Exploring the Efficiency of Artistic Practices within the Context of their Interaction

Andrew Miller

This exposition presents the artistic research project ‘Exploring the Efficiency of Artistic Practices within the Context of their Interaction’, which examines the ways in which artistic practices interact with one another. It understands practices as the organised media and structures through which a researcher is able to initiate and continue the process of environmental constitution, the embodied process through which the world emerges as meaningful for and with us. The project is situated within the context of a phenomenological approach to consciousness and sense-making. It demonstrates the potential of artistic practices as phenomenological methods; practices not merely for the creation of art but as vehicles for investigation into human experience. The exposition is separated into two sections: The first section attempts to present—that is, to make present—the environment as constituted by the researcher through his engagement with the four main artistic practices; descriptive writing, auditory diagramming, sketching and composing. As part of these practices, the initial engagement with the researcher's surroundings was established through the practices of listening and hearing - making this a primarily aural undertaking. The artefacts are given to the reader in a way that hopes to facilitate desired conditions in which the researcher’s perceived environment becomes present. The artefacts relate directly to the practices which allowed the researcher’s understanding of his environment, and are therefore powerful objects, which may allow the reader to come into contact with the same dynamics that allowed the environment to appear in the first place. The second section contains a reflective text which looks back on this process of environmental constitution in an attempt to understand the role of each artistic practice within the context of their interaction. It also contextualises the project within the framework of artistic research, by understanding the artistic practices not only as methods for art creation, but also as mediators of human experience, and therefore as tools for understanding the way the world emerges with us. The text, therefore, simultaneously addresses the idea of consciousness as an enactive process, one which sees a blurring of agency between researcher, practice and environment. The reflection is split into two sections, each referring to two different phases of research: the first, an open and generative approach to the engagement of the practices. The second, a pre-determined and deliberate structure for this engagement.

Link to Artefacts

Two Types of Interactions

The splitting of this research into two phases was not something that I had planned from the beginning but became necessary as part of a flexible method of research. As a process of forced interactions, Phase Two offered me an importantly different perspective of engagement with my practices. The ways in which these practices interacted were often similar but allowed me to further understand,not only their role in constituting my emergent environment but also their specific forms of mediation with a context of interaction.

By forcing an engagement with two simultaneous practices, I wanted to create a situation which allowed me to focus on the ways these practices influenced each other. After engaging at least once with each pair of practices, I began to notice a certain trend regarding how the tools and specificities of each practice lead toor encouraged a subsequent rupturing of the dynamic they conditioned. More concretely, I noticed two types of interactions: an interaction that lead to the modification of one or both practices and an interaction which encouraged a deeper understanding of specific phenomena. To explain this more clearly, I will offer two examples that put these two types of interactions on display.

The first of those examples is the interaction between diagramming and writing. In order to engage with both practices at the same time, I conducted my aesthetic practices of hearing and listening whilst viewing the artefacts of both practices from Phase One. During this process, I would move back and forth between my aesthetic practices and the artefacts until I reached a point at which I was ready to engage with one or both of the practices. As I viewed the diagrams and texts, I began to notice aspects of the environment that were common to both, but which also appeared in different ways. The diagram conditioned its emergence as a whole in a different way to the texts. By viewing the diagram I allowed the tension between words to guide me through the process of sense-making. I could start by viewing certain constellations of words and, as I moved my eyes across the page to view the other words, I partook in a process where the whole started to slowly emerge. The diagram gently guided me and allowed me to make sense of the environment its dynamics conditioned. The way I made sense with the diagram over time was completely different to reading the text and, by being so, it meant that certain aspects may have been more apparent or existed in different constellations. The ‘truth’ I felt may have been somewhere in the middle. The difference in this conditioned temporality led me to modify my practice of writing. The subsequent modification was an attempt to rupture the very temporality which conditioned the act of writing. I decided to write descriptively as I normally would, but then took the resultant text, separated the sentences and ordered them randomly. By doing so, I hoped to rupture the narrative order in which a text is subsequently read. The result was very insightful in not only helping me in the process of constitution but also understanding the tools and specificities of these practices by stretching their boundaries. I also speculated as to the whether this modification of writing would be applicable to composing. Due to time restraints enforced on the research project, I was not able to test my theory but I couldn’t imagine the same effect being reached. Words and especially words within the context of sentence making seemed to be such finite objectual events, a re-ordering of which could be perceived and therefore be effective. Due to the non-objectual nature of audible phenomena, I hypothesised that such a modification would not carry a lot of potential.

The second example refers to a type of interaction that inspired me to delve deeper into a certain phenomenon or set of phenomena. The most interesting aspect of this type of interaction is that in almost opposition to my previous example, it occurred mostly between practices which functioned in different media. Each practice gave access to certain phenomena in different ways, and by doing so inspired my attempts to explore them further through the other practices. The example I have for this type of interaction is composing and sketching. Each practice exists in a different medium; composing in the medium of sound and sketching as a visual practice. The difference in the way they mediated my process of environmental constitution were vast and almost complimentary, as they inspired new ways of approaching each other. Like the previous example I approached these two practices in a similar way, in a ‘to and fro’ between my aesthetic practices of listening and hearing and then simultaneously viewing and listening with my artefacts of sketching and composing.

PHASE TWO

As I listened with my surroundings and my compositional artefacts, aspects of the environment such as ‘constant’, ‘static’ and ‘distant’, started to appear. I looked over to my sketching artefacts to see if these aspects appeared in a similar way. I saw this as possible, the same dynamics were present in the sketches, which also conditioned the appearance of those aspects as I listened to my compositional artefacts. I decided to concentrate on exploring the phenomenon or set of phenomena surrounding what I understood as ‘distant’ through the act of sketching. Its presence was far stronger as I listened with the artefacts of composing. Therefore, by trying to explore it with sketching, I hoped to simultaneously re-frame the dynamics which conditioned its appearance and learn more about the tools and specificities of sketching. Sketching conditioned my engagement through the technologies of the pencil and paper, and the various skills which they enabled, such as shading, texture etc. As I started to sketch, I noticed that the phenomena of ‘distant’ appeared through sketching as a certain type of ‘density’, possibly due to the very restrictions of working with a lead pencil. Whilst the notion of ‘density’ is essentially different to that of ‘distant’, their manifestation in sketching seemed coherent. I had to ask myself if, instead of phenomena appearing as ‘distant’, they were indeed forming different densities. I decided to move back to diagramming and attempted to introduce this word into the diagram. As I did so, it initiated a complete rupture of how the place appeared with me through diagramming. Due to the introduction of this word into the diagram, I was forced to move certain other words and constellations around to accommodate this new object within the dynamics of the environment. This process of interaction between the two practices continued asthey both continued to update and re-frame each other in new and helpful ways; their very interaction inspired a deeper exploration of these phenomena. By doing so, I not only continued to understand them but also the environment as a whole and the practices which mediated its emergence as meaningful.

Bibliography

Arteaga, Alex, Boris Hassenstein, and Gunnar Green, Klangumwelt Ernst-Reuter-Platz, Berlin: Errant Bodies Press, 2016.

Borgdorff, Henk. The Conflict of the Faculties. Perspectives on Artistic Research and Academia. Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2012.

Cage, John. Silence: Lectures and Writings. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2012.

Noë, Alva. Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature. New York: Hill and Wang, 2015.

Roads, Curtis. Microsound. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.

Varela, Francisco J., Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016.

Glossary of Terms

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