#transdisciplinary inquiries

[ajaderaven]

Transdisciplinary Inquiries

I’ve changed my research question a little for TransD, and figured I should post an update. 

Originally I was going to look at how a person’s vocabulary influenced the range of colours that they see. Now I want to see if mental factors influence a person’s perception of colour, so that’s their stress levels, their happiness levels, their tiredness levels, as well as their vocabulary.

Hopefully with a slightly bigger research focus I’ll get better results and therefore be able to develop a better project.

[ajaderaven]

Transdisciplinary Inquiries

The selection of creative ideas after individual idea generation: Choosing between creativity and impact

Reading this article has really made me aware of idea choice and my perception of ‘creative’ and ‘good’ ideas. It’s a habit of mine to brainstorm, because, as the article confirms, we often believe that with a large quantity of ideas generated their must be at least one ‘good’ idea in there somewhere. And while there may be a good idea, it’s apparent from this study that many people have difficulty determining which is the ‘best’ idea. 

There were several reasons for that in the study, many of them to do with the definition of ‘best’. In the study, the researchers were looking for best in terms of a combination of originality / creativity and feasibility. Many participants tend to judge an idea first on whether it was feasible, and also on whether it would create a positive impact and would neglect to judge an idea on originality. When asked to choose which idea was best based on creativity, the similarity between their choices and the official judges increased, but participants were more dissatisfied with their choice. It appears that creativity = originality and also best = feasibility when judging an idea’s worth. It also appears that “Participants may well regard originality as the single most important dimension of creative behaviour and creative products and as incompatible with feasibility.” 

Another thing that I found interesting that pre-screening a list of ideas can actually decrease the likelihood of choosing the best one. When faced with a large list, most people immediately try to cut it down to a more manageable size and will quickly discard several ideas without studying them. While pre-screening can be a ‘bad’ thing if done incorrectly, it can also help by making the participant focus more on each of the individual ideas and give them proper consideration. Pre-screening by exclusion (getting rid of ‘bad’ ideas) was much more successful at this then pre-screening by inclusion (picking the ‘best’ ideas from the list and discarding the rest). 

I’ll keep this in mind for future brainstorming, idea generation, and idea selection. 

References: 

Eric F. Rietzschel, Bernard A. Nijstad and Wolfgang Stroebe, (2010) The selection of creative ideas after individual idea generation: Choosing between creativity and impact. The British Psychological Society.

[ajaderaven]

Transdisciplinary Inquiries

Selecting a Research Topic: A Framework for Doctoral Students. 

I read through this article, and I thought that it had some interesting and valuable points that I’ll definitely keep in mind when finalizing my project decisions in studio and when choosing my research topic. 

First, it said that a student that is doing research should be willing to challenge beliefs. I definitely knew that while researching I’d be finding out new information, but I hadn’t realised that I’d probably also be discovering that beliefs, assumptions, and prejudices of my own are wrong. Now that I know that I’ll be more open to the idea, and prehaps even challenge some of my beliefs deliberately in my research topic. 

Second, once again, to ask “Why”. Why am I researching this, why is this topic important, why did I choose this topic instead of another? This theme of questioning one’s purpose is popping up everywhere, and is a easy but valuable tool that will help develop my projects, briefs, proposals, and outcomes. 

Another thing that I found interesting was one point about looking at the problem, something that I had heard of last year, but had mostly forgotten about until it was brought up in this article. The article talked about rather then getting a quick, sketchy idea of a problem and immediately diving into solving it, we should stick with the problem, examining it from different angles, trying to find out the background reasons for the problem, and try to understand it more fully. This will mean that our solution will more directly relate to the problem and will probably be better at actually solving it.  

The article pointed out a couple of pitfalls people often run into while researching, one thing that I found interesting but also a little strange was how it said to not just work from the most popular theories, to continue from the most well-supported, referenced, research, but to look at quieter, less known theories. This point did have some validity, but generally I thought that the most well-supported theory is the one that’s true. 

One last thing, that I did agree with, was that people new to a field are less-likely to hold prejudices, specific worldviews, or paradigms. This means that they are more open-minded, and have the potential to discover something new almost completely by accident. 

References: Andy Luse, Brian E. Mennecke, & Anthony M. Townsend (2012)  Selecting a Research Topic: A Framework for Doctoral Students. Retrieved from: http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=scm_pubs

[ajaderaven]

Transdisciplinary Inquiries 

Walking into Transdisciplinary Inquires on Wednesday I really had little idea of what to expect. I was kinda expecting it to be a continuation of either Intro to Creative Tech or Integrative Practices, and to be honest, because it was a compulsory class I hadn’t put much research into finding out what it was about. I’d read the blurb when confirming my papers months ago, and then promptly forgot everything about it until walking into class yesterday. 

It actually looks really interesting and like it’ll be helpful towards my projects. Last year we were introduced to the concept of asking meaningful questions which would give useful answers to us, and that idea was again brought up in this class, in one case how being part of BCT was about asking the right questions to help our work and progress. I also found the distinctions between the different statements (Intent, Conceptual, Contextual, and Reflective) interesting and I’ll explore those later in my proposals and other projects. 

After leaving the class, I realised that while I felt I had a greater idea of what I’d be taught over the semester, I actually was a little foggy on what the project was, other than it being a research project. I’ve had a scan of the brief and I’ll keep turning ideas over in the back of my mind until I have one (or more) that I latch onto.

I also read (The first chapter of) “Interacting: Art, Research and the Creative Practitioner,” and I actually found parts of it really interesting. It brought to light how art and art installations were evolving, and how these days it’s almost expected to be able to manipulate an art-piece. The passive viewer is being turned into an active participant, and both the artist and the viewer creates the art, which I thought is a really nice way to describe it. A greater range of emotions can be invoked by an art-piece now, when you can interact with it, than before. You might dislike a painting, but it’s more difficult to get frustrated with it than it is with an art-piece that is not behaving like you want it to, and also, there’s more likely to be satisfaction with an interactable art-piece when you manipulate it into looking or behaving how you would like it to. 

Another really interesting point brought up was that with interaction comes responsibility. The audience have stepped in and changed something, and if that leads to a negative outcome it’s more likely to feel like their fault. The work can be more powerful that way. 

One of the last things that I found interesting was a quote, that many artists are silent as “This makes it easier for artists to pass on the job of defining and defending what they do to critics, aestheticians, and historians.” (Sullivan, 2010) I know I’m definitely guilty of this, but I also deliberately like to keep quite about my meaning for my work sometimes until I’ve heard what other people think of it. I’ve always liked how an art-piece can mean something different for each person that sees it, and I like to see the differences between opinions. If the meaning for them is different from the meaning for me, it doesn’t mean they’re wrong, it just means that my art-piece has taken on additional life and has evolved without me.  

References: 

Linda Candy and Ernest Edmonds (2011) Interacting: Art, Research and the Creative Practitioner Retrieved from: http://research.it.uts.edu.au/creative/linda/CCSBook/Jan%2021%20web%20pdfs/Main%20Introduction.pdf

Sullivan (2010)