ICT role in 21st century education and it's challenges.
Research data-visual arts-presentation
1. Research data –
challenges for the visual arts
UCA Research and Enterprise
Strategy
UCA Research and Enterprise
Strategy
Prof. Kerstin Mey, Director of Research + Enterprise
2. Research in the space of the Visual Arts
• Creative inquiry = approach to
research
• ‘Practice-led’ = methodology for
inquiry
• Connected to practices of
making (poiesis) and material
processes
• human sensorium and embodied
experience
Paul Vanouse, The Active Stimulation
Feedback Platform, 2005
3. Arts ‘versus’ Science
World / Reality
Science Art
Authoritative knowledge Beauty/aesthetics
Factually true Expression of emotions
Systematic Imagination/expressivity
Methodical Creative
Objective Subjective
Rigorous and clinically precise ‘Fuzzy’ / imprecise
Intentionality Intuition
Proposition/ deduction/ argument Artefact / artefiction
Hard subject Soft subject
‘I think therefore I am’ ‘I feel therefore I am’
Team Individual
Consciousness
4. Research in the space of the Visual Arts
• A ‘contact zone’ in which different
perspectives, concerns, approaches
and methods can ‘meet, grapple
and clash’
• Cross-disciplinarity
• Notion of dialogue – motion –
negotiation and exchange of values
– approximation of truth
• Creativity/ problem solving ≠ a
homogenous process ‘folded and
fluid’ if not at times ‘messy, fuzzy
Ori Gersht, Willow Rose
and tumultuous’ (Exploding Flowers), 2007
5. ‘Disciplinary’ Definition of Research Data
‘Research data can be described as
data which arises out of, and
evidences, research. This can be
classified as observational, including:
sensor data; experimental; simulation;
derived or compiled data for example
databases and 3D models; or
reference or canonical for example, a
collection of smaller datasets
gathered together (University of
Edinburgh 2011a).‘
Paul Vanouse, Latent Figure
Protocol, 2007
6. ‘Disciplinary’ Definition of Research Data
‘Examples of visual arts research
data may include sketchbooks, log
books, sets of images, video
recordings, trials, prototypes, ceramic
glaze recipes, found objects, and
correspondence. The
[KAPTUR]project team found that the
nature of visual arts research data
Oron Katz @
can be both: tangible and intangible; Symbiotica, University of
digital and physical; heterogeneous Melbourne
and infinite; and complex and
complicated (Garrett et al. 2012).’
7. ‘Disciplinary’ Definition of Research Data
• Documents (text, Word), spread sheets
• Logs, field notebooks, diaries, workshop note books,
sketch books
• Questionnaires, surveys, interviews, transcripts,
codebooks
• Audiotapes, videotapes
• Photographs, films
• Test responses
• Slides, artefacts, specimens, samples
• Collection of digital objects acquired and generated
during the process of research
• Data files
• Database contents (video, audio, text, images)
• Models, algorithms, scripts
• Contents of an application (input, output, log files for
analysis software, simulation software, schemas)
• Methodologies and workflows Janice Gordon@
Symbiotica, University
• Standard operating procedures and protocols of Melbourne
• Other emerging digital formats
8. Aileen Stackhouse: Trahere – the sense
of unease in making a mark
The practice of drawing and the practice
of thinking, 2005
16. Mick O’Kelley: Urban Negotiations: Art and
the Production of Space as an Ethical
Encounter
• Self-determined inquiry in the
area of social innovation
• Favelas in Sao Paolo, Brasil
• Documentation of material and
social research processes
through photography and two-
dimensional, architectural
models
17. Research Data in the Visual Arts I
• Research in the Visual Arts is
dynamically emerging, complex field
• Connected to incessant digitisation,
developing media platforms, formats
and forms and changing literacy
practices
• In tension to established research
paradigms and academic and
professional standards
• Requirements of research funders
• Validation through groups of
experts/peers/users: practices and
Terike Haapoja,
critical discourses Entropia, 2004
18. Research Data in the Visual Arts II
• Breadth and variety of research
practices and respective
diversity and volume of data
• Discipline specific approach,
knowledge and understanding –
definition of research data and
awareness of researchers
• Development of research design
based on awareness of research
data requirement practices and
standards
Leonardo da Vinci, Studies of a
horse, 1482
19. Research Data in the Visual Arts III
• Risks from physical and
technical obsolescence
• Data storage: institutional and
individual - practices of and
infrastructure, resources, policies
and guidance for deposition,
data preservation and
conservation, future proofing
• Versus practices that
conceptualise ephemerality
• Access to / re-interpretation of Helen and Kate Storey, Primitive
Streak, 1997, Wellcome Trust
data Sci/Art
20. Research Data in the Visual Arts IV
• Perception of ownership and
Intellectual Property Right for
data generated in the context of
research arising from ‘individual
creative practice’ and ‘subjective
expression’ and its
documentation (log and sketch
books, patterns and designs
bozetti and models, samples
and specimens)
Joseph Beuys, Chair with fat, 1964
21. Research Data in the Visual Arts V
• Expectation of risk taking in
research that contest and rupture
existing practices, paradigms and
standards in order to provoke our
senses and thoughts, educate
and innovate
• the ‘unknown unknowns’ may Tagny Duff, Viral Tattoo,
produce unexpected, un- 2008
recognised ‘data’ for which there
are not (yet) policies and
protocols
22. Paul Carter: Material Thinking
‘… creative knowledge cannot
be abstracted from the loom
that produced it. Inseparable
from its process, it resembles
the art of sending the woof-
thread through the warp. A
pattern made of holes, its
clarity is like air through a
basket. Opportunistic, it opens
roads.’
Focus for my presentation is provided by the framework of research in the Visual ArtsThe concept of creative research is itself a ‘proposition that reciprocally frames the ‘known unknowns as its deframes the experiencing of the unknow unknowns’ (Sher Doruff). It constructs a port of entry to matters of concern – As we use terms to qualify this re/search by preceding it with visual arts, art and design or creative or practice-based we invoke two things:The proximity / connectivity to scientific inquiry on the one hand and differences on the other, sometimes in an exclusive and at other times in a hospitable mannerCreative inquiry = approach to research (as in scientific research)Practice-based = methodology for inquiry: practice or aspects of it may raise and interrogate the research questions in relation to the context, respecting the unique constellation of values that each practitioner-researcher / designer researcher contributes to the knowledge-base of practice – Practice-based research highlights Art and Design as spaces for ‘higher order thinking’ in which original contributions to knowledge are made, the boundaries of existing knowledge are challenged or lost knowledge is being excavated – though being I emergence for not much more than three decade,this area of inquiry is still ‘young’This value proposition is closely connected to issues of research funding, the development of research degrees such as MPhils and PhDs as well as research career trajectoriesThe use of research in the context of Art and Design is also an expression of a relationship to established research paradigms and standards in the natural and social science and the humanities that sought to emphasise both the claim for equality in levels, scope, reach, quality and values of inquiry whilst at the, whilst at the same time pronouncing the methodological specificity of inquiry in this fieldThe term seeks to address the specific needs regarding the modes of interactions, the relationship between process and outputs (products, content, services, experiences, and [media] distribution models), quantitative and qualitative evaluation and thus to a complex and complicated range of data and data sets
In broad perceptual term we are often still caught up in an unjustified juxtaposition of scientific inquiry and artistic expression reaching back to C P Snow’s influential Rede Lecture of 1959 The Two Cultures, subsequently published as The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution
In correspondence to recent developments in contemporary arts, and altered cultural concerns that have moved from the re/presentation of life worlds – and the experience of them – to the re/presentation of Other – of communities and (their social inter/actions) notions of research in art and design have been shaped and re/formed. After a phase of heightened self-reflexivity during the culmination of postmodernism in the later 1980s and early 1990s, creative practices have increasingly become a zone of multi-, trans-, and interdisciplinary endeavour that bring together and intervene in other areas of knowledge production and organisational systems such as science, medicine, sociology, politics, corporate administration and so forth. More then ever since the advent of modernism, do the creative arts display a connectedness with other spheres of life. Institutional art and design currently promote their capacity as space for exchange and comparative analysis between different knowledge domains and epistemological practices if we think for instance of design management, design ethnography or curation. The digital age with its promotion of hypertextuality and intermedia has opened up new possibilities in terms of information distribution and gathering, business models such a sopen access to research publications, discourse and self/organisation. Furthermore, with a growing understanding that fundamental issues faced by societies and communities within a global context are too complex to be solved from single subject perspectives, creative investigation has attracted heightened attention for its capacity to move across, bring together and converge different knowledge domains including the natural and social sciences, the humanities, business processes and administration systems. Creativity and the artistic mind are increasingly valued in thinking about contemporary leadership, organisational, economic and human development. For instance, the immensity of our existential challenges demand a renewed focus on sensory perception and embodied experience, emotion and affect and highlights the importance of imagination, intuition, improvisation, and divergent, alternative thinking combined with continuous inquiry, reflection and reflex/ivity. Creative research calls to the fore and deals with lingering tensions between practice and theory, thinking and doing in their specific contemporary situatedness, historical evolution and disciplinary and institutional inflections as much as it demands an ongoing reconsideration of its own object of study, approaches, methods and instruments. This is reflected in current conceptualisations of research programmes in the art and design.
Examples taken from the UCA Research Code of Ethics – to illustrate the diversity of data
Behold: Visual Thesis – a chronological documentation using photographs of the evolution of drawing throughout the researchThe drawing experimented with the idea regarding creativity, thinking and practice that had issued from the investigation and explored current cross-disciplinary thoughts and concepts regarding the subject with other practitioners from the fields of social anthropology and philosophy. Documentation of thinking occurring during the works’ gestation was examined and interpreted as well as the work itself. The project was complex and consolidated emergent ideas throughout the research concerning the analogous nature of drawing and conversation and the place of writing. The research increased understanding of the influence of visual and cognitive elements on generating new knowledge by detailing non-verbal interactions between practice and thinking, and argued that practice is essential to elucidate and inform creative thought.
Kennispeki
Class
Selection of images from different aspects of research including ‘Nothing’
Existere
Research in the Visual Arts is dynamically emerging fieldResearch is connected to practices of making and material processes – to the whole of the human sensorium and embodied experienceIts communication is connected to incessant digitisation, developing media platforms, formats and forms and changing literacy practices – consequences to the way in which the outcome of creative research can be disseminated and experiencedCreation of tension to established research paradigms and academic and professional standardsRequirements of research funders in terms of transparence, robustness and significance of data, permanenceValidation of what research data are influenced by groups of experts/peers/users: practices and critical discourses