What is Research?

Week 9
28 November - 4 December 

A lecture on the importance of research and its surrounding circle; analysis, research, evaluation and solution. A reminder that research will tick the boxes on a grading list as well as furthering the development of a project. Discussed was the different types of research that we may employ and their atttributes: Stimulated (looking for inspiration), Systematic (deconstructive) and Intuitive (having a basis knowledge).

When researching visually, I often find myself sub consciously scouring Instagram and Pinterest for interesting illustrators or creatives. Sometimes I can get lost thinking of ideas in my head and appreciating this other art, that I forget to record it as part of the development process. Yet it is crucial to create a plethora of material for creative inspiration to personally refer to, and for your audience to be able to contextualise and visualise how the growth of the concept occured.

On the other hand, I lean strongly towards deconstructive research where you begin to pull things apart and see their inner workings; starting the trials and errors, redrawing and revisiting ideas.
It's important to remember not to anchor yourself to the first idea that pops into your head as innovation can be found through changing media or colour, or other artists' influence.

We are all still fresh faced, bushy tailed babies when it comes to our 'art careers' which is why we can't take ourselves too seriously, and must learn to enjoy the little failures.

As Fred put, we must fail, or our practice becomes stagnant.

We cannot let our dreamed outcome drive the process or we will only ever venture as far as we have been before and only ever find the same solutions. We must progress through our process by producing bundles of ideas and experimenting thoroughly.

Therefore Process is more important than Outcome.