1. Interviews KAPTUR 28th October 2011
KAPTUR
Goldsmiths, probing interviews
Tahani Nadim, Kaptur Project Officer
I’ve carried out 2 initial interviews, one with a design-researcher (Design Department),
the other with an artist-researcher (Art Department). Both interviews were
unstructured and took the shape of a conversation about the nature of research data in
design and art, respectively. I was familiar with both interviewees prior to the
interviews through my work in the Sociology Department and in managing Goldsmiths
Research Online. Each interview lasted about 40 minutes and notes were inputted
directly into my laptop.
1. Design-researcher
The researcher situates himself between 2 disciplines: sociology and design. There is a
tension in that the former is more concerned about the way in which data is produced
whereas the latter, design, looks at what to do with it. Sociology has very formal
methods for the production of research data. In design, issues have been addressed,
sometimes heatedly, around what counts as data and how design is meant to position
itself vis-à-vis data. Should design draw from exiting methodological approaches? Or
should it rely on its own disciplinary heritage? Is design practice also about defining
new ways of producing and working with data?
Within the social sciences there are efforts towards rethinking methods and rethinking
the nature of data. This work is often done by people who are positioned in between
disciplines or who work alongside people of different disciplines such as Noortje
Marres1 (sociology and design), Nina Wakeford2 (sociology, design and art), Alex Wilkie3
(sociology and design). Projects such as Energy and Co-Designing Communities (ECDC)4
point to some of the more innovative ways in which research data is being produced and
worked with.
1 http://www.gold.ac.uk/sociology/staff/marres/
2 http://www.studioincite.com/people/nina.html
3 http://www.gold.ac.uk/design/staff/wilkie/
4 http://www.ecdc.ac.uk/
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2. Interviews KAPTUR 28th October 2011
The researcher mentioned the PHD-DESIGN@jiscmail.ac.uk email list where issues
around the production and application of research data form a continuous trope. On this
list, various figures within the "design academy" (that is, designers working in
academia) debate about how to conduct research and the value and role of data.
Asked about design's disciplinary heritage in relation to research data, the researcher
pointed to the sub-discipline of HCI (human computer interface) design: This began as a
crossover between cognitive psychology and design and has made use of extensive
experimental data. He also pointed to the ethnographic and participatory design coming
out of Scandinavia under the umbrella of "action-research", in particular the work of
Pelle Ehn.
The researcher pointed out that one has to distinguish between design research in the
academy and design in the commercial world. He said that design education in places
such as the RCA is very practice-oriented, bringing in professionals to teach students
rather than providing theoretical reflections of the discipline's history and different
approaches.
Having run his own design consultancy prior to joining academia, the researcher
stressed the fact that it was very much an integral part of his work to do and present
research. But the difference, he argued, between this and the academy is in the
epistemology: why you're creating knowledge is different. In his consultancy work,
knowledge was produced to further insights that lead to commercial opportunities. In
his work for a multinational microchip producer, many of the designers assumed hybrid
roles: publish papers while also making prototypes.
He provided a concrete example of the design of a new technology for elderly people
suffering from chronic disease. This was an "innovation project" which meant that it
started off with a vague idea. The aim was to pin it down: identify a chronic disease in
which they could intervene and where there was a big enough market. Asking him about
the kind of research undertaken, he listed the following: People did web searches; they
looked at existing technologies supporting diseases; they did market research into
companies and organisations that deliver services for people with chronic diseases;
some people researched form factors, that is, the aesthetics of devices; there were "in-
home interviews" which are a very common technique in design where design and
ethnography intersect;
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3. Interviews KAPTUR 28th October 2011
In-home interviews include photographs of the habitat and setting as well as participant
observation. They had a doctor to look into medical aspects and computer scientists
researching existing platforms and hardware solutions. All this generated masses of
very heterogeneous data that was then presented at weekly meetings, brainstorm
meetings; every week;
The researcher noted that there are different settings in which data is curated. In
brainstorm meetings, for example, the data gleaned from interviews is put on post-it
notes and arranged on a wall. This visualises the data in a way that tries to offer a
"realistic representation": each interviewee has bit of data associated and this is
spatially related (on the wall) sticking to a certain logic. However as the meeting
progresses, these post-it notes become rearranged. Thereby the data transforms from a
realistic representation to a speculative one.
Another kind of presentation described by the researcher is the PowerPoint: Here data
"ends up" and is "enacted" in front of stakeholders or other interested parties. Its
interpretation and presentation is neither flexible nor open. PPT presentations are
about relating a coherent and rational story.
The researcher calls these different settings for data presentations "events" and argued
that data can be handled very differently: sometimes the difference is subtle, sometimes
it is more explicitly different. Most important for him in understanding and working
with data is its fluidity and its heterogeneity.
2. Artist-researcher
The second artist-researcher works in the Art Department (part-time). She is a painter.
Aside from teaching and painting, she also curates projects and exhibitions.
She views research data very much in terms of "academic work" which she situates
outside her daily practice of painting. This, she finds very hard to articulate "as
research". This is not because it's not research but because it is conducted in such an
experiential way that cannot be taken out of and presented *outside* the (practice of)
painting. Doing so, extrapolating and externalising research data from the process,
would engage it in a structure which "seems uncomfortable". However, she is quite
happy to think and talk about research data in relation to the "projects" she's been
engaged with, in particular, the curatorial projects she's done.
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4. Interviews KAPTUR 28th October 2011
It is hard for her to talk about research and research data around her own studio work
because her work is such a "material practice". She could say how translucent the colour
is or how the image is an effect of constantly changing syntactic changes or how the
painting is painted after other paintings. All this could be described as or in a "more
logical process". But she described her practice as "I make surfaces and I paint on them".
This is "antithetical to doing funding applications". When she has become involved with
curating, she has found it a "more externalised" activity: it has become easier to
articulate the various elements that inform it. With painting, she says that she makes it
and that meaning is "found". Meaning is emergent and generative from the practice and
activity of painting. She talked about that there is an "inside" that, although informed by
(other) paintings and material practices, remains on the inside. There is, she said, "no
research trip required". Following from this she noted that research trips were another
way that she thought of research data.
The making of her work, she stressed, has to do with "the pit of my stomach" and this is
not something she'd like to make public. She also mentioned that it took her a long time
after having made the work to "catch up" with it. For example, in her studio she has
mounted a painting that she had started two years ago and which is just now coming
into its own, starting to make sense.
She talked about being/feeling "stumm" in relation to articulating her paintings and the
research process behind painting: "one doesn't want to be in a room full of people and
not be able to speak". However, when working with someone else on a project (she's
currently collaborating with another artist), this articulation becomes much easier. In
this collaboration, they conceived of a proposal for an exhibition of their work and
"bounced ideas around". It was, she described, about "trying to find a place that is
already made"; the "nearest embodiment of the thing that I wanted to start with."
She sees her studio practice separate to her work in the academy but central to her
teaching there. Like most artists in the academy, she works part-time and is funded for
half a day of research per week (academic staff contracts specify teaching and research
time - paid differently). She noted that though the process of making work might be
inaccessible to useful description in this context, the work does become public through
exhibitions etc., and that at this point can be contextualized and discussed and
counted/assessed for auditing purposes (eg REF).
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