Identifying criteria session

This session featured an hours' worth of lectures from Aranxta Echarte ('Research Methods') and Rachael Miles. Rachael's was a kind of walk-through example of a way of doing our next assignment.

Aran's lecture

'Research methods' - Introduction to methods-related terminology

Three types of research methods-

• Qualitative research
• Quantitative research
• Mixed research (qualitative & quantitative study)
  

Qualitative research traditions:

• Heuristic research (put yourself in the situation)
• Phenomenological research (describe objectively)
• Hermeneutical research (looking at the context around the situation)

Quantitative research methods:

• Random sampling
• Selected sampling

Qualitative research methods:

• Participant observer - collection & analysis of field data
• Direct observation - physically or using camera/other media
• Interviewing - structured or unstructured (set questions)
• Case studies

• Data research
• Experience research- research as exploratory or investigative process - repetition/test/variation (change external factors)/exploratory research (set specific rules)

Analysis:

• Analysis of examples - explain why these examples
• Descriptive diagnosis
• Diagnostic research
• Collection
• Replication - naturalistic is copying and learning a technique
• Hypothesis testing
• Variable-based research - how a variable effects what is being done

Also- meta-analysis - analysis of the analysis.

Rachael's lecture

Look at the media in terms of what you can glean from them and how you can apply these things to your own work.

Often research is secondary- re-presentation- DVD, photo etc. It is difficult to work out your criteria from second-hand information so she suggests going to see the work live.

Set of criteria (descriptions until set) could be aspirational- how you could want to look at your or others' work.

Looking/re-looking through representation/writing/redefine.

Roni Horn
You Are The Weather | Dead Owl | Ant Farm | This Is Me, This Is You | Asphere

• Tautological (needless repetition)
• Viewing mechanisms
• Empirical (derived from experiment and observation rather than theory)
• Parallax (the apparent displacement of an object as seen from two different points that are not on a line with the object)

Seeing & looking

• Seeing - appearance & understanding; habitual
• Looking - searching to understand/investigate; the gaze; mechanical aspect of thinking

Group session

We were divided up into 4 groups and given a word. We were asked to name as many artists as we could that full under that description. We had 20 minutes to do this, then we had to think of the antithesis of that word and had another 20 minutes to name artists that fell under that category. The words were:

• Political | Apolitical/politically inert (my group)
• Narrative
• Traditional
• Figurative

I thought this was a brilliant assignment and it provoked a lot of debate within our group. We found a lot of artists who would fall into 'political'- I remember suggesting my perennial favourite, Jan Svankmajer, for making work that loudly criticised the political regimes he lived under, and Christian Dior for creating flamboyant fashion during the rashioning of WW2. I think all of us got to discover artists we'd never heard of from other people. However when it came to political's antithesis, it took us a good 10 minutes to even decide on the word. Even when we had done that, after lengthly discussion, we came to the conclusion that there was no 'apolitical' artists- that even if the artist themselves never intended the work to be political, the era, social atmosphere or audience always politicises work. It was a fascinating discussion and certainly lively and I really enjoyed it.