part 2

A Few Notes on my choice of Media, Materials & Techniques My engagement with the processes of crafting a multi-media art book that relied on both analog and digital techniques of design was a new experi-ence. I enjoyed thinking through the ways in which image placement and layout traverse between the computer screen and the craft matt. I found the actual process of printing (on a double sided, four page spread) challenging and have now acquired a stack of pages with upside down, mirrored, or wrongly crossed images. All of my resources were from home and upon reflection, I am happy that I decided to print the book this way. It gave me the opportunity to experiment with printing in layers, scanning, cutting and pasting and printing on a variety of paper media. One of my primary chal-lenges was getting my bleed lines to go to the edge of my pages. I think that this was because my paper was an off size and there are pre-set mar-gins on my printer. Although this was frustrating to me, I did my best to work with it, by adding layers of text and adjusting my layout so that these were not as obvious. It was a good practice in ‘making do.’ Ideally, I would like to insert one more “set” into my book (each set is composed of six pages). This set would continue the aesthetic of the botany and natural history and also include a text and im-age about one or two more contemporary female scientists (probably Rachel Carson and Marie Curie). I think that this would allow the aesthetic to flow a little bit more consistently because, as it stands, I feel that the more contemporary inserts seem a little bit of place. Lastly, if I revise and add to this book, I will change the title. I am not happy with the addition of “field guide” because I do not think that it is this or that it functions as this. Over-all, I am happy that I worked with various textures, images, and paper forms and with my decision to

traverse between digital and analog divide processes of design and layout.

Other Experiments with Other media

Through the process of working with images for the book, I experimented with constructing cro-chet and knitted flowers. I wanted to work with textiles in the tradition of female craft work and also think about the traditional ways that we utilize various materials to represent organic and natural forms. I also spent a few days capturing micros-copy images that I had intended to use for a few short videos. Unfortunately, my files became un-linked and I was not able to reconcile this before the vernissage. However, I now have a lot of raw material to work with and will continue to create a similarly themed microscopy video next semester. Although, my experiments with these media did not come to fruition, they were avenues through which I could think, while doing. Furthermore, engaging in a hands on way – as mode of experi-mentation – helped me to become more comfort-able with the idea that learning through various media does not necessarily have to produce something in order for it to be beneficial. And, as many people experience, many ideas came to me while I thought through my hands. Breaking away from the thinking through the screen and the text is difficult but sometimes the most effective way to work creatively through a topic or problem.

Weaving as Research Creation

The book that I created embodies texts, images, and citations from a variety of different books that I collected. In the tradition of cut and paste (collage) mentioned earlier, I decided to blend a variety of ideas, materials, and aesthetics together to create story, or in the least, a frame for a pos-sible story. My decision to use clips of texts rather

than writing a narrative type dialogue that could be woven throughout the book of was a conscious decision. While working on this project, I found myself becoming very engaged in the research and feeling like I had to write a very coherent and well evidenced “alternative history.” Not only are the parameters of such a project too massive for one semester, this kind of thinking took away from my creative process, I felt a bit paralyzed by hav-ing to present “the facts” or many facts because I was communicating through a medium that I was not completely comfortable with. A stream of insecurity was constantly running through me that said: this is not going to be “enough.” Chap-man and Sawchuk mention the challenges that come with evaluating research creation and hav-ing its projects viewed as credible through the academy [5]. Unlike written theses, which are part of a long running tradition and are accompanied by solid barometers of measurement and evalua-tion, research creation projects do not exist in an institutionalized tradition where secure methods of evaluation are in place. My thinking often went back to the question of how do I show that I put a lot of research and work into this? How do I com-municate all of my sources and all of my research without laying them out there, on the page, in some kind of an analytic fashion, so that they can be displayed as proof that I ‘did the work.’ Chap-man and Sawchuk, cite Leavy, to say that “both artistic practice and the practice of quantitative research can be viewed as crafts. Qualitative researchers do not simply gather and write, they compose, orchestrate, and weave” [6].

Reflecting on the parallels and overlaps that ex-ist between my topic of research and the topic of research creation is fascinating and actually opens up another window for me to do some further exploratory research. I think that the tradition

of non-institutionalized research and non-expert knowledge has longer running roots than most of us realize and is absolutely tantamount to cre-ative thought, discovery, and intellectual practice. As Chapman and Sawchuk reveal, the practice of non-traditional forms of learning is tactical: a form of intervention [6]. As I write engage with this process of reflection, I am recognizing how pertinent Chapman and Sawchuk’s paper is to my own MA research. It connects more substantially than I realized upon my first two reads of the pa-per. I will continue to pursue the arguments that are presented throughout the next few months. The connections between women’s participation (in the home, in the domestic sphere, as assistants, etc.), non-expert knowledge, tactical intervention, and research creation are many and the parallels are overt. Additionally, while I focused on women in my own project, there are broader lines of class and access that can explored by breaking out of the lens of gender and utilizing an interstectional framework that brings questions of class, race, and gender together to ask these important questions about forms of knowledge, access to knowledge, and modes of knowledge creation.

Citations

[1] Visions of Empire, Voyages, Botany, and Repre-sentations of nature. eds. David Philip Miller, Peter Hanns Reill. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

[2] te Hessen, Anke. News, Paper, ScissorsL Clip-pings in the Sciences and Arts Around 1920 in Things that Talk. ed. Lorraine Daston (New York: Zone Books, 2004).

[3] Ibid.

[4] Lorraine Daston, Introduction to things that Talk, in Things That Talk ed. Lorraine Daston (New York: Zone Books, 2004).

[5] Chapman, O. & Sawchuk, K. “Research-Creation: Intervention, Analysis, and “Family Resemblanc-es.” December 2011. (Draft)

[6] Ibid.