A Routine Sequence of External Actions

A story about the performance of sculpture at the Scottish exhibition ‘Selective Memory’ at the 51st Venice Biennale 2005. This is a piece of experimental text that plays with literature styles and conventions, uses first hand experience, fact, fiction and appropriated text.

Amanda Ravetz – 30/04/09

Amanda Ravetz trained as a painter at the Central School of Art and Design and later completed a doctorate in Social Anthropology with Visual Media at the University of Manchester. Her work with visual anthropology investigates new collaborative possibilities linked to image-based work.

On Art and Anthropology – Amanda Ravetz

Anthropology (/ˌænθɹəˈpɒlədʒi/, from the Greek ἄνθρωπος, anthrōpos, “human”, and -λογία, -logia, “discourse”, first use in English: 1593) ^[1] is the study of human beings, everywhere and throughout time

Visual Anthropology – a subfield of cultural anthropology that is concerned, in part, with the study and production of ethnographic photography, film and, since the mid-1990s, new media. It also encompasses the anthropological study of visual representation, including areas such as performance, museums, art, and the production and reception of mass media.

Ethnography – (Greek ἔθνος ethnos = fplk/people and γράφειν graphein = writing) is a methodological strategy used to provide descriptions of human societies, which as a methodology does not prescribe any particular method (e.g. observation, interview, questionnaire), but instead prescribes the nature of the study (i.e. to describe people through writing).

Ann Douglas – 12/02/09

I was unable to attend this seminar so this is an academic response to practice based or practice led research

Practice-Based Research within a creative and cultural context is often defined as an original investigation that aims to gain new knowledge by means of practice and the outcomes of that practice. Investigation, originality and contribution to knowledge may be demonstrated through creative outcomes, which include artefacts such as images, music, designs, models, digital media, performances and exhibitions. The significance and context of the claims are validated by text, but a full understanding can only be obtained with direct reference to the creative outcomes.(1)  Practice-based research is naturally of great interest to practising artists and designers, but it is not confined to these disciplines. One may find examples in music, in software design, in engineering, in law; in fact in any subject where the result might be an artefact generated in the laboratory or workplace. (2)

David Haley – 16/04/09

I had to miss this seminar but was led to the work of Robert Persig and one of his quotes, as quoted by Haley in many of his papers.

The most moral activity of all is the creation of space for life to move onward. –Robert Persig, Lila p. 430

I went on to find an interview with Robert Persig, an American writer and philosopher, and came across this, which i find more interesting ….

Clare Barclay @ the fruitmarket – 09/04/09

Claire Barclay Openwide
7 February – 12 April 2009

This solo show presented a range of work by Barclay. Recognisable pieces from the past, reconfigured along side newly commissioned site specific pieces.

Highly crafted sculptural objects narrate the artists story, her language. Her work typically manifests as a sculptural form, which are then juxtaposed with props, found objects, fabric, turned wood …..

Janice Parker – 26/03/09

movement seminar? interesting. Honestly I am getting to old to care about what I look like in such  strange situations – I enjoyed it but if this continues I will have to reconsider the course!

The feelings embedded in a work of art can be regarded as the product of an inverse function of the properties of the brain mechanisms that give rise to these feelings: y = f(x). x=f^-1(y) Ivar Hagendoorn

I like it, don’t know what it means but I like it …..

imagination.lab – 07/03/09

I was invited to take part in a PACT workshop (Promoting art and creative industries collaboration). This imagination.lab was initiated to inform a larger research paper looking at the collaborative partnerships between arts and creative industries. This pilot study, funded by the AHRC, in particular looks at the collaborative technologies used to facilitate synergy between art, creative industries, the community and the academy in ‘creative hubs’.  The study investigates the new possibilities for collaboration that CSCW approaches to design would be able to develop.

Peter Liversidge

“I propose to write proposals”

the performance of sculpture – 12/03/09

seminar with Joanne Tatham & Tom O’Sullivan

The performance of sculpture is when the work goes beyond the performance of its material and performs within its place. When it starts to have a conversation with its environment, with its surrounding architecture. The objects that are placed together have a narrative that they need to perform.

Jan Verwoert says “As these criteria are applied to sculpture, it becomes a vehicle, through which concepts of ‘relationality’ taken from performance or installation art, can be reformulated.”

Clive Gilman – Cultural Currency

Culture V’s Art

Culture happens without aspiring to the status of Art. It is incidental.

Art is a subset of the broad concept of culture. It is deliberate.

Art is culturally specific therefore it is not exclusive and subject to change. However pockets of culturally inscribed spaces foster art as its property, carving out the degrees of ownership. ‘ART’ has a language, but today it is dominated by the language of contemporary art practice. Via the power of the spiraling peer consensus this language has become our belief system, our doctrine, our formula.