What is a concept?

What is practice-led research?

Week 1
ADAD1002

Week 1
ADAD1002
(2016)
A Gateway group hard at work in 2015

Aims for Week 1

Introduction to the course, outline of assessments and
expectations;
Discussion around concepts what they are, how they
are engaged in art and design practice;
Introduction to practice-led research in art and design
as the dominant mode of contemporary professional
practice.

Athina Christie, a 2015 Gateway student, experimenting with code. In art and design, practice-led research refers really simply to
the way that a project can direct its maker towards new experiences and new knowledge.

What is a Concept?
A concept is an abstract idea or set of ideas.
Concepts are the basis of language: we think and speak in concepts
and according to our conceptual understanding of the world.
Concepts are integral to art and design practices: concepts drive the
development of work and the direction of a project. Thinking
conceptually about practice is important work emerges from
engagement with and relations between ideas.
We can say talk about
Earth, a planet in a solar
system and with a very
unique environment.
Earth, to disciplines like
science and geography,
is a specific, concrete
thing. On the other hand,
the world is a concept. It
is an abstraction that
includes the planet but
also includes history,
culture, economy, and so
on. Ayreen Anastas and
Rene Girards mapping
project Crisis of
Capitalism (right) can be
understood as a work
concerned with the world
as a key concept for
contemporary practice.

concepts have material effects

Concepts exist in the world: they
are heard, interpreted, translated,
acted on, mutated, silenced.
They dont exist just in as pure
abstractions.
This work by T (Andrew Brooks
and Kynan Tan, both A&D PhD
students), uses audio from
politicians about border security
and asylum seekers. The
speakers cause the discman to
skip and the audio to glitch,
creating a feedback loop of failed
slogans. The concepts so
central to politics are here
rendered inoperable, broken,
corruptible. Video here

Studio Exercise 1

The artist and teacher Paul Thek is famous for (among other things) giving his students a long
list of questions to answer as part of their art/design education. Part of the idea behind getting
the students to answer such questions was to get them to think conceptually about their
experience and practice. Below are some of the questions in the list. In small groups, choose
two or three questions, discuss them (considering the different ways they can be interpreted)
and then complete your own answers individually. Discuss as a group.
from Paul Theks Teaching Notes:
What is abstraction?
Redesign a rainbow.
What is the most beautiful thing in the world?
Design a black mass out of anuything you can find.
Design a work of art that fits in a matchbox, a shoebox.
Design a new clock face.
What is the purpose of art?
Make a skyscraper out of inappropriate materials.
Illustrate your strangeness.
What is a shaman?
What is leisure?
What is waste?
How can we humanise the city?

Paul Thek, Untitled (Two Figures). c.19745

practice-led research
We define practice-led
research as a mode of
research that takes making
as a way of working through
problems and generating new
ideas.
We discover and learn
through practice. It is in the
processes of making, erasing,
editing, playing and reflecting
that the answer (or a new
problem!) is revealed.
Practice-led research is way
of investigating concepts
through a variety of modes
and methods.

Students in a 2015 Gateway class learning circuitry together.

Staff profile: Pia Van Gelder

There are two things that drive my practice-led research. One is my community, and the other is
unsolved mysteries. My community is formed by Dorkbot, a regular event for people doing strange
things with electricity, where artists, musicians, engineers, programmers, scientists, gather to show
each other their independent projects. Through this group I learn about technological developments in
science, design and art and I have learnt how to make instruments like electronic synthesisers.
Predominantly, I have always been fascinated with electricity, where it comes from, what it does, and
how we understand it. Collaborations with other artists and scientists have lead me to experiment with
natural energetic phenomena, like brainwaves, wind, mist, telluric currents, and the electrical
conductivity of anything skin, vegetables, water.
My mother says that when I was 4, I walked around the house in a trench-coat with a magnifying glass
looking for clues. I announced that I wanted to be a detective. I didnt think much of this fascination
until I started doing my PhD, and I realised that I am a kind of detective!

My practice is led by my ongoing research into historical understandings of energy both scientific
and philosophical. And I am most excited by obscure and non-canonical stories. In order to
uncover and solve these mysteries, I find myself looking through historical archives of peoples
letters and personal diaries, in old private libraries. I even interview people.
All this research inspires me to share these uncovered narratives through performative work and
interactive installations that provide people with opportunities to contemplate these understandings
of energy. My most recent work, Relaxation Circuit (2015), re-enacts a historical bio-circuit,
invented by Leon Ernest Eeman in 1919. This circuit proposes to treat a variety of conditions
including anxiety and stress by simply connecting peoples bodies using wire and copper plates,
without any additional sources of power. Eeman proposed that these conditions were healed by
circulating the bodys own bio-energy. My reworking of his circuit has one addition, an electronic
bio-synthesiser. This synthesiser creates tones that are modulated by participants, sonifying the
bodys healing radiant powers.

Click on the image on the right to see a video about Pias

work Relaxation Circuit!

transdisciplinary practice
Transdisciplinary practice refers to modes of inquiry that move across, through,
down and up different disciplines or that do not have a home discipline.
Contemporary artists and designers are transdisciplinary because they need to be
responsive, adaptive and creative in the context of perpetually-shifting fields and
frames of reference.
UNSW Art & Design is dedicated to transdisciplinarity. You will be working in this
mode throughout the next four years.

A students Gateway work, 2015

Staff profile: Peter Blamey

Our very own Peter Blamey is a great example of a transdisciplinary artist. Peter works with
various materials (found objects, the body, circuitry, discarded electronics), systems,
environments and processes. His work is often subject to unknown or contingent forces: weather,
energy, humidity. His work sits somewhere between installation, performance, sound/noise art,
experimental music and other modes. Transdisciplinarity is interested in the relations and
resonances between different but connected materials and ideas. (Click on the photo for video!)

Studio Exercise 2
Sometimes, transdisciplinary practice means working in a way that is relevant to multiple fields: you
might work, for example, somewhere between sculpture and performance, or somewhere between
object and spatial design, or somewhere between poetry and architecture!
Other times, it means doing thing with people who have different skills and interests than you: you
might be a dancer who works with an animator; you might be a painter that works with a sound
artist.
And other times, it means working in a way thats different to what you normally do: you might be a
roboticist who decides to work with clay for a project. Or you might be an installation artist who
decides to work with textiles to see whats possible.
For this exercise, find something to work with thats unfamiliar to your practice. It could be your own
body, or language, or video. Try to make something out of that unfamiliar material or method and
document the results. What did you learn? How can you integrate what you learned into your
everyday practice?

what to bring to class this semester

Bring basic resources that you need in order to make things and test ideas (your
kit pencils, paper, fabric, plasticine, glue, string, scissors, etc.)
Laptops and phones are great for documentation and experimentation, but if you
rely on them too much to make things, youll miss out on developing lots of other
hands-on making skills.
You can use found objects. Going out of class to find things and sharing
resources are an important part of this course.
In 2014, students worked with
whatever materials where at
hand to make work that allowed
them to think through the
concept at hand.
They also decided to worked
together to bring snacks and
treats to class, so that their
experimentation was fuelled by
sugar!
Remember to come every week
with something to work with.
Preparation is key to getting to
the most out of the course.

For Next Week

Set up your Tumblr and post your results from todays exercise. If you are using the
same Tumblr as in Semester 1, make sure you post something that says: Hey! All
posts from here are for ADAD1002, S2 2016. That way your teacher will know whats
what.
Log onto Moodle and read through the outline carefully.
Read through the brief for Assessment 1 and choose a question.
Post something on Tumblr that relates to your research question.

A students punk fruit work from 2015!