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This chapter starts with a foreword, which briefly outlines some of the practice made around the process of drawing the research together, a single screen iteration of this is shared as a video on this page. This is the only chapter that does not have my recorded ‘voice’ in it; by now I hope that you can hear me as you read, and it seemed apposite to be quieter through these conclusions.
The main elements of the chapter are a revisiting of the research aims, an outlining of the process of the work and the putting together of this chapter, followed by the largest section, an outlining of outcomes and new knowledges, the chapter, and thesis, then ends with a brief review of areas that this research and its outcomes may be of interest to, and my initial thoughts on future directions that might develop and extend this work.
A foreword to Gathering Closer: making of works.
This foreword to the chapter briefly outlines the works made alongside the drawing together of the research, this chapter and the works are titled ‘Gathering Closer’ for two main reasons. Firstly, throughout the period the works cover, I was bringing the research into this form, I was getting all my notes, recorded discussions, elements from papers and talks, my ‘thinking through the doing’ together; trying out and testing ways to put it together with ‘materials’ gathered and from the works/exhibitions made. Secondly, the materials and resulting artworks, were gathered closer to ‘me’, they are from my everyday sonic-environments, gathered in my house, garden and studio.
My initial gathering in this process, was of my making of a new skirt (having made clothes all my life), the next gathered on the hottest day of the year, 19th July 2022 (and on record), in my garden and tested out as a multichannel work. Neither gave me things that I felt I could explore in depth while working on the drawing together of the thesis, so I looked closer. I began to gather sound, film and still images as I was working. My process has always involved handwriting notes and making rough diagrams - these maps out the work to be undertaken and ways to try and bring together my thinking and share it. I already had some diagrams from papers and talks and roughed out RC pages; these began to come together with some of the audio within the RC exposition as the backgrounds to chapters (which I am sure by now you have experienced).
In March 2024, as part of a group show ‘habitus’ at The Hive Gallery, Birmingham. I showed a 3 channel/screen testing out of the work. The exhibition was ‘curated’ by the artists involved as a testing of works in progress and a coming together and seeing how the works would interact in the space. The art works included paintings (in the broadest sense), embroidery, digital constructions, light boxes and my video and sound pieces. In the exhibition my screens and speakers were relatively small and unobtrusive, but it was my sounds that brought the space together. In October/November 2024 I showed a larger scale single screen version of the work (in a staff exhibition at Birmingham School of Art), this is the main piece on this page.
My final submission includes an exhibition, Gathering Closer, which is briefly outlined in the Introduction chapter. It will be (now was) a new work made through the bringing together of elements from across the research in a porous sharing of praxis. I will make it utilising my affect heuristic, the plan/scaffolding is to have multiple potential elements to work with in the space, and through my embodied process position and edit these into a coherent ‘work’ that in part shares the research while also being a space to bodily encounter it.
Revisiting the aims of the research:
The central concerns of this research were to gain an understanding of the affective dimensions of our/my everyday sonic-environment. Alongside this I sought to develop approaches that would support the making of fine art installation work constructed with gathered (micro)elements of these environments, in ways that hold the potential for events of affecting embodied encounter. Key to this has been developing a praxis methodology that allows for the working with/for affect across all the research. This is centred around ‘this bodymind’ as a site of embodied research, and utilisation my ‘affect heuristic’ and continually developing situated knowledge, it is unquestionably subjective and located within my specific cultural and social experience.
The scope of this investigation is, for practical reasons, narrow. I have been bodily exploring small areas/spaces, while considering art/ists, theorists and literature particularly concerned with microshocks and event in affect theory, having identified this/these method and field to be key to informing approaches to making and working with and for affect. As affect is a pre-conscious response, gathering research ‘data’ through questionnaires or interview was not germane, therefore critical reflection, discussion, and informal feedback around works made was utilised. Furthermore, as affect and sound are textually ‘tricky’, the outcomes are primarily shared through test works, fine art installations practice and this multimodal collaging on the Research Catalogue.
The creation of and reflection on the original sonic-led fine art installation artworks has informed the development of an understanding of what might be necessary for the construction of spaces for affective encounter and new moments of embodied response, and a recognition that an embodied approach is fundamental to working with/for affect.
The process:
As I explored my ‘field’, developed approaches through Early Tests and Experiments and The Cairngorms, and made test works, my understanding grew and clarified areas for consideration in the subsequent research. These I further investigated through the praxis processes of Dyffryn (and The Book), About and Coventry, the creation and exhibiting of original artworks, and explication of thinking through papers and talks and iterative reflection. The drawing together of all the research for submission additionally extended and deepened my knowledge of things required in/for the making of spaces of embodied encounter.
The research was not a starting from scratch, but a building on and with - which brought together and entangled the making of - artworks, literature, artists work, praxis approaches and this ‘bodymind’. Knowledge coalesced through doing/thinking, iterative cycles of gathering, reflection, discussion, revisiting and reworking. The new knowings resulting from the praxis are made manifest in the new original art works, the development of a unique methodology/approach, and how it is all brought together in this Research Catalogue exposition as thesis. This was all undertaken with the intention that this research will extend existing thinking on affect theory, affecting elements in sonic-environments and the creation of embodied spaces as fine art installation, and a hope that others can use and develop elements of this work in the future.
The scaffolding I use within this research is specific to this body of work, linked with the theoretical concerns of affect and embodied practices and my wider methodological approaches. Furthermore, the way that I developed the scaffolds, what has been of use and reused, or what was only of use in a moment, are particular to this ‘bodyminds’ ways of doing and being. Unlike the particular scaffolds in use, the ‘scaffolding’ as a concept is transferable, and therefore of use to others praxis, to be utilised in a range of research areas, and by different ‘bodyminds’. This scaffolding is at times clearly visible within the form of the exposition, the texts and the artworks, it is referred to and considered at multiple points through this thesis, however, at other points, these scaffolds are not so ‘seeable’ and sometimes not evident at all. My intention was that my scaffold/ing/s were to be mutable and permeable, there to hold open a working space, an environment in which things could be constructed or structured around. Where they are visible in the final formations, this occurs because this is how they need to be, but I did not intend for the scaffolds to always be present and obvious, I wanted these striated structures to have the capacity to fold into smooth spaces, appear transparent, or slip from view when their use in the process was concluded and their visibility was not required.
The outcomes of this research are an entangled collection of elements. Ordering these is difficult, as on each revisiting/reworking they shift and move. They are not distinct or separate things; they did not occur in delineated or discreet ways. This is all permeable, shifting stuff, which is why a scaffold is needed, in this moment, the plan for this next part is that I outline the outcomes following the order of the aims, starting with the exploring of affecting dimensions of our quotidian sonic environment through the doing, and how this opened links to theory/literature and spoke back to it. This will be followed by an outlining of the emergent embodied methods, and finally, the understanding of the making of spaces which hold potential for embodied encounter.
Changed perspectives and future directions:
The new knowings developed through the research includes: a methodology that combines and explores the intersections of affect heuristic, crip/neurodivergent, feminist, new materialist, emergent, embodied approaches; a new and unique approach to the creation of artworks as sites of affecting embodied encounter; and an extending of understanding of the affective dimensions of quotidian sonic-environments. These are shared through the original artworks made and this multimodal thesis.
The research will be of interest to, can inform future investigations and be worked with/built upon within:
- Artist/praxis research, as this work informs discussions relating to emergent art practice methodologies, specifically those interested the integration of approaches across research and in embodied methods.
- Theorists of affect, embodied research and new materialism, due to the utilisation of an affect heuristic to work with/for affective encounters, and particularly as the art works are sites of potentials for the sharing of active affect/encounter and the formation of new knowledge.
- Disability studies, because the methodology adds to the canon of thinking around research informed by lived experience, especially as it includes a neuropositive approach which utilises characteristics of ND conditions as ‘tools’ in the research and has been brought together to work ‘with’ a particular ‘bodymind’.
- Occurrent arts, as the works themselves are places of sharing of new knowledges, sites of research and generators of new event.
I am considering how I will further develop this research, including in/through future installations to work with spaces for their particular ‘atmospheres’ and considering ‘our’ relationship to ‘environments’; and extending my use of text and (my) voice in my praxis and construction of art works. I also plan to continue to work on, explore and develop my affect heuristic embodied approach, and look in greater depth crip/neurodivergent methodologies, investigating what these can bring to my research, and to (art) praxis.
Outcomes continued:
Through the research I developed an understanding that the utilisation of a range of permeable, flexible, mutable scaffolds supports the holding open of a ‘space’ of investigation, gathering, making of art works (both physically and conceptually) and ‘putting together’ thinking for sharing. I recognise that this ‘bodymind’ needs scaffolds for textual (and other) activity, as does the stuff of sound and affect due to their intrinsic ‘slipperiness’.
Utilising ‘scaffolds’ gave edges and shape to how I would work, gather and ‘form’ the materials. I have ‘constructed’ these scaffolds to be fluctuating, expandable, shifting things, allowing for elements to move in and out of place and focus. I have used them to ‘hold’ a space enough that I can undertake this as a sensing body with ‘things in mind’ (again another structure). Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘Smooth and Striated’ (2004) informing my approach to scaffolds and recognition of the potential of folding/transforming from structured (scaffolded/striated) into smooth space, which ‘is filled by events or haecceities, far more than by formed and perceived things’ (p479), and the utilising of this in the constructing of occurrent installations/works/spaces.
I identified through reflecting on practice and theory that the gathering would be from a place/space not in transit, and required multiple elements, gathered in different ways (not necessarily concurrently); this allowed for the construction of a ‘picture’. In creating an expanded ‘space’ I can then give the possibility of moving from observing to inhabiting, an environment making ‘time’ with the materials, and for them to be ‘felt’ and so engaged with ‘bodily’.
Understanding from my own experiencing and the literature that affect and sound are multifaceted, shifting and active, the spaces I construct need to be ones where stuff, the atmospheres and microelements, come to the fore, fade, shift and move, and where sound, affect, bodies and spaces are porous and promiscuous. The ‘spaces’ I make therefore need to be constructed with the space they will be in, and allow for the bodies that will interact to ‘open up’ an ‘extended field of view’ that is not singular and static.
I recognised though my revisiting/reworking of materials, and my reading and considering around the transmission of affect, the importance of some ‘qualities’ in the materials - that haecceities and quiddities, the ‘thisness’ and ‘whatness’ of them, could hold points of ‘recognising’ and of ‘query/thought’, and that my use of images can also add ‘links’ which scaffolds an engagement with the works. These felt/sensed and recognised things trigger ‘activations’ of prior encounter and active meaning-making; they are themselves embodied responses and experiencing, and prime a body for more.
These all come together with/through the sensing experiencing of this ‘bodymind’ in the constructing of my original art works. My experiencing of the spaces, the specificities and differences of the stuff /microelements I gather and work with, are intrinsic to how we respond to, interact with, and recognise them. My setting up of ‘pools’ and points to create a space produces gaps and porosity, and my layering of shifting materials elicits seepage and ‘extamacy’ between bodies in the recognising and half knowing. These collectively open a permeability between here/there, now/then, ‘this’/other, making the works sites of active shifting and changing sensed awareness with the potential for affective embodied encounter.
Outcomes:
I recognised early in the process that my understanding of the affective dimensions of our everyday sonic environments relied on and was ‘known’ to me through my experiencing of it; linking this situated knowledge to my increasing understanding of affect theory allowed a drawing in to more specific areas. Exploring the intersection of ‘microperceptions/microshocks’ (from Leibnitz, Massumi et al), and our experience of ‘sounds’ around us and how we make meaning with/through them, led to a comprehending of these shocks as events of affect that may be triggered by the stuff of a place/space. I developed a notion of microelements as something I could ‘look’ for in the sonic environments and formed a novel embodied framework for gathering the stuff of spaces/places.
This developed into an understanding that our experience of stuff of space/place is multidimensional and involves atmospheres of many shifting and changing elements and moments of ‘microshock’ which occur in relation to these as triggers of affect. I realised that I could construct/compose my gathered microelements and atmospheres into pools of active shifting stuff which were new moments of affective event within a space, which began to happen in The Cairngorms Shee Water test piece and developed through the later art works made, bringing about a recognition of the importance of qualities in the materials. If these atmospheres and microelements hold qualities of haecceity and quiddity (thisness/whatness), then these can make and reactivate, memory (learned understanding, skills etc.)
All aspects of the research were undertaken through the same approaches; the porosity of the theories, bodies, materials and processes involved has allowed and necessitated this. I developed new knowing through doing/thinking, which was tested, reflected on and developed further through iterative cycles of making art works, sharing, discussion, reading and making associations between elements of the research. This brought into focus the requirement for a heterogeneity of embodied methods, all utilising and developing the situated knowledge of this ‘bodymind’.
Through my individual lens, I have developed a praxis methodology utilising my ‘affect heuristic’ and scaffolds for facilitating the ‘work’. Adopting a positive speculative space of ‘not knowing‘, and a neuropositive relationship to ‘myself’, enabled an openness to ‘sensing’ and ‘following my affective nose’ in the process of gathering and the constructing of artworks along with other ways of sharing such as this ‘thesis’. This additionally supported the development of ‘porosity’ and extimacy in my embodied process, all required as only though bodily experiencing can the elements for potentially embodied experience be gathered, worked with, brought together and put into play.
What I have made is for the ‘experiencing’, where some parts of what is bodily experienced are ‘common’ to ‘me’ and the ‘audience’, and others are ‘individual’. I both ask the viewer to ‘sit in my seat’, and know something of how/what I experienced, while also to recognise, be active in, and open to, the triggering of (small nondramatic) ‘events’ within an affective atmosphere - through the reactivation of prior experience.
I adopted a speculative and open approach after experimentation early in the research showed that this was required for the ‘finding’ of the affecting elements and atmospheres within our quotidian sonic-environments, and the gathering of and working with stuff of them. Additionally, this approach was necessary so that I could work with them without abstracting or using them to represent anything other than ‘themselves’ and so explore ‘their’ potential affective dimensions.