Illustrating Complex Networks

Abstract

This audio-visual discourse presents how the practice of network mapping can illuminate the project brief through the lens of all stakeholders. One challenge of research-through-design is that the knowledge produced is often embodied within artefacts, unable to be shared or interrogated by others. There is therefore a need to produce artifacts which are accessible to an interdisciplinary audience. To demonstrate the complex nature of project networks there is a need to visually articulate the networks involved to show where stakeholders sit and who is connected to who. By visually representing this data, the networks are able to be interrogated by others beyond the individual researcher. This discourse will reflect upon issues in creative practice research and respond to the issue of how we can navigate interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary quagmires in practice-based research. This short methodological reflection will interrogate the value of a predetermined brief and suggest that through network mapping, a more nuanced brief can be created through the lens of all stakeholders. This discourse suggests that this method can be used by those in inter or transdisciplinary fields, beyond that of architecture, to illuminate transdisciplinary quagmires that may arise through the production of a project brief.