Creative Practitioners Research Articles

Environmental Sound Artists: In Their Own Words by Frederick Bianchi and V. J. Manzo

Reviewed by: Environmental Sound Artists: In Their Own Words by Frederick Bianchi and V. J. Manzo Ely Lyonblum Environmental Sound Artists: In Their Own Words. By Frederick Bianchi and V. J. Manzo. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. [xxvii, 204 p. ISBN 9780190234614 (hardback), $105; ISBN 9780190234621 (paperback), $36.95; ISBN 9780190234645 (e-book), varies.] Figures, tables, illustrations, index. The concept of the "soundscape" received its language from R. Murray Schafer's Tuning of the World (New York: Knopf, 1977; 2nd ed., The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World [Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1994]). And yet much of contemporary sound art eschews the term soundscape in favor of language that is less lauded with polemical notions of sacred versus vulgar sounds. Experimental musical practices that incorporated environmental sounds were further explored by Pauline Oliveros, who was famous for her practice of deep listening and a holistic approach to composition that drew from elements of the environment. Uniquely, sound art has developed across sectors in radio, film, anthropology, music studies, and media arts. Accordingly, writing about sound studies effectively is writing from an interdisciplinary network that values creativity and critique equally. Bringing together perspectives of those who might count themselves as sound-studies [End Page 109] scholars demonstrates the wide scope of research and practice present in the field. With this in mind, Environmental Sound Artists: In Their Own Words is a text that is long overdue. While many studies in performance and media arts engage with creative practitioners of the field through interviews, Bianchi and Manzo take a more traditional, academic approach—only in form, not in content—and have the artists write for themselves to great effect. The text begins with a primer on sound art and environment that is especially useful for those unfamiliar with the featured authors' work. The editors deserve praise for their careful selection of contributors, from commonly referenced artist–researchers such as John Luther Adams, Ximena Alarcón, Christopher DiLaurenti, Bernie Krause, and Andrea Polli, to those sound artists whose nascent work shows great promise. Many of these short essays assume a similar structure, making the diversity of their research more easily readable. The authors identify their disciplinary or professional training and offer strategies for approaching subjects through sound—in some instances the very subject they aim to address. References to influences of their practice provide clues to the diverse nature of environmental sound art and a wide scholarly web of practices, many of which began as wildly experimental and are now common in the university classroom. (Marcel Duchamp and Maurice Merleau-Ponty are cited as examples.) Some authors reflect on their site-specific installations (Luther Adams's The Place Where You Go to Listen and China Blue's Negative Ellipse); Polli and Marty Quinn dissect the subject of environmental sound as data; and Bruce Odland, Alarcon, and Zimoun explore listening as sensory studies of place. As they approach these topics, the tone of the text vacillates between academic critique and personal commentary. This balance of writing in sound studies is especially critical in order to create space where scholars and artists can meaningfully exchange knowledge concerning their respective practices. More interesting, however, are the scholars' insights into the creation of their research. Throughout their many essays, the authors avoid the common trap of discussing sound art in strictly musical terms or with subjective linguistic vernaculars that are so unfamiliar to music studies that readers are left without a point of reference. This book joins the company of a small but quickly growing collection of texts concerning sound artists. Angus Carlyle and Cathy Lane, in their In the Field: The Art of Field Recording (Axminister, UK: Uniformbooks, 2013), use a series of interviews with artists and scholars to conduct historical research and review the current landscape of field-recording practice. Throughout, the authors examine field recording as the basis for new approaches to sound art, documentary, and music production. Another notable addition to the sound studies library is Keywords in Sound, edited by David Novak and Matt Sakakeeny (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015), which provides readers with a wide view of the field, including words in use by artists...

Artists and the Rite of Passage North to the Temperate Zone

For an aspiring Australian artist, a sojourn north to the world’s large cultural centres has become a rite of passage and to some extent a requirement to achieve recognition both abroad and at home. Many of Australia’s most recognised artists have spent some or a considerable amount of time abroad, such as musician Peter Sculthorpe, painter Arthur Streeton and contemporary indigenous photographer Tracy Moffatt. Despite the frequency of this rite of passage, Australian art continues to struggle to achieve significant international recognition. This article considers the influence of this rite of passage for Australian artists in the context of a rapidly changing global art world, which is increasingly subject to changing production and consumption patterns. It does so in the context of what Bourdieu describes as a cultural field and which involves a complex arrangement of horizontal and vertical power relationships. The paper also considers the extent to which this rite of passage is relevant in the second decade of the 21st century and for a nation which, although having strong historical ties to Britain in particular, is geographically closer to Asia and in a time of the Asian century.

Dialogues between audience research and production

This article offers a historical analysis of the audience testing of television drama from The Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) by the in-house DR Media Research Department from the mid-1990s until 2016. The article investigates how the methods for testing have changed from more traditional focus groups and surveys to include biometric methods (e.g. skin conductance) to measure audience arousal. While audience testing is often primarily viewed as a quality measurement tool for executives, the article argues that testing can also be a dialogue-based tool offering creative practitioners the opportunity to learn more about their series and their audiences.

Displacing Creativity: Artists, Space Scientists and Audience-Led Television in 1970s India

From August 1975 to August 1976 the Indian space agency’s world-leading Satellite Instructional Television Experiment, known as SITE, broadcast to 2,400 villages across the country. This early project of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) defined a societal remit still considered the formational imaginary behind the space agency’s range of remote sensing and planetary activities. The paper focuses on a brief span of time following SITE when opportunities opened for village residents to take control of the media, and this came about in part through initiatives in which creative practitioners working with the space agency introduced methods of co-production. The shift in creative agency from producers to audiences carried radical possibilities for social mobility and locally determined, rather than state-led, development initiatives. The purpose of this short paper is to highlight how creativity coincided with audience-led innovation. Opportunities for audiences to use the technical equipment opened as creative methods of co-production became more commonplace, such that innovation reflected the cultural values, or cognitive matrix, of the audience. Although the shift in agency from producer to audience was unprecedented, it was swiftly suppressed when the national satellite broadcast system INSAT finally became operational in the 1980s, in spite of—or perhaps because of—this flourish of social innovation. Applying the concept “cognitive innovation” to this context foregrounds the limited opportunities available for rural television audiences to use the technology instrumentally for their own purposes. Displacing creativity, by dismantling the project and putting a halt to its emerging methods of co-production, was a way of delinking the audience from the technology and thereby imposing a different order. By indicating how creative activity accesses cognitive innovation, the paper introduces the notion of “displacing creativity” as a transferable measure of agency. It argues that where creativity is displaced, crucial mechanisms by which subalterns gain agency to act and to innovate are lost.

Translanguaging space and creative activity: theorising collaborative arts-based learning

ABSTRACTThis paper focuses on an innovative transdisciplinary educational arts-based learning project, LangScape Curators, which links to and leads from research conducted for the AHRC-funded ‘Translation and Translanguaging’ project. Here, we describe how we work collaboratively with creative practitioners to use a variety of creative arts methods with young people to explore the linguistic landscapes of Leeds. We propose a theoretical framework for collaborative research activity of this nature, and we use one of the creative arts activities – collage – to exemplify visual understandings of how communicative repertoires and linguistic landscapes are explored through co-produced pedagogical workshops. The programme and its associated research make an original contribution to linguistic landscape-based collaborative ethnographic research. We conclude by setting out directions for the future of these activities and their application in applied linguistics research and practice.

Grounding the ‘auto-intoxicated’ Romantic poet: A socio-material theory of poetic praxis

This paper engages with the archetype of the ‘auto-intoxicated’ lyrical poet (Moffitt 2005: 34) associated with the Romantic tradition. The archetype is of interest because it continues to inform theories of creativity, including in the discipline of psychology, where studies examine character traits or cognitive processes as if creativity resides in distinctive patterns of thinking alone. It is also present in creative-writing classrooms that insist on their role in cultivating an innate talent and unique voice. Following a socio-material approach to creativity, this paper argues that creativity must be understood in a broader context that extends beyond the paradigm of the special individual. This necessitates considering both the creative practitioner’s embodiment within a social or institutional network and also the affordances and constraints of creative materials, which are themselves enacted within social and cultural frameworks. This paper focuses on the generative agency of materials or media when it comes to poiesis. The goal is to provide a more rigorous understanding of poetic creativity and to lay the foundation for a way of teaching poetry that better serves contemporary apprentices in the craft, particularly in a time of medial change.

Articulate walls: writer’s block and the academic creative

ABSTRACTIn the study of creative writing as an academic discipline, much attention has been paid to pedagogy, often in reaction/opposition to the question ‘Can creative writing be taught?’ What of the creative practitioners who are working in an interzone between nurturing their students’ writing and maintaining creative output of their own? Institutional ‘publish or perish’ demands have not yet aligned themselves with the shifting realities of the creative marketplace, the changes in the publishing industry, and the mental fatigue of analysing student work. In this scenario, the creative who is also an academic (or the academic who is also a creative) may find that his or her practice is paralysingly out of sync with the syllabus; and teaching from a state of creative depletion may engender a cascade of self-doubt. This paper will look at the process by which these practitioners attempt to navigate this zone of creative disconnect.

Sex and Sexualities in Popular Culture: A Networking Knowledge Special Issue

In November 2015, we held a symposium on the theme of Sex & Sexualities in Popular Culture at the Watershed, Bristol. Having met at a conference on popular music fandom and the public sphere, earlier that year, the symposium was a result of our shared interest in, and work on, sex and sexualities in popular culture. Bethan has worked extensively on antifandom of Fifty Shades of Grey and the moral panics surrounding the ‘irrational’ behavior of One Direction and Twilight fans. Milena’s research focuses on sexual consent in erotic fan fiction, and they have a keen interest in how media and culture interact with the discursive construction of sex, sexualities, and consent. Through the symposium, then, we wanted toafford a platform for postgraduate researchers and creative practitioners exploring the nuances of sex and sexualities within popular culture to meet and share ideas. Of course, the terms ‘sex’, ‘sexualities’ and ‘popular culture’ are not fixed or immutable and while we included suggestions for what papers might examine, the abstracts we received covered a range of topics, from literature and computer games to social media and fan fiction, and advertising to social activism. The symposium was well received both in person and online. We encouraged attendees to live tweet using the hashtag #popsex15, and discussions took place both at the Watershed and on Twitter about consent, the normative depictions of sex andrelationships in popular culture, misogynistic hate speech and intersex characters in literature. The amount of engagement with the ideas and themes coming out of the symposium suggested that a deeper analysis was needed, and this special issue of Networking Knowledge - Journal of the MeCCSA-PGN attempts to engage in more detail with some of these.

Planting Poetry: Sowing Seeds of Creativity in a Year 5 Class

This article offers a case study account of a garden-themed poetry writing project run by a creative writing organisation in partnership with a class of 9–10-year-old children from a London primary school. I explore the concept of creativity which framed the five-week project and analyse the different ways in which the creative practitioner worked collaboratively with the class teacher to develop children’s writing, not least by adopting an open, inclusive pedagogy. Despite the obvious successes of this project, I raise questions about the role of creative practitioners working in schools and the ways in which special projects locate creativity on the margins of the mainstream curriculum.

Creative Cardiff: Utilising cultural mapping for community engagement

Abstract In 2014 Cardiff University set up a Creative Economy team tasked with exploring how the university could improve its relationship with creative practitioners around the city. To explore this relationship the team embarked upon a research project to map creative industries in the city using a mixed methodology of online data collection and semi-ethnographic interviews. As the project progressed the creative economy team designed and launched a city-wide creative network Creative Cardiff connecting the city's creative populous through events, resources and a website with membership subscription. This article explores how mapping can be used to develop the university/creative economy relationship within metropolitan spaces as a contributor to the development of the modern civic university. It also explores the opportunities and challenges posed by a mapping project of this scale, taking into account debates in cultural mapping literature as to what a map actually is.

Building soft skills in the creative economy: Creative intermediaries, business support and the ‘soft skills gap”

In recent years, the UK government and policymakers have sought to maximise the impact of the creative economy via a programme of targeted intervention. Intermediary agencies − those organisations that sit between government and policymakers on one hand, and creative practitioners and microbusinesses on the other − are increasingly seen as crucial to the functioning of the creative economy. This article reports on the activities of one creative intermediary − Cultural Enterprise Office − based in Glasgow, Scotland. CEO’s remit is to help creatives become more ‘businesslike’, and they provide or facilitate access to training and skills development. The article draws on interviews conducted with CEO staff and clients, and ethnographic material gathered from observation of CEO’s working practices. I explore how creatives narrativise their personal and professional development in relation to intermediaries, and demonstrate the tension at the core of CEO’s practice − between their remit to support a skills and employability agenda and their understanding of the limitations of this agenda. I also explore the emotional component of business support, which arises in response to the extreme individualisation associated with creative work, and the precarious working conditions that creatives face. The rationale for writing this article stems from the fact that the creative economy is now a globalised concept, with many countries looking to the UK for guidance on growing the sector. Yet little is known about what services creatives draw down from intermediaries, why and when, or how they understand the role of intermediaries.

“Help Them Understand the Complexity, the Difficulties and the Pleasures of Creative Writing”: Children’s Author Libby Gleeson on Creativity in Education

ABSTRACTNurturing young people’s creativity seems to have become one of the foremost goals of education over the past few years. However, a minimal amount of attention is paid to the challenges that teachers face in achieving this goal in the classroom. In this interview-based article, children’s author Libby Gleeson indicates that while an assessment-driven curriculum undermines teachers’ efforts to promote creativity, equally detrimental is their own inability to position themselves as creative practitioners. Based on her professional experience as a writer and educator, Gleeson suggests that teacher education and development can play a pivotal role in helping teachers to nurture their personal creativity.

Making as Growth: Narratives in Materials and Process

As an activity, research through design gives rise to new knowledge from both creative processes and, if there are any, resultant artifacts. Arguably, all creative practitioners are researchers of one kind or another, whether through materials, aesthetics, technologies, ethnographies, or cultural theory. It also can be argued that research methods in creative practice have not so much been invented or applied to validate academic integrity, but instead they have unfolded and emerged as enquiry has deepened. In this way, the design researcher has the means to re-position their projects to frame premeditated research questions and objectives within their work, and in some cases, apply research questions after practice has taken place.

‘We’re all going to die’: Perceptions and experiences of time among creative practitioners

This paper surveys briefly a range of modern ideas on the creative process and some possible approaches to understanding time, from scientific to philosophical, experiential and managerial. This paper argues that the relationship between time and productivity remains obscure, that the creative person’s commitment to an excessive and unpredictable use of time challenges administrations to adjust their expectations and re-value the use of work time, and finally that newly conceived levels of trust need to be foregrounded between an organisation and its most creative employees.

The parallel worlds of tourism destination management and the creative industries: exchanging knowledge, theory and practice

This paper suggests that there may be insufficient recognition of critical ideas, professional and cultural practices associated with the ‘creative industries’ among tourism destination management researchers, practitioners and policy-makers in England. The paper considers the relationships between academic and practitioner knowledge and practice that potentially connect tourism destination management with creativity and the arts. The paper argues that more research is needed on the contrasting backgrounds, education and occupational discourses of tourism and arts / creative practitioners and how these may be addressed in the curriculum at postgraduate and continuing professional development (CPD) levels. The article suggests that there is a need for destination managers to explore contrasting agendas, knowledge needs and interests, and occupational discourses among creative industry practitioners and likewise for creative industry practitioners concerning tourism and destination management.

Metaliteracies, creative practitioners and art libraries: a critical review of the literature

How do artists, designers, architects and craftspeople seek and deploy information in support of their practice? It is a question that is of central importance to the learning and teaching that art libraries provide, yet one that has also been subject to much debate within the historical and contemporary literature. An attentive reading of this literature reveals three fundamental metanarratives, each underpinned by a particular epistemology, and it is these narratives that have then informed how institutions construct, embed and assess the teaching of information skills to their readers. Only by critically evaluating the literature is it possible to resituate our own practice and that of our respective institutions within a paradigm that is most appropriate for our particular contexts. It is also possible to identify gaps in our collective professional understanding, in the hope of signposting avenues of research potential for the future.

Indigenous creative practice research: between convention and creativity

ABSTRACTThis article addresses some critical issues in the research environment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander candidates at Australian universities. It will be useful to non-Indigenous supervisors of Indigenous students, as well as Indigenous students considering the different kinds of creative practice projects possible at postgraduate level. The article examines the nexus between Indigenous knowledge and creative practice research. The significance of this relationship becomes more apparent with increasing participation of Indigenous creative practitioners in postgraduate education. By drawing on our experience as supervisors of PhD- and MA-level higher degrees with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander candidates, we discuss some of the issues that may arise for supervisors and Indigenous researchers in creative practice research environments. Through Indigenous candidates’ creative projects, we argue these works provide insights into the existing conventions of practice, knowledge and research in Western education. Thus, we demonstrate how Indigenous knowledge has contributed to creative practice research, and broadened its horizons and methods of inquiry.

Creative practitioner inquiry in the helping professions, by JaneSpeedy and JonathanWyatt, Rotterdam, Netherlands, Sense Publishers, 2014, 236 pp., £28.00 (paperback), ISBN:9789462097414

Creative practitioner inquiry in the helping professions, by JaneSpeedy and JonathanWyatt, Rotterdam, Netherlands, Sense Publishers, 2014, 236 pp., £28.00 (paperback), ISBN:9789462097414

SAMPLE by Collect Scotland

In the United Kingdom (UK) textile creative practitioners operate in differing roles as artists, craftspeople, designer-makers, in-house designers and in a freelance capacity. Many textile designer...

On Building Practical Biocomputers for Real-world Applications: Receptacles for Culturing Slime Mould Memristors and Component Standardisation

Our application of bionic engineering is novel: we are interested in developing hybrid hardware-wetware systems for music. This paper introduces receptacles for culturing Physarum polycephalum-based memristors that are highly accessible to the creative practitioner. The myxomycete Physarum polycephalum is an amorphous unicellular organism that has been found to exhibit memristive properties. Such a discovery has potential to allow us to move towards engineering electrical systems that encompass Physarum polycephalum components. To realise this potential, it is necessary to address some of the constraints associated with harnessing living biological entities in systems for real-time application. Within the paper, we present 3D printed receptacles designed to standardise both the production of components and memristive observations. Subsequent testing showed a significant decrease in growth time, increased lifespan, and superior similarity in component-to-component responses. The results indicate that our receptacle design may provide means of implementing hybrid electrical systems for music technology.