practice-led research in creative arts, media & design
I've started an ATN-Research online module which is great because it allows you to articulate things about your research, well actually it forces me to articulate things in writing about my research. I feel a little like I'm moving in slow-motion at the moment, but I think this module will really help to think through some things Adrian and I were talking about in terms of using my Marker film as a prompt for further thinking, and I think this module will help me think through some of those ideas.
One of the preliminary readings was Marshall and Newton's "Scholarly Design as a Paradigm for Practice-Based Research." The quote that we are asked to respond to from this reading links heavily to a lot of the discussions Romana, Benjamin, Adrian and I have had in our Monday group meetings regarding art and research:
A tension has developed: those representing conventional research practices insisting that scientific inquiry hold sway, and those representing practice looking for ways in which their activities might be recognised and valued (as an equal to conventional research) more directly by the academy. (Marshall and Newton, 2002)
In response to this quote I do not think there is any need to favour either scientific enquiry or practice in terms of a PhD, apart from considering that practice in the context of a PhD must be research. My position is that artistic practice cannot be an academic output as the artefact itself, within itself, does not articulate research. However, when accompanied by a written exegetical piece it can articulate itself as research because the exegesis ties the artefact into the realm of what is to be explored. The artefact hence is research but to be understood as such it needs to accompanied by some type of writing which places it into the context of what the academic is exploring. I don't think a artistic practice should be valued in itself by the academy as research.
When Marshall and Newton state that:
The substantive part of the research program (the practice-based work) remains as a piece of practice and not as a piece of research.
the answer is two-fold in response to what I have stated about. The piece of practice exists as research when it is understood as research in response to the writing, it is informed by some type of academic enquiry. The piece of practice is research always to the academic. However, if the work, for instance, is an installation in a gallery unaccompanied by its research then I think it is impossible for the work to be understood as research as opposed to a piece of practice.