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May 21, 2006

seminar poster

Poster for upcoming GRC. Click on it to see big... the 'abstract' should be legible? I've since rewritten the abstract for the program. It went more like this...

[abstract]
This practice-led, project-based research charts, simultaneously, my disenchantment and re-engagement with graphic design. A seismic shift in activity and perception bought about by a provocative process of disruptive reframing. Central to this research are questions about dislocation, disinterest, and reinvention. These questions are framed by an underlying desire to locate a conversation and a community of practice that has some resonance for me.

Exploring and proposing 'monstrosity' as generative metaphor - a methodology - within practice-led research, the projects, initially, provoke my own personal habits, beliefs, and expectations. Later projects, often 'outside' the research specifically, will be used as evidence of a certain level of re-engagement.

As disenchantment is common, perhaps pervasive, within professional practice, my account of this research will propose that a more general understanding of practice-led research - highly reflective, self-initiated work - is essential if graphic design is to support and sustain imaginative, innovative, and inventive practitioners. Rather than target graphic design's inability to support provocative practices, my research focuses on the potential of the individual practitioner to motivate and design a more generative and engaged practice.

Posted by Luke Wood at 04:52 PM

May 16, 2006

Summative categories

Thinking about how to 'curate' (sorry Kreisler!) this next issue of The National Grid so that I can submit it as my final project/thesis I've decided to break it into three parts. Each part presenting a different aspect/conclusion to my research (and hopefully making clear without 'saying' the relevance of the publication to the Masters?).

DISENCHANTMENT

PROVOCATION

ENGAGEMENT

I think I was influenced by this "DDD11 exists in the shady overlap of a curious venn diagram made of two saw-toothed circles labelled BIOGRAPHY and REPETITION" from Dot Dot Dot. Following a conversation with someone last week I sat down to write something about DDD... I was interested in how I'd discovered it on my first trip to Melbourne, it'd taken me a while to 'like', and then I've recently met and hung out with Stuart (ed DDD). I thought that somehow by charting my relationship with this publication I could explain my Masters (and maybe that'll be my text for the next TNG?). Anyway I like the way the monster dissapears into the middle (of my murky venn diagram), and it's not about my own research specifically... it feels more abstract (useful). In fact this decision has been influenced by the number of people (graphic designers) I've met with lately who've all seemed very 'disenchanted'. If disenchantment isn't pervasive in professional practice then it is certainly very common.

So my current plan is that I'll 'curate' (I can't think of a better word) a bunch of texts by other people that fit into (or sit between) these ideas. And for my submission I'll generate another document to sit with this (to hold it's hand... I'll make it the same shape/size) that will be broken (fabricated) into the same sections DISENCHANTMENT/PROVOCATION/ENGAGEMENT. This text will contain the 'academic' stuff (documentation of earlier projects, personal observations, and explicit thesis) that 1. is required for a Masters, and 2. seemed inappropriate for TNG.

I'm currently trying to write a summative (conclusive) statement under each of these three headings for my penultimate review in Melbourne in 2 weeks. I'll post that here when I'm able to articulate something I'm (more or less) happy with.

Posted by Luke Wood at 03:31 PM

May 11, 2006

The National Grid as thesis...

In discussion with Lisa just prior to leaving NYC she suggested the possibility of using The National Grid as my final project... primarily I think as a way to combine the projects and make less work for myself, but also because it seemed to make some kind of sense as I'd been pointing to TNG as 'evidence' of my Masters having manifested some change/shift in my practice.

I immediately liked this idea, but having thought about it over the last week I've been finding it really hard figuring out how to proceed? It seems obvious that I'd 'plan' the issue and then brief people to write about specific aspects that relate to my topic... esp people who'd been influential within it, Lisa obviously, and I was really keen to Stuart to do something. I quite liked that the briefs I would write could be considered as my thesis (in the sense that the thesis contains as many questions as answers).

Anyway I talked to Jonty, my co-editor, about this idea... and we both agreed there was a large potential for it to be 'icky'. Interestingly I think we both meant the same thing in our use of a vague and childish term... it was hard to locate, but I think it had to do with the idea that TNG would become (for an issue at least) 'academic'. I think we both like the idea that the publication can be more abstract than that... existing between definitions like that and 'real world' etc. More of a ghost...

I think I mentioned this to Cameron and Lisa when we met, but it became more apparent when considering how to package/write up my research... I have two potentially different endings I think? To be honest I feel like there's one that RMIT would like, and then there's one that The National Grid would like... my question here (and I really would like feedback!) is... are these really different? And is [1] innappropriate for TNG? Or is that just a question of the language I use? And finally, should I just go back to doing what I was going to do (thesis as a publication of/on it's own, a monstrous text constructed by me using both appropriated and original texts)?


[the sensible academic conclusion]
1. THE MONSTROSITY OF PRACTICE-BASED RESEARCH
- the newness of practice-based research (illegitimacy)
- the hybrid/mutant nature of it (it's construction is monstrous)
- that it tends toward autobiography and narcissism
- how to negotiate this (self-awareness vs self-obsession)... learn from it, make it generative?
- how to articulate this... communicate (extract) implicit/particular/tacit knowing as explicit/abstract knowledge via personal stories and anecdotal evidence?
________________________________________________________________________


[the angry young man conclusion]
2. THE DYNAMICS/MECHANICS OF MONSTROSITY IN CREATIVE PRACTICE (imagination, innovation, and invention)
- monstrosity as a generative metaphor
- the importance of the marginal and provocative in creative practice
- locating the marginal/peripheral
- generating and sustaining the provocative

all of the above could be discussed particularly in relation to individual practice (reinvention, generative-ness), but also more abstractly in relation to the broader domain of Design (something about Design's ability to generate or sustain marginal and provocative practices [I don't think we do it as well as other creative practices... why?])
________________________________________________________________________


My penultimate review is on in 3 weeks and I really need to make a decision and get a considerable amount done before then!? I'm quite freaked out about that time frame but I'll try and reserve my anxiety for offline discussions...

Posted by Luke Wood at 10:00 AM | Comments (2)

May 09, 2006

Having something to say... conclusion(s)

I recently met with both Lisa and Cameron to talk about my thesis. Cameron pointed to my desire for a 'grand narrative' as perhaps important, and that I shouldn't shy away from it. There was an interesting argument around what a thesis is as opposed to an exegesis, Cameron thinks/thought I was looking for something important to say... and kind of went on to say that he thought I had that (specifically in relation to practice based research). I was asked what my conclusion was and I said I thought I had multiple conclusions (based on different observations). It was suggested that I might perhaps write up these conclusions... working backwards... in the expectation that this might help me work towards an 'end-in-sight'. I haven't done this yet, but I have given a lot of thought the practice-based/led research one.

I had to write a blurb about my research for a book in the weekend, and I wrote this (this is unedited and written in a rush but I thought it was worth putting up here)...


title:
MONSTROUS PARTICULARS & ABSTRACT AUTOBIOGRAPHIES

text:
I've been trying to write something about the monstrosity of practice-based research. About how much I hate it, but that, in hindsight, it's obviously been rather fruitful for me. I want to say that practice-led research tends toward autobiography, and that its inevitable that we've all become quite monstrous here - too much time spent in front of the mirror (mine have been those warped and disorienting ones you can find at Coney Island). Followed by something witty - jocuserious - about the horrific realisation that I had somehow become the object and subject of my own research. But then, of course, to articulate my point (all monsters have at least one sharp point) that only through this painful realisation - the creation of my own worst enemy, my own Mr Hyde, a self-motivated self-disruption bordering on masochistic nihilism - could I (we?) have made any progress. What kind of progress have I made? Like Victor Frankenstein's monster, mine has made me realise what's important, but unlike poor Victor and Dr Jekyll I hope I've been able to 'pull out' in time, for this is dangerous work. But sometimes things need to be destroyed to be rebuilt. And if I sound overly cynical or negative it's because I've found that the generally destructive dynamics of monstrosity - aberration, fear, illegitimacy, exaggeration, provocation, failure (you could go on but these are the ones I'm interested in) - might be rendered momentarily useful. Indeed, through the manifestation of my own cynicism - traversing my own discomfort and fear - I have, almost unconsciously, managed to re-engage with a practice/domain that I had previously all but given up on. I still think graphic design is a bit trite and banal, but that interests me now... deeply perhaps. And somehow that's all I really wanted anyway. To be more engaged by it.

I'm being brash and a little vague, so I guess I'll just propose monstrosity as a generative metaphor within practice-led learning - a strategy for extracting the implicit and the particular, and a methodology for articulating and/or negotiating the beast that will inevitably appear in explicit and abstract terms. How to write about yourself? How to negotiate the narcissism of it all? And to be honest, I want to see others suffer as I have done. If I don't I'll be skeptical about what they've gotten out of all this, that's all.

Posted by Luke Wood at 11:10 AM