Where’s the Silver Lining? – Yesterday was not a great day! I was unable to work on my blog because most of the day was spent trying to get it to display properly. I was annoyed because I had lost a full day of working on my visual programming tutorials. Not only was my blog page not loading properly but the homepage would not display it’s menus without swiping the screen on a mobile device. I tried just about everything I could think of to get my website working and sat up into the early hours of the morning but still no ‘joy’. However every cloud has a silver lining because I managed to speak with a man about a chladni kit (a way of visualising sound waves with sand). We had a long conversation and it so transpired that this person had similar interests to mine having completed a PhD at a University in Ireland while looking into sound and vibration. I intend to devote a separate blog post to the chladni kit when it arrives so I can go into more depth. However the takeaway message from yesterday was that every cloud really does have a silver […]
What is Action Research? – Research is an important part of any art project and ‘Action Research’ is one way to approach this. Action research is a unique combination of ‘Action and Research’. In essence it is research by the practitioner into the practice to change and improve’. This link points to a video about Action Research. Below are some of the key points from the video. Some research questions – *The practitioner allows themself to experience surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation which they find uncertain or unique. They reflect on the phenomenon before them, and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in their behaviour. They carry out an experiment which serves to generate both a new understanding of the phenomenon and a change in the situation.* (Schön 1983: 68) Schön, D.A., (1983) *The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. *New York: Basic Boo 1. How do you respond to the encouragement to be surprised, puzzled and confused? 2. Donald Schön is not writing specifically about artists, so when he says ‘carry out an experiment’ what do you think that could look like for artists in general and specifically for you? Answers – In […]
