Output details

Are ambiguous research outputs undesirable?

'Working Papers' is the result of a series of conferences examining research methodologies in the arts, and the debates current at the time regarding their validity and distinction from those in the humanities. This paper was presented, together with an accompanying film, at the '5th Biennial Research into Practice Conference', Royal Society of Arts, London, 2008, and was subsequently double blind peer-reviewed and selected for publication.

¶ Establishing a position in response to debates concerning practice-based research (Biggs, Bolt, Durling, Elkins), it argues that research in the visual and performing arts, can display a manner of thinking that makes a different, but equivalent, contribution to cultural discourse and analysis. In answering the specific question posed by the conference call: "Are unambiguous research outputs in the arts possible or desirable?" it examines problems associated with ambiguity in terms of knowledge and practice and the possibility that expectations of practice-based research rely on a series of assumptions. In order to progress methodologies beyond reliance on those of the humanities, it advocates the need to identify the specific location of any such assumptions, and to demonstrate the "field" of possibilities being questioned through the considered use of both practice and verbal articulation. The essay emphasises the crucial distinctions between process and product, and argues that the application of research questions / methods needs to be unambiguous, whereas the research outputs do not.

¶ This output facilitated the development of core research concerning relationships between visual practice (photographic/filmic) and wider cultural debate, which is discussed by the author in more specific terms in 'Cities and Photography' and 'Photographic Realism'.