Steps to conducting art & design research:
• planning and preparation for research,
• surveying the research context,
• locating your research questions in relation to the context,
• generating and gathering data through the use of research methods,
• evaluating, analysing and interpreting your research outcomes,
• communicating your research findings.
Coming from a non-scientific background led to some significant challenges, especially when it came to thinking about methodology.
• How have you come to the decision to do research? What are your motives? Write a short story about it.
• What do you hope to gain by undertaking research? Include this at the end of your story.
Story:
Deciding to do research stemmed from undertaking my BA in animation. By living and breathing my practice inevitably leads to questions. Questions that can keep me up at night. My interests snowballed into wondering about sound and image accompaniment. Activities as menial as walking around observing the world, while listening to music, made me question cognition of such material, both individually and holistically. My motives have therefore been to understand sound and image accompaniment further, not only to satisfy me but to make genuine resonation in the viewers of my work. By gaining this further understanding, I hope to achieve a cognitive recognition of what I demonstrate, which my audience may not even understand themselves, but will find satisfying nonetheless.
The Process
• ‘what?’ – the identification of a ‘hunch’ or tentative research proposition, leading eventually to a defined and viable research question
• ‘why?’ – the need for your research in relation to the wider context, in order to test out the value of your proposition, locate your research position, and explore a range of research strategies
• ‘how?’ – the importance of developing an appropriate methodology and specific methods for gathering and generating information relevant to your research question, and evaluating, analysing and interpreting research evidence.
At MA level, I have come to the understanding that finding other practitioners methodologies can inform and validate my own research. Getting influence from specific techniques proved to work within art & design research makes the work more valuable.
Setting off into research 'Terrain'
First of all you need to consider which modes of transport – that is, methodology and methods – you will use. This depends on the terrain. It is important to consider initially a wide range of options, to examine some useful examples, and perhaps try a few out (as pilot studies). You might adopt a methodology in which your practice, or aspects of it, may play a role in the investigation. You might need to use several methods – a multi-method strategy – in which two or more methods are used to address your research question. This is a kind of ‘triangulation’ of methods. Your research methods must be used rigorously in order to yield good quality evidence. This stage might require you to test out the ground before venturing onto it, to retrace your steps, to use more than one vehicle, to go off in different directions, to explore many kinds of terrain, to collect a range of data in order to begin to provide enough evidence to be in a position to address your research question. It is important to document your whole journey – you might keep a reflective journal to record your progress. It is important to carefully organize and manage the information you amass so none is lost on the way.
Note - Keep a research diary to reflect upon effective methods for my enquiry
VERY IMPORTANT FOR ME ↓
Keeping an open mind, you need to reflect on your experiences and the collected information. You need to evaluate and select – what’s valuable, relevant, significant, and what isn’t? You need to ‘sieve’ the material using criteria derived from your research objectives. You need to ‘play with the data’, visualising possibilities, making creative connections.
An important part of any thesis is the identification of future research leading on from your work. This brings the research process full cycle – the identification of new research questions and new territory to be explored.
How can we carry out rigorous and respectable inquiry using methodologies and methods appropriate to practice – research without wearing a lab coat and safety goggles?
• What could research in Art and Design be?
• Why might artists and designers do research?
before we ask
• How might artists and designers do research?
Schön proposes that much of this activity is personal knowledge, not usually articulated, sometimes indescribable, and that it relies on improvisation learned in practice. In fact he likens it to an intuitive ‘art’ – ‘knowing-in-action, the characteristic mode of ordinary practical knowledge’. This kind of ‘knowing’ is dynamic – knowing how rather than knowing what. Schön identifies that the professional’s inability or unwillingness to articulate this kind of knowledge has led to a separation of academic and professional practice.
much of the debate about research in our sector has focused on the fear of losing creativity by speaking about it, and even worse, by writing about it!
Intellectualising creativity to death! ^^
always exposing ideas and practices to other professionals for feed-back, support and advice. In seeking the views of others, which will inevitably be subjective, we can develop inter-subjective views, which are less likely to be one-sided. Of course, keeping a critical view of your research at all times is essential.
because the elephant was so large each could only have a partial experience of it through incomplete sets of senses, and any one individual could not fully comprehend the complete beast. Only by making analogies and sharing each other’s perceptions of the mysterious creature could the totality of the beast be appreciated. Similarly in the case of describing and developing research in Art and Design; the experiences of many researchers are required to define the parts in order to form the whole picture.
making art/design/creative work through specific project frameworks or as a body of work exploring the research questions, which might include, or be supplemented by, any of the following:
– observation and related notation/use of symbols,
– visualization – drawing (in all forms), diagrams,
– concept mapping, mind mapping,
– brainstorming/lateral thinking,
– sketchbook/notebook,
– photography, video, audio,
– 3D models/maquettes,
– experimentation with materials and processes,
– modelling/simulations,
– multimedia/hypermedia applications,
– digital databases, visual and textual glossaries and archives,
– reflection-in-action/‘stream of consciousness’/personal narrative,
– visual diary/reflective journal/research diary,
– collaboration/participation/feedback, for example workshops,
– use of metaphor and analogy,
– organizational and analytical matrices,
– decision-making flow charts,
– story boards, visual narratives,
– curation,
– critical writing, publications,
– exposition and peer feedback/review.
These have been augmented with useful social science methods, usually adapted and/or re-contextualised in some way e.g.:
• interviews, questionnaires, surveys (seeking the opinions of others),
• case study – in-depth study of relevant examples,
• participant-observation – researcher as participant/collaborator in the research,
• personal construct methods – making sense of ourselves in our world(s),
• evaluative techniques, for example semantic differential, multiple sorting,
• soft systems methods.
The multi-method concept also suggests the use of multiple media, not only in its information technology sense (multimedia/hypermedia), but its value in using and integrating different kinds of media that provide different kinds of complementary sensory information.The involvement of practically all our human senses, as well as other independent sensory instruments, is more likely to give us a comprehensive and ‘rich’ perspective on the research issue being explored.
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