Methodology. In retrospect.

Spent a few hours earlier today sitting in front of my laptop waiting for a fully formed methodology chapter to arrive. Needless to say…

I’ve decided to focus on Rosenberg’s ‘poetic research’ approach, as outlined in his essay, The Reservoir (translation by Adrian Miles), as i feel it best reflects the practice that i’ve gone through in the evolution of my project (not that i knew that before i started).

I finding my methodology discussion a little hard, as i have to fit in the broader conceptual stuff – ie a discussion of Rosenberg – alongside a discussion of the actual literal framework i developed to frame the production of the works – eg choosing 3 works, the establishment of genre approach, the iteration process etc). But, taking things one step at a time, i’ve just been focusing on a closer analysis and referential examination of Rosenberg thus far. I started by pulling out some important quotes/concepts from Rosenberg’s description of ‘poetic research’, and simply responding underneath with how i feel my work/methodology responds to / is an example of this research practice. As follows:

The poetic in research can be seen as an attempt to develop a technicity of the “hunch”

My hunch: Photo-essays tell stories in a manner that appeals to me, and photo-essays are somehow (hopefully) relevant to me as a documentary filmmaker in the digital environment. Why? “because it seems to be right, interesting, useful, unusual” (Miles 2010);

Ground refers to an extant body of knowledge or mode of practice

My current/previous practice of conventional documentary. (eg Given Everything). Documentary filmmaking within the broadcast paradigm.

Open water is the space of originality; that which has not yet been established

a digital documentary video practice that integrates the aspects of the still and moving image; a documentary practice that engages with the affordances of the digital environment;  a documentary practice that combines a photographic and videographic approach to narrative, aesthetics, recording.

Centripetal forces: draws connections to established research practice and knowledge

 theories of traditional documentary practice & narrativity; my attempt in semester 1 to describe/align/expound the practice of the photo-essay with/through theories (McCloud, Manovich, Mulvey, essay film, documentary photography) relating to other visual practices.

Centrifugal forces: movement to counter the process of grounding

The probe of the photo-essay as a catalyst for video practice; a ‘photographic’ approach to video; “still video”; the act of stepping into the airport for the first piece, camera rolling and no idea.

The centrifugal creates sets of references that relate to a number of theories without necessarily conforming or committing to any one

The balance of numerous theoretical nuggets within the evolution of practice: spatial montage, McCloud’s ‘closure’, my established practice as a photographer, my established practice as a filmmaker, the body of extant photo-essays and their construction, interaction design etc.

Research in open water can be imagined as swimming & diving…, at the mercy of the element:

 the immersion in, and constant referral to, the photo-essay – experimenting in unknown practice (both personally in other-discipline of documentary photography, and universally in striving towards a new form of non-fiction story-telling; experimental, trial and error approach of composition, curation, compilation, design; at the mercy of the photographic/photo-essay form and its shaping of my practice; Ezedia as exploration interface (allowing sketching, as opposed to coding – promotes creative practices, compromises final output as prototypes, not finished products (but that’s just fine))

Poetic research engages with the notion of complexity, weaving together disparate elements in a complex and evolving structure:

The problem of the ‘photo-essay video translation’ is a complex problem, a wicked problem. There is no right answer, only better and worse solutions; it lies between disciplines, between practices, between approaches; weaves together cinema, documentary, photography, design, interaction, web stuff; not understood until after the formulation of the problem.

In the case of the “poetic” the focal territory is found through a process. It is iterative, working in the space between substantiation and deviation

Experimental, in initial method of shooting TRANSIT, then iterative in the application of successful methods from this explorative process into the following works; not knowing what it was exactly I wanted to find out (focal territory) before commencing exploration, but rather just following a hunch or intuition; this resulting in a recognition and awareness of characteristics and direction in my now-evolved practice

Poetic tropes deployed within a “conceptual program” … developing neologisms from the words that define areas in early research

Adoption of the term “still video” to describe a concern/examination with/of how the moving image can have the same formal and functional characteristics of the still, in accordance with an aesthetic and narrative translation of the photo-essay form.

The Reservoir

Actually not sure yet. Is my project and exegeses (with their deep watery appendices) my reservoir?

So that’s it. Yes, it’s a long way frpm a methodology chapter and an integration of a discussion about the more literal, practical methodology employed. But i think it’s a good place to start. If nothing else, it has solidified my choice to focus on Rosenberg and his body of water.

Pulling some shapes.

Ok, so have been drawing some more pictures. This one makes more sense than the last. Rather than trying to draw things around the individual elements of production, i’ve been working towards running two ‘threads’ through the exegesis, that the writing is a response to… At the moment, these are ‘still video’, about everything concerned with production on locations, and ‘spatial____’. Maybe stories, maybe aesthetics, not sure yet. But anyway, its about the arrangement of videos within the page. Making stories through spatialized video elements. So, two options at the mo. Either reshape all the writing so far to act as a response to these two threads. Or, keep the writing tight on the making, then push these two threads through as sort of ‘propositions’ at the end. Anyway, here’s the picture:

Exegesis structure thus far.

Been a while, yes.But i’ve been busy making and writing.

I’ve been struggling to get my writing from a modular collection of topics into a more streamlined, flowing arrangement. Unfortunately at this stage its just a little complicated. I drew a picture to show just how complicated it is.

Will my work change if my question does?

So i’ve been fretting about the framing of the question.

But, as Seth helpfully pointed out today, even if i do this, will my work change? The short answer is no. It won’t.

What does this tell me? Stop freaking out about trying to find the answer to it all now and just finish making the damn things.

Good advice.

Onwards.

Audiences.

Who’s my audience?

First and foremost, like it or not, my audience is my examiner. The fact that I’m producing an actual video piece makes this a bit harder to accept. After all, I’d like to think that anyone who comes across the finished product would still be able to get something from viewing it – this may not be the case were i to write only a thesis. Still, the truth is that I’m not making pieces to be enjoyed by the everyman. They are pieces that are evident of my research. Of course, when it comes to exegesis-ing, the scope of that audience is clearer – namely, the examiner and the examiner alone.

So who is this said examiner, this mystery wrapped in an enigma? Well, although i have previously (although perhaps no longer) placed my work within a documentary context, i don’t think a suitable examiner would be one from a traditional documentary background / practice. They’d be confused by all the clicking, and be disappointed at the lack of beginning, middle, end. So, a suitable examiner would be someone coming from a more multimedia background, someone familiar with non-fiction practice, and familiar with web-based, interactive work.

What are their expectations?

I expect that they would expect that i am producing work to a level that is relevant to the general interactive-nonfiction-webdoco scene at the moment. They would be looking for something that addresses new problems, or old problems in a new way. Interactive non-fiction works are not a new thing by any means, so they’d expect an engagement with the area beyond the ‘wow, i have to click to make it play’ kind of thing. They would expect elements such as interactivity, multi-linearity, loop etc to be employed as thoroughly practical, intrinsic elements – not just because they can be, now we’ve started making films on the web. So far, i think i’m heading in the right direction, as every element i’m employing in the production of my work has a grounding in the source element: the photo essay.

As for the exegesis, i’m sure the novelty of practice as research has also worn off. Just as if my research we’re solely based in literature, statistics, etc, an examiner would expect my initial research and reflections to be evident in the practice. As is becoming more clear, there’s a well established method of practice-based-research that any examiner will be familiar with, so they will be expecting to see this practice (ie practice-based-research) evident in the exegesis and in my work.

How do i know this?

I know who the examiner will be because i’ve been looking into the work of such people in the production of my own work. I know they must be out there somewhere. I know (or at least hope) that these people will be the ones examining my work, as they are the most likely to identify and understand my work. So hopefully someone like that will be chosen. As for knowing their expectations, i’m generally basing these off what i know from the people around me in similar positions – eg seth, adrian. I know what they’re expecting from me (as they’ve told me throughout the semester), so i’m assuming my examiner’s expectations will be of a similar standard.

Second essay: response to a response

Some thoughts in the wake of my second essay / proto-exegesis attempt:

• Move away from a ‘documentary’ practice.

The more i get into this, the more i consider losing the idea of making ‘documentaries’. After all, what do i get from using it, apart from the extra baggage of the history and context that it brings with it. What do i get from documentary that i do not get from non-fiction? I originally called my practice a documentary practice to distinguish it from a fiction practice. Yet, as seems pretty obvious now, the opposite of fiction is not (necessarily) documentary, but non-fiction. ‘Non-fiction’ lets me keep the basic content that i’m interested in – ie making films from content out there in the ‘real world’ – without it being strung up upon all the baggage that comes with documentary as a term. I make it clear in my essay that that i’m not looking to engage with staples of authenticity, objectivity et al, and really only discuss ‘documentary’ (as social/political agent) when using it as a contrast to the more artistic, less didactic, forms of photography i’m actually interested in… So what do i want with documentary? Not a lot then. Sure, i may refer to my work as documentary to demarcate it from fiction when describing it to the laymen, and yes, the form of the photo-essay i’m interested in does have its roots in documentary practice. But beyond this, and considering this is all there is, ‘documentary’ as a term is out. Non-fiction is in.

• Create some distance between the photo-essay and my practice

So far, my project has been about translating the photo-essay into a video practice. This has meant that everything – the contextual purpose, the equipment, the visual style and composition, design, layout etc – have explicitly been using the photo-essay as a source. In some ways this is true of what i’ve been doing, but for this project to be manageable i think i need to really focus in on one particular aspect to take from the form. Perhaps “an exploration of multi-screen interfaces in non-fiction video (as seen in the photo-essay)”. Or maybe “Non-linear non-fiction – from page to screen: a translation of photo-essay arrangement “. Etcetera etcetera. But it’s feeling like having the stated goal as a video translation of the photo-essay – and thereby addressing every single element that goes into the production of a photo-essay (see above) – is too scattered and a tad overwhelming. Rather than the goal being such a translation, i feel i need to re-orient to use what interests me about the photo-essay as a frame through which i view and address a more concrete, particular problem.

• Define said problem

This really has been floating round for a while now. A translation of a photo-essay into a video practice is not a problem. Yes, it presents and interesting challenge / framework / inspiration from which to create interesting pieces, but the practice of doing so will not really be the answer to a problem or a knowledge claim (or at least as i have been able to define one thus far). I’m beginning to realize that it’s not a good thing that i feel i already have a reasonable idea of what the finished product will look like. If i do, there is obviously no research-through-practice going on. Just practice. Thus slightly negating the whole point of my honours-doing.

So, this needs to be looked at. I have slowly been realizing that the “real” reason behind my initial attraction to the photo essay lay in the format’s ability to enable open, non-expositional, non-fiction audiovisual works, which are as much objects of artistic expression as they were observational documents. I think that’s pretty much what i like about them. Yet to frame that as a research problem, as i really need to be doing in honours, comes out something like “How can one produce observational, expressive, non-fiction audiovisual pieces?”  Of course, I have absolutely no idea what the resultant work would look like (beyond being probably nothing like a photo-essay, at least). So the conundrum: I can tell you what a video translation of a photo-essay might look like (and even make one), but doing so would not be the result of an practice-led-research based problem. I can tell you what it is about the photo-essay that interests me, but when that’s framed as a research problem, it’s too huge for the scope of honours, and probably will have little to do with the photo-essay.

Two possible ways forward here. Firstly, somehow frame a research question that addresses the combination of factors behind what interests me about the photo-essay (and do so without getting bogged down in “documentary”). This i see as unlikely, esp. in the remaining 12 weeks. possibly the only way to do this would be narrow down the photo-essay as a frame of reference, by say maybe focusing on the work/technique of a specific photographer, or by specifying a specific type of photo-essay upon which to focus, such as “the photo-essay as portraiture”, or “the photo-essay as news reporting” etc.  Secondly, forget such lofty aims of “open non-fiction pieces”, “artistic expression through observational non-fiction” etc. As a research question, focus instead upon a particular aspect of the photo-essay as a catalyst for further exploration. Perhaps, as mentioned, their non-linearity. Or maybe the idea of the layout of multiple videos being a narrative element/technique in itself (possible cheesy title: “Editing Sideways: Video Layout as Aesthetic Practice). The latter particularly would be able to incorporate the photo-essay as a base material in a non-arbitrary manner, as the form certainly uses the layout of multiple elements as both an aesthetic and narrative tool… (i actually quite like this, will follow up).

Anyway. That’s how i’m feeling at the moment. More than a bit meh.