Journal of Writing in Creative Practice - Volume 1, Issue 3, 2008

At a time when UK universities yield increasingly to top-down management systems, this article revisits Alexander von Humboldt's famous memorandum of 1810, which called for licensed seclusion and a spirit of open collaboration in the new University of Berlin. To today's administrators, this would probably sound impossibly chaotic because, when learning communities become complex and independent, their flexibility is gained at the expense of managerial certainty. However, the article suggests that cybernetics, complexity theory and design might provide a theory for Humboldt's practice. By emphasizing the more tacit aspects of knowledge sharing, emergent values can be sustained without the need for hierarchical control. This is exemplified in the co-design methods of artist, turned architect, Friedensreich Hundertwasser, whose residential buildings still sustain thriving communities.

This article documents a re-iterated workshop which was presented firstly to groups of undergraduate students in New Zealand, from a variety of disciplines, not all of which were arts based, who had elected to take a paper in creative process as a minor component of their degree. For these undergraduate students, the workshop was designed to introduce a system for entering a zone, a creative pre-space, which would be an effective preparation for writing creatively.

The same workshop was then presented to groups of postgraduate Master of Fine Art and Master of Design students to improve the quality of their journal writing. For these students, the workshop was designed to introduce a performative series of actions which would help to disrupt preconceived notions, and introduce new ways of thinking, about the relationship between writing and creative practice.

In the workshop, all the students were invited to consider, with the careful scrutiny of a forensic scientist, the secret life of places. They were introduced to a system used by Japanese scroll artists who record the journey from a beautiful place to a beautiful view by making observational drawings of lateral views along the way, from regular vantage points, turning slowly through 180 degrees, until, having reached the destination, the beautiful view itself, their gaze is directed back to the starting point.

In the process of recording their own small journeys in this way, with rolls of paper and charcoal, students described experiencing a slower, embodied form of knowing which not only enlivened them to the secret life of places, but also gave them a tacit understanding about writing structure. The students, at undergraduate and postgraduate stages in their education, became aware of themselves simultaneously travelling, in a self-directed way, through space, whilst also being defined by that space. They expressed an awareness of this reciprocal relationship verbally, through drawings and in critical, self-reflective writing. The students absorbed the exercise as part choreography, part script and as a metaphor for academic writing, in which the end (which can rarely be fully anticipated) must be signalled by the beginning, and in which the introduction is often finally drafted last.

This article also explores the value of irregularity as a legitimate pedagogical strategy to inform journal writing, by empowering students to explore their own creativity through an autonomous process of critical self-reflection. The form of this article attempts to offer a model for a style of writing within this process which could be described as belonging to the genre of creative non-fiction.

This article traces the origins and development of a new oral assessment for undergraduates within the field of art and design. It examines the roots of a re-modelled viva voce and its specific relevance for students with the specific learning difficulty, dyslexia. An insight is offered into the process of finding a model, responding to appropriate feedback and further sustaining a model which will make a difference.

The viva voce described consists of a one-hour oral examination specified as being an oral presentation for thirty minutes, followed by an oral defence for the same period of time. This oral delivery is in lieu of a written dissertation; it is the culmination of an extended piece of work supported by theory, research methods, analysis and evaluation. It is currently offered to students with dyslexia as an accommodated assessment. Its future lies in its integration as a choice of assessment for students as part of inclusive education.

Whatever helps learners with special needs can indeed be of help to all learners. (Race 2005: 159)

The work illustrated in this paper represents students who have responded to projects and studio workshops that address notions of reading, as opposed to looking at imagery and looking as opposed to reading texts. Active learning is viewed as a means of engaging with projects developed to facilitate enquiry into handling texts as artwork and artwork as text. I am not advocating any formula for working with dyslexic students or students defined within the above remit for Widening Participation. I do not claim any specialist experience about dyslexia, but I am attempting imaginative solutions to students' individual personal struggles in studying and practicing in the Arts. Using a Constructivist teaching model, whereby I hope to facilitate learning rather than to teach, and students are encouraged to respond to, and adapt projects which will inform the curriculum content of the subsequent student cohort. Docendo Disco: By teaching I learn (Grayling 2006: 226) is the philosophy that supports the ongoing development of work in this genre. Each academic year, student's responses to work using text inform the curriculum content for the following student cohort. Student evaluation and comment genuinely informs the developing curriculum in an effort to reflect what students perceive to be relevant and useful. Specific examples of student artwork, which challenge the perceived stigma of dyslexia, will be discussed. Encouraging students to use their primary personal understanding of the condition to confront it is central to the theme of dyslexia as personal experience. It is important to note that whilst I am aware of our dyslexic cohort and of Widening Participation agendas, curriculum development is for the benefit of all our students.

The individual case studies presented are done so with the consent of all graduates of York St John University whose work is represented and with the understanding that their work frequently addresses individual experience of diversity or difference. The work will provide a forum for future discussion. Art can empower and enable students to confront and challenge their unique contribution to a University community. The results are often exciting and can stimulate reflection and discourse for curriculum development within Higher Education Faculties.

Research degrees are a recent phenomenon in the emergent academic design disciplines, and design practitioners and academics still debate their characteristics. Practice-based degrees may incorporate studio and other project work as part of the submission and the dissertation may exhibit variation in the visual and textual modes employed. The production of hybrid practice-based dissertation genres has consequences for research, supervision and writing pedagogies. The academic literacies approach stresses the need for students, faculty, and others to acknowledge the fundamentally underdetermined forms and conventions of dissertation writing and to work together for greater transparency in giving and getting feedback. If design fields wish to pursue the hybrid genres that practice-led project incorporating projects demand, a relevant writing pedagogy must be developed which looks beyond current conventions. Including evidence from an analysis of four recent practice-based doctorates with data from qualitative interviews with design educators, this paper argues for the relevance of academic literacies for dissertation writing and project work in design. In the final part of the paper I argue for the particular relevance of academic literacies for design research practice.

The investigation concerns a series of typeface legibility and readability studies which have resulted in the creation of a number of new typefaces including Sylexiad. Sylexiad is grounded and informed from a dyslexic viewpoint and is a typeface for the adult dyslexic reader.

Sylexiad was developed by means of comparative typeface testing. This involved a series of formative and summative small-scale tests that accommodated two established word recognition models word shape and parallel letter recognition. This novel method of measuring legibility and readability is called developmental typeface testing. The data was gathered by means of qualitative and quantitative techniques from dyslexic and non-dyslexic groups based at Norwich University College of the Arts and The University of East Anglia. These techniques included questionnaires, interviews and observations. The research was inductive and practice-based in approach.

The findings identify which typographic characteristics adult dyslexic and non-dyslexic readers preferred and why. For the majority of non-dyslexic readers tested, it was the combination of serif-style, lowercase forms, large x-heights, medium weight, variable strokes and normal inter-word spacing that was preferred. The non-dyslexic readers also favoured the form of Times New Roman. Conversely, for the majority of dyslexic readers tested it was the combination of handwritten style, uppercase forms, long ascenders and descenders, light weight, uniform strokes, perpendicular design and generous inter-word spacing that was preferred. The dyslexic readers also favoured the form of Serif Sylexiad.

The conclusions have raised issues that confirm and contradict current typographic principles of legibility. In particular, from a dyslexic perspective, the word shape model has been challenged. The outcomes and issues that have been identified as a result of developmental typeface testing have therefore contributed to new knowledge within the field of dyslexia typographic research.

In this paper I will discuss three communicative acts: an ephemeral artwork InMemory; a narrative The art of being lost; and a paper Ephemeral Art: Mourning and Loss. These were presented, respectively, at the Salina Art Centre, Kansas; Emotional Geography Conference, Queens University, Kingston, Ontario; and (Im)permanence: Cultures In/Out of Time at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. These pieces deal with the same subject, but are presented in different modes reflecting the requirements of different sites a gallery, a conference, and a book. All three aspired to creativity as well as rigour, to articulate intuitive as well as empirical knowledge. I will discuss these works in terms of site specificity and integrated practice, rather than opposite poles of a creative spectrum, which places text at one end and image at the other. I will demonstrate how each mode has informed the other and how each has benefited from the particular requirement imposed by the site. The site here is not just the physical location but includes the anticipated audience, the environment, and the atmosphere. The works are interactive and are akin to the concept in communication analysis of recipient design. I hope this case study may be useful in providing an alternative to viewing writing in art and design as inherently problematic. Instead, I offer an analysis of a multifaceted practice in which the I is always present, implicitly or explicitly.

Why has rational logic remained so appealing to the western mind? It is probably because of its high level of consistency. Unfortunately, internal consistency does not always lead to practical consistency, and this has encouraged the development of bureaucratic, negative, cynical and solipsistic modes of reasoning. Moreover, whereas the logic of nature is non-linear, rational logic tends to be linear. As such, it is inauspicious. The world needs wisdom, but although governments consult some of the brightest thinkers, collective human actions frequently turn out to be dysfunctional. In maintaining a bureaucratic, ballot-box system of governance, our society has evolved a reasoning process that limits civic responsibility to the making of critical, often negative choices, rather than inspiring future-based, imaginative reflection. This decision-oriented mindset is now ubiquitous within the economic and political domain. As voters and consumers we are merely invited to choose, never to dream. Although this democratic style of capitalism may seem characteristically modern, its origins can be found in the strongly truth-oriented philosophies of the early Greeks. This article argues that the mindset it produced is inauspicious if it encourages citizens and governments to regard facts, statistics, or scientific laws as less important than imaginative thoughts and emotional experiences. In politics, the claim to being part of the so-called real world is common. Ironically, this idea evolved from within the western idea of a world that is independent from the thinker, yet is also, somehow, amenable to truth-oriented inquiry by the rational mind.

This dualistic approach was implicit in the idealism of Pythagoras and Plato, and in the categorical reasoning of Aristotle, all of whom, in different ways inspired the notion that data, numbers, forms or sets might represent a higher mode of reality than the experiential world. Many legal, bureaucratic and political systems still reflect this kind of alienation. This article argues that it should be every citizen's duty to envision beneficial ways of living. This would require a radical overhaul of the education system and an alternative to the political and economic discourse that has led us to the brink of disaster. Where this may be useful to individuals who wish to formulate a truth-claim, or to defend a rhetorical position, it is less helpful for facilitating actions that are attuned to the ecosystem. This article asks whether design thinking, incorporated within metadesign, might inspire a more sapient form of governance. Where precedent-based legislation manages society at the level of textual and categorical logic, traditional design methods do similar things by managing forms and anticipating the behaviours they might inspire. What is most urgently needed in the twenty-first century is a more collective, imaginative, incentivizing and outcome-centred mode of reasoning that will support new, co-creative forms of democracy. This new mode of reasoning may need to be highly situated and contextualized, because an ethics of creative engagement would need to eclipse an ethics of standing-for a particular cause, or belief. By exploring design-thinking as a possible basis for further development, we may therefore create a richer type of ethics that is eudemonic, synergy-enhancing and, above all, auspicious.

The Secret Life of Objects, by Jane Graves (2008)

The Graphic Arts Research Project module at Liverpool School of Art and Design, Liverpool John Moores University: A review of the effects of Writing-PAD