... and to respond to my own email (probably bad etiquette) one can observe the
obverse to be the case - just as plenty of research is not necessarily
instrumental so too is much art instrumental, whether responding to a
commission brief, applying for thematised funding, completing a work destined
to be sold in an art gallery or making adjustments to a performance in response
to audience feedback. Adrian's argument has value but is too black and white...
best
Simon
Sent from a mobile device, thus the brevity.
Simon Biggs
si...@littlepig.org.uk
s.bi...@ed.ac.uk
http://www.littlepig.org.uk
On 18 Jan 2013, at 14:49, Simon Biggs <si...@littlepig.org.uk> wrote:
I agree with everything Adrian says except the statement that in an academic
context all research is instrumentalised. It is true that there is more and
more pressure for this to be the case but there remain numerous threads of
non-instrumental research, whether in theoretical physics, astronomy, pure
maths, anthropology, philosophy or creative practice. Happily it is still
possible to spend tax payers money on useless inquiry.
best
Simon
Sent from a mobile device, thus the brevity.
Simon Biggs
si...@littlepig.org.uk
s.bi...@ed.ac.uk
http://www.littlepig.org.uk
On 18 Jan 2013, at 10:53, Adrian Miles <adrian.mi...@rmit.edu.au> wrote:
hi all
On Friday, 18 January 2013 at 4:53 PM, Johannes Birringer wrote:
> And would Kathryn Bigelow need to defend Zero Dark Thirty? how would you (or
> Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3D, for that matter)? or defend Stifters Dinge? or
> Lexia to Perplexia (Digital Rhetoric and Poetics: Signifying Strategies in
> Electronic Literature)? or, say, the fabulous video, 'Shadow Sites II'
> (Jananne Al-Ani), shown at the recent exhibition "Light from the Middle East"
> at the V&A in London?
> I am not sure how to defend these works.
>
Such things only need 'defending' when they want to be offered up as research.
Art is, to keep this rudely crudely simple, non instrumental to the extent that
it can quite happily be only about itself. Whether that is formalism, or via
Deleuzean intensities, or what ever terms you like. If you want to call it it
knowledge then you need to recognise that it is non instrumental knowledge
while it is art. (It doesn't have to serve or answer to any purpose outside of
that which it proposes.)
Research on the other hand, particularly in the university context, is
instrumentalised knowledge. It has to make contestable, evidenced based claims
about something. (In these sorts of debates people seem to think that these
claims must all be highly instrumental in a dumb sense, but this is a straw man
argument. Just as a pure mathematician can do research into "Knot theory:
different aspects of the topic."
(http://www.math.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/home/about/our-research/postgraduate-research-topics/postgraduate-research-topics-in-pure-mathematics)
so practice and project based research can investigate highly specific and
possibly arcane topics only relevant to a very particular problem within a
narrow field.)
So any of the items listed by Johannes only need to be defended if presented as
research objects and/or outcomes in themselves, in which case you need to
demonstrate and make contestable, evidence based claims. You can do this using
evidence from the work, or as the work, or the work might provide a
demonstration and proof of these claims, but leaving the work by itself is not
research, it is art.
In Talan's comments about project based teaching, for example, I would imagine
the role of the project is not just to be creative, or make art, or a project,
but for the project to embody and explore key problems. I'd also think that how
these are explored or realised in the project probably get documented outside
of the project, whether that is through studio conversations, presentations,
critiques, a brief accompanying essay, or some other device. These things are
not supplements outside of the project but are what shifts the project (or the
art thing) into a research practice.
And before I get treated as a troll or this as flame bait, art is and should be
just as it is, and is under no obligation to do anything else apart from be.
But if anyone then wants to also claim it as research, then more is needed.
Finally, research here is not the same as the sorts of professional research
anyone does to learn about something to then use that knowledge in a work. For
instance a journalist researching a story, a writer researching some history to
write a novel, or an artist researching biology to make bioart. Research in the
sense intended by the university is a contribution to knowledge, but the
examples just cited are merely the application of existing knowledge.
--
an appropriate closing
Adrian Miles
Program Director Bachelor of Media and Communication (Honours)
RMIT University - www.rmit.edu.au
http://vogmae.net.au/
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