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You should give another try?
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Research as art
In the publication "The three configurations of practice-based PhDs", Elkins mentions John Berger's PhDs thesis (who mingles poems and art history) as a fusion of text into creative work (Elkins, 2005). This is a good example of “artisticization” of the research findings. However, with this example, Elkins seems only to refer to the reform of the medium itself. In order to offer the opportunity of transforming research into artistic acts, institutions need to implement much more radical changes in the different concepts related to artistic research.
- First of all, instead of text-based presentations or hundred-pages long theses, the public needs different media forms, which are more creative, meaningful, and attractive. The work of artistic research will bring more social impact when it gets closer to the public. Therefore, we can enhance the effect of artistic research by specific actions. These can be the transformation of a thesis book into a short story, a video book, a documentary, etc. The doctoral defending can become an art event. The conference presentation can transform into an art performance (as in Henk Slager's proposal for Bucharest Biennale 9). The publication can be a game, a video clip, an animation, etc.
- The next step for change is renewing different artistic research concepts such as research topics, research purposes, art messages, art actions, or art mediums.
Instead of framing research topics in the context of art-related issues, research can focus on other fields as well. Beyond the concepts of inter- or multidisciplinarity, artistic research allows the creation of a unique space, where the boundaries between other sciences are blurred and merged. In this way, artistic researchers diversify sources of knowledge, and their artwork may convey multiple contents.
Instead of just focusing only on the aesthetic, art also needs to be associated with everyday life, to raise public awareness, and to offer solutions to various social problems as well. Artistic research should focus on the useful aspect, or in other words, useful art should play an essential role in contemporary art. I believe that this change might motivate the public to return to art, and could reconstruct the social position of art, which has been weakened in many contexts.
Instead of formalizing it through mediums, art should focus more on the message and action. Generally, the genres of art are defined with a close reference to their medium, such as painting, sculpture, music, or film. However, nowadays we are witnessing the blurring of the mediums’ boundaries in contemporary art practices. Hence, identifying the categories of artworks has become more difficult. One solution that could be applied is: concentrating on the art topic and considering art message and action as key elements. There is no doubt that art messages are crucial elements in altering the public perception while art actions can serve as solutions for various social problems. Focusing on art messages and actions will contribute to enhancing the social role of art in general and for each artwork in particular.
Nevertheless, through what means do artists shape art messages and construct art action? Undoubtedly, art research is a fundamental element in the process of articulating messages and formulating strategies. Creating artworks through intensive research is a potential experimental direction for contemporary artists. In other words, the “research-based artistic practice” should soon become a widely applied methodology in arts.
Instead of using just only one art medium to communicate with, artists can use various media to convey their messages and actions. Each art medium has different values and metaphorical functions. Therefore each art research finding can be combined with an appropriate art medium. In this way, the artwork can become a united entity in both aspects: content and form.
Overall, it may not be easy to implement the fundamental changes mentioned above. In the systematic educational institutions, changing a small element always affects a series of related transformations, and nobody wants to complicate their works. Nevertheless, we should not accept this standstill inertia and conservatism of contemporary art education. A revolution in art education should be considered in the near future.
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You are stuck here. Why don't you try the other ways?
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You are close to the result.
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Don't be stress, take it easy!
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Nothing is easy, isn't it?
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Visual practice as research
In the artistic revolution mentioned in this article, the "research-based artistic practice" is considered a potential art methodology, as it contributes to blurring out the boundaries between art and research. It also formulates the creative works that are the results of the encounter between art and other sciences. Although this practice direction requires multiple skills and wide knowledge from the artists, it will offer more opportunities to them in discovering emerging issues and developing new artistic strategies.
The diversification of the artistic material is one of the most prominent advantages when the divide between research and art is being eliminated. In other words, when the artistic practice has been conducted as research, the collected findings will become art materials both literally and figuratively. A case study image or an interview audio recording, an artefact or an algorithm can all become artistic materials and can be constructed into different combinations that classical art has not fully discovered yet. Besides, the combination of various sources of knowledge can also create new artistic contents. In other words, the diverse research materials taken from different fields can be constructed into unique, meaningful, and powerful messages of contemporary art.
If the artistic practice is based on research, the creation of artwork may have a direction from the beginning. The practical orientation might play the same role as a hypothesis; it can be right or wrong; it can bring some successes or failures. But the most important thing is to help practitioners not fall into a state of confusion, disorientation in their working process. Each artist will draw his or her way to their practice according to the case study. The personal research strategy can also be an artist's creative work.
Take my research design as an example.
Personally, my artistic strategy is developed in close relation to "research-based artistic practice". Research and visual practice are conducted simultaneously. The research findings exist within the visual works themselves. The two diagrams below serve as models of this artistic strategy.
Research design graph 01
The graph 01 provides an overview of my research and artistic practice. The process starts with theoretical research related to the art topic or case study. The topic is examined from different points of view and aspects. The diverse research aspects open up numerous small research findings - what I call "sub-findings." Each “sub-finding” conveys an artistic message in itself. Those artistic messages are expressed or exposed via an appropriate art medium and the outcome of the sub-process is to introduce a “component artwork” (sub-artwork).
The process of discovering art topics and expressing them through the artworks is implemented continuously throughout the research progression. The final work is the synthesis of various "sub-findings" and "component artworks". Graph 02 below illustrates the last stage of the process.
Research design graph 02
I consider this second graph the context of "after my research turn". The graph represents the synthesized results of my artistic research and practice. The "sub-findings" and "component artworks" intertwine to create the final full "picture" of the process itself. Specifically, this picture is often represented as the final publication or exhibition. No matter what format it takes, the final picture must be a fusion of the complex and comprehensive results.
It can be said that following this artistic strategy requires more complex theoretical and practical work. However, it might contribute to many outstanding results. There are two main reasons that motivated me to apply this research strategy:
Firstly, the interleaving of theory and practice creates many opportunities to verify and experiment on “sub-research findings”. Through this continuous verification process, the final research results will be adjusted and developed appropriately - as nothing can be perfect, especially at first.
Secondly, the problem needs to be examined from many aspects and analyzed based on different theoretical foundations. Because the phenomena and problems exist in a state of constant movement, being strongly influenced by various factors. Studying from multiple perspectives will make the phenomena or problems more explicit, and the results of the research more convincing.
All in all, the "research-based artistic practice" can become an ideal methodology for doctoral students in Practice-based PhD or Doctoral of Liberal Art programs. It can establish a strong interconnection between art practice and research; it can generate numerous new experimental opportunities for artists-researchers. This methodology could contribute with certainty to the potentially productive novelties in art creation.
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APPLICATION
In order to turn the proposal related to the art revolution mentioned in this article into real actions, I have implemented several radical transformations in my doctoral studies. This part of the writing will present briefly my research topic and some of the findings that I have concluded so far in my own doctoral research program.
Overall, theoretical research is my starting point where I discover social phenomena through observation, data collection, and analysis. Next, the collected “analysis results” have been used artistically to create a series of “component artworks”. Finally, the collection of “analysis results” and “component artworks” are considered the decisive result.
My current art topic or case study is related to an emerging social phenomenon: "Advertising in the Age of AI (Artificial intelligence) and Automation". The research has been implemented in the following conceptual framework:
The conceptual framework of research
Advertising is an artistic medium that has undergone plenty of transformations through a long history course. Each new advertising form reflects sharply the social changes in general and in the political economy in particular. Obviously, since the early 20th century, advertising has become the pure representation of social power (Adorno, & Horkheimer, 2007). Right now we are witnessing the overall dominance of the force of the cyber world; online-advertising has become an undeniable social phenomenon. For the most part, we consider online advertising as a normal and harmless form of marketing. However, behind these familiar advertisements, there are several abnormal and conspiratorial industries. Within online marketing strategies, there are thousands of hidden tactics and shady acts that we do not know or care about. Plenty of social ethical and human rights issues are being ignored for the sake of benefits and profits of advertising sponsors. It can be said that the contemporary advertising industry has tremendous consequences beyond economic issues.
In each moment internet users are being exploited as living resources for economic and political purposes around the world. More seriously, with the help of advanced digital technologies, the dominant governments, corporations, and organizations control, manipulate, and exploit users at different levels. In particular, the rise of AI in the past decade has increased the threats of digital tactics on personal integrity. Generally, the future can hardly be brighter. Nearly all companies, global corporations and countries have been constantly investing in and exploiting the transcendence of information technologies to pursue their hidden conspiracies. In addition to giant mechanisms that can improve themselves automatically through their own experiences, many leading educational programs have been training the real human the conspiratorial ability to create more and more explicit algorithms - that ultimately can fully dominate the user's psychology and behavior. Therefore, the automatic system not only can send the right targeted advertising messages to the users, but it can also completely dominate the entire society by controlling their thoughts, predicting their actions and ultimately manipulating their perception of reality. In the main, the vast expansion of cyber-capitalism has become an essential global concern in this day and age.
Nevertheless, the cyber-influencers do not act on the global scale and aren’t limited to commercial sectors only. "Netizens" exist in a controlling network of different scales and multiple sectors. In almost all countries, cities or even small towns, the digital-based automatic controlling systems are being applied widely. Companies, corporations, non-commercial organizations and even political parties are fully exploiting the advantages of algorithms. Taking a wider look, there are dire competitions between global and local forces, between commercial and non-commercial entities; that all aims to occupy the power ranks over the controlling rights.
We cannot completely deny the benefits that technology brings to modern people, but at the same time, we need to see clearly the limitations it creates in order to have the appropriate perceptions and actions. Artificial intelligence has replaced people in many fields, including the arts. Especially in advertising design, a number of algorithms have been created to replace human design work by modeling creativity. This replacement enhances productivity and generates more profit for the advertising industry. However, modeling creative work is actually in contradiction to the nature of creation. The result of creative mechanization can not go beyond the reproduction or repetition of already existing artwork. Taking a closer look, automatic creation machines normally operate based on different models - which are programmed through algorithms. The creative modules work by connecting groups of information. Thus, the digital models of artistic styles, colour tones, characters, scenarios, etc. generated by information systems will soon become popular. In the near future, we will definitely receive video advertisements produced by automatic mechanisms. Algorithms will not only selectively deliver, but they will even construct personally targeted video ads based on personal data. People will only receive the right, precisely targeted advertisements, specially designed for them, and suiting best their present and their future psychographic model. Moreover, this personalization of information received by internet users will take place in all types of communication in the future. Without new policies and actions against this process, the person's entire worldview will be constrained into a narrow, poor and monopolar space. That will inevitably lead to extremeness and contradictions in the world. Peaceful opportunities seem to be just an illusion.
Nowadays, we tend to have the opposite feelings of faith and fear related to artificial intelligence technologies. In general, modern people seem to be too dependent on technology and the cyber world. Although they can see the negativity within this world, they cannot get out of the social community that contains almost all of the matters related to the digital world. That is a social dilemma! Several scholars have proposed different solutions to solve this problem. For example: exiting from the technology environment, deleting social media accounts (Janzen, 2019); building a new social system - cyber socialism (Malone, 2018), creating legal corridors to protect personal information (McNamee, 2018), etc. From my point of view, each proposal has its advantages and disadvantages. It seems that we did not reach the most effective solution by far. The question of how people can survive in the super-automation world still needs to be answered. We need to generate social attention in all the different fields, and to create new proposals and ideas to solve this continuously worsening social problem.
It can be said that this research process has helped me to deepen my insights into the problems related to automatic advertising and cyberspace. It has also generated plenty of artistic inspiration. These following artworks are the results of my experimentation on this particular topic and case study.
01. Brave New Chapter (the link to the project)
Readymade objects + Historical reenactment + Intervention
"Garage Europa" exhibition
5UN7 Art Institution, Bordeaux, France
Dec 2019
02. The keys (the link to the project)
Installation Infographics
"Parallel Hungary" exhibition
Aula exhibition hall, Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Budapest
Feb 2020
03. Dialectic of Cyber-Enlightenment (the link to the project)
Found objects + Intervention
“From Fake Mountains to Faith + The Colonial Warehouse” exhibition
Archives Bordeaux Métropole, Bordeaux, France
Jan to May 2020
04. BB9 plan for the conference (the link to the project)
Performance
Suppose to be part of the Bucharest Biennial, Romania.
Jun 2020
05. BB9 plan for the research lab (the link to the project)
Performance + Social activist
Suppose to be part of the Bucharest Biennial, Romania.
Jun 2020
06. Horus Case (the link to the project)
Cyber-docufiction
“Host and hostility” exhibition
Virtual Exhibition at hostandhostility.com
May 2020 to April 2021
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A DIFFERENT RESEARCH DIRECTION
"The 'Enlightenment,' which discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines."
— Michel Foucault
There is no doubt that the Age of Reason has created great revolutions to liberate people from the oppression of dictatorial monarchies and harsh religious laws. It also motivated the development of science and technology, solving many problems related to human life. However, the process of "scientization" has been causing significant obstacles to development in many fields, including the arts. The academic arts models, the framed art research methods have significantly limited the creativity of both teachers and learners in many parts of the world. Art schools seem to exist in the paradigm of prison, as Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish (1977) points out: “Schools serve the same social functions as prisons and mental institutions – to define, classify, control, and regulate people.”
Therefore, liberating the creative energies of academic models has become an urgent need for the new generation. The different ways of artistic research and new forms of artistic expression should be encouraged and developed with no delay. In the past two decades, many art educators and researchers have mentioned reconsidering the concept of artistic research, especially at higher level education (Elkins, 2005; Seago, & Dunne, 1999; Slager, 2015; Michelkevičius, 2018). Several propositional ideas about the new concept and orientation of artistic research and practice on the doctoral level have been published. Among these writings, I have been particularly impressed by the research orientation introduced by James Elkins: “The research dissertation can be intended to be read as art, and the visual practice as research.” (Elkins, 2005). However, this argument seems to have some limitations, especially in the diversification of research communicational means. In order to include more genres of research communication, I have transformed Elkins's claim into a new one: “The research dissertation can be intended to be read, watched or participated in as art, and the visual practice as research.” It means that the research finding can be presented in different forms of arts such as a novel, video, film, performance, etc. The visual practice should involve collecting, organizing, and analyzing information in order to enhance our understanding of a topic or an issue. It should also include the proposal for new solution models. I strongly believe that if the artistic research and practice were to be liberated in this manner, it would become an endless pleasure for the artist (Slager, 2015).
Generally, artistic research at a higher level should accept the variety of ways of approaches. Each working strategy has different strengths and weaknesses. Remarkably, the experimental process is the way researchers expand knowledge and develop their skills based on their achievements and mistakes. Researchers explore various issues from an artist's perspective when other scientific methods disappear or merge into an improvisational artistic narrative. The artworks form impressive and meaningful pieces of communication based on creative practices. Through curatorial strategies, authors have more opportunities to make a remarkable interaction with society than other scientific fields. It can be said that, with the power of the current education industry, research formulas can only reproduce the artist's mind and art products (Adorno, & Horkheimer, 2007). Nevertheless, in order to extend the artist's mind, research needs to reinvent the different approaches and forms of artistic expression.
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