A Cognitive Investigation of a Material led Art process

In this article I compare video footage I recorded during two separate studies on craft ceramics, in China and Taiwan respectively, to reflect on the way images might contribute to theoretical reflections on embodied practice in craftwork. In the first, key moments captured by the camera illustrate, and help us to understand, local conceptions of craft and ethics of skilled practice, yet these moments are fleeting and their value unlikely to be recognized by a casual viewer. An analysis of the second video footage, in which a Taiwanese master ceramicist is brought to “unpack” his skilled knowledge when in the role of a teacher, reveals another way in which images can bring viewers to access otherwise “invisible” dimensions of skilled practice.

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 2020

Taking a psychological and philosophical outlook, we approach making as an embodied and embedded skill via the skilled artisan’s experience of having a corporeal, nonlinguistic dialogue with the material while working with it. We investigate the dynamic relation between maker and material through the lens of pottery as illustrated by wheel throwing, claiming that the experience of dialogue signals an emotional involvement with clay. The examination of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of habit, the skilled intentionality framework, and material engagement theory show that while these theories explain complementary aspects of skilful engagement with the material world, they do not consider the dialogic dimension. By way of explanation, we submit that the artisan’s emotional engagement with the material world is based in openness and recognition and involves dialogue with the material. Drawing on the intimate relationship between movement and emotion, it promotes an open-ended manner of working and permits experiencing with the material, acting into its inherent possibilities. In conclusion, we suggest that dialogue, whether verbal or nonverbal, constitutes a primary means for making sense of the world at large, animate and inanimate.

ProQuest, 2019

Material users, such as studio artists, architects, designers, and material engineers, require information specialists who understand the informative qualities of physical materials. Tactility, meaningfulness, emotions, exploration, and experimentation all inform the studio artist’s decisions throughout the process of art creation. This study was an investigation into how information gathering through materials experience (MX) supports the creative, artistic, and intellectual needs of studio artists. In this study, a mixed-methods approach was used by the researcher to explore the influences of MX as information gathering, combining the use of a questionnaire of students and professional artists, direct observation and focus group, and artist interviews. The total subject population included three groups comprised of 82 studio artists, five art students, and 11 professionals. The operationalized models of MX behavior were (a) experiential levels of engagement; (b) MX through exploration, expression, creation; (c) experiential levels of connection; (d) information-seeking behavior through MX; and (e) MX through material culture. Through the analysis of the data, the complexity of MX as information gathering was illustrated Findings showed that sight and touch were the first points of engagement for artists and provided the most practical information. Artists also experienced aesthetic intuition and intuitive experimentation. Material experience was not a set of singular actions that must happen in a specific order. Material experience as information gathering was in flux, moving back and forth during the information gathering process. It appears tangible information supported the artists’ practical sides of their processes while intangible information supported the creative side. Based on these findings, a conceptual model was developed to provide a foundation for further research in ISB studies using a materials-centric approach for users who work primarily with physical materials, bringing an added dimension to understand the user experience (UX). Additionally, MX provided an opportunity for librarians and information scientists to re-explore information gathering in all its forms—textual, visual, and physical. Research into information behaviors through MX may contribute to interaction design, provide a more in-depth understanding of the information experience through physical materials, and the roles of the artist experience in virtual and augmented reality.

Philosophy & Technology

The notion that human activity can be characterised in terms of dynamic systems is a well-established alternative to motor schema approaches. Key to a dynamic systems approach is the idea that a system seeks to achieve stable states in the face of perturbation. While such an approach can apply to physical activity, it can be challenging to accept that dynamic systems also describe cognitive activity. In this paper, we argue that creativity, which could be construed as a 'cognitive' activity par excellence, arises from the dynamic systems involved in jewellery making. Knowing whether an action has been completed to a 'good' standard is a significant issue in considering acts in creative disciplines. When making a piece of jewellery, there a several criteria which can define 'good'. These are not only the aesthetics of the finished piece but also the impact of earlier actions on subsequent ones. This suggests that the manner in which an action is coordinated is influenced by the criteria by which the product is judged. We see these criteria as indicating states for the system, e.g. in terms of a space of 'good' outcomes and a complementary space of 'bad' outcomes. The skill of the craftworker is to navigate this space of available states in such a way as to minimise risk, effort and other costs and maximise benefit and quality of the outcome. In terms of postphenomonology, this paper explores Ihde's humantechnology relations and relates these to the concepts developed here.

Aalto University publication series DOCTORAL THESES, 2022

Through sustained practice, creative practitioners begin to develop a relationship with the material with which they work. This kind of relating to the material accompanies aesthetic qualities that are not only perceived as belonging to the material but also recognised within the body, creating a connection between the practitioner and the material. This research emphasises the role of aesthetic qualities in creating these connections and concentrates on this level of ceramic practice, where the body's role is central in feeling, sensing and extending towards the material world. This research has developed in two phases; the research material was firstly gathered through practice-led research focusing on the subjective experience in ceramic practice, and then, secondly, the research has continued to develop from the topics identified during the first phase within a collaborative approach to conducting research. The first phase of the research included studio work, an artist residency period and a workshop. The second research phase discussed and developed the identified research topics within and through workshops in collaboration with other professional practitioners. The particular interest is in the subtle body that implies understanding a more nuanced level in material work. Here, the bodily perspective in creative practice is examined, and the discussed practice is focused on attuning to feeling and experiencing the material bringing our body's sensuous understanding to the forefront. The aim is to understand how creative practitioners begin to tune in with the aesthetics of materials and their processes within making. The research focus is framed through three directions on the body: the experiencing body, the sentient body and the performing body. The common perception of creative practice is through its outcomes; however, a practitioner's creativity that sustains a material practice is built through experiences understood in the body. What is opened up through this research is the experiential and performative dimension of creative acts in the context of ceramics. One of the main outcomes of this research is the Subtle Ground method that offers an aesthetic-driven direction in making whereby the creative practitioner's attention is directed towards the subtle body and the experiential dimension in making.This research argues that focusing on aesthetic qualities and giving attention to embodied connections can create the basis for a meaningful material relationship in the context of creative practices. Relating to material is a process that engages the body to perform and experience the felt material qualities. These felt and performed qualities in creative material work can also have therapeutic possibilities and thus widen the implications of the research results.

2021

Artistic practice and education build on a long tradition of aesthetic critique and problem solving. This tradition has later on influenced also practice-led and practice-based research approaches centering on the artistic process. Although these research approaches depend on the processes and objects that essentially have not only cognitive but aesthetic qualities, the role of the aesthetics in these research processes still lacks an analytical discussion in this context. In this article we explore the process aesthetics in the context of artistic, practice-led research. Namely, we examine the potential of the concept of aesthetic engagement as a framework for understanding and analyzing the involvement with the artistic process. The results of this investigation are the two complimenting degrees of involvement with the artistic process through making and perceiving, and the relations that activate these different ways of engagement. To illustrate and concretize the subject, we employ an example of video material capturing moments of experimentation with ceramic art.

Organization Studies, 2019

Practice-based studies of organization have drawn attention to the importance of the body as a site of knowledge and knowing. However, relational encounters between bodies and objects, and the affects they generate, are less well understood in organization studies. This article uses new materialist theory to explore the role of affect in embodied practices of craft making. It suggests that craft work relies on affective organizational relations and intensities that flow between bodies, objects and places of making. This perspective enables a more affective, materially inclusive understanding of organizational practice, as encounters between human and nonhuman entities and forces. We draw on empirical data from a qualitative study of four UK organizations that make bicycles, shoes and hand-decorated pottery. We track the embodied techniques that enable vital encounters with matter and the affective traces and spatial, aesthetic atmospheres that emerge from these encounters. We sugges...

Digital Creativity, 2010

As a result of development toward ‘smart’ materials, materials now enable an expanding range of aesthetic expressions and user experiences. These materials are fundamentally temporal in their capacity to assume multiple, discrete states of expression that can be repeatedly and minutely controlled. These materials come to be, or become, only over time and in context—they are becoming materials. Thus, in the development and application of such materials, we must engage more extensively with the experience of materials in practices of design and of use. This paper introduces and discusses the concept of becoming materials—as well as the implications for practice—through a series of examples from our own practice-led research within art, design and architecture. Coming to terms with the implications for material practices of design and of use, we suggest, requires the development of new concepts and methods for doing and studying the design of becoming materials.

Over the past two decades, a continuous dialogue and fruitful convergence has been taking place in academia between art and design related practices and the practice of research. While the practice of research aims at the generation of new knowledge, art and design practices predominantly aim at the creation of new artefacts. However, this does not mean that there is no knowledge involved in the making of artefacts. Rather, knowledge and understanding of one’s own creative practice are generated whilst the artefact is being formed. Such knowledge can be called ‘experiential knowledge’ or knowledge that is derived from experience and concerns ‘how things appear’ (Williams 2001, p. 189). How artefacts appear in the practices of artists/designers that are integrated into the conduct of academic research is the focus of this special volume ‘Experience·Materiality·Articulation.’ Direct experience of artists/designers performing research in academia is key in the discussion within this special volume. The volume takes a critical look at the interactive and dynamic relationship between experience and articulation from the perspective of practicing artist-researchers who deal with materiality in their practice.