledge claims are not framed in relation to empirical (quantitative and/or qualitative) validation in an exegesis or reporting publication. Rather, it tends to be cast in relation to related philosophies, theories and practices and be described in terms of an extension of their poetics. It may include reflections (by its maker, critics and audiences) upon the experiences of the artefact and the insights it provides, but these do not serve to draw conclusions about the outcome or its reception and they do not serve to ‘verify’ the artefact. Instead, they document its evocation in an expansive, open-ended way and serve to illustrate an array of experiences and insights that the artefact has produced. Other contributions to knowledge might also arise from an evocative research project, such as insights into the preoccupations of the

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culture within which the artefact was produced or new methodologies, types of production and exhibition practices (or ways that the researcher or other practitioners have engaged with them). These claims are also associated, in some form, with the artefact, which is positioned at the centre of the research outcomes.

Effective and Evocative Practice Research Projects To illustrate the differences between the creative practice research approaches we have described, it is useful to consider two research projects that sit at opposite poles of the effective–evocative research spectrum. Both are successful doctoral research projects from Queensland University of Technology and here they help us to make concrete the differences we have described in terms of forming contexts, aims and questions; practice, methods and processes and the role of the artefact as a research outcome, as evidence and new knowledge. Both projects sit within the realm of digital media and, while both explore the potential of this new medium, they do so in very different ways and for quite different ends.

An Exemplar of Effective Practice Research What we have described as effective practice research is exemplified by a doctoral project entitled Resilience by design: A participatory approach to designing an interactive digital application for promoting children’s resilience by designer Oksana Zelenko (2012). The project was problem-based, with a research question that can be summarized as: How can we effectively support children in acquiring resilience through an experiential digital application? The research was contextual: it related to a particular community (primary schools). And the aim of the research was to design digital tools to complement and extend established approaches to building resilience (the capacity to bounce back from adverse circumstances) in primary school curricula. The objective of the (digital) artefact was to effect change – to increase the capacity of children to develop strategies of resilience. Because it was contextually specific, the research process first involved establishing the practices and priorities of the stakeholders through observations, interviews, focus groups and creative workshops. 242

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Together with a literature and contextual review of existing design strategies, this evaluation was used to establish a design methodology (participatory design). Then, with the children cast as co-researchers, the project involved identifying interface and interaction design principles to underpin an effective design solution (Zelenko and Hamilton 2008). It was only after this substantial body of research – and more than a year into the project – that the practice began. The practitionerresearcher therefore did not see this project as ‘practice-led’ and never used this term. During the design and development phase, the children’s participatory workshops involved design complemented by user-testing, which was conducted through a combination of participant observations, surveys, focus groups and semi-structured interviews. The resulting data was carefully analysed and the findings fed into the project’s iterative development (Zelenko and Hamilton 2008). The resulting artefacts were prototyped digital tools that presented a variety of interactive activities for individuals and groups of children. In both their form and function they were instantiations of the concepts, interaction design principles and methods of participation that were developed through the research process. They were tested by a sample group of children and teachers, who evaluated their capacity to help understand and acquire attributes of resilience. In reporting, the project was situated within the fields of health and education as well as interaction and interface design practice. An outline of the participatory design and evaluation methods was provided, along with the story of how the research had unfolded. The design principles that arose from the methods used were identified and explained, followed by a description of how they were applied to the resulting design outcomes. The quantitative and qualitative analysis was presented as evidence of the efficacy of the tools, along with an explanation of how the tools incorporated the principles developed through the research process. This established the efficacy of the artefacts, but it also established the effectiveness of their inherent design principles. A comparison of the outcomes with other (offline and online) approaches to fostering resilience situated the research outcomes in the trajectory of research in the field. In this way, the designer-researcher demonstrated how the design principles that were developed through the research methods were applied, tested and verified (instantiated) in

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You said resilience is...

show all qualities in 1st place

about you

show all qualities in 2nd place

Facing challenges

confidence

bouncing back

being strong

me

show all qualities in 3rd place

BONUS!

growing m Fa ily

and it looks like resilience can be a whole lot of things • choose 8 things from the list above that you think are the essential qualities of resilience • dreg the chosen words onto the graph

NEXT– use the stickers on the right to mark top three qualities out of the eight you have put on the diagram

1st

2nd

3rd

find one quality mentioned the most (any category)

show top three most mentioned qualities

drag & drop color stickers on words

Figure 19. Oksana Zelenko, Visualising Resilience, 2008, exemplar of digital media prototype interfaces

the artefact, as well as how they could be generalized for the broader benefit of the field.

An Exemplar of Evocative Practice Research What we describe as evocative research is exemplified by a doctoral project entitled A porous field: Blurring the boundaries of perception (2007) by intermedia artist Ali Verban. The research goal of this project was to produce a series of installations to evoke memories of immersion (antiphonic choirs in lofty, Gothic cathedrals, diving in an ocean and being adrift at sea) which the practitioner-researcher described poetically in the preface of her exegesis. The objective of the research was to simulate sensory perceptions of immersion within the ‘neutral’ space of a gallery through digitally manipulated sound, image and video installations. This project was practice-led. Emerging from the researcher’s established art practice, it began with experimentation into the manipulation and projection of image and sound, while research into theories of phenomenology and the precedents of intermedia installation art were conducted. It was well into the project – after two interim exhibitions had been staged – that the research aims 244

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Figure 20. Ali Verban, in an other light, 2006, intermedia installation.

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and research questions were identified. That is, while the researcher’s prior practice, along with a theoretical and contextual review, informed the practice from the outset, both the research intention (to understand the contextual and physiological elements of perceptual and sensory experiences of immersion) and the research question (whether these conditions could be produced in a neutral gallery space to evoke the audience’s own embodied memories) emanated from the practice as it unfolded. During development, feedback from respected peers (other artists, academics and critics) was gathered through an informal process. It was not recorded, quantified or analysed in detail but the insights that this dialogue provided helped the researcher to reflect upon the emerging practice and research questions and consider further possibilities. The resulting artefacts included three immersive intermedia art installations, which embodied the philosophical concepts, aesthetic principles and understandings of perception and immersive experience that had been developed through the course of the research. The effect of the installations was not tested through formal evaluation methods. Indeed, the researcher resisted absolutely any suggestion that she ask specific questions that would lead the audience to interpret, analyse or verify the perceptual sensations produced. Instead, she invited open-ended responses. Diverse and often poetically written, these responses were testament to the depth and breadth of the evocation of the work, the contingencies of the body and spatial immersion, and the states of awareness and perception that had been provoked (ways of seeing, being in and knowing of the world). The research and its outcomes (the artefacts and their reception) were framed in the exegesis through reference to art historical precedents (minimalist installation, intermedia art and so on), philosophical understandings and phenomenology. And, while the principles that were drawn from these sources contributed to the development of the work and were presented in the exegesis, the work itself (and its affect) was positioned as more important than the knowledge that could be abstracted and generalized from it (such as principles and processes for producing a sense of immersion). The two research projects we have described sit at opposite poles of the effective–evocative spectrum. This is because, while both are creative practice digital media projects, they have arisen out of

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very different contexts and motivations (to effect change/to evoke experiences). This key difference has impacted profoundly on the kinds of questions the researchers have asked, and the aims that the research projects have pursued. In turn, it has led to very different methodologies, methods and processes being adopted, which have had a marked impact on the timeline of the research (particularly in relation to the advent of the practice). And, ultimately, it has determined the form of the research outcomes and how they should be understood – not only in terms of their reading, but their impact, the types of new knowledge they have produced and how it is evidenced.

Hybrid Research Practices that Combine Effective and Evocative Approaches As we noted in the introduction to this chapter, we do not intend for the research approaches we have described to be understood as a delimited dichotomy. Not all creative practice research projects sit at the poles we have described and there are positions to consider besides the two we have presented so far. While experimental art practices tend to gravitate towards an evocative research paradigm, and innovative problem-based design practices often tend towards the effective research paradigm, some research projects shift between. Some projects may appear to be problem-based design solutions, while being intentionally evocative. Others may appear to have an artistic, evocative outcome, while they have been developed with the intention of being effective. That is, it is possible for researchers to assume the research tendencies and apparent outcomes of one paradigm in pursuit of an underlying goal that is related to the other. This hybridity is perhaps best illustrated by examples.

Harnessing the Evocative to be Effective A research project that employed evocative research methods in pursuit of an effective goal is an Honours project entitled ‘More than half a life’ by communication designer Gavan Bright (2008). The research project focused on digital media approaches to HIV education/prevention materials. Its aim was to counter complacency about safe sex after two decades of traditional health promotion and advertising. The research 247

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was thus problem-based, asking: ‘How might we employ new (digital) tools and strategies to increase engagement with safe sex messages?’ The research was contextualized in what has been described as the ‘postAIDS’ era, and it related to a specific community (gay men). The aim of the research, as well as the role of the artefact, was to effect change: to increase engagement with safe sex messages and thereby reduce the occurrence of high-risk behaviours. The research process first involved contextual investigation: establishing the target audience’s perceptions of traditional advertising through survey questions about a recent government-sponsored poster campaign. Together with a literature and contextual review of existing marketing material and strategies, this primary research helped to establish the design ‘problem’, namely that a defence mechanism (personal disassociation or ‘blunting’) was coming into play in response to the advertising (Bright 2008). The researcher then embarked on a radical shift. Informed by communication and ‘persuasive media’ theories, he speculated that an evocative first-person digital story with a direct appeal to the audience might stimulate a response of empathy, which might in turn trigger personal identification with risks (a precondition for behaviour change). The research shifted into an evocative research modality, with the intuitive production of a first-person digital story: a self-portrait comprised of an emotive montage of images and voiceover (Bright 2008). Its making progressed as an artwork might, with its meaning remaining open as informal feedback from academics and peers fed into the researcher’s understandings of the affect and resonance produced by the work in progress. In contrast to the objective instrumentality of much HIV health education materials, the resulting digital story was intimate, sad, funny, confessional, courageous, redemptive and compassionate, but its message was not closed. That is, it was evocative and affective. Indeed, we might go further and say that it provided deep insights into emotions, human nature, relationships, our place in the world, ways of seeing and ways of being in relation to what is, was, or might be. Switching back to effective practice mode, the design researcherpractitioner then tested the impact of the digital story upon a sample target audience, who evaluated its capacity to engage them, educate them about risk and, ultimately, to influence their approach to protection. The quantitative and qualitative data that was produced was

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analyzed and compared against the initial (poster campaign) survey data. In the exegesis this comparative data was presented as evidence of improved efficacy. The guiding principles and design processes were also presented in the exegesis in a generalized form, to facilitate the uptake of the project design, strategies and methods in other public health projects. It could be said that many health promotion campaigns (and indeed advertising in general) employ evocation to be effective (to persuade an audience to do something or believe something). What makes it possible to position this project as research is a combination of its intent; its questions; its investigative methodology, which combined analysis, speculation and experimentation and the formulation of new and theoretically underpinned design principles; the role of the artefact as an (evaluated) instantiation of the new knowledge produced and the transferability of the findings (the design principles and methods) to other contexts. In terms of where it sits on the effective-evocative research spectrum, we might declare this project to be a hybrid of effective and evocative research processes. Evocative research methods in the production of the artefact led to an outcome that is as evocative as any art practice. But the research intent of the project (to effect change) and the role of the artefact as an instantiation of this intent pulls the project to the effective practice research end of the spectrum.

Transposing an Evocative Practice into an Effective Research Project Moving beyond the realm of postgraduate research projects into funded research, we will now consider an example of a research project that occupies a hybrid position in the evocative and effective spectrum. The Designing Sound for Health and Well-being project (2010) was an interdisciplinary ARC-funded project led by Elizabeth Grierson and Keely Macarow in collaboration with sound artists Philip Samartzis and David Brown and emergency medicine researchers Tracey Weiland, George Jelinek and Craig Winter. To paraphrase the description by Weiland et al. (2011), the research project posed the question: Can composed music and soundtracks be used as a tool to reduce anxiety in patients in hospital emergency wards by diverting their 249

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perceptual attention? Described by the researchers as ‘designing for social contexts’, the research was contextualized within an emergency ward of St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne. It was relevant to a particular community: patients presenting at a public hospital with trauma or other emergency conditions. It was problem based: its objective was to effect change (make a situation less daunting for patients) through the production of sound based artefacts. Building upon an earlier research project between St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne and RMIT (the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology), which concluded that 99 per cent of surveyed patients thought that music could improve their Emergency Department experience (Weiland et al. 2011), it could be said that the project arose out of an established (medical) research field. However it also involved the development of original music and, in this regard, arose out of existing experimental creative practices of the musician researchers. In the preliminary phase of the research, the research process assumed an evocative research mode. It relied on the sound artists creating works that they subjectively hypothesized would, through their evocation, induce a relatively relaxed mood. Soundtracks (field recordings, compositions, electro-acoustic tracks and so on) were developed iteratively with feedback from fellow researchers (as one might expect in an evocative research paradigm). Then the focus and purpose of the feedback shifted. A hundred emergency patients were played the tracks, and they evaluated them to establish which were most effective in reducing anxiety. Based on the resulting survey data, an iterative process ensued and four new 20-minute sound recordings were created: an electro-acoustic music composition; a composition based on field recordings and a composition with an embedded binaural beats (which had been shown in prior studies to potentially induce meditation-like states) (Weiland et al. 2011). These tracks were then played to 170 patients, who were tested for pre- and post-listening anxiety levels using a medical statistical survey instrument (Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory) (Weiland et al. 2011). That is, the sound compositions (the artefacts) were formally evaluated in situ, using quantitative evaluation to measure their efficacy. This testing allowed the researchers to draw a definitive conclusion, namely: ‘In moderately anxious ED patients, state anxiety was reduced by 10%–15% following exposure to purpose-designed sound interventions’ (Weiland et al.

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THE EFFECTIVE AND THE EVOCATIVE Figure 21. RMIT and St Vincent’s Hospital, Designing Sound for Health and Well-being, 2010, photograph by Katharine Dettmann.

2011: 698). This result was context-specific but, through publication of the research methods and outcomes, the approach and findings can be generalized and extrapolated to other contexts (other types of hospital wards, for example) or used as a precedent for research into whether other modes of arts practice offer similar potential. That is, the research occupies a place in a trajectory of new knowledge generation. Where this project sits on the effective-evocative research spectrum is a matter for consideration as the project evolved out of both existing 251

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design/medical enquiries and an existing creative arts practice. Clearly, the music and sound researchers approached the design problem speculatively, and the music they produced was evocative. However, the research intent required the music researchers to shift their practices into an effective research paradigm. As they write, ‘This process is counterintuitive to how the composers would normally operate as they are normally guided by a self-generated set of ideas and references for an audience who are already familiar with the context in which they work’ (Macarow et al. 2009: 3). They go on to describe the project as applied research, and we would concur. But it is not simply applying existing research in practice; new knowledge and innovation has arisen through collaboration between differently situated, interdisciplinary researchers and the intersection of their methodologies. The intent of the project (to effect change) and the role of the artefact as an instantiation of this intent ultimately define the impetus of the research as effective, but the outcome was achieved through evocation and affect.

An Effective Research Approach Becomes Evocative Some projects take a seemingly opposite approach. An example is the -Remnant Emergency Artlab project Investigating the Bat/Human Problem (2010). This collaborative research project by Keith Armstrong, Natalie Jeremijenko, Leah Barclay, Tony Fry et al. was funded by various sources including the ARC and the Australia Council for the Arts. The research was contextual; it was triggered by the anticipated relocation of 22,000 grey-headed flying foxes (fruit bats) from the Royal Botanical Gardens in Sydney. The research project was problembased, addressing the question: ‘How can we begin to address the “human/bat problem” by devising new ways of protecting a keystone species through coexistence in an urban environment?’ The stated aim was ‘to investigate ways in which the ecological relationships between humans and the other “co-dwellers of our urban ecology” might be resolved’ (Armstrong et al. 2011). The research intent was therefore to effect change, and so we might assume this project to be effective practice research. Moreover, the research process involved typical effective research methodologies, methods, timelines and processes, including initial research into the environmental context and interviews 252

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with stakeholders (garden staff, bat conservation groups, architects and members of the public) to establish priorities. In conjunction with a literature and contextual review of ecological design theory and sustainable design practices, this research base provided the background for a participatory design process, with stakeholders involved in codesigning a solution. The outcome was a fully developed design proposal for an urban sanctuary for the evicted bats. Entitled the Botanic Garden Xtension, it identified a key site at Barangaroo Headlands Park and selected it to become part of a future network of city-wide gardens. Complete with concept drawings, maps, visualizations and sequenced press releases, this prime land was described in promotional materials and a purposebuilt website as ‘Sydney’s iconic new ecological waterfront flying fox sanctuary and park’ (Armstrong et al. 2011). However (and herein lies the shift in paradigm) the answer to the research question – ‘how can we begin to resolve the “human/bat problem”?’ (our emphasis) – was not through such a seemingly pragmatic solution. Without control over Sydney’s town planning (which would be required to implement the design solution), the researchers established that the first necessary step was to raise awareness and support. To this end, the workshops were not designed to develop and implement a viable solution but to ‘help build public, participatory “images” of what a sustainable “citizen-led”, world might be’. The resulting artefacts were not referred to as a solution by the researchers but as ‘a “playful proposal” . . . that might open up a new space for creative discussion about the future we want, and need’ (Armstrong et al. 2011). That is, the artefact involved imagining. While it appeared in promotional materials as if the design process was unfolding, the project was not intended to be implemented nor evaluated, but was presented as an art practice might be: as an evocation (or perhaps a provocation). While this research project appeared to pursue an effective research goal (developing a solution to a problem), and while it implemented methodologies for a pragmatic design solution, the underlying intention was instead to produce a social/political appeal. The outcome, while looking like an effective solution, is instead a meditation upon our place in the world and upon ways of being in relation to what is, was, or might be.

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Figure 22. Keith Armstrong, Natalie Jeremijenko, Leah Barclay, Tony Fry et al., Sydney Botanical Gardens Xtension of Barangaroo, Investigating the Bat/Human Problem, 2010.

Conclusion After more than 15 years of discussions on creative practice research in the literature, we have now advanced past the initial phase of justification and the subsequent phase of speculation about the possibilities of creative practice research. We have reached a third phase, in which we now have a large enough collection of completed projects to support an empirical analysis of the types of research projects that have been produced in creative disciplines. This means that it is now possible to map the spectrum of creative research and to draw some conclusions and some distinctions. 254

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In this chapter we have identified two distinct forms of creative practice research, which we have called effective and evocative practice research. We have defined and illustrated the fundamental differences between their forming contexts, research questions and aims and objectives and we have gone on to argue that these core conditions, in turn, underwrite a range of contingent characteristics of the research: the methodologies and practices, as well as the intentions invested in the resulting artefacts and the form of new knowledge claims. In order to situate creative practice research and its outcomes within an expanded research framework, we must recognize that the impetus and aims of creative research projects drive projects in distinctive ways. By refocusing discussions on art and design research in terms of effective and evocative paradigms in this way, we have established that creative practice research is not a unified or undifferentiated field. We have, however, argued that while some researchers seek to be effective and some to be evocative, others integrate these approaches. However, such hybrid research is not presented here as evidence of a lack of differentiation, nor simply as an intermediate stage along the effective-evocative spectrum. Rather, it integrates effective and evocative research approaches in intentional ways for specific ends. By investigating how these factors play out in practice, and by positioning examples of successful research projects within an effective– evocative research spectrum, it is our hope to contribute to the understanding of the expanded field of creative arts research, as well as to enable research writing that effectively frames research projects in terms of their inventiveness, innovation and contribution to new knowledge generation. We are curious about how this framework might be applied to fields beyond art and design and have included an example from music and sound to test its wider application. However, in doing so, we recognize that there may be a need for further mapping of the expanded field of creative practice research.

Acknowledgements The first part of this chapter was presented at the ACUADS conference at Griffith University in 2009, and the later part at the Material Interventions conference at Deakin University in 2010. The authors 255

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acknowledge the support of the Queensland University of Technology in attending these conferences. We also thank the researchers whose work we have cited for agreeing to the inclusion of representations of their work.

Note 1

Rittel (2010) argues that some problems are ‘wicked problems’ that cannot be ‘solved’ or ‘tamed’ but may be ‘resolved’. Donald Sch¨on (1983; 1987) similarly argues that there is a type of problems – those of the ‘swampy lowlands’ – that are messy, resist theoretical and technical solutions and do not have a single ‘true’ solution.

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13 The Mode of Invention of Creative Research: Onto-Epistemology Iris van der Tuin

The question ‘How does creative research invent?’ precedes the question ‘What are the inventions of creative research?’, because the type of research under discussion in this volume gives rise to important onto-epistemological considerations. ‘Onto-epistemology’ is a term coined by Karen Barad (2003, 2007), a theoretical physicist working in the field of gender and queer studies. Onto-epistemology tries to formulate how ontology and epistemology are intertwined. Just like the quantitative socio-economic historian who once told me ‘I do not work according to an epistemology’ did in fact confirm some (naive) epistemological notations, all explicit epistemological reflection has ontological presuppositions as well as ontologizing effects. This relation works the other way around as well: all reflections on ontology have epistemological presuppositions as well as epistemologizing effects. Onto-epistemology wants to do justice to the immediate entanglement of ontology and epistemology and shifts what it means to do ontological or epistemological work. In short, it moves away from ‘reflection’. Ontology concerns theories of being; epistemology, theories of knowing. Owing to the fact that all theories of knowing deal with 257

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the beings of subjects, objects, instruments and environments, they are ontological by implication. Not acknowledging these insertions may create unwanted slippages interfering in one’s work. And owing to the fact that all theories of being allow or disallow for certain epistemologies to flesh them out, they are necessarily epistemological. Leaving these affirmations untouched may make one vulnerable to oppressive knowledge production, even if a co-evolutionary knowledge creation is intended. Let us consider ‘atomism’. Atomist metaphysics posits delineated entities as objects of research and individual scientists and scholars as the ones dealing with them in a clearly outlined academic environment and with the help of certain instruments. A disjunction is presupposed between the object and the subject: an authoritative academic handles and describes the entity following a prescribed procedure. The suggestion is that the academic has a mute object in hand, which is in the process of being described exhaustively following scientific rules and norms. The environment is clean and the instrument is a mere mediator, that is, a necessary evil. Such atomism has far-reaching assumptions and consequences on the most fundamental epistemological and ontological levels. Barad (2001, 2010), just like Henri Bergson (1913), has written about the assumptions of atomism with regards to time and space. According to any atomist metaphysics, space is a container and time is cut up in successive fragments. We do not treat these assumptions as assumptions or their effects as effects because we are so used to atomist metaphysics. Bergson has called it an intellectual as well as habitual routine. One of the effects of atomism – losing sight of experienced non-linear temporality – has dictated his own entire oeuvre (Bergson 2007: 88–9). We also lose sight of the agency, as Barad would say, of the object of research, as well as finding ourselves unable to consider the role of instruments and environments on the knowledge produced. Instruments are not seen as affecting the outcome of the study and environments do not seem to have an identity. Sharon Traweek (1988) has described this set of assumptions about science as treating science as ‘a culture of no culture’. By conceptualizing onto-epistemology, Barad wants to do justice to the implications of the above considerations. In addition, ontoepistemology is her tool for mapping out the (unexpected) differences and similarities between ontologies and epistemologies that we are

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prone to think of as contrasting. Atomism tends to be used in an accusatory manner only, whereas it still, in fact, pervades a lot of the work we do on knowledge production in both the natural sciences and the humanities. The natural sciences in particular follow a ‘realist’ epistemology according to which its scholars can come to know the world out there by carefully weighing what they find in their Petri dish. Neither the matter in the dish nor the extra-academic phenomenon of which this is but an abstraction is supposed to be able to trick the scholar (Haraway 1988: 593, 596), luring scientists into some conclusions and not others. The humanities work according to the seemingly opposite model of ‘linguisticism’, by abstracting the meaning of an artwork from its material dimensions. The arts scholar is supposed to have transcended her capacity to be continuously surprised by artistic creations and to do her academic work in as rationalist a manner as possible. Transversing both traditional realism (positivism) and linguisticism, Barad (2003: 829) defines onto-epistemology as ‘the study of practices of knowing in being’. Barad’s definition demonstrates how onto-epistemology itself has an onto-epistemological vantage point. Barad wants us to study practices. Such practices happen in being and they are of knowing. ‘In being’ points to appreciation of refraining from ontological assumptions, such as the assumption of entities being clearly delineated or of entities being mute in the hands of signifying academics. Here, being is allowed the possibility of being messy and above those assumptions which tend to produce reductive accounts. ‘Of knowing’ indicates appreciation of refraining from epistemological assumptions, such as the assumption of knowledge claims ruling over objects of knowledge or existing in a web of words that refer to each other instead of to objects, of instruments being mentioned mediators and of environments being fully neutral. The culture of knowledge production, here, gets a face. So whereas all instantiations of research are onto-epistemological, only some can account for the fact that they are, which is why these are the ones that Barad privileges. Whether we start from the assumption that things can be captured by scientific formula or that signs have a constitutive outside, the onto-epistemological gap between words and things is shared and cannot be researched from either extreme of the continuum (Haraway 1997, Kirby 2011). Privileging practices, or ‘science in the making’ (Latour 1987), prevents us from making these assumptions

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and allows us to study their effects. Practices that take the processual nature of the scholarly journey into consideration are preferred, because they allow one to affirm the onto-epistemological character of all knowledge production and hold out the possibility of adjusting to what falls through the gaps in the format of hypothesis–testing–conclusion, a natural scientific procedure that pervades academia as a whole. Affirming the onto-epistemological nature of all research practices privileges the ‘how-question’ for each and every engagement with them. How are research practices enabling or constraining? How do they open up or buy into the anthropocentric schema of the authoritative scientist objectifying a muted entity with the help of a mediating instrument in a neutral environment? How is a linguisticist approach equally anthropocentric? In fact, the question has to be asked: Are academic and creative research that different? To what extent can we say that artistic research has to be rescued from the equally anthropocentric schema of the inspired artist-scholar objectifying muted material with the help of mediating instruments in a biased environment? Isn’t this distinction similar to the distinction between positivist and postmodern approaches to scholarly knowledge production and therefore as non-exhaustively dichotomous? If we continue to posit that artists produce ‘other’ knowledges from their non-scientific studios, holding up the ideal of knowledge production in clean laboratories and restricted-access libraries and archives, we are never to answer the question as to why ‘it is mainly artists who search for articulating their attitude vis-`a-vis the sciences, but not vice versa, scientists who articulate their attitude vis-`a-vis the arts’ (Zwijnenberg 2007: 32). This chapter tries to demonstrate how the heightened attention to onto-epistemology, even if not labelled as such, in creative research teaches positivists and linguisticists alike something about their practices, whilst acknowledging that all these practices are at once specific in terms of the knowledge produced and generic in ontoepistemology.

A Pile of Clay, the Mass of Earth ´ In ‘Reflections on Etienne Souriau’s Les Diff´erents Modes d’Existence’ ([1943] 2011), Bruno Latour extensively cites one of the aesthetician and metaphycisian Souriau’s many reflections on ‘the creative act’: 260

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A pile of clay on the sculptor’s base. An undeniable, total, accomplished, thingy [r´eique] existence. But nothing of the aesthetic being exists. Each hand or thumb pressure, each stroke of the chisel accomplishes the work. Don’t look at the chisel, look at the statue. With each act of the demiurge the statue little by little breaks out of its chains. It moves towards existence – towards the existence that will in the end blossom into an existence that is intense, accomplished, and actual. It is only insofar as the mass of earth is destined to be this work that it is a statue. At first only weakly existing via its distant relationship with the final object, which gives it its soul, the statue slowly reveals itself, takes shape and comes into existence. First the sculptor is only pushing it into shape, then bit by bit he achieves it with each of the things he decides to do to the clay. When will it be finished? When the convergence is complete, when the physical reality of this material thing comes to correspond with the spiritual reality of the work to be made, and the two coincide perfectly. In its physical existence and its spiritual existence it then communes intimately with itself, each existence being the mirror of the other. . . . But this growing existence is made, we can see, of a double modality that finally comes together, in the unity of a sole being progressively invented in the labouring process. Often there is no warning: up to a certain point the finished work is always a novelty, discovery, or surprise. So that’s what I was looking for! That’s what I was meant to make! (Latour 2011: 310)

The way in which the creative act is said to unfold in this fragment can be named an instance of onto-epistemological unravelling. And Souriau’s sincere engagement with this mode of existence in the studio, a mode of invention really, is an example of Barad’s study of practices of knowing in being. How is the practice of the sculptor? How is there a moment of insight? And how is there an ontological plane of being from which the erupting entities can only afterwards be delineated? After all, Latour says that the above is not a progress narrative of discovery. Yet a statue is created; even the artist comes into being,1 and knowledge is being produced in an environment that only then becomes the sacred space of an artist’s studio. Let us unpack the above by focusing on two onto-epistemological interrelations: the ‘material-semiotic’ (Haraway 1988) and the ‘spacetime manifold’ (Barad 2007). It is very clear that the person approaching 261

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the piece of clay is not approaching that piece with a well-defined idea, with form, in mind. And even if this person does have just such an intention, trying to shape the clay according to that schema, Souriau shows that it is in the relation between the clay and the person – in the practice of working with, in this case, the hand, the thumb, the chisel – that a statue comes about. Here we find matter to be as active as form; matter and form exist in a relation and ‘intra-act’, as Barad would have it. Matter and form are both material-semiotic. Such a process leads somewhere, and then the person becomes an artist and the environment a studio, but this causality is not mono-causal (from form to matter), necessary (the piece of clay can remain a mass of earth) or predictable and predetermined. We can discover the same idea expressed differently in Donna Haraway’s development of the concept of the material-semiotic or material-discursive actor: whereas we can surely engage ourselves in a process of naming, the name that expresses the soul of the sculpture only comes into being with the final object, with the finished work firmly in place. It is even only there and then that the piece of clay becomes a sculpture. Apart from the entangled realities of word and thing, human and non-human, Souriau’s description reveals a curious spatio-temporality. The making of the statue, at first sight, seems to follow a course of progressive development: from lump of clay to statue. But when is it that the mass becomes a sculpture? Or, even more fundamental: when is it that the clay is revealed as having the potential of becoming art? Souriau describes that this potentiality is brought forth with the seeming end result firmly in place. A piece of clay is agential, because what is in the hands of the worker has as great an impact on the emergence of the artefact as what is in her mind. But there is no essence to the clay before that essence is revealed with the end result in position, with the then-sculptor thinking: So that’s what I was looking for! That’s what I was meant to make! The temporality at work is one of changing history: with the end result, the clay becomes always already that statue (see Barad 2010). And we can find proof of a similarly counterintuitive spatial process. How distant and disjunctive do earth and statue seem to be, when the end result is ready . . . But no, when the statue is there, clay and art become the sides of two thin pieces of paper, glued together, like mirror images. Physicality and soul have always already been one, once the statue has revealed itself. It is there and then, in the intense

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Pebbles, Rocky Materials The quantitative historian I mentioned above – sceptical about epistemology – can be expected to be even more sceptical about the knowledge produced by the sculptor and therefore the example of the leaping into existence of the statue may not convince him of the importance of doing onto-epistemological work on knowledge, objectivity and truth. He may disregard onto-epistemology, simply because the sculpting is not a conventional truth-seeking practice and the sculpture is not a conventional piece of objective knowledge, despite the fact that we have demonstrated its undeniable existence and its capacity to engender solid musings about form and matter, time and space. Let us therefore look at Manuel DeLanda’s ‘The geology of morals’ (1996). DeLanda, philosopher of science, art and the work of Gilles Deleuze, has written the following:

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space of the studio, that the history of a spatial distance has been closed, not once and for all, but always already. It is interesting to note that Souriau himself seems to have had difficulty formulating this point about space. In his explicit phrasing of the above fragment we seem to find a movement from distant to close and coinciding. However, the space-time manifold reveals as much about time, about ‘duration’ (Bergson [1896] 2004) as it does about space, about ‘jumping scale’ (Smith 1992).

Geological strata (accumulations of sedimentary rocks like sandstone or limestone) are created through a process involving (at least) two distinct operations. . . . Geologists have uncovered one such mechanism: rivers acting as veritable hydraulic computers (or at least, sorting machines). Rivers transport rocky materials from their point of origin (a previously created mountain subject to erosion or weathering) to the place in the ocean where these materials will accumulate. In this process, pebbles of variable size, weight and shape tend to react differently to the water transporting them. These different reactions to moving water are what sorts [sic] the pebbles, with the small ones reaching the ocean sooner than the large ones, for example. Once the raw materials have been sorted out into more or less homogenous

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groupings deposited at the bottom of the sea (that is, once they have become sedimented), a second operation is necessary to transform these loose collections of pebbles into an entity of a higher scale: a sedimentary rock. This operation consists in cementing the sorted components together into a new entity with emergent properties of its own, that is, properties such as overall strength and permeability that cannot be ascribed to the sum of the individual pebbles. This second operation is carried out by certain substances dissolved in water (such as silica or hematite in the case of sandstones) which penetrate the sediment through the pores between pebbles. As this percolating solution crystallizes, it consolidates the pebble’s temporary spatial relations into a more or less permanent ‘architectonic’ structure. Thus, a double operation, a ‘double articulation’ gets us from structures at one scale to structures at another scale. (DeLanda 1996)

The act of architectonic creation in a so-called natural environment, as it unfolds here, resonates with the act of sculpting in a seemingly cultural one. Again we find that matter has an active role in articulating an end result (here a sedimentary rock). And, again, the spatiotemporality is at least surprising, if not counterintuitive, as I will detail below. What happens? In the process of forming sedimentary rock, no human is involved. It might even be the case that the geological reflection is done whilst the rock or its birth is out of human sight or has never been within sight or human knowledge (Meillassoux 2008). The active entities, here, are rivers, pebbles and other minerals. The rivers are transportation devices and the pebbles and others minerals react to the transportation. The river works on an entity that has previously been created, solid as a rock but with a history. The point of origin of the creation of sedimentary rock thus refers back to earlier points of origin, infinitely regressing but never final, mute or, alternatively, oblivious. The second operation mentioned by DeLanda demonstrates how sedimentation creates something new ( just like the statue is new) and that this new substance (again, just as in the case of the statue) has emergent properties of its own. The rock thus created cannot be delineated by reflecting upon the characteristics of all pre-existing pebbles and minerals and flows that are in the game. The rock has characteristics in and of itself and these characteristics, despite the deadness of the rock, are emergent, 264

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have always been and will continue to be so. This temporality does not refer to the discovery of an essence that was and will always be in place, but to processes that demonstrate what it is that the pebbles have always already been able to do, without them or us knowing, and without needing an actualizing, save being transported by that river. What happens next is unknown, because every end result is always already a new point of origin. On top of that, the spatiality of the creation, again ambiguously formulated in the quote above, is not a progressive process of a set of tiny pebbles growing into a big rock. The emergent properties of the pebbles are put in place with the emergent properties of the sedimentary rock and therefore they conflate in spatial terms as well as in temporal ones. Despite the fact that the artistic material-semiotic and space-time manifold will be more easily accepted by the socio-economic historian because of their supposed unscientific nature, and despite the fact that DeLanda (1996) discusses class and social strata in a manner similar to discussing pebbles and rocky materials, the scientific materialsemiotic and space-time manifold have been discussed more often than the artistic or cultural-science ones. So far, onto-epistemology has been applied to the natural sciences more frequently than the humanities (Dolphijn and van der Tuin 2012) or with art and creative research (Bolt and Barrett 2012), which is yet another counterintuitive twist in the tale that I document in this chapter. Barad writes the following on onto-epistemological discoveries about the natural sciences: We do not uncover pre-existing facts about independently existing things as they exist frozen in time like little statues positioned in the world. Rather, we learn about phenomena – about specific material configurations of the world’s becoming. (Barad 2007: 90–1)

Here, the statue is being used in a pejorative manner, as a feature of atomist metaphysics, whereas we have seen that one should be careful with such metaphors. Not only do metaphors work – as in, do work (Lloyd [1984] 1993: vii–xv, Haraway 1997: 97) – but a statue is a new entity with emergent properties of its own. So let us try to develop an explicit onto-epistemology of creative research in order to answer how creative research invents. How do creative research practices allow for facts to 265

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emerge and how are these practices beneficial for insight into the ontoepistemological nature of all knowledge practices?

Quantum Leaps In ‘The mode of knowledge production in artistic research’, Henk Borgdorff discusses to what extent creative research is mode-1 (following the model of the ivory tower) or mode-2 (fully externalist). One of his arguments for its internalism is that creative researchers engross themselves in ‘research in performance practice on the performance practice of historical music, or [in] choreographic research in and on specific movement potentials . . . ’ (Borgdorff 2007: 77; emphasis in original). The stance that Borgdorff ascribes to creative researchers can be named onto-epistemological; I do not share his evaluation of immanent practices as conforming to internalism. Stephen Goddard in his 2007 ‘A correspondence between practices’ makes very clear how this is so. Goddard’s discussion of his creative doctoral research begins by discussing the necessity of producing a reflexive exegesis next to practical work. Whereas his exegesis is ‘fortunately’ determined by the practical work, which was completed as part of the research. Goddard admits that he has wanted to see the exegesis as ‘another arena of creative practice’, the ‘generat[ion] [of ] a combined and reflexive research praxis’ (Goddard 2007: 113). The additive epistemology affirmed here is not in line with his picking-up of Deleuze’s ‘praxis’ or with the way in which Goddard’s story unfolds. What we encounter in his chapter is a former PhD candidate struggling with the fact that he had to deduct a ‘between’ or ‘across’ practice and theory, art and reflection (Goddard 2007: 120) on dualist terrain, following the contradictory requirements that creative researchers are confronted within academia, whereas the work itself is done on a material-semiotic plane and in a curious space-time manifold. To employ the terminology of Alfred North Whitehead ([1925] 1997: 197), academia creates ‘minds in a groove’, whereas ‘there is no groove of abstractions which is adequate for the comprehension of human life’. Goddard (2007: 119) describes his way of dealing with the exegesis as one of ‘resisting explanation’. And this resistance comes back

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Art often takes an antithetical stance towards the existing world, and it delivers the unsolicited and the unexpected. This is its very strength. At the same time, commitment and reflexivity are inseparably bound up with the production of art – not in the form of demand and supply, but in the conveyance of a ‘narrative’ in the materiality of the medium which can be understood as a commentary on the existing world and an opening to the other, the unknown. . . . The performative, world-constituting and world-revealing power of art lies in its ability to disclose to us new vistas, experiences and insights that bear upon our relationship with the world and with ourselves. (Borgdorff 2007: 77)

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in Borgdorff’s elaboration of the way in which artistic research is accountable or reflexive:

In this text we find a reluctance to theorize or speak of the work similar to that which we stumbled upon in the case of Goddard. Is art or creative research dealing with this world or antithetical to it? Borgdorff affirms antithesis when ‘this world’ is a world of known (formats of ) interpretation, a world that was pre-existed by, and continues to bring forth, minds in grooves. Hence the scare quotes placed around narrative, which is at once a commentary on the existing world and an opening to the other, the unknown. Educated minds in grooves cannot reach the latter and therefore creative researchers have to resist pre-formatted explanations – such as those through which we tend to understand geological work on sedimentary rock, for example, that comes to conclusions that DeLanda does not ascribe to. Onto-epistemologically speaking, the Other, the unknown, new vistas, experiences and insights do bear upon our relationship with the world and with ourselves. This demonstrates how creative researchers want, at once, again, to move away from the authoritatively epistemological and the comfortably everyday habits (compare Bergson) in order to engross themselves in what is, we can say with Whitehead, (non-)human life or, with Brian Massumi (2002: 66), ‘ontologically prior’. All of this can be embraced in its full complexity when we take on Kathrin Thiele’s elaboration on an intimately related task, namely Deleuze’s ‘to believe in this world, as it is’ as the vantage point of political activism: 267

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Rather than a credo that is to be ‘followed’ it must become first a question of analysis (of that which ‘is’ the world . . . ) and second, on a more affective level, a carrying forward of the movement of immanence, that is ‘a belief in this world, as it is’ as the only condition for a different future. A becoming-active as political activism cannot be based on the – however rigorous – renewal and restoration of categories such as universalism and truth, which are to be followed with the same categorical fidelity that any knowing ‘believing in’ has always prescribed. To the contrary, ‘belief in the world, as it is’, according to Deleuze, must remain a fully immanent process of experimentation – an open-ended process that only ever constitutes itself parallel to what it experiences; an experimentation, however, that is to be understood in a most sober sense, a negotiating from within. (Thiele 2010: 39–40; emphasis in original)

How do creative researchers such as Goddard believe in this world, as it is? And how is this an onto-epistemological gesture that can be a blueprint not only for aspiring creative researchers, but also for natural scientists and cultural scholars that are knowledge-theoretically angehaucht? Let us focus on the temporal aspect of how artists, pebbles, rivers and minerals and creative researchers alike ‘invent’; that is, on the emergent qualities that leap into existence. In a 2009 interview in the journal Parrhesia, Massumi astutely investigates the work of Gilbert Simondon, but he also makes the following side remark: It is a measure of the effective potential of his own conceptual inventiveness that [Simondon] came to [a] brink, so far ahead in anticipation, and in a way that furnishes us today with future-facing resources apt to assist us in coming to our own response, as an expression of an ethics of becoming. (De Boever et al. 2009: 45)

Massumi places Simondon on a ‘brink’, elsewhere called a ‘threshold’ (2009: 39), and this brink is a measure of the effective potential of his own conceptual inventiveness. A certain methodology is thus ascribed to the philosopher Simondon; we get onto-epistemological insight in the how of his conceptual practice. Furthermore, a measuring tool for 268

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conceptual inventiveness is introduced in a diagnosis that is concerned with the temporality of theory. Massumi states that ‘the conditions are right today for Simondon to have a major impact’. The latter is important, because it makes clear that Simondon’s ‘overall theory of qualitative change’ (De Boever et al. 2009: 45) or of ‘ontogenesis’ (De Boever et al. 2009: 37) is not to be essentialized in the past or in one scholar and, likewise, it is not something not yet used up in its pastness either, albeit still active. The brink is when Simondon’s work, as a potential, ‘clicks together’ (De Boever et al. 2009: 39) with another potential, for instance, and according to Massumi, with the work of Deleuze and Guattari, Bergson and Whitehead, all mentioned in this chapter. Here is another quote: [Simondon] links invention to an action of the future on the present. . . . The moment of invention is when the two sets of potentials click together, coupling into a single continuous system. A synergy clicks in. A new ‘regime of functioning’ has suddenly leapt into existence. A ‘threshold’ has been crossed, like a quantum leap to a qualitatively new plane of operation. . . . Before the passing of the threshold there were two discontinuous energetic fields . . . in a state of what Simondon calls ‘disparity’. When the synergy kicked in, the disparity rolled over into an emergent continuity. The differentials between the two fields are still there. But there is also something else, which has leapt into existence. (De Boever et al. 2009: 39; emphasis in original)2

Although it seems as if this analysis pertains to technical objects only, Deleuze ([1966] 2001: 46) has simply stated that Simondonian concepts are ‘susceptible to all sorts of applications’, to clay and thumbs and chisels and statues, to rivers and pebbles and minerals and sedimentary rock, that is. After all, ‘[f]or Simondon, all transition, all change, all becoming, is quantum’ (De Boever et al. 2009: 41; emphasis added). And when discussing the different epistemologies of recognition, sets of unreal opposites such as naive positivism and explanatory postmodernism, Simondon explicitly states that ‘a term is already an individual, or, in any case, something individualisable and that can be the source of ecceity and can turn itself into multiple ecceities’ (Simondon 2009: 4). Individuation in Simondon pertains to change without a telos, 269

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to movement itself, and this change is a material-discursive, nonlinear spatio-temporal process, because Simondon continues by saying: ‘Matter can receive a form, and within this form-matter relation lies the ontogenesis’ (Simondon 2009: 4). In other words, here we have entered the vantage point of practices in which the (non-)human material agents (clay, hands, pebbles, minerals) are as active as the (non-)human mental ones (form, ideas). We can call this diagnosis a quantum leap in onto-epistemology. Barad talks about the quantum leap in a manner similar to Simondon and, as such, it has to be acknowledged that Massumi and Simondon have helped me engage anew with her 2007 book Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. The quantum leap is Barad’s theoretical tool and, simultaneously, it is the so-called object of her study. Here is the definition: Quantum leaps aren’t jumps (large or small) through space and time. An electron that ‘leaps’ from one orbital to another does not travel along some continuous trajectory from here-now to there-then. . . . What makes a quantum leap unlike any other is that there is no determinate answer to the question of where and when they happen. The point is that it is the intra-play of continuity and discontinuity, determinacy and indeterminacy, possibility and impossibility that constitutes the differential spacetimematterings of the world. (Barad 2007: 182; see also 432 n. 45)

Barad, too, uses the quantum leap for (conceptual) invention (Barad 2007: 428 n. 3). And when she discusses what might come out of the continental philosophical reading of the most quantum physical chapters of Meeting the Universe Halfway, she even explicitly employs what Simondon calls the clicking together of two sets of potentials and ends by saying that ‘[q]uantum leaps in any case are unavoidable’ (Barad 2007: 38), which takes away possible anthropocentric worries about a doer behind the deed of onto-epistemological musings. Barad’s unavoidability is found in Simondon too. Massumi says that Simondonian inventions have what he calls “absolute origin”, which pertains to ‘an autonomous taking-effect of a futurity; an effective coming into 270

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existence that conditions its own potential to be as it comes. Invention is less about cause than it is about a self-conditioning emergence’ (De Boever et al. 2009: 40). What is involved in such ‘quantum leaping’? What we are in fact talking about here is ‘the paradox that before’ the clay and the thumb and the chisel, the pebbles and the river and the minerals, Goddard and his postcards and photographic and filmic equipment ‘entered into relation, the respective multifunctionalities were not in effect. They were nowhere. They are not to be found in the past. It is when the relation kicked in that they were determined, by that very event, to have been the potential for what has come.’ The potential thus comes from the future: ‘invention is the bringing into present operation of future functions that potentialise the present for an energetic leap into the new.’ The explaining epistemologist can only bring two disparate systems ‘to the brink of relation’ (De Boever et al. 2009: 40; emphases in original). Onto-epistemologically we would have to consider unavoidable leaps and the working together of ‘a multitude of forces’ (Simondon [1958] 1980: 31). Such leaps, then, suggest that we have to think differently about the temporality of invention, just like we saw above. Creative research invents in such a way that our fundamental epistemological and ontological assumptions are carried away, shaking up the stifling effects they may have. This is also how scientists and cultural studies people and artists and rivers invent. The groove of creative research is not yet as deep as the alluring groove of the two cultures of the sciences and the humanities. Currently, the practices of creative researchers are the fulcrum of onto-epistemology. Therefore, creative research is privileged for developing our ontoepistemological vantage point. I promise to give this volume to the quantitative socio-economic historian and to discuss it with him.

Acknowledgements The author wants to express her thanks to the Amsterdam-based sculptor Piet van de Kar for conversations on studio practices. She also wishes to thank Estelle Barrett and Barbara Bolt, and Kitty Zijlmans and Annette Kraus for conversations on creative research. 271

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Notes 1

Ernst Cassirer, curiously dismissed as a Kantian or neo-Kantian philosopher, has made a similar point in The Logic of The Cultural Sciences, namely: Subjective and objective, feeling and gestalt must merge into one another and must be completely absorbed in one another if a great work of art is to be created. However, it follows from this that – and why – the work of art can never be a mere reproduction of the subjective or of the objective, of the mental or of the objective world, but that a genuine discovery of both takes place here: a discovery that, in its general character, falls short of no theoretical knowledge. (Cassirer [1942] 2000: 31; emphasis added)

2

The logic of 2, which hints at asymmetrical sexual difference or heteronormativity, is not an essential feature of Simondon’s work.

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References Introduction Barad, K. (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning, Durham and London: Duke University Press. Barrett, E. (2011) Kristeva Reframed: Interpreting Key Thinkers for the Arts, London: I.B.Tauris. (2007) ‘Experiential learning in practice as research: context, method, knowledge’ in Journal of Visual Art Practice, Vol. 6, No. 2: 115–124. Barrett E. and Bolt B. (eds.) (2007) Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry, London: I.B.Tauris. Eisner, Eliott W. (1997) ‘The promise and perils of alternative forms of data representation’ in Educational Researcher, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Aug.-Sep.): 4– 10. Gibson, R. (2010) ‘The known world’ in Donna Lee Brien, Sandra Burr and Jen Webb (eds.) TEXT, special issue, Oct. 2010, Gold Coast: Griffith, University: 1–11. Haraway, D. (1988) ‘Situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective’ in Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Autumn): 575–599. Ihlein, L. (2010) ‘Framing Everyday Experience: Blogging as Art’, unpublished PhD thesis, Melbourne: Deakin University. Kuhn, T. (1970) ‘Revolutions as changes of world view’ in T. Khun, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: Chicago University Press: 111– 135.

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Onions, C. T. (ed.) (1978) The Shorter Oxford Dictionary on Historical Principles, Vol. 11, third edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Polanyi, M. (1958) Personal Knowledge, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Sutherland, I. and Acord, S. K. (2007) ‘Thinking with art: from situated knowledge to experiential knowing’ in Journal of Visual Art Practice, Vol. 6, No. 2: 125–140.

Chapter 1 Art School Resources (n.d.) ‘Sample Artist Statement’, available online at: www.artstudy.org/art-and-design-careers/sample-artist-statement.php [accessed 10 March 2013]. Austin J.L. (1975) How to Do Things with Words, J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbis`a (eds.), Oxford: Clarendon Press. Australia Research Council (ARC) (2008) ‘ERA indicator descriptors’, December 2008, available online at: www.arc.gov.au/pdf/ERA Indicator Descriptors.pdf [accessed on October 2009]. (2009) ‘Draft ERA submission guidelines: Physical, Chemical and Earth Sciences (PCE) and Humanities and Creative Arts (HCA) Clusters’, Consultation available online at: www.unisa.edu.au/rqie/docs/ DraftERASubmissionGuidelines HCA PCE.pdf [accessed 30 October 2009]. Australian Government, Australian Research Council (2011) Excellence in Research for Australia, ERA 2012 Submission Guidelines, Canberra: Australian Government. Balkema, A. and Henk, S. (eds.) (2004) Artistic Research, Amsterdam: Redopi. Barrett, E. and Bolt, B. (2007) (eds.) Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry, London: I.B.Tauris. Barrett, E. (2007) All that is Solid Melts into Air, catalogue essay for the exhibition at the McCulloch Gallery, Melbourne. Biggs, I. (2009) Art as Research: Creative Practice and Academic Authority, Saarbrucken: VDM Verlag Dr. Muller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG. Biggs, M. and B¨uchler, D. (2008) ‘Architectural practice and academic research’ in Nordic Journal of Architectural Research, Vol. 20, No. 1: 83–94. (2009) ‘Supervision in an alternative paradigm’, in TEXT, special issue, No. 6, available online at: www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue6/Biggs& Buchler.pdf [accessed 22 March 2013].

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Bolt, B. (2004a) Art Beyond Representation: The Performative Power of the Image,

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(eds.) (2010) The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts, London: Routledge. London: I.B.Tauris. (2004b) ‘The exegesis and the shock of the new’ in TEXT, special issue, No. 3 (April), available online at: www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/ issue3/bolt.htm [accessed 10 March 2013]. (2009a) ‘A performative paradigm for the creative arts?’ in Working Papers in Art and Design, Vol. 5, available online at: sitem.herts.ac.uk/ artdes research/papers/wpades/vol5/index.html

[accessed 20 March

2013]. (2009b) Neon Blue, available online at: www.ucl.ac.uk/theviewfrom here/ [accessed 9 March 2013]. (2011) ‘Whose joy?: Giotto, Yves Klein and Neon Blue’, in International Journal of the Image, Vol. 1, No. 1: 58–67. (2012) ‘ERA research statement for Neon Blue’, submitted for the 2012 ERA assessment exercise. Butler, J. (1993) Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, London: Routledge. Carter, P. (2004) Material Thinking: The Theory and Practice of Creative Research, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) (2009) ‘Humanities and Creative Arts: recognising esteem factors and non-traditional publications in Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative’, advocacy paper, August 2009, available online at: www.chass.org.au/ papers/PAP20090820HH.php. [accessed 25 October 2009]. Deleuze, G. (1990) The Logic of Sense, M. Lester with C. Stivale (trans.), C.V. Boundas (ed.), London: Athlone Press. Dolphijn, R. and van der Tuin, I. (2012) New Materialism: Interviews and Cartographies, Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press. Gray, C. and Malins, J. (2004) Visualizing Research: A Guide to the Research Process in Art and Design, Aldershot: Ashgate. Grieson, E. and Brearly, L. (2009) Creative Arts Research: Narrative of Methodologies and Practice, Rotterdam and Boston: Sense Publishers. Harvey, L. (2009) Opportunities and challenges for the new ERA, available online at: www.arc.gov.au/pdf/DASSH 2Oct08.pdf [accessed 30 October 2009].

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Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) and the Department for Employment and Learning, Northern Ireland (DEL) (n.date) Research Excellence Framework, available online at: www.ref.ac.uk/ [accessed 9 March 2012]. Leavy, P. (2009) Method Meets Art: Arts-based Research Practice, New York: The Guildford Press. Makela, M. and Routarinne, S. (eds.) (2006) The Art of Research: Research Practices in Art and Design, Helsinki: The University of Art and Design. McNiff, S. (2009) Art-Based Research, London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Seares, M. (2009) ‘A new era for creative arts research’, available online at: www.chass.org.au/articles/ART20090430MS.php [accessed 25 October 2009]. Slager, H. (2012) The Pleasure of Research, Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Fine Arts. Smith, H. and Dean, R.T. (2009) Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice in the Creative Arts, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Sullivan, G. (2005) Art Practice as Research: Inquiry in the Visual Arts, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. Thornton, S.P. (2004) ‘Solipsism and the problem of other minds’ in Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, available online at: www.iep.utm.edu/solipsis/ [accessed 9 March 2012]. Visher, L. (2009) ‘Creative Arts and the new ERA’, available online at: www.arc .gov.au/pdf/ACUADS 2Oct08.pdf [accessed 30 October 2009].

Chapter 2 Blanchot, M. (1987) ‘Everyday speech’ in Yale French Studies, No. 73: 12–20. Bourriaud, N. (2002) Relational Aesthetics, Dijon: Les Presses du Reel. de Certeau, M. (1988) The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley: University of California Press. Haapala, A. (2005) ‘On the aesthetics of the everyday: familiarity, strangeness, and the meaning of place’ in A. Light and J.M. Smith (eds.),The Aesthetics of Everyday Life, New York: Columbia University Press: 39– 55. Highmore, B. (2008) ‘Everyday life and cultural theory’ in S. Johnstone (ed.), The Everyday, London: Whitechapel: 79–87.

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March 2010]. (2005) Bilateral Kellerberrin, available online at: kellerberrin.com [accessed

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Ihlein, L. (2003) Bilateral, available online at: lucazoid.com/bilateral [accessed 3

3 March 2010]. (2006) Bilateral Petersham, available online at: thesham.info [accessed 3 March 2010]. (2007) ‘Bilateral blogging’ in The International Journal of Arts in Society, Vol. 1, No. 7: 53–62. (2008) Bon Scott Blog, available online at: bonscottblog.com [accessed 2 May 2009]. (2009a) ‘Framing Everyday Experience: Blogging as Art’, unpublished PhD thesis, Melbourne: Deakin University. (2009b) Bilateral Petersham (book), Sydney: Everwilling Press. (2010) ‘To follow things as I encounter them: blogging, art and attention’ in 127 Prince, available online at: 127prince.wordpress.com/ 2010/05/14/to-follow-things-as-i-encounter-them-blogging-art-andattention-lucas-ihlein [accessed 9 August 2012]. Ihlein, L., Keys, N. and L’Orange, A. (2009) Push and Pull Redfern, available online at: pushandpull.com.au [accessed 19 June 2009]. Kester, G. (2004) Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Lacy, S. (1995) Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, Seattle: Bay Press. Leff, D.K. (2004) The Last Undiscovered Place, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Mathews, F. (1999) ‘Becoming native: an ethos of countermodernity II’ in World Views: Global Religions, Culture and Ecology, Vol. 3, No. 3: 243–271. Miller, L. (2003) ‘Belonging to country – a philosophical anthropology’ in Journal of Australian Studies, No. 76: 215–223; 257–258. Moreton-Robinson, A. (2003) ‘I still call Australia home: Indigenous belonging and place in a white postcolonizing society’ in S. Ahmed, C. Casta˜neda, A-M. Fortier and M. Sheller (eds.), Uprootings/regroundings: Questions of Home and Migration, New York and Oxford: Berg: 23–40. Muller, L. (2008) ‘Towards an oral history of new media art’, in Fondation Daniel Langlois, available online at: www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/ page.php?NumPage=2096 [accessed 7 March 2010]. Reilly, A. (2003) ‘Cartography and native title’ in Journal of Australian Studies, No. 79: 3–14; 217–219.

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Chapter 3 Armstrong, K. (2003) ‘Towards an Ecosophical Praxis of New Media Space Design’, unpublished PhD thesis, Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. (2007) ‘Towards a connective and ecosophical new media art practice’ in J. Hamilton (ed.), Intimate Transactions (Armstrong, K. et al. 2005–08): Art, Exhibition and Interaction Within Distributed Network Environments, Brisbane: ACID Press. (2009) ‘Sustaining the sustainable? Developing a practice and problemled new media praxis’ in H. Smith and R. Dean (eds.), Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice in the Creative Arts, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Armstrong, K., Kerr, G. and Brereton, M. (2004) ‘Artistic Biofeedback Environments for Health and Physical Activity’ (unpublished ARC Linkage application), Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. Armstrong, K., Barker, C., Pack, D. and Lickfold, L. (2009–10) Knowmore (House of Commons). Poznan: Mediations Biennial & Brisbane: State Library of Queensland. Armstrong, K., Dean, R., Lawson, S. and Pack, D. (2010–12) Finitude (Mallee: Time), various exhibitions: Beijing, Brisbane, Mildura. Armstrong, K., Barclay, L. and Tito, J. (2011) Remnant Breath as part of Remnant Emergency Artlab, 26 January 2011, Te Henui Walkway, New Plymouth, New Zealand, available online at: www.remnantartlab.com/lab-3 [accessed 2 July 2012]. Armstrong, K., Jeremijenko, N., Fry, T., Muller, J. and Barclay, L. (2011) Remnant Emergency Artlab exhibited Brisbane and New York. Armstrong, K. and Hayward, M. (2012–13) Reintroduction, available online at: www.embodiedmedia.com/#/page/re-introduction, [accessed 2 July 2012]. Australian Research Council (2012) ‘ERA 2012 submission guidelines’: Australian Government, available online at: www.arc.gov.au/pdf/era12/ ERA2012 SubmissionGuidelines.pdf [accessed 2 May 2012]. Baker, E. (2005) ‘Me/Us/Them’, available online at: embodiedmedia.com/#/ page/art-and-science-essay, [accessed 2 May 2012]. Barrett, E. and Bolt, B. (eds.) (2007) Practice As Research: Approaches To Creative Arts Enquiry, London: I.B.Tauris.

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Carter, P. (2010) Ground Truthing: Explorations in a Creative Region, Crawley,

interactive art system for movement rehabilitation’ in Second Nature Vol 2, No1: 120–137 Fry, T. (2003) ‘The voice of sustainment: an introduction’, in Design Philosophy Papers: Vol. 1 (n.p). (2008) Intimate Transactions: Close Encounters of Another Kind, Geo Website, available online at: www.geoproject.org.au/geo/ dbase upl/IT%20 Critical%20Writing.pdf [accessed 2 May 2012]. (2010) Email dialogue, Artlab Project, Brisbane, 12 April 2010. Gillette, D. (2007) ‘Statement in Support of the Intimate Transactions Project’ (unpublished document), California Polytechnic, San Luis Obispo, USA. Goldsworthy, A. and Riedelsheimer, T. (2004) Rivers and Tides, United States: Mediopolis Films. Hay, P. R. (2002) Main Currents in Western Environmental Thought, Sydney: UNSW Press. Hamilton, J. (ed.) (2006) Intimate Transactions: Art, Exhibition and Interaction Within Distributed Network Environments, Brisbane: ACID Press. Heim, M. (1998) Virtual Reality and the Tea Ceremony, available online at: www.mheim.com/files/vrtea.pdf [accessed 10 June 2012]. Hoffie, P. (2009) Spin-Doctor (Some Notes On KNOWMORE [House of Commons]), exhibition catalogue, Brisbane: State Library of Queensland. Jeremijenko, N. (2010) X Clinic: The Environmental Health Clinic and Lab, NYU, available online at: www.environmentalhealthclinic.net [accessed 2 May 2012]. Madden, J. and Viller, S. (2007) ‘Am I the lighter one? awareness in a dualsite networked installation’ in J. Hamilton (ed.) Intimate Transactions: Art, Exhibition and Interaction Within Distributed Network Environments, Brisbane: ACID Press. Merchant, C. (ed.) (1996) Critical Ecology: Key Concepts in Critical Theory, New Jersey: Humanities Press. Merchant, C. (2004) Reinventing Eden: The Fate of Nature in Western Culture, first edition, New York and London: Routledge. Milner, R. (2006) ‘Ubiquitous computing: shall we understand it?’ in The Computer Journal, Vol. 49, No. 4: 383–389. Naess, A. (1995) ‘The deep ecology “eight points” revisited’, in G. Sessions (ed.) Deep Ecology for the 21st Century, Boston, USA: Shambhala.

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Polli, A. (2007) ‘Eco-media: Art informed by developments in ecology, media technology and environmental science’ in Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research, Vol. 5, No. 3: 187. Re-Think: Contemporary Art and Climate Change. Copenhagen (2009–10) exhibition, National Gallery of Denmark, Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center and the Alexandra Institute, 31 October 2009–5 April 2010. Scott, J. (2010) Artist in Labs, available online at: www.artistsinlabs.ch/english/ index.php [accessed 2 May 2012].

Chapter 4 Barnard, M. (1998) Art, Design, and Visual Culture: An Introduction, New York: St. Martin’s Press. (2001) Approaches to Understanding Visual Culture, New York: Palgrave. Barrett, T. (2003) ‘Interpreting visual culture’ in Art Education, Vol. 56: 6–12. Duncum, P. (2002) ‘Visual culture art education: Why, what and how’ in Journal of Art and Design Education, Vol. 21: 14–23. Efland, A. D. (2004) ‘The entwined nature of the aesthetic: A discourse on visual culture’ in Studies in Art Education, Vol. 45: 243–251. Eisner, E. (1998) The Enlightened Eye, New Jersey: Prentice Hall. (2002) The Arts and The Creation of the Mind, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Eisner, E. and Powell, K. (2002) ‘Art in science?’ in Curriculum Inquiry, Vol. 32: 131–159. Ingham, V. (2009) The Art of Multimodal Decision Making on The Fireground, Centre for Cultural Research, Sydney: University of Western Sydney. Kindler, A. M. (2003) ‘Visual culture, visual brain, and (art) education’ in Studies in Art Education, Vol. 44: 290–296. Kress, G. and van Leeuwen T. (1990) Reading Images, Victoria: Deakin University. Leedy, P. (1997) Practical Research: Planning and Design, New Jersey: PrenticeHall. Lemke, J. L. (1994) ‘Semiotics and the deconstruction of conceptual learning’ in Journal for The Society for Accelerative Learning and Teaching, Vol. 19: 67–110. Miller, A. (1978) ‘Visualization lost and regained’ in J. Wechsler (ed.) On Aesthetics in Science, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.

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Routledge. Nelson, G. (1977) How to See: A Guide to Reading Our Manmade Environment,

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Mirzoeff, N. (1999) An Introduction to Visual Culture, London and New York:

Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company. Pink, S., Kurti, L. and Alfonso, A. I. (eds.) (2004) Working Images: Visual Research and Representation in Ethnography, London and New York: Routledge. Rose, G. (1980) The Power of Form, Madison and Connecticut: International Universities Press. (2007) Visual Methodologies, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage. Shusterman, R. (2008) Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. (2000) Pragmatic Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. Sturken, M. and Cartwright, L. (2001) Practices of Looking, Oxford: Oxford University Press. van Leeuwen, T. & Jewitt, C. (eds.) (2001) Handbook of Visual Analysis, London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi: Sage. Wechsler, J. (ed.) (1978) On Aesthetics in Science, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Chapter 5 Ades, D., Cox, N. and Hopkins, D. (1999) Marcel Duchamp, London: Thames & Hudson Ltd. Arnheim, R. (1974) Art and Visual Perception: a Psychology of the Creative Eye, Berkeley: University of California Press. Bailey, C. A. (1996) ‘Getting to know you: data collection in the field’ in C. A. Bailey, A Guide to Field Research, London: Sage Publications Ltd: 49–88. Beaumont, D. (2010) ‘Print As Continuum: Repropriation and The Spoils of Multiplicity’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Southern Queensland. Bell, L. (2004) ‘Artist’s Pages: Decolonizing Tactics in “Writing Space”’, in P. Stoicheff and A. Taylor (eds.) (2004) The Future of the Page, Toronto: University of Toronto Press Inc: 255–270. Benjamin, A. (2005) Walter Benjamin and Art, London: Continuum. Benjamin, W. (1999) ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’ in H. Arendt (ed.), Illuminations, London: Pimlico.

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Carter, P. (2004) Material Thinking: the Theory and Practice of Creative Research, Australia: Melbourne University Press. Cazeaux, C. (2008) ‘Inherently interdisciplinary: four perspectives on practiceled research’ in Journal of Visual Arts Practice, Vol. 7, No. 2: 107– 132. Chamberlain, D. F. (2003) ‘Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961)’ in C. Murray (ed.), Key Writers on Art: The Twentieth Century, London: Routledge: 217– 220. Clandinin, D. J. and Connelly, F. M. (1998) ‘Personal experience methods’ in N. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds.) (2000) Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials, California: Sage Publications, Inc. Cost, F. (2005) The New Medium of Print: Material Communication in the Internet Age, New York: RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press. Coulter-Smith, G. (2002) The Postmodern Art of Imants Tillers: Appropriation en abyme 1971–2001, London: Paul Holberton Publishing. Creswell, J. W. (2003) Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches, second edition, California: Sage Publications, Inc. Dall’Alba, G. and Hasselgren, B. (eds.) (1996) Reflections on Phenomenography: Towards a Methodology? Gothenburg: ACTA Universitatis Gothoburgensis. Deleuze, G. (2004) Difference and Repetition, London: Continuum. (2006) The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, London: Continuum. and Guattari, F. (1988) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, London: The Althone Press. Edwards, P. (2006) ‘On being peripatetic in a scholarly world: some suggestions for new models of higher degrees research studies in fine art’, Speculation and Innovation: Applying Practice Led Research in the Creative Industries Conference 2005, Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology. Eisenstein, E. (1979) The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, London: Cambridge University Press. Fer, B. (2004) The Infinite Line: Re-Making Art after Modernism, London: Yale University Press. Gilmour, P. (1986) Ken Tyler, Master Printer, and the American Print Renaissance, Canberra: Australian National Gallery, Canberra. Griffiths, A. (1996) Prints and Printmaking: an Introduction to the History and Techniques, Berkeley: University of California Press. Hammond, M., Howarth, J. and Keat, R. (1991) Understanding Phenomenology, U.K: Blackwell Publishers. Hayter, S. W. (1962) About Prints, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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comparative Survey’, National Gallery of Australia, available online at: nga.gov.au/FirstImpressions/index.cfm [accessed 20 August 2008].

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Henshaw, M. (2003) ‘First Impressions: the early history of lithography, a

Hyde, L. (1996) ‘Two accidents: reflections on chance and creativity’ in Kenyon Review, Summer/Fall 1996, Vol. 18, No. 3/4: 19–35. Ivins, W. M. ( Jnr.) (1969) Prints and Visual Communication, Massachusetts: M.I.T. Press. Janesick, V. (1999) ‘A journal about journal writing as a qualitative research technique: history, issues, and reflections’ in Qualitative Inquiry, December 1999, Vol. 5, No. 4: 505–525. Jarvis, M. (2007) ‘Articulating the tacit dimension in artmaking’ in Journal of Visual Art Practice, 2007, Vol. 6, No. 3: 201–213, available online at web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.usq.edu.au [accessed 8 April 2010]. Jones, C. A. (1996) Machine in the Studio: Constructing the Postwar American Artist, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. (1997) Painting Machines: Industrial Image and Process in Contemporary Art, Seattle: University of Washington Press. Kellehear, A. (1993) The Unobtrusive Researcher: A Guide to Methods, Australia: Allen & Unwin. Kirker, A. (1996) ‘my poor little book . . . very rich for eyes’, Artists’ Books + Multiples Fair ‘96, Numero Uno Publications, Brisbane: Centre for the Artist’s Book Grahame Galleries + Editions. Leedy, P. D. (1997) Practical Research: Planning & Design, New Jersey: PrenticeHall Inc. Leslie, E. (2000) Walter Benjamin: Overpowering Conformism, London: Pluto Press. Lippi, J. (2001) ‘Up close and personal: the researcher at the centre of the research’ in C. Boucher and R. Holian (2001) (eds.), Emerging Forms of Representing Qualitative Data Melbourne: RMIT Press. Marshall, C. and Rossman, G. B. (2006) Designing Qualitative Research, California: Sage Publications. Mcelheny, J. (2007) ‘Readymade resistance’ in Artforum International, October 2007, Vol. 46, No. 2: 327–335. Naumann, F. M. (1999) Marcel Duchamp: The Art of Making Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, New York: Harry N Abrams Inc. Noyce, R (2006) Printmaking at the edge, London: A & C Black Publishers Ltd. Olmert, M. (1992) The Smithsonian Book of Books, Washington D.C: Smithsonian Books.

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Pink, S. (2001) Doing Visual Ethnography: Images, Media, and Representation in Research, London: Sage Publications Ltd. Rorschach, H. (1951) Psychodiagnostics, fifth edition, Berne: Verlag Hans Huber. Stoicheff, P. and Taylor, A. (eds.) (2004) The Future of the Page, Toronto: University of Toronto Press Inc. Sullivan, G. (2005) Art Practice as Research: Inquiry in the Visual Arts, California: Sage Publications Inc. Tallman, S. (1996) The Contemporary Print: from Pre-Pop to Postmodern, London: Thames & Hudson. Williams, L. (2004) ‘Spectacle or critique? Reconsidering the meaning of reproduction in the work of Patricia Piccinini’ in Southern Review: Communication, Politics and Culture, Vol. 37, No. 1: 76–98, available online at search.informit.com.au/fullText;dn=848625135921099;res=IELHSS [accessed 23 November 2009]. Wollheim, R. (1995) ‘Minimal art’ in G. Battcock (ed.) Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology, Berkeley: University of California Press: 387–399.

Chapter 6 Barrett, E. and Bolt, B. (eds.) (2007) Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry, London: I.B.Tauris. Biggs, I. (2005) ‘Hybrid texts and academic authority’ in K. Macleod and L. Holdridge (eds.) Thinking Through Art: Reflections on Art as Research, New York: Routledge: 190–200. Bryson, N. (1983) Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze, London: Macmillan. (1988) ‘The gaze in the expanded field’ in H. Foster (ed.)Vision and Visuality, Dia Art Foundation, Discussions in Contemporary Culture No. 2, Seattle: Bay Press: 87–114. Crary, J. (1991) Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: An October Book, MIT Press. (1999) Suspensions of Perception, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: An October Book, MIT Press. Dallow, P. (2007) ‘The visual complex: Mapping some interdisciplinary dimensions of visual literacy’ in J. Elkins (ed.) Visual Literacy, New York: Routledge: 91–104.

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Thinking Through Art: Reflections on Art as Research, New York: Routledge: 20–39.

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Davey, N. (2005) ‘Art and theoria’ in K. Macleod and L. Holdridge (eds.)

Derrida, J. (1987) The Truth in Painting, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Engels-Schwarzpaul, A-C. (2008) ‘At a loss for words? Hostile to language? Interpretation in creative practice-led PhD projects’ in Working Papers in Art and Design 5, available online at: sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes research/ papers/wpades/vol5/tesabs.html [accessed 6 July 2009]. Foster, H. (ed.) (1988) Vision and Visuality, Dia Art Foundation, Discussions in Contemporary Culture No. 2, Seattle: Bay Press: ix–xiv. Gombrich, E. H. (1972) Symbolic Images: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance, United States: Phaidon. Harley, R. (1999) ‘Motion landscapes: a video-essay on panoramic perception’, unpublished DCA thesis, Sydney: University of Technology, Sydney. Jay, M. (1996) ‘Vision in context: reflections and refractions’ in T. Brennan and M. Jay (eds.) Vision in Context: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Sight, New York and London: Routledge: 1–14. Kemp, R. and Jones, B. (2009) ‘The museum of desire: cognition in performance and reception’, paper delivered to the 4th International Conference on the Arts in Society, Venice, 28–31 July 2009. Leader, D. (2002) Stealing the Mona Lisa: What Art Stops Us From Seeing, London: Faber and Faber. Marks, L. (2000) The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment and the Senses, Durham and London: Duke University Press. Morgan, S.J. (2001) ‘The Terminal Degree: Fine Art and The PhD’ in Journal of Visual Art Practice, Vol. 1, No. 1: 5–15. O’Riley, T. (2005) ‘Representing illusions’ in K. Macleod and L. Holdridge (eds.) Thinking Through Art: Reflections on Art as Research, New York: Routledge: 92–105. Prior, N. (2002) Museums and Modernity: Art Galleries and the Making of Modern Culture, Oxford, New York: Berg Publishers. Renshaw, P. (2005) ‘Connecting conversations: the changing voice of the artist’ in M. Miles (ed.) New Practices, New Pedagogies: A Reader, London: Routledge: 81–102. Sobchack, V. (2000) ‘What my fingers knew: the cinesthetic subject, or vision in the flesh’, paper delivered at the Special Effects/Special Affects: Technologies of the Screen, Symposium, Melbourne, 25 March 2000.

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Sullivan, G. (2005) Art Practice as Research: Inquiry in The Visual Arts, Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications. Sullivan, G. (2008) ‘Methodological dilemmas and the possibility of interpretation’ in Working Papers in Art and Design 5, available online at: sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes research/papers/wpades/vol5/gsabs.html [accessed 6 July 2009]. Sutherland, I. and Acord, S. K. (2007) ‘Thinking with art: from situated knowledge to experiential knowing’ in Journal of Visual Art Practice, Vol. 6, No. 2: 125– 140. Tormey, J. and Sawdon P. (2008) ‘Are ambiguous research outputs undesirable?’ in Working Papers in Art and Design 5, available online at: sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes research/papers/wpades/vol5/jtpsabs.htm

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Chapter 7 Arader, M. (2009), ‘The diverging paths of documentary theatre: The reader’, available online at: www.kqed.org/assets/pdf/arts/programs/spark/214 .pdf [accessed 3 December 2009]. Barrett, E. (2011) Kristeva Reframed: Interpreting Key Thinkers for The Arts, London: I.B.Tauris. Barrett, E. and Bolt, B.(eds.) (2007) Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry, London: I.B.Tauris. Brook, P. (1968) The Empty Space, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Eiermann, K. (1997) ‘The basics of existentialism’, available online at: www.dividingline.com/private/Philosophy/Philosophers/Existentialism/ ExistentialismBasics.shtml [accessed 3 December 2009]. The Free Dictionary, ‘The theatre of fact’, available online at: encyclopedia2 .thefreedictionary.com/Theatre+of+Fact Dictionary [accessed 9 August 2009]. Hopper, E. (1995) ‘A psychoanalytical theory of “drug addiction”: unconscious fantasies of homosexuality, compulsions and masturbation within the context of traumatogenic processes’ in International Journal of PsychoAnalysis, Vol. 76, No. 6: 1121–1142. Johnson. R. (2009) Habitat: A Documentary Theatre Project, U of M Rarig Center Arena, Duluth, Minnesota. Jones, L. (2012) The Privilege Gene, La Mama Theatre, Melbourne, 27–29 November.

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Laramie Project, University of Wyoming, New York: Vintage Books. Lacan, J. ([1959–60] 1992), Seminar VII: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, London:

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Kaufman, M. and Members of the Techtonic Theater Project, (2001), The

Routledge. McNeily, J. (2011) ‘Methods for a new dramaturgy of digital performance’, available online at: phenomenologyresearchcenter.academia.edu/Jodie McNeilly/Papers/968977/Methods for a New Dramaturgy of Digital Performance [accessed 1 March 2013]. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962) Phenomenology of Perception, Colin Smith (trans.), London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Ravid, O. (2009), Theatre and Phenomenology, available online at: theatrephenomenology.blogspot.com.au/ 2009 [accessed 9 December 2009]. Shotter, J. (1993), Conversational Realities: Constructing Life Through Language, London: Sage Publications Inc. Welsh, S. (2009), The Biography Of A Battler, Kylie Gral (dr.), La Mama Theatre, Melbourne, 18 September-6 October.

Chapter 8 Bates, W. H. (1920) The Cure of Imperfect Sight by Treatment Without Glasses, New York: Central Fixation Publishing Company. Beckett, S. (1969) ‘Play’ in S. Beckett, Cascando and Other Short Dramatic Pieces, New York: Grove Press: 43–63. Candy, L. (2006) ‘Practice-Based Research: A Guide’, in Creativity & Cognition Studios, 1, available online at: www.creativityandcognition.com/ resources/PBR%20Guide-1.1-2006.pdf [accessed 30 October 2009]. Crimp, M. (2005) Fewer Emergencies, London: Faber & Faber. Deleuze, G. (1990) The Logic of Sense, New York: Columbia University Press. Douglas, A., Scopa, K. and Gray, C. (2000) ‘Research through practice: positioning the practitioner as researcher’ in Working Papers in Art and Design, available online at: www.herts.ac.uk/artdes/research/papers/wpades/vol1/ douglas2.html [accessed October 30 2009]. Freshwater, H. (2009) Theatre & Audience, Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan. Frichot, H. (2005) ‘Stealing into Deleuze’s Baroque house’ in I. Buchanan and G. Lambert (eds.), Deleuze and Space, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press: 61–79. Gray, C. and Malins, J. (2004) Visualizing Research: A Guide to the Research Process in Art and Design, Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate.

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Grehan, H. (2009) Performance, Spectatorship and Ethics in a Global Age, Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan, London. Hadley, B. (2008) ‘Mobilising the monster: “modern disabled performers” manipulation of the freakshow’ in M/C Journal, Vol. 11, No. 3, available online at: www.journal.mediaculture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/ article/viewArticle/47 [accessed 30 October 2009]. Hadley, B., Rajak, J., Filmer, A., and Caines, R. with Read, A. (2010) ‘The “dirty work” of the lie’ in Performance Research, Vol. 15, No. 2: 124– 131. Hadley, B., Trace, G., and Winter, S. (2010) ‘Uncertainties that matter: risk, response-ability, ethics, and the moment of exchange in live art’ in About Performance, No. 10: 137–151. Haseman, B. (2006) ‘A manifesto for performative research’ in Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy, No. 118: 98–106. (2007) ‘Rupture and recognition: identifying the performative research paradigm’, in E. Barrett and B. Bolt (eds.) Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry, London and New York: I.B.Tauris: 147–157. Heddon, D. (2008) Autobiography and Performance, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Kane, S. (2001) ‘Crave’ in S. Kane, Complete Plays, London: Methuen: 153– 202. Keidan, Lois (2007) ‘Access all areas’ in I. Ivkovic and T. Medak (eds.) Extravagant Bodies, Zagreb: Kontejner: 122–137. Kumari Campbell, F. (2008) ‘Refusing able(ness): a preliminary conversation about ableism’ in M/C/Journal, Vol. 11, No. 3, available online at: journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view Article/46 [accessed 30 October 2009]. Lehmann, H.T. (2006) Postdramatic Theatre, K. J¨urs-Munby (trans.), London and New York: Routledge. Marchionini, G., Wildemuth, B.M. and Geisler, G. (2006) ‘The open video digital library: a M¨obius strip of research and practice’ in Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Vol. 57, No. 12: 1629–1643. Massumi, B. (n.date) ‘Deleuze, Guattari and the philosophy of expression (AN INVOLUNTARY AFTERWORD)’ in The Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/ Revue Canadienne de Litterature Comparee, Vol. 24, No. 3 ( January 1998), available online at: www.anu.edu.au/hrc/first and last/works/crclintro.htm [accessed 30 October 2009].

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ago of a strange form of aphasia, he disappeared twice’ in New York Times, July 11 1931: 13, available online at: www.i-see.org/bates obit.html

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New York Times (1931) ‘Dr W.H. Bates dies; an eye specialist: victim, many years

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Chapter 9 Couser, G. T. (2002) ‘Signifying bodies’ in S. L. Snyder, J. Brueggemann and R. Garland-Thomson (eds.) Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities, New York: Modern Language Associates. Deleuze, G. (2005) Cinema 1: The Movement Image, H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam (trans.), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Dewey, J. (1934) Art as Experience, New York: Capricorn Books. Ellis, J. C. and McLane B.A. (2005) A New History of Documentary Film, New York: Continuum. European Foundation Joris Ivens (n.date) ‘1925 (5) / Rain’, available online at: www.ivens.nl/films/?p=118&t=2&k=2&film=26&details=ja [accessed 20 July 2012]. Greenhalgh, T. and Hurwitz, B. (1999) ‘Narrative based medicine: Why study narrative?’ in BMJ, Vol. 318: 48–50.

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Grimshaw, A. and Ravetz, A. (2005) Visualizing Anthropology, Bristol: Intellect. Loizos, P. (1993) Innovation in Ethnographic Film: From Innocence to SelfConsciousness 1955–1985, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Macdougall, D. (2006) Film, Ethnography and the Senses: the Corporeal Image, Princeton: University of Princeton Press. Marks, L. U. (2000) The Skin of Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment and The Senses, Durham: Duke University Press. Mayne, J. (1993) Cinema and Spectatorship, London and New York: Routledge. Metz, C. (1974) Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nichols, B. (2001) Introduction to Documentary, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Pink, S. (2006) The Future of Visual Anthropology: Engaging The Senses, London: Routledge. Plantinga, C. R. (1997) Rhetoric and Representation in Non-Fiction Film, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Riessman, C. and Quinney, L. (2005) ‘Narrative in social work: a critical review’ in Qualitative Social Work, Vol. 4, No. 4: 391–412. Seng, P. (2007) Dewey and The Movies: A Missed Opportunity, available online at: www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/SAAP/USC/TP32.html [accessed 20 July 2012]. Snyder, S. and Mitchell, D. (2006) Cultural Locations of Disability, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sobchack, V. (1992) The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Stoller, P. (1997) Sensuous Scholarship, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Storey, J. (2003) Cultural Studies and The Study of Popular Culture, Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press. Swain, J. and French, S. (2008) ‘There but for fortune’ in J. Swain and S. French (eds.) Disability on Equal Terms, London: Sage Publications. Sykes, G. (2003) The Images of Film and the Categories of Signs: Pierce and Deleuze on Media, available online at: www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/ aboutcsp/sykes/deleuze.htm [accessed 23 May 2009]. Taylor, M. (2008) ‘Disabled in images and language’ in J. Swain and S. French (eds.), Disability on Equal Terms, London: Sage Publications. Tyler, S. (1987) The Unspeakable: Discourse, Dialogue and Rhetoric in The Postmodern World, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

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Chapter 10 Adams, K. (2010) ‘You can only know your own story: the precarious position of the action researcher’, paper presented to the Participatory Action Research and Action Learning 8th world congress, Melbourne, Australia, available online at: wc2010.alara.net.au/Formatted%20Papers/3.1.1.DEC.1.pdf [accessed 17 July 2012]. Ahmed, S. (2006) Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others, Durham and London: Duke University Press. Anzaldua, G. (1987) Borderlands: La Frontera, San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Bhabha, H. (1994) The Location of Culture, London and New York: Routledge. Bolt, B. (2004) Beyond Representation: The Performative Power of The Image, London and New York: I.B.Tauris. Collischan Van Wagner, J. K. (1989) Lines of Vision: Drawings by Contemporary Women, New York: Hudson Hills Press. Cornford, F. (1980) From Religion to Philosophy: A Study in The Origins of Western Speculation, Hassocks: Harvester Press. Crary, J. (1990) Techniques of The Observer: On Vision and Modernity in The Nineteenth Century, Cambridge: MIT Press. Halberstam, J. (2011) The Queer Art of Failure, Durham and London: Duke University Press. Ings, S. (2007) The Eye: A Natural History, London: Bloomsbury. Johnston, J. (2010) Angels of Desire. Sydney: Gnosis Press. Mayhew, M. (2010) ‘Marking time; examining life drawing as methexis’, Time.Transcendence.Performance: Refereed Conference Proceedings, Monash University, Caulfield VIC, Australia, available online at: arts.monash .edu.au/ecps/assets/docs/proceedings-mayhew-marking-time-ttpconference.pdf [accessed 2 July 2012]. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964) The Primacy of Perception: and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History, and Politics, J. M. Edie (ed.), C. Dallery, (trans.), Evanston: Northwestern University. Oliver, K. (2001) Witnessing: Beyond Recognition, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Taussig, M. (2011) I Swear I Saw This: Drawings in Fieldwork Notebooks, Namely My Own, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Chapter 11 Bamberger, J. and Sch¨on, D. (1991) ‘Learning as reflective conversation with materials’ in F. Steier (ed.), Research and Reflexivity, London: Sage: 186– 209. Barrett, E. and Bolt, B. (eds.) (2007) Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry, London: I.B.Tauris. Belenky, M. F. et al. (1997) Women’s Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice and Mind (10th anniversary edition), New York: Basic Books Bolt, B. (2006a) ‘A non standard deviation: handlability, praxical knowledge and practice-led research’ in Speculation and Innovation: Applying Practice Led Research In the Creative Industries Conference RealTime Arts Vol. 74 (special issue), August-September, Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Bolt, B. (2006b) ‘Materializing pedagogies’ in Working Papers in Art and Design 4, Available online at: sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes research/papers/ wpades/vol4/bbfull.html. ISSN 1466–4917 [accessed 24 July, 2012]. Born, G. (1997) ‘Modernist Discourse, Psychic Forms, and Agency: Aesthetic Subjectivities at IRCAM’, in Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 12, No. 4: 447– 578. British Association of Art Therapists (n.date) ‘What is Art Therapy?’, available online at: www.baat.org/art therapy.html [accessed 30 July 2012]. Bruner, J. (1996) The Culture of Education, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Carter, P. (2004) Material Thinking: The Theory and Practice of Creative Research, Carlton Victoria: University of Melbourne Press. Cohen, G. (2000) The Creative Age: Awakening Human Potential in the Second Half of Life, New York: Avon Books. Coughlin, Joseph F. (2009) MIT AgeLab, Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Denzin, N. K. and Lincoln, Y. S. (eds.) (1994) Handbook of Qualitative Research, London: Sage. Dewey, J. (2005) Art as Experience, New York: Perigee. Doruff, S. (2011) ‘Artistic res/arch: the propositional experience of mattering’, in R. Smite, K. Mey And R. Smits (eds.), Acoustic Space No.9: Art as Research, Riga: RIXC, The Centre for New Media Culture and MPLab of Liepaja University Latvia: 15–23. Ewenstein, B. and Whyte, J. (2006) Knowledge practices in design: the role of visual representations as ‘epistemic objects’, EBK Working Paper 2005/06,

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Sobel, R. S. (2007) ‘Entrepreneurship’, in The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, Library of Enonomics and Liberty, available online at: www.econlib .org/library/Enc/Entrepreneurship.html [accessed 15 July 2012]. Steier, F. (ed.) (1991) Research and Reflexivity, London: Sage. Tsoukas, H. (2009) ‘Creating organizational knowledge dialogically’ in T. Rickards, M. A. Runco and S. Moger (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Creativity, Abingdon: Routledge: 160–176. Watson, A. (1992) ‘An Exploration of The Principle of Chance as a Stimulus to the Creative Activity known as Sculpture’, unpublished PhD thesis, The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK. Whitehead, D. H. (2003) ‘Poiesis and art-making: a way of letting-be’ in Contemporary Aesthetics, Vol 1. (online journal available at: www. contempaesthetics.org/ [accessed 30 July, 2012]. Wikipedia (n.date) ‘Slow Art’, available online at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Slow Movement#Slow Art [accessed 25 October 2011]. (n.date) ‘Somatics’, available online at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatics [accessed 25 October 2011].

Chapter 12 Armstrong, K., Jeremijenko, N., Barclay, L., and Fry, T. (2011) ‘The bat human project’ Remnant Emergency Artlab, available online at: www. remnantartlab.com/the-bat-human-event/ [accessed 21 January 2012]. Armstrong, K. (2012) Email correspondence with the first author, 1 February 2012. Barrett, E. (2005) ‘Creative arts practice, Creative Industries: method and process as cultural capital’ in Speculation and Innovation (SPIN) Conference Proceedings, Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology: 1–13. Barrett, E. & Bolt, B. (eds.) (2007) Practice as Research: Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry, London and New York: I.B.Tauris. Biggs, M. and B¨uchler, D. (2008) ‘Eight criteria for practice-based research in the creative and cultural industries’ in Art, Design and Communication in Higher Education, Vol. 7, No. 1: 5–18. Bolt, B. (2004) Art Beyond Representation: The Performative Power of the Image, London and New York: I.B.Tauris. Bourke, N., Haseman, B., Mafe, D. and Vella, R. (eds.) (2005) Speculation and Innovation: (SPIN) Conference Proceedings, Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology.

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Brien, D. L. and Williamson, R. (eds.) (2009) ‘Supervising the creative arts

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Index Ahmed, Sarah, 203–4 Armstrong, Keith, 252–4

Bolt, Barbara, 121, 191–3, 219, 231, 237, 271

Austin, J.L., 30–1

Borgdorff, Henk, 266–7

Australian Centre for the Moving

Brecht, Bertolt, 131–2

Image, 54 Australian Research Council (ARC), 23–24, 26–30, 51, 241, 252

Brooks, Peter, 124–8, 143 Buchler, Danielle, 25–7, 32 Butler, Judith, 31

Back-to-Back Theatre, 149

Campbell, Fiona Kumari, 147

Baker, Liz, 63–4

Carter, Paul, 60, 96–7, 188, 192, 207,

Barad, Karen, 257–8, 262, 265, 270 Barrett, Estelle, 57, 77, 121, 139, 140, 143, 208, 212, 237, 271 Bates, William Horatio, 152–4, 165

224 Catts, Oron, 21 Cazeaux, Clive, 104 Conceptual Art, 38 Cornford, Francis, 192–3 Crary, Jonathan, 117, 195–6

Benjamin, Walter, 89, 95, 106–7 Bergson, Henri, 258

De Certeau, Michel, 43–4

Biggs, Michael, 25–7, 32, 121

De Heem, Jan Davidsz, 84–5

Bilateral Kellerberin, 39–40

De Landa, Manuel, 263–5, 267

Bilateral Petersham, 39–49

Deleuze, Gilles, 98, 102, 162, 180,

Blanchot, Maurice, 41, 43 Blenky, Mary, 214–5 Blogging, 38–49

267, 269 Denzin Norman K and Yvonna S Lincoln, 212

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d´erive, 43 Dewey, John, 71, 74, 169, 185, 207, 213

Intimate Transactions, 51–2, 54–5, 61–3, 65 Italy, 110

Duchamp, 98

Ivens, William M., 94–5

Ecology, 57–9

Jarvis, Michael, 103

Ecosophy, 57

Jeremijeko, Natalie, 53, 252, 254

Eisenstein, Elizabeth, 94

Johnston, Rachel Ann, 140

Eisner, Elliot W., 4, 71–2

Jones, Caroline, 92–3

Ellis, Jack C., and Betsy A. McLane, 176

Keidan, Lois, 164

Engels-Schwarzpaul, Tina, 110

Kirby, Vikki, 259

Excellence Research Australia (ERA),

Kirker, Anne, 105

22–30, 59

Kristeva, Julia, 154

Expanded Cinema, 10, 38

Kuhn, Thomas, 3

Florence, 115–6

Land, Ray, 221

Fluxus, 10, 38

Latour, Bruno, 201, 259–61

Fremantle, 104–5

Lehmann. Hans-Theis, 148–151,

Friere, Paulo, 211 Fry, Tony, 60–2

154, 161 Lemke, Thomas, 72 Lippi, Joseph, 90

Gibson, Ross, 5, 6

Loizos, Peter, 182–3

Goddard, Stephen, 266, 268

Lumi`ere Brothers, 166

Gombrich, Ernst, 115 Gray, Carole, 237

Marks, Laura U., 179, 182–3 Massumi, Brian, 267, 270

Haapala, Arto, 41–2

Matisse, Henri, 84, 86

Halberstam, Judith, 200–1

Mcehleny, Josiah, 97, 100

Hamilton, Jillian, 61

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 129, 198–9

Haraway, Donna, 4–5, 7–9, 258–9,

Methexis, 31, 188–9, 191–3, 201–2

261–2, 265

Metz, Christian, 167

Haseman, Brad, 161–2

M¨obius strip, 161–4

Hayter, Stanley William, 95

Muller, Lizzie, 49

Heidegger, Martin, 192, 219–20

Museum, 109–20

Historiography, 116 Nauman, Bruce, 98 Infra-thin, 98, 100, 106

300

Nicholls, Bill, 166, 174–5

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Shusterman, Richard, 71, 74–5

Oliver, Kelly, 195–7, 199–200

Simondon, Gilbert, 268–71

INDEX

onto-epistemology, 257–72

Sobchack, Vivian, 119 Performativity, 30–3, 75, 146, 192

Stelarc, 20–1

Phelan, Peggy, 147, 152

Sullivan, Graham, 92, 93–4, 100,

Phenomenology, 140–2 Pink, Sarah, 91, 168, 179 Polyani, Michael, 5

109, 121 Synder, Sharon, and David Mitchell, 147–9

Renaissance, 113–6, 120–2

Tajiri, Rea, 182

Rose, Gillian, 72

Taussig, Michael, 199–200 Taylor, Margaret, 172

Sandahl, Carrie, 151

Thiele, Kathrin, 267–8

Sch¨on, Donald, 207, 210, 213, 215,

Tsoukas, Haridimous, 214

235, 238, 256 Scott, Bon, 47–49 Scrivener, Steven, 233–4, 236, 239–40

Whitehead, Alfred North, 266, 267, 269 Wollheim, Richard, 106

Sennett, Richard, 207, 222 Shotter, John, 130, 141–2

Zelenko, Oksana, 242–3

301