Art & Research: an e-journal of artistic research and practice
"Art & Research is an artist-led, internationally peer-assessed open access e-journal of Research in Fine Art Practice, focused upon questions, contexts and methodologies of artistic research and practice. Art & Research aims to serve professional artists and academics, curators and critics, artistic researchers, postgraduate and doctoral research students and undergraduates, and to inform current pedagogical thought in a global context."
(Ross Birrell)
Fig.1. Dutton + Swindells, Studio Production, Ssamzie Art Space Studios, Seoul, February 2008. Courtesy of the artists.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Majority of contemporary practice-based design PhDs use methodological bricolage
"A recent analysis of doctorates in design has identified four common characteristics of research approaches found in the exploration of practice-based design research questions [1]. They are: 1) a 'bricolage' approach to research design, 2) reflective practices, 3) the use of visual approaches and 4) thesis-structural innovation. These characteristics have been derived from an examination of a range of design theses and using a number of design research frameworks [2-4] to identify the epistemological and methodological models applied. This paper has chosen to focus on one of the four characteristics, the bricolage approach to method construction, as it is seen to be a common feature evident in all six studies. The bricolage method consists of combining methods from the social sciences, humanities, and hard sciences to derive a suitable model of inquiry.
While we acknowledge that design research investigates different issues that require studies into a range of subject areas such as the material, historical, scientific, social and psychological, the focus of this paper is the exploration of research questions derived from practice-based questions. In other words, it focuses on design activities that are used to generate new knowledge and understanding in and of itself.
We posit that the adoption of methodological bricolage is a necessity in design research due to the indeterminate nature of design. ...
Although Levi-Strauss introduced the concept of bricolage as a mode of acquiring knowledge, it was Denzin and Lincoln's [23] articulation of it within a methodological context that offered insight into new forms of rigour and complexity in social research. Nelson, Treichler and Grossberg describe bricolage (in the context of cultural studies methodology) as reflecting a choice of practice that is pragmatic, strategic and self-reflexive [24]. While Kincheloe [25] uses the term to describe multi-perspectival research methods, not just as the usage of mixed methods but to acknowledge that using methods from different disciplines enables the researcher to compare and contrast multiple points of view. Just as designed objects have prescribed affordances, methods automatically imply ontological and epistemological affordances. This relationship between inquiry and method affords design a useful indeterminacy, where not-knowing becomes a constructive loop that the bricoleur appears to be exploiting. As questions arise so methods to answer them are sought, abstracting platforms for design knowledge rather than concrete answers. Bricolage is a useful and necessary concept for design researchers as it allows them to deploy available and established strategies and methods, but also grants them the license to create new tools and techniques in order to address questions that are beyond the realm of the established discipline. Methodological bricolage permits the researcher to look at the problem we have with problems, as well as their solution. The bricoleur views research methods actively, rather than passively, meaning that the researcher actively constructs methods with tools at hand rather than accepting and using pre-existing methodologies [26]."
(Joyce S R Yee and Craig Bremner, 2011)
Fig.1 Danae Colomer, Gazpacho video portion of Food as Opera project.
2). Yee, J. S. R. and C. Bremner (2011). Methodological Bricolage - What does it tell us about Design? Doctoral Education in Design Conference. Hong Kong, Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
