Creating new stories for praxis: navigations, narrations, neonarratives

This paper considers differing understandings about the role and praxis of studio-based research in the visual arts. This is my attempt to unpack this nexus and place it in a context of credibility for our field. Jill Kinnear (2000) makes the point that visual research deals with and intensifies elements of research and language that have always been part of the practice of an artist. Presented is a way to conceptualise and explain what we can do as researchers in the visual arts. I am recontextualizing notions of research, looking at the resemblances, the self-resemblances and the differences between traditional and visual research methods as a logic of necessity. I am investigating how we can decode and recode what we do in the language of appropriation and bricolage. In mapping the processes and territories, I am interested in the use of autobiography as a way to incorporate a deep sense of the intricate relationships of the meaning and actions of artistic practice and its embeddedness in cultural influences, personal experience and aspirations (Hawke 1996:35). This is a study that explores possible parameters for visual research, questioning in what sense is it the best way to understand our relationship with traditional research fields

Reflections from Participants

The Road Ahead: Public Dialogue on Science and Technology brings together some of the UK’s leading thinkers and practitioners in science and society to ask where we have got to, how we have got here, why we are doing what we are doing and what we should do next. The collection of essays aims to provide policy makers and dialogue deliverers with insights into how dialogue could be used in the future to strengthen the links between science and society. It is introduced by Professor Kathy Sykes, one of the UK’s best known science communicators, who is also the head of the Sciencewise-ERC Steering Group, and Jack Stilgoe, a DEMOS associate, who compiled the collection

Co-authorship in the age of cyberculture: Open Educational Resources at the Open University of the United Kingdom

Locating Open Educational Resources (OER) as a phenomenon of cyberculture, this paper presents a reflection on the possibilities of co-authorship that are entailed in OER initiatives of different natures and settings within a large organisation. A selection of OER-related projects and activities carried out at the Open University of United Kingdom (UKOU) are examined from the perspective of a comparative framework proposed by Okada (2010). The framework identifies key features and differences between ‘Closed’ and ‘Open’ Education, that is, respectively, formal education, which takes place within the constraints of institutional Virtual Learning Environments, and informal education, which is gradually taking place more widely in cyberspace. The paper is introduced with a succinct discussion of the connection between cyberculture and the emergence of OER, followed by a presentation of the comparative framework adopted. The UKOU´s structure and methods are then presented, and various projects are discussed. The article concludes by proposing a brief commentary on the creative potential that is being unleashed at the very boundaries between formal and informal educational spaces that cyberculture is challenging

Landscapes of the invisible: sounds, cosmologies and poetics of space

In this PhD by Publication I revisit and contextualize art works and essays I have collaboratively created under the name Flow Motion between 2004-13, in order to generate new insights on the contributions they have made to diverse and emerging fields of contemporary arts practice/research, including digital, virtual, sonic and interdisciplinary art. The works discussed comprise the digital multimedia installation and sound art performance Astro Black Morphologies/Astro Dub Morphologies (2004-5), the sound installation and performance Invisible (2006-7), the web art archive and performance presentation project promised lands (2008-10), and two related texts, Astro Black Morphologies: Music and Science Lovers (2004) and Music and Migration (2013). I show how these works map new thematic constellations around questions of space and diaspora, music and cosmology, invisibility and spectrality, the body and perception. I also show how the works generate new connections between and across contemporary avant-garde, experimental and popular music, and visual art and cinema traditions. I describe the methodological design, approaches and processes through which the works were produced, with an emphasis on transversality, deconstruction and contemporary black music forms as key tools in my collaborative artistic and textual practice. I discuss how, through the development of methods of data translation and transformation, and distinctive visual approaches for the re-elaboration of archival material, the works produced multiple readings of scientific narratives, digital X-ray data derived from astronomical research on black holes and dark energy, and musical, photographic and textual material related to historical and contemporary accounts of migration. I also elaborate on the relation between difference and repetition, the concepts of multiplicity and translation, and the processes of collective creation which characterize my/Flow Motion’s work. The art works and essays I engage with in this commentary produce an idea of contemporary art as the result of a fluid, open and mutating assemblage of diverse and hybrid methods and mediums, and as an embodiment of a cross-cultural, transversal and transdisciplinary knowledge shaped by research, process, creative dialogues, collaborative practice and collective signature

The SLIM (Social learning for the integrated management and sustainable use of water at catchment scale) Final Report

Background: SLIM stands for 'Socuak Learning for the Integrated Management and Sustainable Use of Water at Catchment Scale'. It is a multi-country research project funded by the European Commission (DG RESEARCH - 5th Framework Programme for research and technological development, 1998-2002). Its main theme is the investigation of the socio-economic aspects of the sustainable use of water. Within this theme, its main focus of interest lies in understanding the application of social learning as a conceptual framework, an operational principle, a policy instrument and a process of systemic change

Processo e desconstrução: estruturas recursivas entre cozinha e design

From the triangulation kitchen, design and process this study searches evidence for bridging process between the fields of kitchen and design following Buchanan’s theory of rethinking placements over categories by way of signs, things, actions and thoughts. Kitchen and design are thus understood as liberal arts disciplines seeking to privilege a placement-based approach to projectual practice. Deconstruction was instrumental for exploring and testing the presence of recursive structures —elements carrying the essential information that generates similar patterns visible on different fields— intersecting the two fields, aiming to prove if and whence kitchen may contribute to expand the knowledge of design. Pallasmaa’s conception of an architecture of the senses, for whom the role of the body is understood as the locus of perception, thought and consciousness, helped explore and convoke the space of kitchen visited by artists and designers throughout recent history, as a means to establish relations between theories, processes, and projectual methodologies in kitchen and design. The reading of the space finds its translation through diverse processes applied by these creators leading to an understanding of a kitchen milieu: process as context. The empirical work with the research sample practices allowed for a discourse within, between and beyond individual samples to reveal the dialogical abilities of the applied processes. From the interpretation of the empirical work it is suggested that kitchen multiplies design (k x d). It implies that the context of kitchen multiplies the space of the discipline of design, becoming, in Buchanan’s term, a “quasi-subject matter of design thinking”. If so, kitchen as other placements may offer, or are open to receive and edify, an expanded view of the discipline of design. Considering findings of the three main typologies (education, research, process) it suggests transversality and integrates fundamental knowledge dimensions as the capability for negotiation between different actors/disciplines. This is made visible through the practices that comprise the research sample, namely curiosity, context, scale, desire, care. This study recommends further research into the transformative potential and imaginary of the kitchen/canteen in liberal arts education.A partir da triangulação cozinha, design e processo, este estudo investiga a evidência para o processo de ligação entre as áreas de cozinha e de design, de acordo com a teoria de Buchanan de repensar mais os posicionamentos que as categorias mediante sinais, coisas, ações e pensamentos. Assim, cozinha e design são entendidos como disciplinas das artes liberais, procurando privilegiar uma abordagem baseada no posicionamento em relação à prática projectual. A desconstrução foi fundamental para explorar e testar a presença de estruturas recursivas —elementos que comportam a informação essencial que gera padrões semelhantes em áreas diferentes— entrecruzando as duas áreas, visando provar se e a partir de onde a cozinha pode contribuir para expandir o conhecimento sobre o design. A concepção de Pallasmaa de uma arquitetura dos sentidos, para quem o papel do corpo é entendido como o locus da percepção, do pensamento e da consciência, ajudou a explorar e a convocar o espaço da cozinha, visitado por artistas e designers ao longo da história recente, como um meio de estabelecer relações entre teorias, processos e metodologias projectuais na cozinha e no design. A leitura do espaço encontra a sua tradução através de diversos processos aplicados por estes criadores, levando a um entendimento de um milieu de cozinha: o processo como contexto. O trabalho empírico com as práticas da amostra de investigação permitiu um discurso dentro, entre e para além das amostras individuais para revelar as capacidades dialógicas dos processos aplicados. A partir da interpretação do trabalho empírico, sugere-se que a cozinha multiplica o design (k x d). Isto implica que o contexto da cozinha multiplica o espaço da disciplina de design, tornando-se, na terminologia de Buchanan, uma “matéria de quase-sujeito de design thinking”. Se assim for, a cozinha, tal como outros posicionamentos, pode oferecer ou estar aberta a receber e a edificar uma visão alargada da disciplina de design. Considerando os resultados das três principais tipologias (educação, investigação, processo), sugere transversalidade e integra dimensões de conhecimento fundamentais como a capacidade de negociação entre diferentes actores/disciplinas. Isto torna-se visível através das práticas que incluem amostra de investigação, nomeadamente curiosidade, contexto, escala, desejo, cuidado. Este estudo recomenda desenvolver investigação sobre o potencial e o imaginário transformadores da cozinha/cantina na educação das artes liberais.Programa Doutoral em Desig

Proceedings of ECER 2020 NW 29. Research on Arts Education

This work is a Proceedings book that compiles the accepted submissions to network 29 in conference ECER 2020. Network 29. Research on Arts Education focuses on the disciplinary discourses, politics, institutional and non-institutional practices and research of arts and education at an international level with a special emphasis on European practices. The submissions are grouped into four chapters: 1) Rethinking Teaching and Arts Practices; 2) Arts-Based Research for Transforming Society; 3) Art Practices for Opening Gazes; 4) Arts and Education Across Concepts