MA Week 3 - The curse of academic reading

Reflection on taught session, Friday 16th October 2015

Understanding and critically analysing academic papers

 

The afternoon was heavy going. We had been asked to read and annotate a paper by Peter Dallow regarding practice-based research in the creative arts. I’d dutifully done this and had nearly lost the will to live part way through. This is not a criticism aimed solely at Mr Dallow, should he ever read this. Rather it is a reaction to the fact that I find academic papers – particularly social science-type papers- very verbose. I am used to brief business documents and academic papers seem to repeat the same things again and again, although I acknowledge that that may be highlighting nuances beyond my grasp.

The nub of Dallow’s paper appears to me to be that practice-based research – as opposed to practice – has to have an element of considered, written introspection and reflection in order to demonstrate the originality of the way in which the artist has engaged with their materials and produced an outcome. To be honest, it made me ask the question, “why do we have to write in response to art?” Why can’t we produce another piece of art, or a song? Why can’t we, for example, make a series of images that show development of thought/technique prompted by the article? However, the article contained an interesting quote (which cites Frayling, (1993, p5)) that “creative work is ‘as much about autobiography and personal development’ as it is” (Dallow, 2003, p60).

Some fellow students and I analysed one quote from the article regarding the differences between practice and practice-based research (Dallow, 2003, p53). We concluded that supplying a product to a client constitutes practice. Even if you have to learn something new along the way – for example, a new software package – this is not really research, more a means to an end of getting a tool for the job. This, though, raised the question of whether something might be known to others in the world, but might be ground-breaking for you personally. Also, you might do something within your comfort zone, but that might push others’ boundaries. In that case it could be classed as practice-based research (in our opinion).

I told my classmates that the article had got me quite mad with its excessive verbiage, so they suggested I should cut it up and put it together in a different way so it made totally random verbiage.  This then led us to all get a bit edgy about how we felt about cutting up books… earlier that day I’d been pondering the idea of the tension between archive (keeping stuff) and declutter(being able to move in your own house), and now another tension. Here’s me thinking creatives are not academics, then none of us were totally comfortable with the desecration of a book. We need to push our boundaries big-style.

Some general conclusions from the session: 

        

·         Practice-based research should be innovative, risk-taking, and push you out of your comfort zone.
·         Practice-based research must disseminate information/processes as well as producing a finished product (this is repeatedly stressed as important)
·         The audience and context are part of the research, not just the end product
·         Practice-based research is cyclical and reveals something new to you, possibly about yourself