Background

Aims and Objectives | Questions and Issues | Research Context | Methodology

LEARNING IS UNDERSTANDING IN PRACTICE: EXPLORING THE INTERRELATIONS BETWEEN PERCEPTION, CREATIVITY AND SKILL

This project combines approaches from art and anthropology to examine the relation between perception, creativity, innovation and skill, through study of the knowledge practices of fine art. The research explores the potential of a practice-based approach to teaching and learning.

Aims and Objectives

Both art and anthropology may be considered as ways of exploring how the knowledge that people have of the world around them is generated, organised and transferred. The project aims to bring both disciplines together in order to forge an integrated approach to such an exploration. The fundamental premise of this approach is that knowing, along with perceiving, learning, remembering and imagining, is a social activity that goes on within the context of people's mutual involvement in a richly structured environment. In the project we aim to develop the approach by way of a study of the knowledge practices of fine art.

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Questions and Issues

What can be learned from the practice of making? How does making art enrich pedagogy? How are artists' skills learned or acquired? Can an artist be educated? How might an artist who has been educated be distinguished from one that has not? How does knowledge gained through art practice relate to other forms of knowledge? Why are these different forms of knowledge regarded by the public as more or less authoritative or trustworthy?

Considering the relations, in fine art between knowledge production and creative practice, we address these questions by focusing on the following issues:

• Knowledge and its application within fine art practice
• Modalities of practice in contexts of learning
• The management of knowledge and skill in art education
• The communication and use of fine art knowledge and skills

Running through these issues is the broader question of how information transmitted through formal instruction relates to the skill that learners develop through their own practical experiments. Skill is often understood as the mere application of knowledge. This implies, however, that knowledge is transmitted in a disembodied, context-free form – that is, as information – independently and in advance of its application in specific contexts of practice. Our approach overturns this view. We take skill to consist in the embodied capacities of action and perception that people develop throughout life in the course of their practical activities. In the sense, we argue, skill is the very ground of knowledge, and not merely its application. Nevertheless the relation between skill and information remains problematic. We intend that our research will shed light on this relation, in the specific case of fine art practice.

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Research Context

As a collaborative venture between researchers in art and anthropology, this project is entirely novel. Up to now, most anthropological work in the field of art has treated visual culture as an object of investigation, yielding an anthropology of art (Coote and Sheldon 1992, Gell 1998). Our approach, by contrast, regards art as an investigative and exploratory practice, on a par with the practice of anthropology. Thus our aim is to exploit the synergy between art and anthropology as practices of exploration. The synergy, in short, lies not so much in the products of art and anthropology, as in their ways of working.

Though novel in fine art and social anthropology, our approach resonates with that of well-established currents of research in ecological psychology and in science and technology studies (STS). Influenced by James Gibson's (1979) pioneering work on visual perception, ecological psychologists have shown how the development of perceptual skills – or what Gibson calls 'the education of attention' – takes place within the contexts of perceivers' direct, practical engagement with their surroundings. This has been paralleled, in STS, with the approach to knowledge as grounded in environmentally situated actions, developed in particular by Lucy Suchman (1987). Building on this work, the sociologist of science David Turnbull has explored the relation between local knowledge and comparative scientific traditions, in a way that could have direct parallels for our investigation of how locally developed, skilled practices relate to broader traditions of fine art (Turnbull 1993). These studies pose fundamental questions about meaning and the role of knowledge, that are as applicable in the field of fine art as they are in natural science. Importantly, cross–cultural and comparative inquiries into the conditions of artistic and scientific cultures and social practices can suggest new ways of looking at environmental perception and understandings of nature (Ingold 2000), the politics of objectification (Harvey 1998), the connections between persons, technologies and places (Harvey, Green and Agar 2000), and the relation between 'local' and 'global' knowledge (Strathern 1995).

The institutional context for the project is set by an innovative partnership between the School of Fine Art in the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee, and the Department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen. The School of Fine Art at Dundee is committed to forming links with selected departments to extend the scope and range of teaching and research (including an undergraduate pathway with aesthetics specialists in the Department of Philosophy, University of Dundee, and a postgraduate programme in Fine Art Photography with the Department of Art History at the University of St. Andrews). At the University of Aberdeen, the Programme in Anthropology was initiated with Ingold's appointment to a newly established Chair in 1999. The following year saw the establishment of the Aberdeen Research and Graduate Programme in Social Anthropology, Ethnology and Cultural History. With its links to the University's Marischal Museum, research on material culture and practices of visual representation forms an important component of the Programme. In October 2003 an inaugural lecture and colloquia programme celebrated the founding of the Department of Anthropology.

A core research team comprises

• Prof. Murdo Macdonald, Professor of History of Scottish Art, University of Dundee.
• Prof. Tim Ingold, Professor of Anthropology, Head of Department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen.
• Arthur Watson, Head of Graduate Studies, School of Fine Art, University of Dundee.
• Mary Modeen, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, School of Fine Art, University of Dundee.
• Dr. Wendy Gunn, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Fine Art, University of Dundee.
• Two PhD research students, Ray Lucas and Sandra McNeil, based respectively in Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen and in Fine Art at the University of Dundee.

Members of the team share common interests in transformations of artists' knowledge and skill, technologies of information, communication and management of skill/knowledge within a creative process, and situating visual skills within a cross-cultural perspective.

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Methodology

An integrative framework of theory and concepts for analysing ethnographic material concerning the interface between art and anthropology has been developed through a series of lectures (Ingold 2003¹, Gunn 2003²) interdisciplinary workshops/seminars³ and collaborative hands-on training workshops for PhD research students. This programme has established a network of links with researchers from fine art, anthropology, architecture, history, sociology and education, working in academic institutions, centres of art, design and communications and industry both in the UK and abroad. The workshop 'Ways of doing and landscapes of making' (Arbroath 2003)⁴ and 'Making, Finding and Responding to Places' (Lumsden 2003, Glasgow 2003 and Lumsden 2003)⁵ provided a forum for dialogue through doing. Linking theory with practice, individual methodologies and research questions have been developed by respective members of the research team. Independent advice has been sought from the project's advisory board, which involves Dr. Suzanne Kuechler (Anthropologist, University College London), James Hugonin (Painter) and David Nash (Sculptor). This critical input has been a valuable source of ongoing evaluation with respect to the project's original aims and objectives.

Two PhD researchers, Ray Lucas and Sandra McNeil, were recruited in October 2002. In addition to attracting interest from an increasing number of potential PhD and post-doctoral candidates in fine art, anthropology, architecture and art history, the project has employed a research assistant. Suzanne Holland has seventeen years' management experience alongside an undergraduate degree in design and masters in fine art photography. Holland has provided invaluable assistance in day-to-day administrative tasks. In addition, her photographic skills and interest in recording the project activities within different learning environments is generating an excellent photographic and digital archive. The resource is not only proving beneficial for members of the research team in bringing together image and text towards publications and a final exhibition; it has also created interest amongst staff members working within the art school.

Data from the lecture, seminar and workshop programme have provided a learning resource for the PhD researchers working on the project. Ethnographic materials have helped maintain a level of continuity between research team members as they pursue their individual investigations. Following a year of collaborative working, the research team members will pursue their inquiries relatively independently but in parallel.

Ingold, Gunn and Lucas are currently establishing a comparative study of the knowledge practices of fine artists, anthropologists and architects working with masters students in Fine Art (University of Dundee), Anthropology (University of Aberdeen) and Architecture (University of Strathclyde). This work parallels McNeil's PhD research, studying undergraduate fine art studio learning experience with the help of Watson, Modeen and other members of staff. Further context of the team's investigations is provided for by Professor Macdonald's research interest in interdisciplinarity within Scottish art school education and its links with the Scottish educational tradition of democratic intellectualism.

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1. Professor Tim Ingold delivered the Rhind Lectures for 2003 'Lines from the past: towards an anthropological archaeology of inscriptive practices.' The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland endows this annual series of six lectures.
   
   
2. Dr. Gunn presented a paper at the Common-Place Seminar (2003) at The Lighthouse, Glasgow entitled, ' Responding to an environment: descriptions and processes of describing.'
   
   
3. Dr. Gunn received an Innovation award (2002) from The Lighthouse, Scotland's Centre for Architecture, Design and the City, to develop a lecture/workshop series working with Ingold and Snøhetta Architecture and Landscape, Norway. The project was supported by The Scottish Executive, The Royal Norwegian Consulate General, Edinburgh, Scott Sutherland School of Architecture, Aberdeenshire Towns Partnership and The Scottish Art Council's National Lottery Advancement Programme.
   
   
4. Hospitalfield workshop, 'Ways of doing: landscapes of making' attracted scholars and doctoral research students from universities and colleges of fine art in the UK. The interdisciplinary meeting involved presentations by artists, anthropologists, historians and architects. A transcript of the workshop is currently being prepared for publication.
   
   
5. The aim of Dr. Gunn's architectural residency at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop was to establish an interdisciplinary foundation, across the four fields of art, architecture, anthropology and archaeology, for an investigation of what is meant by a sense of place.