I've been asked to teach a class next semester at Art Center and I'm fishing for ideas. The class is called The Art of Research and it is a studio course that aims to close the gap between students' interest making and their familiarity with the context of their practice. It's not a history class, but a class that should give them some research methodologies they might take with them into their practice. Trouble is, how do you teach research without researching something?
I've been polling artists about the way they do research and what place it has in their practice, and I'll eventually share the findings with y'all, but if you've got a moment, could you tell me a little about the roll of research in your studio practice and how you go about it? This is all off the record - I'm not looking to hear so much about this class as about if this class has been helpful in the studio at all, and if so how, and if not, how might it be more so?
Thanks -
1 comment:
When fishing for ideas I've found it very effective to keep the line in the water and to change the bait as often as possible. Ideas prefer fresh natural looking food that floats in a natural way.
With nature in mind, research is a natural part of any process where an individual expects to progress or improve at anything. Everything we know is based on experiences through our senses. Our brain processes that information, subjecting it to analyses and synthesis, thus making the information available so we can apply it to relavant, and sometimes irrelevant situations. The analyses helps us understand the information. The synthesis helps us apply the information. Sometimes when we think we are being creative we are applying that experienced information to a vaguely related situation, "a fringe" application. Others don't make the connection right away. When they do, they say, "What a creative idea!" or "What are you, a bone-head?"
So, efficient research techniques are necessary for creative endeavors. The research takes us beyond our present body of knowledge and experience, as well as sensitizing us to stuff we already know and haven't considered. Besides, why go through all the aches and pains of bunji jumping when you can read about it or watch a video, unless,of course, the physical sensation of pain and the after-effects are what you are researching.
For me research and knowing stuff are half the fun of doing something. In art, research often takes the form of experimentation. It doesn't always mean looking at books. It could be that you are researching a sensation. A vision, smell, or someone touching another has been inspiration for plenty of art. Read Ezra Pound's "In the Station of the Metro," ...the peoples faces, petals on a wet black bough." How did he match that one up?
Sensation.
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