Tag Archive for 'research'

practice-led research references

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seth.keen
on December 3, 2008
in references and research
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AM sent a link to some Select Bibliography for Practice as Research in Performance (last updated 23 March 2005) PARIP Practice as Research in Performance, University of Bristol. The peformance angle also appeared recently in this other UK call for essay posted earlier emphermal online video.

And the local, The Speculation and Innovation (SPIN) conference was held in April 2005 and hosted by the Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology. - abstracts
Themes: 1. Embedded knowledge 2. Knowledge impact 3. Knowledge relationships

Including the section details on Embedded Knowledge:

Discusses knowledge generation such as new discoveries; knowledge manifestation as exemplified by various types of outputs (exhibitions, performance, etc), embodied knowledge and the nature and authority of the knowledge claims that are inextricably linked to practice-based research.

mapping

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seth.keen
on November 23, 2008
in design, research and videodefunct
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I caught up with BC recently in a follow up to his presentation as part of the affective atlas project here at RMIT. He introduced me to open street map

OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world. It is made by people like you.

Along with some other resources including the Pan America Institute of Geography and History based in Mexico, all part of a discussion on the community providing their own information towards the mapping process. Domesday project is an example of both community and specialist documentation. From wikipedia:

It included a new ’survey’ of the United Kingdom, in which people, mostly school children, wrote about geography, history or social issues in their local area or just about their daily lives. This was linked with maps, and many colour photos, statistical data, video and ‘virtual walks’. Over 1 million people participated in the project. The project also incorporated professionally-prepared video footage, virtual reality tours of major landmarks and other prepared datasets such as the 1981 census.

Another reference Association of American Geographers and Chris Perkin’s research and Subversive Cartographies. The essay ‘Radical Cartography: Artists making activist maps‘ is a useful reference towards my current interest in this field. From the abstract:

Radical cartography is a practice that uses maps and mapping to promote social change, and is part of a cultural movement that cuts across boundaries of art, geography, and activism. This paper will present examples of cartographic work by artists, architects, and collectives who create maps to raise awareness of social justice issues. These maps are both artworks and part of a larger activist research and practice.

The other person who reappeared from the videoblog scene was Daniel Liss (pouring down) and his project Seven Maps

Other links:
Book Review - An Atlas of Radical Cartography
Making maps DIY cartography - subversive cartographies post
International Cartography Conference Chile - themes/submission

emotional cartographies - five examples
map my london

ArcInfo GIS software
jet studio GIS software

Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees, Verso: London, 2007

RDF

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seth.keen
on October 3, 2008
in Tools
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Meet with JJ the other day and he spoke about RDF being the next thing to watch on the web. From W3C:

Today’s web is built predominantly for human consumption. Even as machine-readable data begins to appear on the web, it is typically distributed in a separate file, with a separate format, and no correspondence between the human and machine versions. As a result, web browsers can provide only minimal assistance to humans in parsing and processing web data: browsers only see presentation information. We introduce RDFa, which provides a set of HTML attributes to augment visual data with machine-readable hints. We show how to express simple and more complex datasets using RDFa, and in particular how to turn the existing human-visible text and links into machine-readable data without repeating content.

INCITE workshop

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seth.keen
on July 24, 2008
in research
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I managed to catch at the RMIT design research hub, some of the ‘Studying the European cultural intermediaries of new technologies’, a seminar and workshop led by the INCITE research group, Goldsmiths College, University of London. Presented by Nina Wakeford (Director, INCITE) Britt Hatzius (Lead Researcher).

INCITE mission statement:

The mission of INCITE is to provide a creative interdisciplinary space for research projects which explore the socio-cultural dimensions of technology use and design.

Members of INCITE work on subjects such as the links between new media and landscape, technology as a means of sensing place and identifying community, performativity and design, gender, sexuality and mobility, cultures of access and non-access, urban knowledge-making, Internet and digital subjectivities and material culture. Researchers and students draw on a range of disciplinary traditions, not just sociology, but cultural anthropology, art history and design.

In the part of the presentation that I saw by Britt, she covered an analysis of new media artists in Finland. Locations included the medialab at the University of Art and Design Helsinki; also Pixelache. I was intrigued with the way Britt used user-generated techniques to document the artists activities, like for example providing a number of disposal cameras embedded within an installation.

The term ‘critical design’ came up in a discussion of how some new media artists see themselves more as critical designers that artists.

The final future observations for this research as follows:

newness and progress
newness and critique
newness and innovation
newness and slowness

This collection of ideas made me think of how my own research project title could be developed over time.

other references:

Ubiquitous computing
Anthony Dunne, Hertzian Tales, Electronic Products, Aesthetic Experience, and Critical Design

The concept of Relational Aesthetics was also discussed with reference to writing by Claire Bishop. Interview reference.
Participation, Edited by Claire Bishop

Wall to Wall

Published
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seth.keen
on July 24, 2008
in Art
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I went to a talk ‘Up Against the Wall: Thinking Jeff Wall’ at CCP the other night given by David Bate on the photographer Jeff Wall. I had a look through a book of collected essays on Jeff Wall which made me think about the obvious idea of a correlation between this style of writing and documenting project-based research. In the talk Bates did a incredibly close analysis on one of Wall’s photographs. It was great to see so much analysis flow out of one image. Bates experimented with the concept of bringing an iconographic and psychoanalysis analysis together. In his preamble to the talk I was reminded of Roland Barthes seminal writing on photography as one of the few types of theoretical writing that focuses in-depth on practice. In a discussion of Barthes writing on authorship Bates also mentioned Focault’s ‘What is an author?’. An online reference on these two points of view The Differences between Barthes and Foucault on Authorship, Monica Lancini. Finally, Bates also mentioned the “decisive moment” where in his example a still is taken from a cinematic (moving-image) work. I recognised a connection here with the thumbnails and posters used in Videodefunct.

Infoscape Research Lab

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seth.keen
on July 1, 2008
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Mission statement:

The Infoscape Research Lab hosts research projects that focus on the cultural impact of digital code. The lab engages in software and other new media tool development, code mapping, interface design, and new media content analysis. The lab is funded in part with grants from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Media Research Consortium.

outputs and outcomes

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seth.keen
on June 30, 2008
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I noticed some notes by Jean Burgess on research ‘outputs and outcomes’ which got me thinking about the way my own project-based research is tending towards outcomes - projects that have a direct relation with organisations outside the university. I cobbled together some of Jean’s post titled outputs!

Especially in the lead-up to the now defunct Research Quality Framework, one of the things I had drummed into me was the difference between research outputs and research outcomes. Outputs, I have learned, are (merely) the things you make out of your research–products, publications, patents and processes…Outcomes, apparently, only occur when the outputs get taken up and used for something in the ‘real world’–this is what the RQF framed as research ‘impact’.

Links:
Productivity Agenda 2020 summit
The Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) Initiative

dialable

Published
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seth.keen
on June 23, 2008
in research
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dialable | everything you need is already in your pocket.

Dialable is a suite of technologies which allows the public to control big-screen content with simple cellphone interaction. Growing out of thesis work at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, it is a project by Daniel Liss.

writing - material thinking

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seth.keen
on June 23, 2008
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Studies in Material Thinking journal
http://www.aut.ac.nz/material_thinking/materialthinking2/currentissue.html

Invent Invent

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seth.keen
on June 16, 2008
in design
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I went to a workshop last week titled ‘HOW TO INVENT! Pink Diggers, Rude Signs and Driving on the Wrong Side’, given by Professor Tom Barker from the London Royal College of Art (RCA). The blurb form the workshop flyer:

As companies increasingly compete in giant global markets, innovation and design is gaining greater value than ever before. The role of the designer has become pivotal not just to a company’s success, but also in terms of social responsibility, ethics and sustainability. Good design gives competitive advantage and builds brand value. However, the process of designing truly innovative products that succeed has always been a difficult and risky task. How can the designer respond to these new challenges? Why is experimental design and research so important in all of this? What is the contemporary role of design academia?

Tom described how products and design ideas go through a “constant path of evolution” and a highly productive way of working involves “colloborative non-disciplinary” partnerships. In his presentation Tom showed a table that outlined the incubation of future design ideas for marketable products which he called “bottom draw technology”:

5 years - Products that are available now but are generally expensive and not working well.
10 years - Held in the research and development departments of commercial companies.
15 years - University research

He stressed that design briefs need to be “stretched and tested into something else.” The term “experimental design” was used to describe design that is informed by a “creative, artistic process”. The results of these experiments are recorded and reviewed with the idea of working out how they may be used.

In regards to University research he is reluctant to get caught up in pure consultancy work that does not allow for costs to have “time to think.” The paperwork can overwhelm the research. An ideal industry link allows for “process; research and innovation”.

“Project Migration” involves re-packaging research projects to test industry interest.

In the presentation of RCA student work I was intrigued by the way video was used to document design projects - Tom talked about the need for designers to understand how to use narrative in this documentation. A lot of animation, maps, sketches and illustrations where used by students to explain the design process.

References:

http://www.smartslab.co.uk/