Greg Hagin thoughts 2/4/19

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In reading the first piece by Eisner and Barone I was introduced to a a new world in approaching inquiry, and indeed in finding a place for the aesthetics of art to inform and give meaning in qualitative research.

I will admit at this early stage that the possibilities and questions this addition presents are both overwhelming. I read through Victoria Restler’s dissertation, and initially perceived the artwork as merely complementary non textual media; I needed a framework to understand how the various pieces were more than just additive but integrated and coalesced into the support of the underlying thesis.

It is the Wang, et al paper that provides a framework for how to organize and understand the approach of ABR.  The 3 “families” of classification – Research about Art, Arts Based Research, and Art in Research, delineate perspectives, and clarify function and intent.

I was then able to revisit Restler’s work,  now seeing the use of Art In Research as liberating way of approaching understanding. It enhances the thesis that has been supported both quantitatively and qualitatively in text, and the format introduces meaning, thus broadening understanding that would not exist in the more traditional textual research format.

I’m particularly interested in how the paradox of interpretation between artist intent and audience interpretation will play out.  Will integration of art in support of a thesis lead a reader to the direct conclusion in alignment with the scholars thesis?  Or will the interpretative and deeply subjective perceptions of art inject different meaning and understanding;  that possibly counters the argument of the research?

Dahlia’s Thoughts 2/4/2019

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A question that keeps popping up for me is how the “form” of inquiry shapes / enhances / constrains what we “see” and experience.

The piece by Wang and her colleagues was a helpful introduction to arts based research and what different forms and genres can help us see/imagine/complicate.  I appreciated the practical aspects of the piece and seeing specifically what knowledge and ideas can be crafted using different genres such as photography vs. photo-comics, for example.  I did have to laugh to myself that as much as I can critique pieces that seem overly “neat” and “organized”, I really do benefit from pieces such as this that help to “create some order in the messy field” and give us practical ideas for how to engage with different methods.

I realize, of course, that there is so much more than the genre in how we experience something – there is the intent of the creator of the piece, who we are as an audience at the moment we experience it, the context and company in which we experience it and more…But once an artist creates a piece, do they have any control on how it is experienced by others?  I don’t know…Rose (2016) discusses that how we think a piece will be audienced shapes how we compose it in the first place.  Just thinking of these posts we are writing now definitely proves that.  How would we write them if we thought nobody would read them, or if only Gene read them, or if Gene were a professor who only valued “traditional” academic writing?  Clearly the audience shapes how we compose even if we cannot control how an audience experiences our work.

The Barone and Eisner piece reminded me of this in describing the limitations of traditional “academic” writing – the way in which the story it can tell is constrained by its form.  It isn’t that it can’t tell a story but that it can tell a very specific story within certain confines.  They compare this to arts based research  that instead “provides an image of those interactions in ways that make them noticeable.” This idea has really stayed with me this week, that “arts based research is a heuristic through which we deepen and make more complex our understanding of some aspect of the world.” This differs significantly from trying to make something clear, to break it into discrete parts and to simplify it, which feels (at least to me) like the purpose of many academic journal articles.  I kept thinking of Ursula LeGuin’s idea that, “If you can see a thing whole… it seems that it’s always beautiful.”  How does arts based research allow us to see more layers and complexity in what we study…and how does this allow us to see the beauty of kids and communities that are often described by traditional research in deficit-framed language?

This tension between research “clarifying things” and arts based research making messy and complex is a theme that I think will travel with me throughout this semester and hopefully for a very long time.  In thinking about Rose’s call to reflexivity and considering our own interpretations of a piece, I am thinking of many of my questions in researching, especially with kids.  If the adult researcher is choosing the arts-based methods – drawings, photography, video, etc…we are already adding in our aesthetic and research preferences, already deciding which form shows the complexity of our question, already limiting what types of stories can be told.  In grappling with this, I am experimenting with having kids choose their own modalities and combining forms as they wish.  But I have still chosen the subject of the research and the combination of kids and those two things will deeply shape the site of production and thus the images and audiencing…so much to consider!

The Eisner piece gives me hope that even as I grapple with the above ideas, the infusion of arts based research will allow the kids and me to be released from “the stupor of the familiar” aspects of our community and start to create new understandings of what is around us…even if they are limited by the forms of research.  I suppose I have to acknowledge that each way of inquiry into an idea will have its limitations but will also have so many affordances that will help us launch into other lines of inquiry.  I am thinking of John Muir’s idea that, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”  I hope, then, that each inquiry, rather than feeling limited, connects and links with other ideas for exploration.

 

 

Lamar Ok Weekly Reading Response Due Monday, February 4th, 2019

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Arts- Based Methods in Socially Engaged Research Practice: A Classification Framework by Qingchun Wang, Sara Coemans, and Richards Siegesmund

“ABR also fulfills our desire for surprise. It provides opportunities to see new portraits of phenomena, diversifies our perspectives, and emancipates the gaze through which we approach the world around us (Barone & Eisner, 2011). It may also raise our awareness of important social, political, or educational issues, and offer a starting point for further inquiry and actions. ABR often challenges ways of conducting research, and the fundamental nature and purpose of research itself (Saven-Baden & Major, 2013).”

When I read  this article, the quote above really resonated with me. I am working on a project called, “Freedom Dreams” where I am actively collecting  both writing and drawings from children and adults that express what they believe and imagine freedom to look like, feel like, and sound like. The visuals by my young elementary school children, really fulfills my  desire to show the world, that our young children are very much aware of the social, political, and educational issues within our country.

Visual Methodologies (4th ed.) Chapter 2: Towards A Critical Visual Methodology by G. Rose (2016)

“Another aspect of the social production of an image is the social and/or political identities that are mobilised in its making.”

“…there are those who insist that the most important site which the meaning of an image is made is not its author, or indeed its production or itself, but its audiences, who bring their own ways of seeing and other knowledges to bear on an image and in the process make their own meanings from it.”

Is the most important site which the meaning of an image is made its audiences? For me, I still am conflicted about that. Right now, in looking at some of the freedom dreams produced by children, I feel their way of seeing, what they have put on paper their unique yet many common  perspectives, is way more important, meaningful, telling, purposeful, and significant than of its audiences who are viewing them.

Concerns and aspirations for qualitative research in the new millennium by Elliot W. Eisner

“Another feature of the visual arts is that they are used to communicate the way something feels, that is, its emotional character.”

“Yet we live in a culture that is predicated upon comparison: we rate people, we rank them, we assign them to league tables, we put them into stanines, quartiles, we apply cut-off levels, we run them down the same track and see who wins. All of these practices depend upon comparison. We are a meritocracy (or aspire to be one) and we determine mert comparatively. In the process, as my colleague Ray McDermott points out, we not only create successes, we produce failures (Varenne and McDermott, 1998)”

The beauty of art for me, is when we move away from ranking. The true beauty of art is when we look at each piece of art, each piece of freedom dream created, and look at all of its being and creation for what it is expressing and conveying both literally and metaphorically. We actively listen with our eyes, and should ask  more questions than in creating conclusions. Each piece of art has an emotional character, and I’m not sure if we should determine what that feeling but just allow us so sit in that feeling when it evokes.

Arts based research. Chapter 1: What Is and What Is Not Arts Based Research by Barone T. & Eisner, E.W. (2012)

“Arts based research emphasizes the generation of forms of feeling that have something to do with understanding some person, place, or situation. It is not simply a quantitative disclosure of an array variables. It is the conscious pursuit of expressive form in the service of understanding.”

“…the arts are vehicles designed to reveal what someone can feel about some aspects of life…arts based research is not a literal description of a state of affairs; it is an evocative and emotionally drenched expression that makes it possible to know how others feel.”

These quotes are everything. We cannot always quantify the way we understand people, places and situations with traditional ways of collecting data (“hard” science). When you truly want to understand the complex way humans exist in the world in relations to other humans, situations, and systems, we have to honor  and accept other complex ways, such as ABR, in “collecting data,” such as emotions, feelings and internal motives and intentionality. Freedom Dreams is a vehicle to reveal what black and brown children and adults feel about their social location within the world. It is a way to tap into the beauty minds of children, and genuinely ask them how they feel about who they are and their position in the world and the way they feel the world treats them.

Collage

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Hi all:

It was terrific to meet you and break bread with you yesterday. Because the subject of collage came up a number of times, I wanted to suggest two articles on the suggested reading list: Garoian- Art Education in the silent gaps and White, Garoian & Gerber Speaking in tongues. 

I’ve also included a link to an article about the paint Charles White and his work which was intended to rewrite and correct the official American History story.  I thought it especially relevant in light of the interests of Luis and Aderinsola. The link is https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/686548 and I have also included the article in the suggested reading page and called it Robertson: Pan-Americanism, Patriotism, and Race Pride in Charles White’s Hampton Mural. Thinking about the categories of arts-based research articulated by Wang et al., do you think White is engaged in Research about art, art as research, or art in research? Do you think he is involved in arts-based research (ABR) practices at all? Does he satisfy the ABR qualities that Eisner and Barone attach to arts-based research? You don’t have to read the article by Robertson to answer consider these questions, you could only look at the art. Of course reading the article could add to the discussion.

I look forward to reading your thoughts about the assigned articles and about your own projects.

Gene

 

Welcome From Gene

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Hello and Welcome to UED 75100:

I am very excited that you will be joining me in UED 75100, Doing Visual and Arts-based research, during the spring semester. This is only the third time the course is being taught (it is the second time that I am teaching it); I’m hoping the course will have the excitement of a new adventure in using imagery as central to the research process. It looks as if we will be a small class, so we will be able to get to know each other and our reasons for being interested in imagery (and imag-ination) as we look at arts-based projects together and work on our own projects. Many visiting artists and visual scholars will visit us throughout the semester to discuss their work and talk with you about your own research projects.

Though I have sent you this message through Blackboard, we will not be using Blackboard for our course. Instead, we will use a domain I created on the CUNY Academic Commons website called “Arts-based research and visual methodologies, Spring 2019.” Within the next few days (or maybe hours), I will send you an invitation to join that site. You will be able to maintain a class journal (via posts) on that site that can include both text and images. The projected syllabus and readings will also be available on that site, and you might want to look at it before our first class.