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This chapter briefly outlines the key concerns of the research, including what drew me to these areas of investigation. This enquiry is a meeting and merging of many elements through the journey.
I outline the form of this thesis and my decision to use the Research Catalogue platform. I reflect that much of this work sites just outside of language, and that this informed my approach of using scaffolds to support my activity.
I touch upon the places of, and materials gathered and conclude with a description of my premiss for the VIVA exhibition.
Before:
I had never seen myself as ‘involved’ in sound, thinking of sound in the context of ‘music’, and recognising myself as not ‘musical’. This changed over several years while working with moving image; my interest was caught by the snippets of sound picked up as I filmed (most of my work at that time being silent) and extended as I became more aware of ‘sound art’. Watching/listening to performance/sound artist Toshiya Tsunoda’s work, with ‘field recordings’ from the spaces they were working in and experiencing Chris Watson and BJNilsen’s ‘storm’ live at the Arnolfini in 2007, I was viscerally aware of the power that the sound had and the ways it could bodily inform a ‘viewer’. I have always made works around and worked with things of the commonplace and everyday, and I had begun to explore ‘affect theory’ in relation to the works I was making during my MA. These interests started to come together and coalesce into a proposal. Initially I had thought that this research would take place through the making of sonic works alone, but imagery never quite left, and I have begun to see its place in this.
Scaffolding:
As I began, ‘I didn’t intend to create a swirling, multi-branched pattern of histories, feelings, and ideas. I planned to craft a half dozen interlocking essays. I imagined a simple, well-laid out collage. But as so often happens with creative projects, I’ve ended up somewhere I never envisioned. I wrote a mosaic.’ (Clare 2017, p. xv-xviii) At times I feel that collage or mosaic might be apt descriptions, of the drawing together of this research, but right now I am not sure. I do know that using scaffolds and structures has been essential in all the work, recognising links between a budding thinking about these and Smooth and Satiated (Deleuze and Guattari 2004) spaces in affect theory, supporting this as a developing approach from the first conference paper put together during Early Tests & Experiments and through all chapters of the thesis.
My scaffolds are often very simple and are in use in the construction of all the works, including this thesis. (The text version of the thesis could be seen as a scaffold for the reader, allowing a way to access to the ‘writing’ on a ‘standard’ page). I have asked the reader to come on a journey through gathered small ‘sparkles’ that are not completely ‘holdable’ but present, and to try and see the spaces I am holding open. To this end, I have tried to give maps, repeat structures, ‘hooks’ so the terrain becomes more familiar. But there is a balance to be kept: I must not just follow a ‘scheme’, I am trying to write a narrative of what was done, why, and what that means to/for the research. I am trying to write this in my first-person voice, I need the meander, the writing as listening to parts of the works, the drifting and not taking note; otherwise, I would grind to a halt, stultified by a system, and this is about affect and felt/sensed things, and needs the space for those. Therefore into ‘my plan’ goes that need; the free form moments where text is produced, and to pull myself back to those to edit and sort. These scaffolds need to be flexible, mutable and porous, they need to ‘hold open a space’ but not stultify or contain.
Aim:
Developing an art practice research methodology, through a heuristic praxis, to explore the utilisation of scaffolds in facilitating the working with and gathering of affecting materials, for creating atmospheres and spaces of/for embodied encounter.
Objectives:
- To explore/seek the affective dimension of everyday sounds and how they operate as sense/meaning making materials.
- To develop research methods through approaches from my gathering and processing practice.
- To create new moments of embodied response and spaces of affective atmospheres in sound installation works.”
Focus:
“The concerns of this research are in developing approaches to, and an understanding of, gathering the affecting dimensions/atmospheres of my/our quotidian sonic environment, and how the materials, mediated though this ‘bodymind’, can be brought together in the creating of spaces/art installations that have potential for embodied encounter.
I am ‘looking’ through my crip/neurodivergent/ (feminist) new materialist/situated knowledge/embodied researcher lens, at the use(fullness) that I have, and that being this ‘bodymind’ can bring to this praxis project and area of research, recognising this is an (affect) heuristic following of things in the wind.
There can be no starting at the beginning; this is a journey through a changing landscape of praxis/practices that have developed my knowledges through doing/thinking/research. It is a drawing together of elements, observing and reflecting on how they affect, and are affected by, all that is around them, and working with the porosity of sound/spaces/bodies in all of this.
Being outside language:
Much of this enquiry pertains to stuff that is just outside of language, the definable and the definite. I consider how I/we experience non-linguistically in/with art practice, how understanding and writing affect is problematic as ‘affect cannot be fully realised in language, because affect is always prior to and or outside of consciousness’ (Massumi, 1987). I am exploring whether I can use ‘affect heuristic’ as a method, informed by my gut response, in a process of seeking and being open to the sensed, the ‘microshocks’ as I gather, edit, draw together and construct spaces /works.
I am inviting you to join me in knowing/not knowing, through non-linguistic ‘other’ forms of communication, snippets of text, and the transmission of sensed stuff; the relationship between ‘bodies’, the work, and the thinking is to be found in the materials and what occurs. I/you must be in a place of being open, excepting that not all will be revealed/visible; this is work that is between affect, embodied experiencing, language and sound. It is a looking for things not to be found, or more accurately ‘named’, which if ‘unearthed’ for textual describing, by nature, are then no longer what was sensed.
The practice places and ‘materials’:
The practice research centres around my commonplace and everyday aural landscapes, the sites of gathering selected often for pragmatic reasons, accessibility, prior knowledge and wondering if there might be something ‘occurring’ in them. This is a material-based practice, where the materials stand for nothing other than ‘themselves’; I do not abstract or distort them. I gather stuff of the quotidian, as ‘some junk on the street can be fascinating to people and can thus seem to come alive. But is this evanescence a property of the stuff or of people? Was the thing power of the debris I encountered but a function of the subjective and intersubjective connotations, memories, and affects that had accumulated around my ideas of these items?’ (Bennett, 2010 p10). I explore the properties, the qualities, the haecceities and quiddities of the stuff - these microelements of my/our sonic environment - wanting to understand what it may be in them that might affect/trigger a response, how they might be linked, what might scaffold that linking, as well as considering ‘how’ they need to come together and be in relation with each other, bodies and a space. The works I make are not documentary pieces, or solely about the spaces the materials are gathered in; they are ‘of’ my experiencing, all the making/doing mediated through this ‘bodymind’. I construct and draw together the elements in a way to elicit an understanding/sharing of the multifacetedness of this stuff and what it pertains to, as well as having space for bodies to encounter and affect the ‘new work’ in its final making.
Meeting and merging:
This research is situated at the meeting and merging points of many elements and is explored through the gathering of materials, making of artworks, affect theory, visual and sound art practice, emergent praxis/methodologies, crip/neurodivergent paradigms and approaches, and ‘thinking’ of event and activation (quiet points of encounter). Within this I am an embodied researcher.
The affective turn influences understanding of how we communicate, interact and respond to situations and environments, informing many areas, including arts practice through artist/writers such as Simon O’Sullivan, transmission and movement of affecting experience outlined by theorists such as Theresa Brennan, and ‘If one wanted to locate an origin point for the increasingly widespread adoption of the concept of ‘affect’ …. the candidate most likely to succeed would be philosopher Brian Massumi’ (Rekret, P. 2017), from whom I draw much, particularly in relation to microshocks and affective event.
Sound is physical material stuff, made by movement affecting adjacent molecules, and so it travels, reaching our ears, our skin (or a microphone), moving delicate surfaces, and entering our bodies. We cannot fully shut off from it; we have no ‘ear lids’ (Dolar, 2006), it reaches our brains to be decoded, as physical sensations, but additionally in terms of how we interpret and what we ‘make’ of it. I gather the signal of those vibrating molecules; temporarily dematerialised I can work with them and construct ‘new’ linked things, then ‘rematerialised’ into another space where ‘otherbodies’ can encounter, interact and mingle. With sound there is always a slippage and seepage with spaces and ‘bodies’. We can look at a picture without altering it; we cannot experience sound without it being changed and added to by our presence, or another’s journey, a wall, the weather.
This thesis is written from my ‘position’, described through my autoethnographic ‘voice’, ‘not only [trying] to make personal experience meaningful and cultural experience engaging, but also, [to produce] accessible texts,’ (Ellis, Carolyn, et al. 27), which is appropriate for the delicacy, fragility and transient nature of what I am working with. I am ‘central’ in this research; I am not looking at this through an objective detached lens, I am an embodied researcher and Sarah Ahmed’s What’s The Use (2019) gave me a space to reconsider and recognise the use in this bodymind, and develop an emancipatory methodology, making a case/place for ‘me’, and that others might find useful to build with/upon.
Being crip/neurodivergent is a fundamental part of what makes me the person/artist I am. The ‘turn towards affect’ is of interest in considering other ways that things are communicated and passed on, and a departing from dualities, particularly of body/mind. I experience everything in relation, acutely attuned to waves of impact from small things on my ‘skin’ at all times which affect the whole of me, I am interested in the quotidian and everyday because of my variable attention and this sensing/feeling/experiencing. This means I key into details, bits, stuff, and take real and considered notice, giving me ‘an intense interest, a passionate concern that calls out to the researcher, one that holds important social meanings and personal, compelling implications’ (Moustakas, 1990, p. 27).
Bodymind is a term from Disability Studies which is outlined in the methodology, it is a recognising that the body and mind are not separate, that experiencing is across them both. This is particularly pertinent to my neurodivergent (again outlined in methodology) experiencing of the world. I use 'this bodymind' in this writing for several reasons; in all honesty it initially just felt ‘right’, then considering it more deeply, I recognised this as a multifaceted thing. Firstly, I am proudly owning ‘this bodymind’, it is a positive and forthright statement of what/who I am. Secondly, ‘my bodymind’ feels passive and personal to ‘me’; I recognise I am working from a subjective situated position, but I am acknowledging ‘that’ knowing, and sharing it. Additionally, ‘my bodymind’ seems a describing of something separate from the reader and the rest of the world. ‘This bodymind’, is present and active; the reader can also be ‘this’, it is a form of illeism and maybe gives ‘me’ a little ‘distance’, while within this is an extimacy, a sharing and embroiling of myself with the reader and all the (bodies of) the world around me.
The form and a way in:
The thesis has ten chapters and has been constructed on the Research Catalogue (RC) platform as this allows for a mingling of ‘text’ and ‘practice’, meaning the ‘elements’ that make up the praxis research can be experienced together, in a shifting non static form, which corelates to the work I make. The ‘form’ of the thesis is this Introduction, the Field Survey, the Methodology, then six central practice chapters followed by Gathering Closer/Conclusion.
The practice chapters Early Tests & Experiments, The Cairngorms, Dyffryn, About, Coventry, and The Dyffryn Book are set out in a basic chronology, but many aspects overlapped, are interrelated and co-occurrent. The praxis research; a gathering, holding and constructing, which through the mediation and situated knowledge of this bodymind, shifts the materials from documentation to new spaces, occurrence and knowings.
The Research Catalogue platform facilitates the construction of expositions in a way that draws parallels between this ‘part’ of the submission and how I construct art works and presentations: a drawing together of ‘elements’ and modes of experiencing, text written in ‘chunks’ contextualising the praxis and explicating thinking and the visual background to the ‘chapters’ a diagram from the time of its coming together. In the practice chapters, these diagrams are overlayed with photographs from gathering and showing activities and intermingled with documentation and audio and film/still materials from works made. All the chapters have recordings of elements of the text, in my voice, and audio of the gathering closer of this whole. The Praxis is brought together in this way with the aim that; the diagrams and photographs locate, the structure holds a space open, my voice links me to the text and you the reader to me. Hopefully a route emerges to explore the ‘work’ together and through the journey a picture of the activity and developed knowings materialises.
There is not a set route; meander, explore, jump about in a non-linier way if you wish. If you stand at a point in the exhibition, you will more prominently hear and see certain elements, as with these expositions, where you ‘place’ yourself will make the view slightly different, allowing the viewer/reader to knit up the stuff in their own way, through a sharing of elements and communicating how they came together at my own points of reflection. Mine is not a solo journeying, it is a building with and around others. Simon O’Sullivan describes rethinking and reworking as a process of ‘affirmation of other practices, activities and works’ (2006 p43). It is a meeting of elements, bits of stuff of the spaces/places/fields I have been working in, my autoethnographic describing of activity, experience and ideas, literature read, discussion, shifting and moving things with emerging thinking coming together and briefly coalescing. These elements/this stuff linked to micro/petit perceptions in affect theory, and the seeping, shifting, permeability of this, all parallels these qualities in affect, sound, bodies and spaces.
Gathering Closer, in conclusion:
Gathering Closer is the title of the VIVA exhibition. It is an audio-visual installation work, (the wider Gathering Closerwork is outlined further in a foreword to the conclusion chapter), a practice drawing together of things made/understood through the journey of the PhD. Centred around a table/desk, which is/was/will be my ‘working position’, the ‘audience’ invited to sit there and/or walk around and explore the space. The ‘materials’ of the show will comprise of elements - audio, film/images and text - from all the ‘sites of gathering’, including through the ‘writing up’, as well as ‘props and supports’ such as my notebook, a table and chair, equipment, projection surfaces etc. The exhibition, put together utilising the new knowledge from this research, through my embodied process of being open and porous to the materials and the site it occupies. None of the constituent parts ‘new’ - but the meetings and entanglements will be new occurrences - drawn together through my ‘affect heuristic’ and a ‘having things’ in mind. A new space of affecting atmospheres, new meetings and experiencings, with the potentials for embodied encounter.