So Cameron has set a task for me. The idea was to print out all my work from the past 5 years and begin to really assess what my PhD is about by examining the work itself. I find it pretty easy to come up with endless different ways of framing the dissertation chapters, but he pointed out that this doesn’t really get to the core of how one might frame a PhD by project. He talked through how a true grounded theory approach would have me sort through all the material, categorizing it in a variety of ways. Made sense as he talked about how the exhaustive and sometimes silly classifications might lead to insights I wasn’t already seeing. Robyn has talked for some time about how I need to see mapping my work as my final project. I haven’t been able to get excited about that idea, until this conversation. For some reason, imagining the expansive exercise of laying out 5 years of work and iteratively collating it into endlessly different piles, seemed in itself a more designerly task than how I had perceived the more instrumental task of showing connections between projects.
In the conversation I pointed out to Cameron that I only had 3 real PhD projects. At this point he looked exasperated and told me my research wasn’t project-based, it was practice-based and my practice included my Parsons work, Studio Anybody projects and of course student work from my teaching practice as well. For someone who has always advocated for the integration of one’s research and practice…I feel somewhat sheepish about admitting that I just really hadn’t seen it that way before! So feels productive already.
The boring part was spending two days gathering together old files with totally archaic file formats etc.
Robyn Barnacle Says:
July 7th, 2008 at 5:08 pmVisit Robyn Barnacle
Hi Lisa,
I like Cameron’s distinction between project-based and practice-based research in that it makes your practice the focus rather than your projects - puts the dog before the tail. It also struck me just how cyclical PhD work is: there’s so much forgetting and re-remembering (from memory, back in your studio anybody days you were very much in touch with integrating research and practice).
Reading your comments on Schon’s paper I am reminded of a conversation the other day with Dave Boud and Alison Lee in Sydney. We were discussing how Schon’s choice of the term ‘reflection’ jars with the materiality of thought/action that he is trying to convey. The notion of reflection in or on action cannot help but evoke Descartes and all his problems about dis-engaged minds from bodies etc. Reflection, unfortunately, is just so head centric! And yet what Schon is saying about design practice is so NOT head centric!
I know you don’t want to go lumbering down the old Cartesian rabbit hole but the first chapter of Bruno Latour’s Pandora’s Hope offers a great (and very readable) summary of the key issues which could provide a neat framework for situating your own work -and that of Schon.
Robyn
lisa grocott Says:
July 8th, 2008 at 11:08 amVisit lisa grocott
Robyn,
Thanks for the comments…as much as I try and write like I think people might be actually reading…I don’t really believe it.
I like your point about reflection being too head-centric, I think it is accurate as reflection doesn’t go far toward a holistic description of designing. But I think it resonates with me because what is going on in designers heads is essentially what I am interested in.
I was recently having a conversation with Luke Wood (an old student) from RMIT and we obliquely touched on this. Luke was complaining about how peoples’ recent interest in the abstract of ‘design thinking’ is getting too far removed from the craft of making. I don’t disagree with him that the material engagement of designing is what distinguishes design from other creative and reflective practices.But my research is primarily (and predictably) interested in the areas of designing that I care about (probably because it is the parts I am good at). Therefore my main interest is in the reflection, the ideas, the conversations. I also perceive that the material/craft piece is also what design has privileged (at least in education) for the last century, so I can accept the pendulum swing on a personal and historical level.
I realise that the way I am writing this makes it seem a little like I accept some Cartesian split, which isn’t the point I am trying to assert. I see that the reflection is driven by the act of making…so either way the Latour chapter seems like it might help me better formulate the point I am making.
Robyn Barnacle Says:
July 20th, 2008 at 11:52 pmVisit Robyn Barnacle
OK, here’s my rather oblique response: is what’s going on in peoples’ heads really going on in their heads?
If thought is embodied through action, or is materialised, then it really is a conversation with the materials of a situation: it’s not just in the head. The idea of thought as a conversation is to me the opposite of thinking of thought as projective, or as being projected out onto the world by the thinking subject.
Its not that I don’t think you should use the phrase ‘what’s going on in peoples heads’ its just a matter of how the head’s conceived. Heidegger’s head is completely inverted, if you know what I mean (see Building, Dwelling, Thinking – there’s a passage where he says something like ‘when I go to leave the lecture theatre my head already pervades the space of the room and only thus can I go through it). This formulation raises the status of things, traditionally conceived as outside the head, so that the relation between thought and thing is more symmetrical. The question then becomes not just ‘what are the designers intentions etc’ but also ‘how are the materials of the situation orienting those intentions.’ It also makes all thought immediately culturally, historically embedded etc.
So, it’s a matter of treating the self-reflexive designer as also always already materially situated.
OK, no more head stuff, I promise! (we philosophers are really stuck on the old brains in vats problem I’m afraid)
lisa grocott Says:
July 21st, 2008 at 7:36 amVisit lisa grocott
It is funny when I speak with Cameron or yourself when you have your philosophy hats on…it is like you are speaking such a different language…or that I am hearing you from far away! It isn’t that I disagree, because I don’t have the expertise to disagree, but it is as if I can agree only from a point of deference. For example…I completely get your point about how all thought is immediately culturally, historically embedded…and like the point about the “self-reflexive designer as always already materially situated”…it is more that I just don’t know what to do with this information.
Does that make sense?
I find it hard to work out how far I can go with introducing these ideas (or at least first better understanding them) without getting caught up in them. Perhaps the easy answer is that I just have to avoid saying gaffes that make it seem like I think you can separate the thinking from the action…without attempting to address this philosophically.
I guess this is the part you can really help me with when it comes to writing up.
Robyn Barnacle Says:
July 27th, 2008 at 10:45 pmVisit Robyn Barnacle
Definitely: what you’re saying definitely makes sense. My advice is that you don’t have to go down any rabbit holes - you’re instincts are right about that. It’s a matter of flagging that you know the rabbit holes are there, or in other words, of registering the complexity - and you’re good at that.
r
Visualizing Design Knowing » Grounded Theory Exercise Says:
July 28th, 2008 at 12:10 pmVisit Visualizing Design Knowing » Grounded Theory Exercise
[...] Awhile back I mentioned Cameron getting me to do some kind of grounded theory exercise to evaluate what my projects were telling me about the contribution of my research. I have always made the claim that my research was done through some practice-led version of grounded theory…I previously stated this because I appreciated that grounded theory meant I didn’t need to begin with an hypothesis, but that I could acknowledge that the research would ‘emerge’ from the projects themselves. I also appreciated that this was a research method that spoke to my resistance of any theory-led practice. Grounded theory sees the research literature as just another relevant piece of information by which to understand what is emerging and does not privilege theory over the projects. That said, I cannot pretend to have followed a grounded theory approach completely, as I have found it valuable to iteratively work to a research question that framed my hunches. So although I wasn’t responding to a direct hypothesis, I think the cycle of making and reflecting was more similar to action research than a close, iterative audit of what I was doing throughout. Still, for my recent review I set out to gather all my projects together and code and memo what has emerged as a way of considering anew what the projects might have to say. [...]
Visualizing Design Knowing » Practice or Project? Says:
July 29th, 2008 at 7:35 amVisit Visualizing Design Knowing » Practice or Project?
[...] Following up from the GRC presentation I want to go back over the terrain of how I situate my work in relation to the research projects and my Parsons practice. Last month I wrote about how Cameron had corrected my description of my research by asserting that is was practice-led rather than project-based. At that stage I understood his point to specifically be that I had to consider all of my practice when talking about my research — that made sense. Going into the grounded theory exercise I had acknowledged that I should include much of my Parsons and Australian practice work, but I struggled with really making sense of how to prioritize all this work in relation to the more focused, discrete research projects. But after presenting my work last week this issue only seems more central to resolve. [...]