[-empyre-] Research in Practice, week two, January 14-20

Tue Jan 15 04:17:56 EST 2013

Dear List, 

Thank you for inviting me to contribute to this stimulating topic. Being in my final funded year of a practice-PhD in Creative and Critical Practice (University of Sussex – School of Media, Film & Music) and thinking about my position within this topic, has led me to reflect on how myself as an artist, my art practice, and as a research-practitioner have developed since beginning over the last three years.

Making the decision of starting a PhD was initially decided out of career choice. As an artist I felt unsatisfied with the purpose of exhibiting my work, and how my time was balanced between making work, networking and administrative duties. I felt that becoming a research practitioner in either art or media would allow me to challenge my practice over and over again and contribute to knowledge and society.  I was then guided toward doing a PhD and assumed it would provide structure and guidance in achieving my goal.  

I didn’t anticipate that a vast majority of my PhD would be about negotiating creative practice within academia, and, that in return these results would form part of my research methods. It seems that creative practice, as digital interactive art, is still looking for its place in the academic system, and that is not yet ready for “speculative research [that] produces its own protocols;  the artist as researcher [to]engage with knowledge in ways that involve the adoption  of new frames of reference, the design of new system and the  acquisition of new behaviours” (Candy, Edmonds:2011:V).

However that same struggle also provided freedom in creating new structures and individually tailored methods. In my case, with the support of my supervisors (Caroline Bassett & Kirk Woolford), through collaborative works with elderly communities and with Fabrica (Brighton based art gallery) I was able to realise new initiatives and to have a relevant environment in which to apply my research methods.

“ […] they are different pathways to articulating a personal methodology in practice-based research into interactive art. What becomes clear is that it is not enough to identify an approach and simply appropriate it wholesale from existing sources in other disciplines: adapting and tailoring to meet one’s own particular requirements is essential.” (Candy, Edmonds:2011:49)

For example, over a year ago I funded a multi-disciplinary and cross-institutional practice group that offers direct engagement with practice, peer reviews, and opportunities to create collaborative work (as artwork or events that relates to practice research); collaborating with Fabrica allowed me to create an extended form of a Beta-Space , a safe, controlled and familiar environment where the elderly communities involved in my work could re-engage with my work and processes, whilst I could observe or have a dialogue with them.  

So, in some aspect to continue to work following my own ethics, instincts, and evaluations, as I was doing as an artist has been much more relevant within academia as opposed to trying to fit in and comply with well-established systems. That said I have yet to defend my work.

Digital interactive art practice invites experimental/ludic, collaborative, ‘action-based’ and ‘reflective methods’ to name a few. However if we consider Moore’s Law  and ‘digital media’s ability to invite a multidisciplinary approach (i.e. art/science; art/informatics; art/well-being), they have continually left us (artists and research practitioners) with an explosion of accessible new skills to acquire (i.e. motion capture, 3D design, interactive software, networked technologies). As these become outmode or outdated, the artist is forced to continuously develop new skills, this could be seen to limit, in part, the creative ‘reflective method’ interplay from Candy’s “creating -> reflecting-> creating again -> reflecting again…” (Candy, Edmonds, 2011:45)  to  ‘learning-> creating -> reflecting->learning-> creating again -> reflecting again…’ 

Naimark (in reference to Simon’s text) makes a fair point highlighting that it is time to move base and to start considering the ‘last word art’. In interactive art practice, it is easy to forget about the initial concept and enjoy the ludic elements that interactivity has to offer, both from the point of view of the research practitioner and the audience/participant.

Another point to consider is the change of the studio environment that I have experienced as an artist to the academic lab. Terminologies are consistently evolving (Foster, 2004: pp4-5), from ‘studio’ to ‘lab’, ‘material’ to ‘data’, ‘canvas’ to ‘platform’, ‘experimentation’ to ‘testing’, ‘audience’ to ‘users’, etc. Making the academic creative environment as ‘first word art’ and encouraging ‘learning-> experimenting-> investigating -> creating -> reflecting->learning again…’. Therefore, in my opinion, creative practice, as artists know it, is essential in an academic environment, to avoid quantifying creative practice and to allow ‘last word art’. 

 “The concept of ‘ reflective practice’ has had a significant influence on the methodological probation is of practice-based research. Reflective practice involves the process of reflecting on one section and learning how to act differently as a result. The starting point of reflective practice is the lived experience of the practitioner.” (Candy, Edmonds, 2011:43)

As it stands, my journey as an artist doing a phd has been most challenging and most rewarding, not only in understanding how to be creative in an academic context, but also in developing my art work and my position and contribution to its broader context. It has been a fascinating journey that has exceeded my initial motives and expectations.

In response to Maria’s question “How do we set up methodologies for practice-based research students?” what about if methodologies for practice-based research stay as malleable and unfix and instead of setting-up them up, it would be about how to access and create tailored methods to fit individual research. Does this seem more reflective of creative practice? At the same time examples of other practitioners and their methodologies, approaches and choices would be useful to gather to identify shared methods… 

Cécile 

________________________________________
From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] on behalf of maria mencia [m.mencia at freeuk.com]
Sent: 14 January 2013 12:34
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Research in Practice, week two, January 14-20

Hi all,
Creative practitioners?  Research degrees? Practice-based? Practice-led? Hybrid? In between? Dr Who am I?
I have to say I didn’t need to do a PhD to make me wonder whether I was an artist, a researcher or an academic. This is an innate condition for me. When I was an art student I made a video of myself stamping my forehead with different rubber stamps (I am an artist, I am teacher, I am a linguist, and so on) I will stamp one and rubbed it thoroughly and then I stamped another one. When I went to art college I was a mature student so I had already done quite a few things in my life but perhaps some of us creative creatures are just happy with inhabiting this hybrid place.
Practice-based research allows for these intersections, labyrinths and hypertextual landscapes of exploration. But, where is knowledge in all this? Is it in these trans-disciplinary connections? In the technologies used? In the different fields of study?
As my colleagues, I started my PhD (2000-2003) to carry on engaging in an intellectual challenge. I finished an MA in history and theory of art at Chelsea College of Art where aside from the course we also engaged with our art practice and organised group exhibitions.  The MA was research-based, we presented our own research papers in seminars and after 2 years of evening seminars I didn’t want to stop this activity. I put a proposal for a PhD in Digital Art and Digital Poetics. In my previous life I had studied English Philology so I had a great interest in language-based art, concrete poetry, sound poetry, avant-garde stuff and new technologies were just there for me to explore these fields as well as Derrida’s grammatology, Landow’s hypertext theories and many other theorists I am not going to bore you with.
I had the time of my life and as a PhD student the academic world was full of possibilities, still is, and I can say I am fully active in lots of different activities- (WATCH this space!! for the e-poetry festival in June, at Kingston Univ).
More reasons to do a practice-based PhD? I just read the essay Simon wrote: titled New Media: the 'First Word' in Art this is a quote from this essay:
‘ Further reflecting such pragmatics Maria Mencia states:
‘I have pursued the production of my artwork and research within an academic environment as this provides me with the production, network and dissemination platforms needed for the development of the work. I don’t think this is the only environment which would allow me to develop my work as there are many other avenues in the art world but it has been my choice to select the academic as opposed to the art world.’
Mencia contextualises this and the value derived from this approach when she says ‘I am interested in the art scene when exhibitions expand into other dialogues such as seminars, talks and workshops; otherwise I find the art gallery a bit sterile and contained’.
 It was interesting for me to read this as it is now 10 years since I finished my PhD and things have moved on. In response to Simon, I gather this might be also why the numbers of creative arts practitioners undertaking research degrees has grown because we have this opportunity which didn’t exist pre-creative PhDs.
The problem is when you come to the realisation that academia is not just about developing our research work as you do in a doctorate, but in fact most of the time we are dealing with admin and teaching and I think this can be a huge hindrance for a creative person. Therefore, I would like to question, if to do a practice-based creative research PhD is appropriate to work in traditional humanities departments?
How can we face the challenges and make an environment which would suit more our research interests in universities with no tradition of practice-based  or proper understanding of creative practices? This can also become even harder if there is no understanding of the research field either, especially if it covers technology and it is trans-disciplinary.
Another aspect I would like to mention, before I finish, in response to Donna ‘As a whole group, we could never be one clear voice or identity, rather a complex cacophony within these two decades.”
I think this is one of the aspects more interesting about practice-based. How do we set up methodologies for practice-based research students?
Regards,
maria

On 13 Jan 2013, at 19:54, BIGGS Simon wrote:

The second week of our discussion on Research in Practice begins. I would like to thank our invited discussants during week one, Maria Grade Godinho, Sue Hawksley, Donna Leishman and Bronwyn Platten, who have kicked the discussion off with reflections on their experiences as artists, PhD students and researchers. I hope that they will sustain their engagement with the debate as it develops.

Donna has proposed a short taxonomy for describing the various conditions that the artist-researcher might find themselves occupying, with which each of the discussants found some resonance:
Dr But_I_am_an_artist
Dr I_was_an_artist_now_I_am_a_practitioner
Dr I_am_a_researcher_nolonger _an_artist
and
Dr Intersitial_somewhere_between

This week's guests might also find these useful criteria - or choose to outline alternate models or take the debate in other directions.

We would like to welcome the invited discussants for week two, January 14-20. They are:

Cécile Chevalier is a French artist and practice-based doctoral student (2009-2013) at the University of Sussex. Cécile works with lens-based media placed in tangible and embodied interactive installation works. Her work has been shown in festivals and exhibitions across the UK and she has contributed to various media research projects. Her research and art work focus on memory, reminiscence & technology. Cécile also teaches animation, photography and digital media at Sussex.

Laura Cinti is an artist working with biology and co-director of C-LAB, an art-science collective. Recent activities include exhibiting living synthetic biology artworks at Techfest 2012 (Mumbai) and curating public art exhibitions for the EU funded 'European Public Art Centre' (2010-2012). Her artworks have been presented and exhibited internationally. Laura has a PhD from UCL (Slade School of Fine Art/UCL Centre of Biomedical Imaging), a Masters in Interactive Media: Critical Theory & Practice (Distinction) from Goldsmiths College and BA (Hons) Fine Art (First Class) from University of Hertfordshire. Recently she was awarded the 'Designers & Artists 4 Genomics Award' (2012-2013).

Talan Memmott is a Lecturer in Digital Culture at Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden. He holds an MFA in Literary Arts/Electronic Writing from Brown University and a PhD in Interaction Design from Malmö University. Memmott is a practicing artist, an academic, and a media theorist. His creative work has been presented at numerous conferences and festivals, and been the subject of a number of critical articles and books. He is currently working on a digital performance piece titled Huckleberry Finnegans Wake. Memmott is Vice President of the Electronic Literature Organization and during 2010-2013 an investigator on the European research project ELMCIP.

Maria Mencía is a media artist-researcher and Senior Lecturer in Digital Media at Kingston University, London, UK. Her doctoral research (2000-2003) in Digital Poetry and Art was one of the first in the field. Mencía’s research is at the intersection of language, art and digital technology. It explores the area of the 'in-between' the visual, the aural and the semantic by experimenting with the digital medium with the aim of engaging the reader/viewer/user in an experience of shifting ‘in’ and ‘out’ of language by looking ‘at’ and looking ‘through’ transparent and abstract landscapes of text and linguistic soundscapes. It draws from avant-garde poetics, exploring digital media grammars. It is trans-disciplinary bringing together different cultural, artistic and literary traditions such as: linguistics, fine art, visual, concrete and sound poetry. http://www.mariamencia.com/

Anne Sarah Le Meur (France) received her Ph.D. in Aesthetics, Science and Technology of Arts in 1999 from Paris 8 University. Both her theoretical (Ph.D, articles) and practical research dealt with the influence of 3D programming languages on bodily expression/representation. Her works play with 3D visual 'unconventions' and the heritage of abstract painting. This work includes still images, recorded and generative animations and real-time performances. Her latest work is an interactive installation based on the viewer's desire to perceive (Interface-Z, LeCube, ZKM residency). After lecturing at the University-Bauhaus-Weimar (1995-1997), Germany, she has been Assistant Professor for the Arts Department, Paris 1 University Pantheon-Sorbonne, since 2000.http://aslemeur.free.fr/index_eng.htm

Simon Biggs
simon at littlepig.org.uk<mailto:simon at littlepig.org.uk> http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ @SimonBiggsUK skype: simonbiggsuk

s.biggs at ed.ac.uk<mailto:s.biggs at ed.ac.uk> Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/edinburgh-college-art/school-of-art/staff/staff?person_id=182&cw_xml=profile.php
http://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/simon-biggs%285dfcaf34-56b1-4452-9100-aaab96935e31%29.html

http://www.eca.ac.uk/circle/  http://www.elmcip.net/  http://www.movingtargets.org.uk/  http://designinaction.com/
MSc by Research in Interdisciplinary Creative Practices
http://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/postgraduate/degrees?id=656&cw_xml=details.php

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Maria Mencia Ph.D
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