Art Practice as Research

Hugo Ortega López. Proximity and cross-contextualization textural disruptions:
William James. Reproduced courtesy of the artist. www.artebunker.blogspot.com

Hugo Ortega López. Propositions III: Form as it contradicts. Reproduced courtesy of the artist. www.artebunker.blogspot.com

Hugo Ortega López: “The challenge is how the intrinsic knowledge structure and language of an art practitioner, as it happens, is accepted as evidence and valid testimony of a research event for academic standards. Could it be that the voice and vision of the artist and his/her studio practice has been altered, even ‘mutated’ by the standardized practices of the academy and the prevalence of verbal/written languages dealing with art related activities? If this is the case, then the way artist-researchers create opportunities, strategies, and make use of forms of inquiry that explore alterity and differentiation needs to be acknowledged.” (Baxter, López, Serig & Sullivan, 2008, p. 8 )

Hugo Ortega López. Cycle, Gear, Eye, Vision: A Sequence of Art and Research Practice. Reproduced courtesy of the artist. www.artebunker.blogspot.com

Hugo Ortega López: “My work … can be likened to a set of gears that implements a cycle of practice whereby my individual eye serves to re-vision things in an institutional setting, and this draws on opportunity and improvisation as much as insight and understanding.”  (Baxter, Lopez, Serig & Sullivan, 2008, p. 7)

Art practice provides fluid opportunities to work beyond the limits of knowledge in what Hugo Ortega Lopez describes as a “visual model of doing.” If one pushes against walled structures there will be points of disruption that will result in the emergence of new forms. This “acknowledges the opportunities that are inherent to a singular local situation.”

Hugo Ortega López. Geometry: Visual model of doing. Reproduced courtesy of the artist.

Hugo Ortega López explores his interpretive encounters with theories and practices of art education research and implications for inquiry that emerge from his studio experiences that are the central part of his doctoral research. At the heart of the problem for López is exploring how to move beyond the limits of knowledge and the role studio practices can play.

The transmission of knowledge is constrained or facilitated by its medium of presentation. Through time, the channels of knowledge distribution have generated a specific hierarchy of forms that determines acceptable type and validity of knowledge. The hierarchical system of research determines the appropriate paths and modes of inquiry.  It demands the conversion of anything into written language and the modification of an investigation into existing labels and formats. The stratification of forms of communication emerged from the possibilities of documentation, transmission and distribution within cultural, political, financial and technological controls that emphasized the discourse and the explanatory abilities of the knower. The accepted forms of scholar communication thus guide behaviors and dynamics in an investigation through the linear constitution and construction of an argument. But what are the possibilities of generating knowledge from highly visual investigations? (2008, pp. 4-5)

López describes the interface between his doctoral research and his studio activity in terms of engines and gears. Meanings found in texts using the usual methods of literature review are limited by the pre-existing set of relationships in place that define conventional content structures. For López there is merit in looking at these systems differently. Examples of engines are “proximity” and “cross-contextualization.” As theoretical objects, textual sources can be re-configured by changing their proximity by building new assemblages of information. Drawing on the philosophical ideas of Gerald Bruns (1999), the focus is less on the ideas that information is comprised of broad, generalized notions, and more directed towards concept that it is in the particular, incidental, and specific textual moments that new insights can reside. In a somewhat similar way, Lopez adapts cross-contextualization from the ideas from Roger Schank’s (1999) work on complexity theory and emergence. Cross-contextualization involves appropriating and assimilating ‘chunks’ of content in a somewhat haphazard way as this transforms them it into new configurations that offer an alternative interpretation to the original. It is these visual forms that become part of narrative structures that emerge from inquiry.

Extract from Art Practice as Research, Chapter 7, Visualizing Practices, p. 206.

Artist’s website: www.artebunker.blogspot.com