Merete Røstad
1. Syllabus
Potential and role of artistic research documentation. Application? Documentation is what remains of an otherwise transient moment.
Send questions or topics I’d like to explore…
What I’d like to go into a bit deeper in the workshop is approaches to ‘researching other research’; how to narrow down the best places to start searching for research
[PhD theses] similar to my own. Second to this I would like to have some more specific insight into organizing for best future access documentation, particularly images
taken of work in process.
2. The Role of Documentation in Practice Led Research by Nithikul Nimkulrat, Journal of Research Practice Volume 3, Issue 1, Article M6, 2007 F
Keywords: documentation; art practice; artifact; practice-led research
This is a ‘quick reference’ guide to process, methodology and documentation.
Interplay between two ‘I’s. I, the researcher and I, the practitioner. Properly documented this documentation is research material.
Practice-based or practice-led? Which best describes what I am doing? Practice-led. My practice and research are intertwined, each feeding on the other.
Thinking about the sources of the methodology I will use; what are the forms of documentation [of the process] used within the fields these methodologies originate?
“Gray and Malins (2004) suggest that research can be seen as a process of resolving issues, problems, and challenges raised in practice. They also
emphasize that the process needs to be credible and the results should be available for critical assessment later.”
3 tasks: 1. Define focus
2. Clarify relevance
3. Develop appropriate methodological thought processes [& apply]
Methodology: multiple, pulled from other areas and adapted to specifics of practice-led research focus.
Aim of documentation= transparency [each step, conscious and unconscious, captured.
Mäkelä (2003) “retroactive gaze” process of looking back at one’s own practice in order to answer one’s research questions.
Objects produced need the documentation of their production to support the claim of them as research material.
Multiple forms of documentation, not limited to, for example textual documentation {language limitations], to gain a broader understanding of the process.
What forms of documentation would capture the breadth of my process? Photos, naturally are a part of my documentation to date. I think I need
to re-explore video.
And add an audio component. But how to keep track of all these different forms? Also, would they be used in each part of my practice, or only certain parts?
“...Polanyi (1969) asserted, knowing and doing are rarely exercised in isolation and their combination is present in the working of our sense organs.”
Document failures as well as successes.
Research log.
Documenting viewers’ response.
3. Visualizing research: a guide to the research process in art and design by Carole Gray and Julian Malins., Ashgate Publishing, 2004 F
and
4. Artistic research methodology : narrative, power and the public by Mika Hannula, Juha Suoranta, Tere Vadén, New York : Peter Lang, 2014 F
Both books are guides for the process. I’ve been thinking about the upcoming first revision of my initial proposal the past eight weeks and particularly about the
language, the structure of my question/research and the most appropriate methodologies based upon my current practice and the research I’m proposing.
The second book’s title was somewhat misleading; the first half representing the contents in a very dry way. However this book is the least dry of the lot! The second
half of the title really represents what this is about, consideration of how the research is communicated, narrated, within the context of the power structures from which
it originates and in which it will exist beyond the studio/research. Whereas the first book provoked thoughts to ‘what’ the structure of the question and methodologies
will be, the second book has made me think more on the ‘how’ [the language by which] I will express the research [structure and methodologies via the documentation,
work, writing, etc.