Reading, Writing & Research Methodologies 2014/2015

This is a shared page for the R,W & R module.

Intro:

The Reading, Writing, and Research Methodologies Seminar is tailored towards (further) developing research methods within the first year of this master. By establishing a solid foundation of research skills, it will eventually prepare students for their Graduate research in the second year. Through reading core theoretical texts, they will establish a common vocabulary and set of references to work from. They will learn the practice of classic ‘essayistic methodologies’, including close reading, annotation, description and notation, students learn to survey a body of literature, filter what is relevant to their research and create comparative pieces of analysis. The seminar helps students to establish methodical drafting processes for their texts, where they can develop ideas further and structure their use of notes and references. The course takes as axiomatic that the perceived division between ‘practice’ and ‘theory’ is essentially an illusion.

Curriculum: The seminar will involve:

(a.) Identifying the object of your research: description and analysis of your work

(b.) Contextualizing your work through description and reflection on contemporary and historical practices.

(c.) Identify research material key to your practice.

(d.) Synopsis and annotation of key texts

(e.) Writing machines: creating methods for group and individual writing.

Throughout, there will be an emphasis on working collectively, whether in a larger discussion group or in smaller reading and writing groups.

Because you are writing an essay for the thematic class, the emphasis over the next month will be on describing and contextualising your own work. We will undertake a series of exercises that help identify your method and help you consider work by others to which it may relate and to consider the context in which you are working.

This Trimester

Note: Because you are writing an essay for the thematic class, the emphasis over the next month will be on describing and contextualising your own work. We will undertake a series of exercises that help identify your method and help you consider work by others to which it may relate and to consider the context in which you are working.

17-Sept

Description of work

Upload your texts here by 15:20

24-Sept

Review description of work

add:describe the broader cultural context (art-design works, film, texts which inform our understanding of the work) = 50 words

01-Oct

Bring along a text, an art object (repro) by another and a piece of popular media (film,clip &c) that interest you.

three things ^{(= dead link, content is taken out of the Antman territory, and placed here ↓)}

08-Oct

1) Three things continued

place your links here:

2) Our Simple Wiki Style Sheet:

Titles and works = italics

Essays = title in caps

Notation = Harvard System (writer, page number) = (Smith, 26)

URL = make link

3) Annotation, note taking and citation - a practical guide

Project 0.2

Annotation- note taking and commentary

The changing face of an idea # 1

Michel Foucault – The Means of Correct Training, from Discipline and Punish (1977)

Gille Deleuze – Postscript on Control Societies (1990)

Mark Poster – Foucault and Databases, from The Mode of Information (1990)

Jean-François Lyotard – The Postmodern Condition (1979)

Brian Holmes – Future Map (2007)

Deleuze identified a shift from disciplinary societies to control societies, which is dependent on a shift from regulation by precepts and regulation by code. Lyotard understands this shift toward the digital order as changing the definition of knowledge. Here we will take Foucault and Deleuze’s texts as a starting point and consider how their ideas have informed discourse on media. Brian Holmes, for instance, draws on Deleuze and Foucault to make a contemporary assessment of society in which computation and prediction is central. During the seminar we will draw on other media – artworks, films and written texts – that are informed by these ideas of how reality is mediated.

Project 0.3

The changing face of an idea # 2

Walter Benjamin’s text The Work of Art In an Age of Mechanical Reproduction has been a cornerstone of media theory since it first appeared. Here we take this text and two others which take Benjamin’s text as a starting point and consider how the ideas from Benjamin’s text have informed discourse on media.

Texts:

Walter Benjamin - The Work of Art In an Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936)

Bill Nichols - The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems (1988)

Jos de Mul -The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Recombination (2008)

Again we will draw on other media – art works and written texts – which inform our understanding of these different perspectives.

Project 0.3

The Culture Industry and the Frankfurt School = what is it, who are they and why should we know about them today?

Project 0.4

Reflection on your practice.

A Guide to Essay Writing

Outcome of the seminar (trimester three)

The specific outcome for the RW&RM seminar of 2014-15 will be a 1500 word text which reflects on your own method and situates your work in relation to a broader artistic and cultural context. The various texts produced within the RW&RM seminar will serve as source material for your text on method. In common with all modules on the course RW&RM serves to support your self-directed research. Therefore, the text on method will inform your Self-Evaluation at the end of the third trimester and provide the basis for your Graduate Project Proposal that you will produce in the fourth trimester.

Brief for 1500 word methods text. The aim of this assignment is to use description of your work as a way of identifying and articulating your method. Describing first what and then how and why you make work often leads to discussions of the works context (what work is similar to the work you describe; what are the key ideas the work deals with). The theoretical elements of the texts you write should therefore emerge from, and have a very clear connection with, the work you are making. For this experiment I am asking you to follow the method outlined above so that you can begin to reflect and write quite deeply about the work you are making. A second method you will find useful is to draw on annotations of texts you have read which have a particular relation to the work you make.

First draft: early May (review in groups)

Final draft: late May (review in groups)

R,W & R Archive