questionofresarch

[questionofresarch]

Final Selection of Image and Summary

I started off this project with the question "In what ways can subversion develop creativity in relation to your own practice?" throughout the process of this project I think I have come to a strong answer.

This project has not only helped me to understand my own practice more regarding research but it has also helped me to develop my skills even further. I have also come to realise what my own research method is called, that being action research, which is when research and action are taken at the same time or "a research method that aims to simultaneously investigate and solve an issue. ".

For example, when I first started this body of work I looked back at my old projects and asked myself how these relate to subversion. This then led me to the action part in which I started to curate a few response images to this question as seen in previous posts.

The aim of the project is to bring about discussion around reality and the digital. If this is still a form of photography even if the actual image is no longer there. Or if this is an internally new form of art itself? With the advancements in technology rapidly growing especially with things like Artifical Interlagents this is an important discussion to start haveing or to start taking more seriously instead of it being treated as a neice topic. Technology is something we use or at least interact with every day and talking about our fears and concerns around it is important if we want to prepare for the future especially as in the UK at lest we are living in an aging population. These people could be classed as vulnerable when thinking about this topic, for example, have you ever had to explain to your grandparents how to send an email or how to send a text? Now imagine what it would be like to explain to them why their neighbour down the street how a robot in the garden that says hello to everyone walking past.

To say it would be alarming would be an understatement, this is why measures should be put in place to help the vulnerable and slowly introduce them to this technology or at least prepare them for it. That's why when discussing this project and subversion it goes against the traditional methods of photography and focuses on the digital and how advanced it has become.

In conclusion, this project still has a way to go before it is finished and is something I will expand on in the coming year. Going back to the question "In what ways can subversion develop creativity in relation to your own practice?" it all comes back to the relationship between traditional photography and the digital. This project is a subversion of photography, bringing up the question is it still photography even if the original image has been removed?

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A lot of this project has been me experimenting with different methods. I suppose part of my research method is very much me responding to my own work.

When curating these images I was very fasinated by Photoshop new feature generative AI that I decided to experiment with it myself. I had put imges that i a curated previously and then expanted them. I did not enter any prompts as I wanted to see what the software would do and what AI would curate.

However, I quickly decided that I did not like these images. Although they were interesting I couldn't see myself using them in this project.

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Images - 17/11/2023

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10/11/2023 - The Digital

I started to think about the process of curating these images, in doing so I then documented how I construct them.

By using different layers within Photoshop I can control the weight of each building thus making some look further away adding depth to the image.

I feel like the process itself is more important than the outcome, there is somthing intresting about the removal of the orginal image. Thinking about this led me onto research about Indexicality. One text I found useful was “The Indexical and the concept of Medium Specificity by Mary Ann Doane” however this text also includes various other authors such as Tom Gunning which is where the following quote is from:

“Digital media emerge as the apparent endpoint of accelerating dematerialisation, so much so that it is difficult not to see the very term ‘digital media’ as an oxymoron. Is the digital really a medium, or even a collection of media? Isn’t its specificity, rather, the annihilation of the concept of a medium? It's information or representation. appear to exist nowhere and the cultural dream of the digital is a dream of immateriality, without degradation or loss” - Tom Gunning

This quote in particular is relevant to my own practice as it brings theoretical ideas to my work. Concerning my work the main part would be towards the end of the quote when the question of the digital losing its materiality. This is especially true when thinking about the progress photography has made, going from film to digital cameras. In my practice, I think that this gap between analogue and digital is even more present and even a gap between photography itself. Though my work is inherently photographic with the removal of the image the question asked then becomes is it still photographic?

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10/11/2023

While thinking about research I was wondering what type of research do I mainly use and after doing some research I found that I mainly practise action research.

This term was first coined in 1944 by MIT professor Kurt Lewin and is a research method that aims to simultaneously investigate and solve an issue.

So, in this case, the problem would be the question itself “In what ways can subversion develop creativity in relation to your own practice?” Then I would work on visual responses to these questions, so In my previous post that was the first response. But in the images below are my second response to both the question and the image.

When thinking about the subversion I wondered what else I could do or if there was another way in which I could show subversion. So I tried ways of introducing the original image.

First with the squares and then with the lines. This is more so to make it look as if the original image was glitching through into the digital. However, after doing these I quickly realised I don’t like them at all.

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03/10/2023

Why this question?

The act of photography is capturing an image but what if you used that image to curate another image? The act of removing the orginal image is removing the index. In essance it becomes almost an act of rebellion against photography to remove the image.

The image above is my first response to this prospect. Using the original images to make a new one, but the average viewer wouldn't know this was the case if you just showed them this image with no context.

The project still has a long way to go until it is a fully formed thing but this is my first response to the question.

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26th September 2023

What question should I answer?

During the start of the module Question of Research we where given the choice of three questions:

In what ways can subversion develop creativity in relaion to your own practice?

How can materiality enhance the user / audience experience, in your own practice?

How does positionality effect the creative/user/audience experience, in your own practice?

To understand what question would be best for me to explore I had to start by breaking down the questions to understand them fully.

I start with the first question in the above list and broke it down into the keyswords which are subversion and creativity. According to the Oxford Dictionary subversion is “the undermining of the power and authority of an established system or institution.”

The next key word creativity according to the Oxford Dictionary means “the use of imagination or original ides to create something; inventiveness”

I followed the same process with the next two question. The keywords in the second question (for me) are materiality an experience. The keywords in the final question (for me) are positionality and (again) experience.

According to the Oxford Dictionary:

— materiality is “the quality or character of being material or composed of matter”

— experience is “an event or occurrence which laves an impression on someone” or “practical contact with and leaves"

— positionality “refers to where one is located in relation to their various social identities”

After breaking down these questions I think the best one to explore in relation to my own practice is the first one “ In what ways can subversion develop creativity in relation to your own practice?” This is the best one for me to explore as my photographic practice could be classed as a subversion of photography itself. But that would be another post.

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What is Research?

When starting this unit I kept coming back to the question of What is research? It is not something that I am new to as my porjects have always been haveily researched based.

However, when hearing other people's versions of research I started to question my methods and what exactly is research. I concluded pretty quickly, that research itself is any form of media that would help inform or advance the project in progress. This can be any form of media or academia.

Previously I have mainly focused on visual research such as films or tv shows. But starting this unit I am leaning more towards academic texts to help guide my research. Although I don’t have anything pinned down at this point I have a long list of text that could be useful.

Saying this it is also important for me to say that the visual aspect of my future research has not lost its importance in the development of my project but more so that the text side of research has gained a greater influence than it has done previously.