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- Volume 3, Issue 1, 2010
Journal of Writing in Creative Practice - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2010
Volume 3, Issue 1, 2010
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Just another piece of paper: creative research and writing
By Amanda BillPractitioners in the fields of art and design often complain of the injustice of having to write a book about their practice in order to satisfy academic definitions of research. What is the point, the argument goes, of producing just another piece of paper? The suggestion that creative work might be converted to research by a suitable accompanying text is justly resisted. This article approaches the theory/practice binary the other way round. It outlines a research project that attempts to convert the text of a conventional academic Ph.D. thesis into a creative research output. The intention is to expose the boundaries that are constructed when creativity is counted as knowledge, and by doing this to put the notion of creativity into play.
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Theory and practice: reconciling design-as analogies with real talk in design education
More LessThis article focuses on two linguistic forms of discourse that are essential to the way knowledge is created in the discipline of design. One form is that found in academic written texts, and at the other end of the spectrum, spoken texts such as those of the design critique, or crit. Students at tertiary institutions are asked to decode both, but they perceive them differently, and often feel that academic texts are unrelated to the perceived real talk, such as that found in the spoken crit, about producing and evaluating designs. Examples of crit discourse are set against examples taken from the literature on design, and in particular in texts wherein the processes and purpose of design are described by way of analogy. These texts are referred to as design-as analogies, as an attempt is made to find a way to point to existing connections hitherto not explored between the two forms of discourse. Ultimately, an intricate connection between the discourse of the crits and the more formally expressed concepts of design theorists will be shown. This article refers to three examples of design-as analogies, namely design as bricolage (Louridas 1999); design as moral problem solving (Dorst and Royakkers 2006); and designing as disclosure (Newton 2004). The authors' explanations of these analogies are held up against the spoken texts of the crits, and an investigation is made of how their theories are enacted in this type of discourse. Some pedagogical implications of the findings are suggested, with activities that could help students to bridge the perceived gap between the metadiscourse of the literature and the discourse of the studio.
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A connective model for the practice-led research exegesis: An analysis of content and structure
Authors: Jillian Hamilton and Luke JaanisteSince the formal recognition of practice-led research in the 1990s, many higher research degree candidates in art, design and media have submitted creative works along with an accompanying written document or exegesis for examination. Various models for the exegesis have been proposed in university guidelines and academic texts during the past decade, and students and supervisors have experimented with its contents and structure. With a substantial number of exegeses submitted and archived, it has now become possible to move beyond proposition to empirical analysis. In this article we present the findings of a content analysis of a large, local sample of submitted exegeses. We identify the emergence of a persistent pattern in the types of content included as well as overall structure. Besides an introduction and conclusion, this pattern includes three main parts, which can be summarized as situating concepts (conceptual definitions and theories); precedents of practice (traditions and exemplars in the field); and researcher's creative practice (the creative process, the artifacts produced and their value as research). We argue that this model combines earlier approaches to the exegesis, which oscillated between academic objectivity, by providing a contextual framework for the practice, and personal reflexivity, by providing commentary on the creative practice. But this model is more than simply a hybrid: it provides a dual orientation, which allows the researcher to both situate their creative practice within a trajectory of research and do justice to its personally invested poetics. By performing the important function of connecting the practice and creative work to a wider emergent field, the model helps to support claims for a research contribution to the field. We call it a connective model of exegesis.
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Writing through design, an active practice
Authors: Julieanna Preston and Aukje ThomassenStemming from a collaborative research project designing, writing, this article outlines preliminary findings to the various ways that design practices and design processes contextualize and explicate an intellectual proposition, i.e. how design contributes to advancing knowledge. The overall aim of the research investigation is to disseminate current understanding and best practice on the relationships between designing and writing and their mutual interest in speculation, expression and research. While most discussions around this topic adopt one of two (often polarized) distinct positions the written text as sole authority and a design object's capacity to be read as a cultural artefact our investigation looks at various media of design articulation directly linked to design as a system of inquiry including but not limited to diaries, diagrams and choreographic notation and comics. These media expose a potential to write through design and expand design research as non-linear, theoretical and yet practical tools.
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Gender and discipline: publication practices in design
By Teena ClerkeDesign research and writing began to appear in scholarly journals over 30 years ago, coinciding in Australia with the transition of design education into universities. Concurrently, a significant increase in the number of women in what could be considered a male-dominated profession and emergent discipline actuated feminist-informed women and design writing. While this writing raised important questions about gender and design, it is generally not cited in design literatures that do not have a specifically feminist focus, and as this article will attest, publication and citation rates demonstrate the dominance of men in positions of influence in scholarly design journals. This is particularly problematic for female design academics and for the field in the current audit climate in universities, whereby state-funded research output is measured by citation analysis systems. Drawing on feminist and Foucauldian theorizations of power and knowledge, and supported by an empirical audit and analysis of gender distribution in publication in two scholarly design journals, I argue first that scholarship as a form of social practice in new professional fields such as design is complexly disciplined and problematically gendered. Second, I argue that further empirical research, and new and different kinds of feminist-informed writing that attend closely to issues of gender, is required to productively disrupt and reconceptualize design scholarship as it is currently practiced.
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Reviews
Operator's Exercises: Open Form Film and Architecture, Columbia University Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, Buell Hall, 30 March7 May 2010
Centre for Learning and Teaching in Art and Design (CLTAD) Conference: Challenging the Curriculum: exploring the discipline boundaries in art, design and media, Novotel Tiergarten Berlin, 12 & 13 April 2010
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Volumes & issues
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Volume 17 (2024)
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Volume 16 (2023)
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Volume 15 (2022)
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Volume 14 (2021)
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Volume 13 (2020)
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Volume 12 (2019)
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Volume 11 (2018)
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Volume 10 (2017 - 2018)
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Volume 9 (2016)
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Volume 8 (2015)
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Volume 7 (2014)
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Volume 6 (2013)
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Volume 5 (2012)
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Volume 4 (2011 - 2012)
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Volume 3 (2010)
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Volume 2 (2009)
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Volume 1 (2007 - 2008)