Here we have collected the Programme, Call for Presentations and Call for Participation in PDF format:

“Questioning Qualities”

 Under the heading “Questioning Qualities” this year’s Sensuous Knowledge conference will focus upon values within and criteria for an appraisal of quality in artistic research – including the overall question of whether these differ from values and criteria for quality within the arts themselves. We will encourage discussions of social and political values in artistic research projects, questions of ethics, commercial and non-commercial qualities, institutional criteria for quality and the relationship – or maybe clash – between aesthetic and cognitive values. As in the former conferences the general aim is a double one: to develop ways of talking about, analyzing and evaluating examples of artistic research, and to consider the special character of cognition related to artistic creativity.

SK5 programme 2008

SK5call_for_participation

SK5call_for_Presentations

The convergence and intermingling of scientific and art/design fields is enabling the creation of new kinds of cultural experiences. Wearable technologies, in particular, are becoming platforms for social interaction, critique, performance, learning, or entertainment. Increasingly, artists and designers are interested in the area of reactive garments: “second skins” that can react to the environment and to the individual. Fashion, health, and telecommunication industries are also pursuing the vision of clothing that can express aspects of people’s personalities, needs, and desires or augment social dynamics through the use and display of aggregate social information. New modes of expression for artists and performers are possible; new forms of fashion and costuming are developing.

Berzowska’s research group, XS Labs, has developed extensive work in the field of electronic textiles and reactive garments over the last six years. This work has been enabled by a Canadian focus on supporting the practice of “research/creation”, which encourages the development of new technologies as an integral component of artistic inquiry and design practice. Berzowska will discuss some of the implications of this kind of hybrid research being carried out in Universities, including the introduction of Human Ethics Research Committee approval, scientific models for managing intellectual property present in the outcomes of “research/creation,” as well as an emphasis towards industry transfer of research results.

berzowska.com

Joanna Berzowska is the founder and research director of XS Labs, a design research studio that develops innovative methods and applications in electronic textiles and responsive garments. She is Associate Professor of Design and Computation Arts at Concordia University and a member of the Hexagram Research Institute in Montreal. She lectures and consults internationally about the field of electronic textiles and related social, cultural, aesthetic, and political issues. Her art and design work has been shown in the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum in NYC, the V&A in London, the Millenium Museum in Beijing, SIGGRAPH, ISEA, the Art Directors Club in NYC, the Australian Museum in Sydney, NTT ICC in Tokyo, and Ars Electronica Center in Linz among others. Her research is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Canadian Heritage, Hexagram Institute for Research/Creation in Media Arts and Technologies, and the Fonds québécois de recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC). She was recently selected for the Maclean’s 2006 Honour Roll as one of “thirty nine Canadians who make the world a better place to live in”.

On artists being commissioned to work on places which are not of their choice or places choosing their artists. On the necessity to see more to understand more. On places made inaccessible. The slowness with which physical space reflects the must faster changes in lifestyle. On the lookout for forms of representation necessary for a city’s evolution.

A presentation of one public project brought to an end and another one in the process of being initiated.

Ingrid Book (1951) and Carina Hedén (1948) live and work in Oslo. Ingrid Book was educated in Oslo, Carina Hedén in Lund, Paris and Maastricht. These two artists have exhibited together at venues such as Bergen Kunsthall (Festival Artists at The Bergen International Festival 2008), Salzburger Kunstverein (Salzburg Art Society), The Bienale de São Paulo, The Berlin Biennial and Kunstnernes Hus (The Artists’ House, Oslo). In addition they have taken part in a number of group exhibitions worldwide.
Book and Hedén have worked and exhibited together since 1987. Today they enjoy international recognition, and can point to frequent exhibitions since the early 90s. They work as a pair in many different mediums, such as photography and video. In recent years the artists’ projects have become increasingly social and more clearly pronounced in their questioning of ethical matters.

Artist, UK.

unloud – S.L.O.N -Solovki Laboratory of North

Theme or research question:

I am currently continuing to explore as an artists and researcher how physical and emotional spaces within visual culture might be a test site for the exploration of both personal and shared imaginative alternatives. What critical approaches might be useful in order to understand what needs to be done in trying to re-imagine particular preconceptions about our relationship to people, ideas and cultures?

The presentation will be broken down into short sections using Unloud – S.L.O.N as an example of a live research project:

The central question will explore: what do I do as an artists/researchers today?

• the social considerations and political conditions
• the necessary implicit ethical considerations
• the role of partnerships as conditions of critical practice

The presentation would use inter-related video and still images as a means to explore these ideas, speculative questions and critical methods. The possibility is to use an exhibition as a live context for the proposed questioning.

What Is unloud – S.L.O.N -Solovki Laboratory of North?

I would like to explore why I am creating, in partnership, a unique centre/laboratory – S.L.O.N on SolovkiIsland, North Russia with the potential to create and facilitate new networks of knowledge and dialogue using Art as a tool or technology of interpretation.

The presentation will outline how? and why? the creation of a communicative space or laboratory for researchers, artists, museum workers and students is taking place on SolovkiIsland.

What are the key questions and dialogues that direct the exploration of the unique conditions and resources on SolovkiIslands and the SolovkiState museum’s archive, scientific and natural resources?

What defines the development of new educational and cultural networks of knowledge in relation to Art and the cross disciplines of:

• Faith, Climate, Nature and Social Memory.
• The role of Contemporary Art in the dialogue and preservation of social memory: The correlation and comparison between the church, gallery and museum as both traditional and contemporary institutes for the preservation of social memory
• What role does or can a contemporary Art Education Institute play in relation to unloud. S.L.O.N?
• What can be disseminated and how?

I would also like to explore the role of partnerships. Why it is a necessary processes and what part they play in the creation of unloud- S.L.O.N. For example:

• UAL – University of Arts, London
• Solovki Museum-Reserve, Russia
• British Council
• AHRC
• Barents Region Council
• Hermitage MuseumRussia
• UNESCO

I have lived and worked as an artist in Sheffield, UK since 1990. Since 1989 I have been exhibiting in an on-going programme of individual, group and curated exhibitions nationally and internationally.Currently undertaking a 3year NESTA fellowship and on sabbatical leave from Nottingham Trent University School of Art and Design, UK, where I was joint course leader of the BA Hons Fine Art programme.

Nottingham Trent University, UK

‘Scattered with marvels’: An investigation into the aesthetics of urban life

About the project

My current research project seeks to describe and analyse the aesthetics of everyday urban life, and through this to consider what aesthetics, freed from art, might offer as a form of critical cognition.

The presentation will recognize the body as a cognitive organ, and will argue that were we to recover the original meaning of the term asthitikos – perceptive by feeling – it would allow the development of an investigative method applicable to a broad range of research beyond the traditional remit of aesthetics. I consider this approach to aesthetics to allow a form of bodily knowing that is not pre-critical or naïve. My presentation will consider sense perception to include the visual, but also the haptic, auditory, etc. and will attend to issues of emotional affect such as shame, boredom, etc., in order to develop new approaches to knowledge. This project draws upon an audio/visual/sensory practice as well as the work of theorists such as Susan Buck Morss. It utilizes a range of emerging contemporary approaches to aesthetics and affect including those of Constance Classen, David Howes, Jane Bennett, Philip Fisher, Lars Svendsen, etc. Crucially, however, it is focused through the non-fiction of a creative writer, Georges Perec, whose suggestions as to the methods by which we might attend to the world we inhabit, I find persuasive.

Questions

I am interested to raise questions about what constitutes a properly aesthetic investigation, and whether sensory engagement can actually be critical. I would like to discuss how the habitual limiting of aesthetic consideration to the artistic sphere is preventing us developing useful investigative tools. Further, it seems that binary categories have become established where practice-led research is now commonly opposed to ‘traditional’ research, partly through a concern to establish the research of artists as being somehow of a different order: I am interested to explore alternatives for aesthetic engagement that might better enable us to investigate our world.

Read more about Joanne Lee.

Associate Professor, Royal Conservatoire, The Haugue, The Netherlands

Helena Gaunt

Head of Research, Assistant Principal (Research and Academic Development), Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London, UK

Qualities of Conversation

This paper addresses questions about the qualities of conversation within the context of research which focuses on the connections between improvisation and artistry in musicians. It builds on areas of research in musical improvisation and processes of learning for performing musicians in Higher Education, and considers how qualities of conversation (musical and verbal) are fundamental to collaborative research in this field.

The underlying question of this research is how does improvisation (musical, physical, conversational) underpin the development of artistry in musicians as performers and teachers? Artistry here is taken to mean what makes performance come alive- what enables performers to leave behind rehearsed skills and enter the realm of the unintended. Artistry undoubtedly demands technical facility, communicative skill and musical understanding; it however also requires improvisation that leads to unforeseen outcomes.

Research method

This research begins from our own practice as musicians, teachers and innovators in conservatoires. An essential objective is to evolve appropriate methodologies for research in practice as well as about practice. We engage in musical improvisation, and in conversation, and the two constantly interweave. We aim to allow the musical improvisation to speak for itself as well as analysing it in words, and we seek ways for the two to interact, transform and perhaps create new kinds of artistic outputs.

Professor Responsible, Institut de Recherche en Design, GenevaUniversity of Art and Design, Switzerland

CreaSearch – Methodologies and models for creation-based research projects in design

CreaSearch is a design research project focusing on the desirable and suitable conditions that are to be fulfilled in order to acknowledge and develop creation based research projects in design. It is not a creation based project itself, but a three step study about a central question: How does a creation project fit into a research project, able to fulfil the universal criterion of communicable results? In other words, what is the epistemological framework for what is called “recherche création” (research creation)? What kind of research model could convince the gifted designers to join research teams, without fearing to loose their creative skills in this academically framed activity?

Honourable authors have published enthusiastic or critical articles on the research creation topic in the visual arts or in the music and dance field, but few have systematically discussed such a research model for design. The main objective of CreaSearch is to propose a methodological frame for research creation projects in design, suitable with the up-to-date challenges of design research and with the legal and administrative peculiarities of the Swiss Universities of Applied Sciences.

Acting Head, Fine Art Media, National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland

Cliona Harmey

Irish artist who works across a variety of media including video, photography, sound and the Internet.

Claire Nidecker

Artist and lecturer in Fine Art Media, National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland

Loss of Journey

Theme or research question:

Integral to the experience of practice and research is the journey. This journey could be virtual, real, physical, mental or metaphorical. The journey can be a distance traveled to find solutions or the stretch of the imagination necessary to encompass a bigger picture or idea.

The rapid proliferation of communication media has shortened the journey experience for everyone. Information now comes to you rather that you having to find it. The journey experience can be confined to a few mouse clicks. The changed quality of that experience is what we want to question.

Issues that the presentation is intended to raise:

What has been learned on the way from question to answer? Is the quality of information compromised by the diminution of the journey experience? Is the destination less satisfying than the route traveled?
Are the tangential directions one can take in pursuing research limited by technology? Does technology allow for the augmentation of traditional pedagogies?
Is the intimacy of presence equivalent to the immediacy of connectivity? What is lost in transmission? Does technology mediate and frame the quality of the learning experience?

The presentation will link to the qualities and values inherent in art education and how to maintain a humanist approach while operating in an economically influenced educational environment. A-learning* can offer strategic solutions to imposed strictures whilst facilitating new modes of teaching, learning and practice based research.

* We propose A-learning, (Augmented Learning) as an alternative to e-learning, specifically orientated to–wards the qualities associated with art learning. It proposes technology as a way of extending existing and traditional art teaching strategies in a holistic way.

Head of research, Berne University of the Arts, Switzerland

Claudia Mareis

Assistante scientfique, Berne University of the Arts, Switzerland

Artistic Investigations for
Managing Professionals in Healthcare

To research and interpret the managerial perception of physicians and managers in hospitals is usually a research question in sociology and organizational research. In 2006, however a group of researchers from a Swiss University of the Arts investigated this proposed topic also from an explicitly artistic/designerly perspective. The project team consisted of the following creative disciplines: media art, communication design, literary writing and drama (overview of the participating disciplines see below). The research team was joined by a practice partner from the field of education and further training in healthcare management.

Proceeding on a completed socio-scientific research effort, whose goal was to explore the individual and collective managerial self-perception of head doctors and hospital directors, designers and artists attempted to put that same interview material in a respectively specific medial form. Thereby, dichotomic research questions were of interest: on the one hand, it was a question of characterizing the extensive study material as compactly as possible in the form of a artistic/designerly presentation and encapsulate it. On the other hand, the demand for knowledge by the creative disciplines and their explicitly non-scientific presentational form should be examined. The result was an astonishing diversity and an amazing acuteness of analysis from the different creative and artistic perspectives.

The research project joined three different research perspectives. Initially, the interdisciplinary approach «Art as Research» shaped the strategy of the project: designers and artists from various disciplines did practice-led research against the background of their respective discipline on a mutual question. Secondly, specific desiderata of design research from the area of social communication were addressed. And thirdly, the socio-scientific background of the practice partner supplemented the project.

Focus of the presentation

The outlined research project offers a broad variety of issues with regard to quality questions within applied artistic research. The presentation of the full paper focuses on some selected quality aspects within the different approaches of the participating artistic disciplines. For instance different quality standards and criteria from both artists/designers and practice partner will be discussed. Besides quality standards between artistic/designerly and socio-scientific research approaches will be selectively compared and discussed.

Professor, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Dept of Music, Norway

John Pål Inderberg

Associate Professor, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Dept of Music, Norway

Improvisation as Phenomenon and Creative practice

Improvisation as a concept and phenomenon has remained a largely unstudied and untheorised topic, especially in terms of its relevance for contemporary work in cultural studies, anthropology, pedagogy, sociology, and philosophy – in other words, it is an interesting and obvious topic for interdisciplinary research. Improvisation is the human practice from which all music derives; as such, it represents a tool for communication and interaction that seems crucial in a global context. With its dialogic character it has the potential to play a vital role both as an artistic phenomenon, as a social force and in this context as a research topic and new perspectives on learning and acting.

The directness and dialogic nature of improvisatory practice, which is something that happens “face to face”, makes it particularly relevant and interesting in relation to communicational aspects. In the book “The Other Side of Nowhere,” Daniel Fischlin and Ajay Heble (editors) argue that music “specifically, creative improvised music and free jazz – can reinvigorate our understanding of the social function of humanities research within the broader context of how that research plays a role in shaping notions of community and “new forms” of social organization.”(21).

Improvisation is a potential for action latent in all human activities. When we improvise, this activity is an existential act, which on a basic level is detached from qualitative assessment. Improvising thus involves initiating processes based on previous experience and activities, which in turn will generate new processes in which learning, insight, and knowledge acquisition form part of a meta level and make up a platform for further development in a variety of contexts. Within such areas of proficiency, for example in music, one may establish so-called idiomatic quality criteria by which improvisational skills can be measured. However, the most important aspect of improvisation is “the open, unfinished, unexplored space” where one has every possibility to create, “to bring different identities together,” and where descriptive phrases only to a limited degree can serve as a meaningful description of what takes place in the course of performance.