Thursday 30 November 2017

Notes Page 15

The pedestrian blog for November ends today.
I'm collating the entries and extracting the significant ideas to marry up with theories I've been looking at.

As part of a symposium of work in progress I submitted the abstract below.
I'm hacking this up now and highlighting what needs defining, elaborating, ditching.... It's been a helpful process for refining the question(s).  I'm also helping to organise the symposium and this already has been an eyeopener.  It's so vital that an abstract lands the presentation in the right field/area, is explicit about the intention and is clear.  I'm not sure I had fully appreciated this before.
The difficulty of committing to a set of ideas holds me back.  So I"m publishing here to force some kind of decision......


Abstract: 

Lining up: What is lost (or gained) when drawing research is (not) pursued through lateral or non-linear approaches? Need to establish/define ‘drawing research’, ‘lateral’ and ‘non-linear as terms.  Attest why this is a purposefully ambiguous title. order/chaos?

Under the working title of Pedestrian I have adopted an experimental methodology of researching through walking. The notion of line is a recurring theme in my practice; as a formal system of drawing, as a wider philosophical subject and as allegory for investigating Research through Practice as a subject. So my research sits mostly in the field of Drawing Theory and Philosophy but has always wandered over tentatively into areas of psychogeography, autoethnography and phenomenology. Do I mention what I will be making or doing? Do I need to at this point? Explore/define psychogeography, autoethnography and phenomenology.
(also elaborate on disruption of line, wayfaring/wandering)

My proposal for this MA began with a concern for my working process.  I had begun to realise - in being of a very non-linear disposition, with a disorganised thinking style - to maintain a productive and logical practice within established models of practice and research I had adapted my behaviour.  I had modified. I had lined-up. And in doing so I had eradicated self reference, spontaneity, chance, even any expressive or emotional traces. I had objectified, controlled and constrained. Line as: retaining and recalling memory, repetitive nature of the action of walking (and trying to remember it) - documentation in ref to memory (eg camera synchronic to drawing/notation etc)
As this is literally knowledge gleamed from practice I rely heavily on current thinking around Research through Practice to contextualise this overall problem and convert it into data for the next phase. I have begun to form conclusions, for example; there are advantages to constraint and the paradoxical freedom it enables; my thinking style is of use in an autoethnographic methodology but I wouldn’t have been able to critique this without the previous experience. 

Bearing this in mind for the presentation I would like to explain how the background connects with the next phase and have identified for discussion three key aspects currently being explored:

  • Considering walking as a form of drawing. 
  • Pedestrianism as a metaphor for lateral thinking. 
  • Drawing examined as rational production or phenomenological process against visual and cultural value systems.





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