Advisor Meeting #4 (Research) (22 Feb. 2017)

with Carolyn Guertin (Research Advisor)

Advice for the Structure of the Research Paper

• The structure for this kind of research paper would normally have a Lit. Review at the beginning, as part of the 1st Chapter – what came before or what has informed this process. This isn’t needed in the MFA.
• The  artist research can be introduced at different points in the paper when relevant to the ideas and concepts you are discussing at that point.
• Re-read the motivation at the beginning of the introduction and move beyond the "why" to the "how so". Add a paragraph after the motivation to talk about the how so.

Where To From Here

• Synthesise all the reading that you have in the annotated bibliography – pull threads out from the reading/research that is most productive or relevant to your practice and shape it into your own personal or guided philosophy.
• So far the work is missing the personal – so far the paper is missing my own story – I’m missing.
• Reread the motivation and move it beyond the “Why” and toward the “How So?”
• Consider personally informed research – what is the back story/context from your own personal experience.
• Be aware of keeping the research in this productive space rather than solidify the work too soon
• What is the “How So…?”
•  The thesis isn’t here yet – move from questions to a critical argument – establish what your personal or guided philosophy is for your practice. What is it that you believe is essential about all these elements that are essential for your practice?
• Where is your space?
• Where is your territory within all this research – mark or draw out that territory
• How are you going to carve your own story…your own personal art practice?
• Take a definitive stance and argue for that with your critical argument.
• What is most productive for you as an artist from this research
•  Don’t think about this process as a box hedge see it as encouraging the growth…keeping track of your intellectual growth over the course of the project will add a lot of depth to the whole art practice

Suggestions

• James Castle - an outsider artist from rural Nebraska (1899-1977) who created drawing, handmade books and invented language because he was born deaf and dumb and was illiterate.
• Book: Sensorium by Carolyn Jones embodied experience with technology and art

o   Immersion

o   Air

o   Auditory Signals

o   Ether

o   Kinesthesia

• You need to see a shape to the project more than just ideas. What are you going to explore within the ideas you have presented here.
• Backstory – personal but abstract. Ground this in your own practices.
• What is your orientation and relationship to the ideas?
• Sketch and draw the dots around your territory within this framework
• Develop your research but keep tying it back into your own practice.
• Find the connections
• The group of artists don't inform your making - It about applying the ideas you have while understanding the ideas that inform their art.
  • Robert Irwin
  • Tacita Dean
  • William Kentridge
  • Ute Barth - really investigate the intellectual side of her practice
  • The other artist you have written about can also be included if it is relevant to that ideas you are writing about.
• Good ideas come our of the making – you don’t want to solidify your making process too early either – stay open to the possibilities

Future

• The most important thing at this stage is to tease out the threads of your research and then from those threads develop your grounding philosophy.
• Find immersive experiences.
• Revisit the documentary Salt
• Investigate Cinema Vérité and Camera Stylo – using the camera like a pen
• Using the camera in a non representational way
• How do you write with the visual machine that collapses the distance between the world and you?
• Agnes Varda 
  • The Gleaners and I (1999) 
  • See how she explores her world with the camera
  • Cinema Vérité – the real for shock effect
  • Varda tries to capture the artistic process
  • The film is about the harvesting by peasants in the French countryside. They are allowed to collect the leftovers that the farmers leave behind. Varda does this with the camera as well as an art philosophy
  • Question how to write this way also. Fully immersive in a space with art and life – where boundaries collapse -when it just becomes an experience – the whole of both
• Deep Focus – is a cinematic/photographic technique where the foreground, mid and background are all in focus. This is also the title of a book by Carl Newport that investigates the distracted millennial mindset and our need to fight distraction.  I couldn't find this book. I found a book titled Deep Work by Carl Newport so not sure if this is the right one.
  • It investigates the  importance of our understanding of the visual and psychic space we occupy in this world.
• The  palimpsests in Kentridge’s work; the immergence in drawing; skin as paper – these all fit together in a really interesting way
• look at Tranquility tanks
• Virtual Reality- investigate this. Its used by NATO and the UN to help policy makers
• Look at Chris Milk – TED Talk
• Investigate filming of 360degree environments.
• Nonny de la Pena – Immersive Journalism. US. California (TED Talk)
•  Wandjina – immersive spirit spaces
• Medieval Cathedrals were also designed to be experienced as a transformative spiritual space.
• Werner Herzog – Cave of Forgotten Dreams – where ancient people used the caves as an immersive space for story telling. The cave drawings on the wall were animated by the flickering movement of the firelight thus creating the first form of stop motion animation.