[-empyre-] Practice in Research & odd methods, rude mechanics

Mon Jan 21 03:19:40 EST 2013

A review of the outputs for the units of assessments in art and design, the performing arts and music, for the UK's 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, would deliver many examples of practice based work that were submitted and reviewed within a framework focused on research value, most of which was considered to be research by definition (and a proportion excellent in that respect).

There were around 70 higher education institutions submitting research active staff to the unit of assessment for art and design (largely practice based work) and over 40 for performing arts, also many practice based. A further 50 or so institutions submitted to the UoA for music, which would probably consist of 50% practice based work. I've not counted how many individual artist/academics this represents, but it will be around a thousand, with each submitting three or four outputs. We can therefore assume there are thousands of practice based outputs documented in the RAE database.

http://rae.ac.uk/submissions/

Music is an interesting case here. It has been a convention in music for 100% practice based PhDs to be submitted for many years. Music has long occupied a privileged position in research-led universities, whereas the other creative arts have, in most instances (at least in the UK), come to this in only the last two or three decades. My main experience of academia as a student was working in the electronic music studio at Adelaide University, which was almost exclusively used by PhD students in composition (that was in the 70's). Obviously this was not a rock'n'roll environment - the Professor who ran the studio smoked a pipe and had leather elbow patches on his tweed jacket, representing the cliche of the senior academic of the time. But it was a highly creative environment dedicated to music practice and the sort of place where technologies and practices were developed that facilitated more popular musical forms (eg: the Professor in question developed the synthesisers used by Pink Floyd on Dark Side of the Moon, a few years earlier).

We have a music school within Edinburgh College of Art (part of Edinburgh University) and there is little debate there about whether music practice can be research. It clearly can be, and 100% practice based! However, music is distinct, at least when considering the main tropes of music within academia (contemporary classical, experimental and electronic music dominate), as much of it exists as writing, in the form of the score. For the PhD the score, along with its performance, is often considered sufficient for the submission. There need not be any further contextualisation of the work, other than that required for the viva. That said, knowing a number of PhDs in our music department, they go to great lengths to contextualise and justify their work, historically, theoretically and technically (often all three at the same time). They are artists and they consider it default that they intellectually justify their work. As an artist myself I've always assumed I have to justify my practice intellectually, whether in argument, in writing or in practice. So, I disagree with Adrian when he states that art does not have to justify itself. I think it does, and always has had to, just like any other human activity. Art is not special. An anthropologist like Tim Ingold writes insightfully about the value of creativity in culture and points out how this is core in social formation, not a special form of human activity.

To give an example of a music PhD, a professional jazz musician submits a number of scores for ensemble pieces and music for dance. This has been contextualised in relation to jazz history (both traditional and modern - eg: Miles Davis, but also working James Brown into the mix) and modern classical music (eg: Stravinsky to Cage), looking at very specific aspects of each of these musical traditions and how they inform one another. This has then been reflected upon in the compositions the student has prepared, which function as exemplars of the hypothesis. The main evidence are the scores. This is considered quite conventional as a PhD submission. I am also aware of similar forms of PhD in the area of creative writing.

best

Simon

On 20 Jan 2013, at 15:27, Cecile Chevalier wrote:

> <So now I feel even more confused, as no one has ever yet, here, mentioned an artwork produced in the university and submitted for review (evaluation,
> knowledge attesting, confirmation of output, impact?), influence, significance?  meaning?   so where are these practices, and how do they matter? how come this is never addressed"?
> what work is generated?> <Johannes>
> 
> To amend the balance in a small way.... VIva Viva exhibition in 2008...  where work and thesis were accessible, the exhibition was open and advertise to the general public as well as academics...
> 
> http://www.closeupfilmcentre.com/vertigo_magazine/volume-4-issue-2-winter-spring-20091/viva-viva-an-exhibition-at-p3-gallery-london-december-2008/
> 
> ...The works displayed clearly showed different approaches to practice-based research - some works were clearly dominant in their practice, other seems to use practice as a method to access/present knowledge. This may have reflected their percentage of practice.... can a practice-based PhD be 80% practice? what is the minimum percentage that practice can be in practice-based research? 
> 
> I was truly excited by the exhibition (at the time I had not started my PhD), although it had similarities with a traditional art exhibition in its format (allocated/curated space and documentation) the content of the work and documentation was not 'art' but 'research art' (in its dominance of knowledge over aesthetics). But what I valued was its access to the general audience that I was then part of, it made research accessible. Sadly there were no Viva Viva in 2009 or any other year after that, which in some aspect reinforces Johannes's questions as opposed to answer them.
> 
> Cécile
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au [empyre-bounces at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au] on behalf of Johannes Birringer [Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk]
> Sent: 20 January 2013 06:18
> To: soft_skinned_space
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Practice in Research & odd methods, rude mechanics
> 
> dear all
> 
> the small post I sent a few days ago was meant to interrupt the conversation, and I am sorry for that.
> 
> The messages that appeared before here were quite illuminating, in many respects, and also deeply, very deeply  saddening, when
> I felt I read about the experiences described, artists becoming academics, teaching, defending their Phds,
> embroiled in bureaucracy of management, pedagogy, teaching studio? teaching academic practice & theory? preparation for teaching,
> administering, writing essays and theses, and all this, yes.  And all this "knowledge production."
> 
> The practice of the now so-called "practitioners" in the university environment. What
> is this, a practitioner? What are we?  what knowledge, Miles?  whose knowledge criteria? what kind of knowledge are you defending?
> and what would be the difference between art (non-instrumentalized?) and art (instrumentalized) and "output"?
> what is an "output"? what are your key problems?
> 
> (I read Sue Hawksley's last post with great interest, as she is describing a dilemma
> of space and time to create.....and her work as a " a dance artist ...work[ing] with new media, for example
> within  digitally-mediated interactive immersive performance environments".....
> 
>>> .
> - these grand claims for developing skills of interactivity feel a bit hollow right now. I notice with irony that I'm finding it difficult to complete this thought....
>>> 
> 
> So now I feel even more confused, as no one has ever yet, here, mentioned an artwork produced in the university and submittted for review (evaluation,
> knowledge attesting, confirmation of output, impact?), influence, signfiicance?  meaning?   so where are these practices, and how do they matter? how come this is never addressed"?
> what work is generated?
> 
> (mind you, I have failed completely to understand/appreciate the quotation offered to us about " research bricolage" ...
> 
>>> 
> of multiperspectival research methods...... diverse theoretical traditions are employed in a broader critical theoretical/critical pedagogical context to lay the foundation for a transformative mode of multimethodological inquiry. Using these multiple frameworks and methodologies researchers are empowered to produce more rigorous and praxiological insights into socio-political and educational phenomena. Kincheloe theorizes a critical multilogical epistemology and critical connected ontology to ground the research bricolage......
>>> 
> 
> 
> This multimethodological stuff,  to me this is unintelligible verbage, I guess, academic lingo, probably about uninspiring and unwitnessed art.
> To what audience or reception or knowledge context is this language directed? who would bother to read/see/experience this "critical connected ontology"?
> 
> so I am just wondering aloud about the "practices", that's all.
> 
> 
> Having just read an article in Art in America [http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/features/sensibility-of-the-times-revisited/]
> about artists back then responding to a questionnaire asking to describe the sensibility of the ’60s, and the same questions posed to artists now in 2012-13,
> i found Carolee Schneemann's reply about dentists quite interesting:
> 
> <<
> Current ideological language uses “practice” to define art concepts at the expense of process. Practice implies perfectibility, strategy, products: dentists have a practice, violinists practice, yoga is a practice, elephants practice for the circus. Process invites risk, uncertainty, vision, unpredictability, concentration and blind devotion.
> 
> Yes, the current situation is more academic. >>
> 
> But surely Schneemann, and the other artists who responded, had much to say about knowledge production, but their production is not defensible, if I understand Adrian Miles correctly.
> 
> That was my whole point. What are you defending, then?
> 
> 
> regards
> 
> Johannes Birringer
> 
> 
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Simon Biggs
simon at littlepig.org.uk http://www.littlepig.org.uk/ @SimonBiggsUK skype: simonbiggsuk

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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