2012 ~ Addressing Studio Creative Practice

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough"

3:40 AM Language,

...

References___Terminology

4:12 AM Reference,

There are basically three ways to insert references into a scholarly text: These are footnotes, endnotes, and the enumerative bibliography; this last one being the list of full references with requisite fields (such as dates, names, publisher info, page numbers etc) that go at the end of the...

How to find / How to read academic texts

3:12 AM Lit. Rev., Reading,

The fifth week was spent by taking the subject material that one of you is working on and using this as an example for finding related material that can be used for a literature review. The one we picked was Ceren's investigation into Eisenman's holocaust memorial in Berlin....

A good question to ask___Why are you a creative practitioner?

10:07 AM Creativity, Definition, Subject,

At this juncture, while you are deliberating upon what your work is all about; a very good (if not indeed downright crucial) question is why you are doing what you are doing. Differently put - what is the burning query that you are seeking an answer to? Such...

Taxonomies instead of (bisociative) diagrams

8:33 AM Diagram, Subject, Taxonomy,

We spent the 4th class examining the diagrams that I had asked you to construct in a bisociative manner - in such a way that you brought the unrelated strands of your practice together. What has emerged instead is that most of you have constructed elaborate and massive...

Literature Review___Locating your sources: Portals, books etc... (and also a few things about citation styles)

1:58 AM Citation, Lit. Rev., Reference, Search, Style,

While Google Scholar is the main source for articles and proceedings papers, another academic search engine you may want to check out is Scirus. PubMed is also a very well known search portal that (as the name already tells us) specializes in biomedical texts and life sciences. As...

Literature Review___Locating your sources: Google Scholar

9:03 AM Lit. Rev., Reference,

For articles and proceedings papers Google Scholar is indeed your one stop shop for a good literature review; you really need to look no further! Sometimes GS even gives you direct download links to pdfs that the author has uploaded or that the publisher has provided, so you...

Literature Review___Finding stuff

9:55 AM Lit. Rev., Search,

This is of course rather self-evident to begin with - you find things mostly online (and only very rarely through the physical library on campus), and you do so by using search terms that you type into a search engine such as Google Scholar. That said, using search...

Literature Review___A hierarchy of sources

7:26 AM Lit. Rev.,

We now come to a very important part of your work - the literature review. Before we go into where you can locate the sources that you need for this, we need to talk about what types of publications can be considered for this task and what their...

Situating your creative practice___Looking "sideways": Arthur Koestler and Bisociation

4:29 AM Creativity, Subject,

Before we go into the all-important subject of the literature review, I am now going to ask you to go out on a limb, and take yet another look at your creative work - but not as a logical construct in which your thought patterns rest upon a...

Theories in Arts and Social Sciences___Broad definitions

9:31 AM Theory,

The book Reflexive Methodology: New Vistas for Qualitative Research by Mats Alvesson and Kaj Skoldberg has given me the idea that it may be a very good thing to give brief definitions of some of the prevalent theoretical frameworks in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Alvesson and...

Your discourse___Tips on language

7:37 AM Language,

Typically an academic text in arts and humanities is from 2500 to 7000 words, depending on whether it is written as a conference paper or as a journal article. The higher number is what would be expected for a journal article where you would develop your ideas on...

Your discourse___First person or passive voice?

5:28 AM Language,

This is a tricky subject and I will try to look at it from different angles: Should your text be of a personal nature, flowing more or less like a narrative or should it be impersonal and objective, adopting a critical stance to your own output? Or should...

Making "editable text"___OCR and pdf converters

10:58 AM Software,

There will be times when you wish to make a quote that will be longer than just a few words. (Although you should always keep in mind that long quotes are not too desirable, instead you should be integrating the author's words into your own text flow and...

Reference management systems

4:38 AM Lit. Rev., Reference, Software,

Very special thanks go to Burcu Avcı who alerted me to these - and they will in fact make your lives a lot easier when it comes to doing your literature reviews, which you will be starting on quite soon. One of the biggest challenges when you are...

Using mindmaps for structuring a paper

4:03 AM Mindmap, Software, Structure,

A very handy tool whilst setting up the structure of your paper are mindmaps. While you can also draw a mindmap on a piece of paper or on a white board, mindmaps as software that you fill and manipulate on your screen are especially recommended since you can...

Situating your creative practice

2:40 AM Diagram,

The third class session was largely spent in trying to identify where you think you are situated within the contemporary art/design spectrum. This is needed in order to be able to reference your work, to establish meaningful connections whilst you do a literature review in the upcoming weeks....

Setting up a Structure

1:42 AM Structure,

Do this before you start to write since it will keep you focused and stop you from rambling and getting carried off of the subject. Art papers seem to be very closely related to papers written in engineering, at least as far as their structure is concerned. This...

Homework

11:56 AM Course, Diagram,

Your homework for this week is creating your own diagram based upon (but not limited to in any way) Graeme Sullivan's diagram that you can see in this post. Read the questions that I have placed underneath the diagram, and there are sure to also be ones that...

Early Abstract Revisions

10:48 PM Abstract, Course, Jargon,

The second week was mostly spent in revising the short abstract that you wrote in order to focus/pinpoint what you will be writing about for the rest of the semester. Most of you have done a good job with this, although some further tweaking of the initial output...

Keywords

2:38 AM Keywords,

Publications will expect you to provide metadata that indexes your text. To put this in everyday words, metadata will help readers find your paper in a database or through an online search engine. Amongst this metadata are keywords that are placed at the start of your text, directly...

Writing an Abstract

11:58 AM Abstract, Definition,

An abstract is not the same as the introduction of your text. Instead, an abstract is a summation of your entire text. Usually publications will impose a limit on your abstract - the most common one is 300 words, although sometimes this can go up as far as...

Specifiying a Subject

1:32 AM Subject,

Keep things focused. Never write a paper about all of your work! Leave that to the art historians who will compile your oeuvre when you are old and rich and famous, if not indeed already dead… ;-) ...

Situating your creative practice

8:39 AM Classification, Diagram,

The following diagram and classifications have been taken from the 5th Chapter of Graeme Sullivan’s 2004 book Art Practice as Research: Inquiry in the Visual Arts. While there can be many other ways of situating or defining your practice; and while many creative practices are far too complex...

Research Methods___Some broad definitions: Quantitative, Qualitative, Digital Humanities

3:49 AM Definition, Dig. Hum., Methods, Qualitative, Quantitative,

Theory of Creative Practice is an emergent field that is generally considered to be situated in the Humanities; however this may be an incomplete definition since the field is hybrid in nature and may borrow from many different research methodologies, some of which may not relate to the...

Course Structure/Why such a course?

2:23 AM Concept, Course, Definition, Field, Focus, Subject,

The course's structure will follow a practice based approach whereby you will be taken through all the steps that go into writing a theoretical text in the field of artistic/creative practice. You will progress week by week, starting by defining and narrowing the subject that you wish to...

Course Definition

11:19 AM Course, Definition,

This course aims to enable artists and designers to theorize and to write effectively on their own creative output and projects, as well as to give them the ability to conduct research and develop theory in wider related fields such as art theory, art criticism, art education, new...

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