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The language of practice, research and the artefact
Loughborough University, England <jacsaorsa@hotmail.com> |
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This paper is based on my PhD research project, which addresses the question of whether and how drawing practice can be used as a method with which to explore and interpret ordinary verbal interaction. The project is significant as regards the theme of this conference in that drawings, 'artefacts' in the sense of their being the tangible result of art practice, are a crucial and indeed integral part of the research process. The project is derived from a profound philosophical concern as to the nature of the relation between our meaningful engagement with the art object, and our inherent predicament as human beings in a social world. The philosophical aim is to offer an explication of this relation through understanding. Philosophy therefore provides a 'frame of reference' (Williams and May 1996) for the research, while drawing practice and social science methodology constitute the vehicle and the process. The exploration, primarily carried out in visual terms, seeks to demonstrate through a visual interpretation of verbal interaction, that drawing practice can be an effective research tool, and furthermore, that drawings themselves facilitate a communication that goes beyond conventional language. The rationale for the research rests on the assumption that the art object is ambiguous in its communicative character, relying on the viewer's subjective interpretation within a dialogical relationship. The aesthetic experience can be considered therefore, more communicative of meaning than conventional language. Based on the further assumption that casual conversation; the most direct form of linguistic communication, finds its visual equivalent in drawing; the most direct form of making a mark, the research procedure is defined by a synthesis of philosophy, art practice and social science methodology. It is an exploratory process involving an initial visual analysis of a conversation through a series of drawings that are made in response to it, and further analyses of the drawings themselves, based on 'grammatical' similarities between the verbal and visual 'texts', using linguistic procedures. It is a circular, self- generating process, which constitutes a continuous analysis; the interpretation of one form of communication through another. This fundamentally interpretive orientation of the research strategy makes untenable any sharp distinction between quantitative and qualitative approaches, and the conclusions, following hermeneutic principals, focus more on emotion, meaning and interpretation in the context of drawing practice, than on cognitive research issues of artistry or perception. The process is described as hermeneutic, that is to say interpretive, primarily because of the fundamental orientation toward art practice as a basis for the exploration of meaning through interpretation, towards understanding; but also because of the adherence to the hermeneutic concern that there is no defensible subordination of image to word with respect to art works. Far from being an isolated and subjective phenomenon, the experience of art is considered here to be a profound dialogical achievement, at least relative to the kind of achievement that is definitive of a casual conversation. The visual analysis of a conversation through drawing practice, with a view to demonstrating how the interpretative skills necessarily involved in the understanding of one are in many ways equal to those needed for the understanding of the other, is therefore the core concern of the research. Research Strategy The research strategy itself is indebted to the principals of grounded theory, and advances through inductive reasoning from quantitative procedures, which provide a basis for analysis, to more qualitative methods that include a final pragmatic analysis of viewers' responses to drawings. Visual phenomena that appear in the drawings are interpreted initially through quantitative analyses, revealing patterning and equivalences that are subsequently analysed through more qualitative, linguistic procedures. These in turn reveal the link between the drawing and conversation through the relational patterning of dialogic phenomena. There are four specific disciplinary areas, all equally influential, which are important to take into consideration with regard to the overall context. The first three, the academic (incorporating the primary methodological procedure), the artistic and the philosophical, together constitute an integrative approach ensuring a fluid relationship characterised by a methodological circularity. This convergence, based on a 'cross-fertilization' of disciplines, (Deleuze and Guattari 1999) is defined by, at the same time as being definitive of, the fourth disciplinary area essential to the overall context, that of drawing practice. The idea of a relation between disciplines, interpreted as a synthesis, is profoundly influential as regards the research strategy. Deleuze and Guattari argue that an idea understood from a philosophical perspective can be taken up by science or art and analysed accordingly through specific processes: the concept as such can be the concept of the affect just as the affect can be the affect of the concept.
Their beautifully conceived metaphor for the progression of thought, which describes perfectly the link between the three approaches of art practice, scientific method and philosophy as they are used in this research, is a 'rhizome'. Proposed as an alternative to the concept of knowledge as a 'tree', the rhizome emphasizes the connection between different areas of thought, not as a logically developing structure from the ground up but as a 'subterranean stem', on a level, diverse and complex in its being. It is in its generality and an infinite potentiality for growth that the rhizome embodies a conceptual synthesis and thus denies the absolute. Accordingly, there is no attempt in this project to define in absolute and concrete terms, the relationship between artwork and language, or indeed between viewer and artwork. The primary aim is to explore and demonstrate the effectiveness of the art object as a crucial element in a research procedure that remains inductive and non-hierarchical in its structure, dependent in equal part on all aspects of the process. Language and the Visual Language creates the link between the subjective self and the objective world and is therefore a manifestation of our existential 'being-in-the-world'. Consequently, language maintains a more 'performative role' (Merleau-Ponty, 1962) than a descriptive one; thus the concept of language as a practice. Dialogue, in the form of conversation, is a clear example of this concept, and in the present research it is conceived as a paradigm for all forms of interaction, linguistic or not, within context of interrelations. The 'textual' characteristics of dialogue are equated with the visual elements in a drawing in both a structural and philosophical sense, such that in the philosophical context the relation between the word and its semantic field is considered analogous to the relation between the object and its visual horizon. A profound relationship between linguistic dialogue and visual art is taken as a basis from which to explore further the nature of the two practices with regard to how the drawing activity and its results may be used to deepen our understanding of what it means to 'be-in-the-world'. Drawings are not the objects but the subjects of the research and, as 'artefacts' derived from a practice that is in itself an interpretation of the primary text (the original conversation) it is difficult to consider them as distinct from the research methodology as a whole in terms of process. This paper will demonstrate through an explanation of the methodology relating to one of the three 'cases' analysed, how these artefacts can and do contribute to the research procedure in ways that go beyond the mere illustration of a concept. Methodology: overview Following a grounded theory approach, different methods used in sequence were equally crucial in terms of the analysis as a whole, and in application, each method formed a basis upon which another built and developed the process. The value of an individual method was judged in terms of its applicability to a methodological synthesis derived from the hermeneutic, philosophical basis of the research. Specific methods that were used are listed below in the same order that they were applied to the data, however the reader must always bear in mind the inherent flexibility of the process as a whole. (Given the theme of this paper, the research procedure is explained here only in general terms and focuses on the methods that were primarily oriented toward the visual analysis. For further detailed explication and discussion of the methodological approach, the reader is referred to the final thesis.)
The research was not so much practice-based as it was contextualised in practice, acknowledging and embracing the circularity of a process that could not easily be differentiated from the artwork itself. It was also acknowledged however, that the practice element could not constitute the research entirely and that some kind of written documentation and evaluation of the project as a whole would be necessary. This was in accordance with the inherent assumption underlying the methodological approach that writing - especially academic writing - while constrained within the limitations of conventional language can only convey meaning, whereas drawing – both practice and result - actually embodies meaning in a very profound way. The results of the analyses written up in conventional terms were therefore understood to provide only tentative conclusions as to the nature of the relationship between the drawing and the conversation, and were always 'interpreted' in conjunction with the body of artworks for the final thesis. Procedure: from linguistic to visual The identifiable stages of the procedure began with the initial recording and transcription of casual conversations and the making of the preliminary drawings. These drawings were created as an intuitive response to the primary data and were analysed quantitatively with respect to content. A 'mapping' process whereby the analysis was mapped onto the originals generated further drawings as the analysis continued through a methodological progression from quantitative to qualitative approaches within a linguistic framework. The drawings simultaneously indicated and constituted the process, in a way that a written description of their content could not. It is important to stress at this point that although the drawing activity was 'research-oriented' all of the principal drawings for this project were done in the same manner and with the same aesthetic sensitivity as similar work done outside of the research context. It was crucial for the continuation of the process that this was so. Primary data consisted of seventeen complete conversations recorded onto audiotape. They were numbered chronologically, documented by date, context, and participants, and each had a working title. They were, in conversation analysis terms, reproductions of a determinate social event. Written transcripts were made of the recordings, and annotated according to the system devised by Gail Jefferson for conversation analysis (Hutchby and Wooffitt 1998: vi-vii). Drawings made rapidly in a sketchbook related to the primary data initially through an intuitive response to the sound of the conversation, and then from more developed ideas about the structure of the dialogue, as established through the transcripts. These constituted both a representation and an initial interpretation of the data and were the first stage of a thinking process that led to further drawings. Five audio recordings were eventually chosen and worked up into separate, large-scale drawings, which were again very much based on an intuitive response to the audio but bore relation to the smaller versions in the sketchbook. These drawings embodied the initial development of the drawing process even before any structured analysis began. For example, during the execution of Drawing 2, (based on an initial sketchbook drawing response to a fragment of the conversation recorded onto Tape 8), it became apparent that its development as an individual piece in its own right was very important. The larger scale allowed for a more complex artistic response to the audiotape. The repeated 'workings over', and more physically emphatic mark making accorded with a response to the intonation and the rhythm of the sound; erasures and overdrawing created more areas of pentimenti and complex layering of forms than were apparent in the smaller work, allowing greater scope for an in-depth analysis of the drawing. All the drawings were executed using a limited range of media in order to make their production as simple and spontaneous as possible without going so far as to actually compromise artistic independence or integrity. This facilitated a focus on their actual content, in the form of marks. Initially executed with charcoal they were worked into with graphite and, in some instances, with ink. Colour was rarely used although some drawings incorporated red ink linework, and pure ochre pigment was used to bring out specific features. The larger drawings were documented photographically at various stages of completion. The choice of the set of drawings relating to the recording on Tape 8 as the first case to be considered for further analysis was a primarily subjective decision, based on aesthetic preference but also with a view to the proposed exploration in terms of the structural character of these visual texts. The further decision to concentrate only on Drawing 2 and the relevant sketchbook drawing was taken with the intention of refining the analysis and producing clearer results. The intuitive now gave over to the more analytical part of the process, which involved specific procedures derived from both qualitative and quantitative approaches, used and adapted for the purpose of interpreting the relationship between the drawings and the conversation. The application of a series of different procedures in a methodological sequence was seen as the best way of achieving the kind of robust interpretation required. This was however, never simply a case of haphazardly plucking methods out of the ether and applying them arbitrarily; it was a more considered process that worked towards an integrated approach – a synthesis of method. Content Analysis The first direct methodological approach in the analytic process was the application of a classic content analysis to the visual texts. Focusing exclusively on the compositional modality of the image, this type of analysis conducts a scrutiny in a fundamentally empirical manner without taking into consideration what the image does or how it is used. It proceeds through a quantitative analysis of the respective drawings, identifying expressive content and areas of colour. At this preliminary stage, the analysis was limited to the visual aspect of Drawing 2 and its sketchbook equivalent, and entailed a comparison of their respective structural composition. The intention was to reveal the superficial structural patterning - the 'grammar' of the drawing - which could subsequently be compared with linguistic structure. In this way, the content analysis provided a sound foundation for further work. During the analysis of each drawing, elements were categorised and grouped into sets of visual phenomena. Patterning and equivalences inherent in each individual drawing, and between the two, were revealed. The criterion of selection that led to the definition of the initial categories was based on the concept of compositional interpretation and the classification of marks (Rose 2001) and three initial word lists describing three different coding agendas; linear, shape/volume and spatial organization, were devised. There was initially no rationale behind the ordering of the descriptive terms or categories in these lists; they were simply devised in a spontaneous way according to the characteristics defined by the three main categories. It became obvious however, even while writing them that they would have to be drastically reduced and refined in order for the analysis to be both clear and comprehensive. It was very important at this stage to avoid 'over-coding', where too many categories are used in an analysis and the results become over-complex and fail to bear out any valid interpretation. The categories therefore had to be well defined and unambiguous in order to ensure a profoundly empirical analysis of what could be seen in the drawing, as opposed to a more qualitative interpretation that would incorporate aspects of meaning outside the content of the image itself. The lists were assessed and revised. Categories that were overtly qualitative, ambiguous or subsumable by other categories were ruled out. For example, 'connection' and 'interconnection' in linear coding were not mutually exclusive and only a single category, 'connecting lines', was therefore required. However, the category 'straight lines', having numerous properties; vertical, horizontal, oblique, etc., had to be expanded into several different categories that took these different phenomena into account. Under shape/volume coding, terms such as 'angular', 'distorted', 'convex', 'concave', 'smooth', and 'rough' were of little analytic use, either because of their lack of exclusivity regarding particular phenomenon, or because of their qualitative association. Shape categories, square, triangle etc., lacked the specificity required to achieve as comprehensive an analysis as possible and had to be adapted to accommodate shapes which were termed 'open' or 'closed'. After this trial and error process of elimination, revised lists were completed and used to begin a thorough analysis of the two visual texts. Results of the analyses were documented to show the relationship between the two drawings in quantitative terms. Graphs were used to highlight more clearly the similarities and differences in the patterning of the visual phenomena. A graph has a self-contained visual effect, and ongoing work experimented with the overlaying of this graphic, interpretative material onto the original drawings. Such work produced further development of the drawings and constituted an initial response to the perceived inadequacies of a quantitative analysis. It was later abandoned however; as it did not prove to be a useful exercise as regards the analysis as a whole. The application of a content analysis to the original drawings proved ultimately to be an extremely difficult, very hit-and-miss procedure because of their complexity, especially in the large piece. The nuances of tone and line quality, the complex layering of the marks, everything that characterized the expressiveness of execution and embodied the element of 'artistry' and innovation, inhibited an analysis that was to focus on content alone. It was decided therefore that a linear simplification of the drawings, made on a trace over the original, would be the most appropriate way to proceed. Ten further drawings were subsequently made in this way in order to simplify the procedure. These trace drawings provided the level of clarity and definition of specific phenomena that the originals could not. They constituted 'transcripts' from which the 'grammar' of the drawing could be analysed and quantified. They became redundant in the course of the analysis as other drawings took more significance in the process, but this did not mitigate their importance at the time of making. Spatial Organisation Despite efforts to ensure an accurate content analysis, it was impossible to ignore the fact that quantification alone could not address the reality of the drawings as complete visual interpretations, not conducive to being fully described by a list of their constituent parts. It became clear that the evidence produced through this kind of analysis had no direct reference to the original material, and therefore failed to provide a viable basis for evaluation. Given the visual nature of the subject of analysis, in order to produce data that could be easily compared and contrasted as well as maintaining the integrity of the procedure, some kind of analysis, in visual terms, of the drawing as a whole was necessary. A solution to this problem was found in a diagrammatic schema that demonstrated the spatial organisation of the original drawing. A visual code was devised, based on simplified symbol shapes that corresponded to the phenomenon they were to describe. Wherever the different visual elements occurred in the original drawings the equivalent visual coding element was drawn onto a schematized 'map' of their contents, and patterning was in this way easily located, described, documented, and compared. This code, and its method of application, was designed with a view to it being easily transferable to other visual data; but specifically in the case of Tape 8, the exercise established three main areas of shape and linear phenomena in both drawings: 1 - connecting and interconnecting linework that defined both open and closed rectangles, dominating the left hand side 2 - a predominance of ovoid shape groupings on the right hand side 3 - open and closed triangular and quadrangular shape groupings in the centre. A quantitative analysis visualised in this way produced a truer interpretation of the visual text and offered a more credible basis for further qualitative analysis. From Visual to Linguistic Stage two of the analytic process of this research entailed reworking the 'texts' (drawings and transcripts) based on the results of the first stage. In the case of Tape 8, this involved the production of Drawing 14, the final, or 'terminal text' in the series. This drawing related to the original conversation more profoundly than did any other because it incorporated all previous responses, both creative and analytic. It was dependent upon these responses for its existence, but it was also independent of them in its existence. As such, it had a vital role in the continuation of the dialogue that characterised the research process, both before and after its creation. A basic assumption underlying the research as a whole is that interpretation leads toward understanding and consequently, progressive interpretation leads to deeper understanding. Therefore, it is from an initial quantitative interpretation of structural relations that meaning begins to be encountered. The development of the series of drawings in the course of the analysis of Tape 8 demonstrated the process in visual terms. The second stage of the analysis was based on a 'synchronic reading' (Egger 1996) and incorporated a linguistic-syntactic analysis of both the written transcript and Drawing 14. It built on the results of the content analysis such that the further development of a meaningful relation between content and form, in and between the transcript and the drawing, was in part derived from its being constitutive of a progressive interpretation and understanding of both. Linguistic methodology was clearly the most pertinent way to directly address the relationship between the two 'texts', in intratextual, intertextual and extratextual terms, and in terms of communicative capacity. Linguistic analysis crosses the boundary between qualitative and quantitative research, and the specific focus on language was easily adaptable to both verbal and visual modes of expression. The introduction of linguistic methods, still within the limitations of a quantitative approach, was therefore intended to provide a 'grammatical' methodology that would operate at a deeper level than the previous analysis and would pave the way for further investigation relative to the philosophical basis of the research. Linguistic Syntactic Analysis of Drawing 14 Having completed a detailed structural analysis of the written text, attention was turned to a parallel analysis of Drawing 14, initially through a semiotic approach in the context of linguistic-syntactic methodology. An interpretation operating on the level of a semiotic analysis can offer a description that goes beyond a purely quantitative approach in that the concept of the sign can be understood in terms of the sign itself, but also in terms of the meaning relationships to which the sign refers. Therefore, although the analysis of the visual text was in part a development from the basis of the previous content analysis, and emphasised the structural elements in the drawing in order to maintain a quantitative character to the procedure, it was conducted in a way that was analogous to the analysis of the written transcript. The findings built on those of the content analysis, while developing them at the same time through a comparison with linguistic equivalences, and in this way, the analysis of the visual text began to move beyond simple structure. The principal emphasis was on the expansion of the enquiry towards an eventual focus on the visual text as the primary vehicle. The analysis had to demonstrate therefore that the visual text had the capacity for meaning outside of itself, through cross genre relations. A significant quote from Course in General Linguistics (Saussure 1959) raises a seemingly obvious, nevertheless pertinent point, which was incorporated into the rationale of this research, The linguistic signal, being auditory in nature, has a temporal aspect, and hence certain temporal characteristics: (a) it occupies a certain temporal space, and (b) this space is measured in just one dimension: it is a line.
The analysis of Drawing 14 proceeded from a close visual inspection, a 'reading' of the grammatical structure of the visual text. This begins with an initial spontaneous description of the drawing as exemplified in the following copy of the transcript made from a recording of the author's description of Drawing 14. There is no law that can guarantee one 'true' description of a visual text, just as there is never only one 'true' meaning of a text. There are no unquestionably right or wrong answers, only different 'readings'. Descriptions, even of structural character, are by their nature necessarily interpretative. It is acknowledged that the implications of working with this particular reading, where the author is here interpreting her own work, entail the reflexive nature in general of this research. These implications are taken into account where the subject is discussed in detail in the chapter on Reflexivity in the final thesis and the reader is referred to this for further information. For now, suffice to say that successful interpretation, according to Rose (2001:4), 'depends on a passionate engagement with what you see'. This analysis procedure was based on the idea of methodological framework disciplining, not destroying that 'passion' both in the creation and in the interpretation of the visual text. The later stages of the analysis as a whole, which adopted a pragmatic approach that focussed on the effect that Drawing 14 had on different viewers, took this issue fully into account. General Description of Drawing 14 - Order Out of Chaos Drawing 14 is of portrait dimensions, 900mm x 1400mm. It was executed on trace by combining a trace of Drawing 10, (which is itself a combined trace of Drawings 3 and 4), with a trace of Drawing 2. Drawing 10 was placed over Drawing 2, centre left. The two most visually important elements in the drawing, as defined in the previous content analysis are the block forms and the ovoid forms. Block forms, both open and closed, dominate the left side of the drawing. Ovoid forms of varying sizes dominate the right side and the centre The block forms create a definite 'construction line' similar to a brickwork effect which descends the sheet, defining the parameters of the left side of the drawing. The centre of the drawing is more intricate and complex than the surrounding area and the block forms appear again here, at a smaller scale but in similar formation. The right side of the drawing is less defined and there are empty areas between the ovoid forms. Jagged linear forms descend from left to right down the sheet intersecting with the ovoid forms. These lines are stronger and more evident towards the centre of the drawing. Straight lines descending diagonally from left to right connect and dissect the ovoid forms. Fewer straight lines descend diagonally from right to left and they occur mainly in the lower half of the drawing. Amorphic shapes and lines are evenly distributed throughout the drawing. They are smaller and more complex in the centre than on the edges. Colour in the drawing appears in linear networks, drawn with red ink, and also and in less defined areas where red ochre pigment has been used. The red linework occurs in both areas of the block forms highlighting the 'construction line', and the pigment 'fills in' and defines the block forms on the left side of the drawing between the first and the sixth block. Pigmentation occurs also in the centre of the drawing, in a small area between the ovoid forms. Black charcoal shading is also apparent in areas defined by the ovoid forms. The above description is an example of what Rose calls 'compositional interpretation'. It looks at images for what they are rather than for what they do or how they are used, and in this sense it retained the more useful aspects of a content analysis while being parallel to a linguistic-syntactic analysis of the written text. This kind of analysis provided the basis for further visual analyses, all of which relied in the first instance on a detailed description of the image. It also provided a bridge between an exploration of the surface structure of the visual text, and a more developed analysis that included the relation between the initial data and the aspects of meaning, content and reception related to the deeper structure of both the texts. As Rose (2001:52) notes: in its concern for the spatial organisation of an image, moreover, compositional interpretation may also begin to say something about an image's possible effects on a spectator.
The following more detailed description of the visual text was derived from the initial interpretation, and was specifically oriented toward a semiotic analysis of the visual text, in order to maintain the analogous relationship to the analysis of the written transcript and move further toward the qualitative development of the process. Detailed Visual Analysis of Drawing 14 Block Forms There are eight easily definable areas of block forms down the left side of the drawing. These correspond with eight areas of block forms in the centre of the drawing. The central blocks begin at the level of the second block on the left and end at the level of the seventh. In both areas, the blocks are multiple forms and vary between ruler drawn and hand drawn. The vertical and horizontal lines that construct them are of varying lengths and incorporate many breaks. These lines do create a framework, a 'scaffolding', for the whole drawing as they relate to the vertical and horizontal lines that are distributed overall, echoing the block forms in the two specific areas. The red linework is specific to the two areas of block forms, occurring nowhere else in the drawing. It differs in character between the two areas. In the central area, it is broken and lacks any noticeable continuum, whereas on the left side of the drawing it forms a continuous 'brickwork' presence between the first and the fifth block. Thereafter it is broken, as in the centre. Ovoid Forms Each ovoid form is a multiple, consisting of many separate ovoids overlapping each other. These overlap in turn to create six areas, or 'collections', of ovoid forms. The largest of these collections consists of eight overlapping ovoids that descend in size order like a spiral from the largest, in the centre of the drawing, to the smallest, which is situated just right of centre further down the sheet. The collections of ovoid forms are situated mainly in the centre, and towards the right side of the drawing, however, left of centre and between the two areas of block forms, three ovoid forms in descending size order are distributed one above the other. The largest of these is situated at the level of the first block in the centre area and the smallest at the level of the third block in the centre. Triangular Forms There are open triangular forms evenly distributed over the drawing. They either are a deliberate statement or are 'accidentally' constructed by the intersection and connections created by other linework. There are four prominent examples of the deliberate addition of these forms. Two are situated at the top of the drawing on the left side, and two much larger forms at the bottom of the drawing towards the right side. All four of these triangular forms are positioned 'apex up' in the drawing. 'Accidental' Constructions Other 'accidental' constructions create a geometric web which is evident over the whole drawing, but is much more complex due to the increased proximity of lies and forms in the centre right part of the drawing. This is the area that incorporates the trace of Drawing 10. Semiotic Analysis of Drawing 14 A semiotic analysis, based on linguistic-syntactic categories, expanded on the previous exploration of the surface structure of the visual text through a content analysis, and ascertained the structural relations present intratextually in both the written transcript of Tape 8 and Drawing 14. It was carried out with a view to determining how the structures of the two different texts related intertextually. Analyses of the transcript and the drawing were first carried out separately, and the results were considered with regard to the correspondences in structural character that were definitive of the relations between them. Saussure's focus on the linguistic character of signs was easily adaptable to the visual, where Drawing 14 was considered a text in its own right. The visual 'language' was equivalent to a written text in terms of the relation between form and content, and in terms of its communicative role. In such an analysis syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations (see below) between elements in a text, build up the surface and the deeper structure respectively. Surface structure exists at the level of syntax and words in the written text, and in the essentials of form in the visual text. The deeper structure reveals underlying meanings in both. Syntagmatic Relations As in content analysis where the concept of coding is central, similarly in semiotic analysis the structure of the text is manifested through coding. The text as a whole is conceived as a complex sign, built up by other signs that first need to be identified before codes can be established within which the signs have meaning. In semiotic terms, the elements of a text are signs; they are syntagms in the form of a word or phrase in the transcript, or an ovoid, for example, in the drawing. Syntagms in the usual linguistic sense are often defined as sequential and are in this sense temporal as in speech or music, but they can also represent spatial relationships in visual texts such as Drawing 14. The relations in the text between individual elements, such as that between a verb and its subject or between an ovoid and a diagonal line, are syntagmatic relations. They provide the structural forms through which signs are organised into codes and therefore define the context from within which the signs make sense. Syntagmatic relations therefore refer intratextually, determining the actual positioning of signs present in the text, and also to the possibilities of combination. The description of Drawing 14 identified key visual elements as the ovoid and block forms, the triangular forms, the amorphic forms and the linework. This interpretation was borne out by the previous content analysis and these elements, in semiotic terms visual syntagms, were therefore shown to be the most important in terms of the structural character of Drawing 14 with respect to coding. For example, the ovoid form and the straight diagonal lines were understood to be primary syntagms and a visual examination of the spatial relations between these two forms revealed that every ovoid form in Drawing 14 was intersected by a straight diagonal line descending left to right. This relation was understood as a simple code. The following summary, based on the description of Drawing 14, was used to explore the syntagmatic relations between the key elements.
A specific relationship in syntagmatic terms, especially pertinent to the research, is that between two mutually exclusive signifiers; a question and an answer for example in the transcript, a block form and an ovoid form in Drawing 14. This relationship, called a 'binary opposition', serves to define the 'universe of the discourse' – a semiotic term used to describe coding parameters. It was particularly useful in this case because of its adaptability to both written and visual interpretation. It became clear in the course of the semiotic analysis of drawing 14 that the dialogic relationship between the block forms and the ovoid forms, facilitated by the linework, was characteristic of a binary opposition between signs, and therefore delineated the universe of the discourse in visual terms. The linework formed the 'anchorage'; element to which all other elements are related, and the framework, or 'schema', through which cohesions and coherences in the surface structure of the text were manifest. Paradigmatic Relations Although Drawing 14 is specifically related to the conversation recorded on Tape 8, it evolved, as does every drawing, over space and time in a way that is relative to the temporal evolution of a conversation in general. Drawing 14 went through many stages of development and was meaningful therefore, even in this sense alone, beyond its structural characteristics. It became clear that a quantitatively oriented analysis, which coded content and spatial organisation through syntagmatic relations alone, could not facilitate a comprehensive interpretation of such a complex visual text. What it did provide was the necessary basis from which to proceed with the enquiry and move towards an understanding of the meaningful concepts to which it refers; those that are further defined by the paradigmatic relations between elements in the drawing. Paradigms refer to the set of signifiers to which the individual sign, or syntagm, belongs. A verb or a noun belongs to the paradigm set of verbs or nouns, and in the same way an ovoid form in Drawing 14 would belong to a paradigm set of loose rounded forms. A block form would belong to a paradigm set of ruled line angular forms and a straight diagonal line would belong to a paradigm set of straight lines. Relations between individual syntagms provide the initial surface structure of the text and are inherently intratextual. Paradigmatic relations underlie and are therefore dependent on syntagmatic relations, but go further towards a comprehensive concept of meaning in that they are inherently intertextual. They refer outside of themselves and therefore the relations between the corresponding paradigm sets in both the written and the visual text provided the deeper structural context to the analysis that related to both the textual actualities and possibilities. Most importantly in the context of the research procedure at this stage, paradigmatic relations can refer to functional contrasts through their capacity to facilitate what is called 'pronominal reference'. This is the reference by a sign to its relative function in a separate text, based on the concept of substitution that entails how a sign could be, or how it was. In this case, signs related outside the primary text, Drawing 14, and corresponded with paradigmatic relations between the elements of form in the written text. Just as each word in the written transcript belonged to a paradigm set of verbs, nouns etc. so each block form in the visual text belonged to the paradigm set of four sided line angular forms. In this way, paradigmatic relations created a second-level structure that determined the patterning of the relationships revealed in the surface structure of both texts and thus provided an element of contiguity that could be interpreted as temporal within the transcript and spatial within the drawing. The analysis through syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations in this way crossed the spatial/ temporal boundary and enabled a genuine cross genre coding procedure. The paradigm sets to which the key visual elements in drawing 14 belong are listed below.
The Meaning Gap The concept of coding introduced by the content analysis was thus revised in the light of the linguistic syntactic descriptions of the texts, and adapted in order to remain coherent with a semiotic approach. The key visual forms and the coding parameters that they defined remained the same but were refined and developed according to the more inclusive analytical stance. The analysis of syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations enabled a more in depth 'de-coding' of both the written and visual texts and led to a deeper understanding of structural relations in both intratextual and intertextual terms. This in turn moved the research process further towards a comprehensive analysis of meaningful relations between the two. It should be noted at this point however that the concept of intertextual meaning, although related, is still distinct from the concept of meaning within either text. This second level of meaning was the focus of a further semantic analysis of both texts, and a final pragmatic analysis, focusing on the visual text only. To summarise, the linguistic-syntactic analysis of Drawing 14, including the semiotic and the semantic analysis, established a fundamental connection between the visual phenomena and their linguistic complements. Semantic analysis built on the previous linguistic methods and focused on structure to locate the meaning of the text within the text itself and pragmatic analysis focused externally from the text, on its intended meaning. The development seemed at first to be well balanced but during the process of the research, there arose an interesting problem that had not been foreseen. In between the semantic and the pragmatic analyses there remained a 'meaning gap', an interpretative vacuum between the internal and external signification of the text. Conversation Analysis, the methodological approach to the interpretation of how meaning is constructed through dialogue that first provided the initial formative framework for the project as a whole, now became an important bridging element in the process. Although still structural in character, Conversation Analysis is concerned with both semantic and pragmatic aspects of the text and the relation between them, that is, the way that the meanings involved in understanding, which are necessarily subjective, adhere at the same time to a more objective general understanding so that dialogue is possible. This type of analysis was therefore fundamental to the research given the premise that the way participants in a conversation orient themselves toward meaning in the transaction relates to the way the viewer orients herself to a drawing. The understanding arrived at in the process of a conversation is here understood as being coherent with the understanding that is arrived at, over time, as a viewer looks at a drawing. The only difference between the viewer and the participant is in the level of subjectivity involved in the response. The viewer's response is necessarily more subjective due to her independence of an agreed structure, but in either case there is a definite dialogical relationship going on, which is characterised by interaction, between participant and participant or between viewer and drawing. Significantly, with regard to the philosophical basis of the research, this dialogical relationship was understood as being based on a profound relationship that the participant or the viewer has with herself. Dialogical relationships in any form require some recourse to the self, however limited, which is instrumental in achieving the understanding arrived at within the process of the relationship and, as the individual subjectivity of the participant provides the basis from which understanding is derived, it is from her own subjective meaning structure that she infers and constructs further meaning. Therefore, during the pragmatic analysis in a dialogue with the Drawings related to Tape 8, the viewer had the potential to go beyond the immediate relation, and experience through her understanding of the piece a more fundamental understanding of herself. This is the point at which the philosophical context of the research was addressed most directly through the process, and at which the practical element – the drawing activity – was clearly a crucially integrated part of that process. Linguistic to Visual: pragmatic analysis It is clear that the linguistic-syntactic analysis, based on the previous content analysis, provided a detailed explication of the surface structure of the two texts under consideration. Drawing 14 was thus validated as a 'text' that maintained a meaningful relationship, derived from structural cohesions and coherences, with the written transcript. In this way, the drawing was shown to be much more than an idiosyncratic, purely 'artistic' interpretation of the primary data. Semantic analysis and conversation analysis further developed the analytic process by allowing a more qualitative approach to the data, which entailed a more inclusive concept of meaning. The pragmatic analysis differed from the previous methods in one crucial sense. Formalised approaches tend to be concerned with stable social variables and reflect social relations through a primary focus on how language use is systematically constrained by context. Such approaches maintain a static position on language. Pragmatics, on the other hand, starts from the assumption that people have varied reasons for using a particular form of language or for choosing one grammatical form over another, and focuses on how language is used in a way that changes or maintains social relationships. It is dynamic in that it acknowledges that different rationales suggest language use is not merely a reflection of social and contextual variables, and is therefore not a static phenomenon. Most importantly, pragmatics is not about meaning as such, it is about the making of meaning. It is about analysing the way people negotiate meaning in interaction. Meaning, by its very nature, is 'fuzzy' in comparison to direct and undisputable fact. However, based on the assumption that meaning can be explained and expressed through drawing practice, this exploration of a methodological compatibility between quantitative and qualitative approaches in order to carry out a comprehensive investigation was intended to demonstrate that despite its vagaries, meaning is as important as fact in terms of how we interpret and understand our situation. Pragmatic analysis, although taking a probabilistic stance and operating on a level of linguistic description that is separate from the levels of syntax, semantics or discourse analysis in general, is still prone to overlap and is 'parasitic' in this sense. It uses the more formal approaches as its point of departure, a basis on which to build, and was therefore ideally suited to the methodological circularity that provided the basis for this research. Drawing 14, a visual 'transcription' of the original conversation, incorporated in its structural composition relations analogous to those inherent in the linguistic referent. However, it is through meaning, negotiated between the viewer and the drawing in a 'dialogue' that is analogous to a linguistic transaction, but which operates on a far greater number of levels, that the potential of drawing practice as an analytical and communicational tool is realised. A pragmatic analysis, a crucially significant stage in the research procedure, constituted the final methodological approach, and the results were analysed and correlated with the basic premises that characterised the philosophical context of the research as a whole. As in the content analysis, the pragmatic analysis concentrated solely on the visual texts, but in line with conversation analysis the investigation was specifically oriented toward the dialogical relationship between the drawings and the viewer. The analysis constituted an inquiry into the effect that the drawings had on the viewer, in terms of how the viewer was interpreting them in order to achieve a meaningful understanding. It was very important to demonstrate how the relationship between the viewer and the drawings changed as the meaningful associations that derived from the temporal experience of looking became more complex. The pragmatic analysis in application was the key to methodological synthesis characterised by the hermeneutic circularity that was the fundamental basis for the project as a whole. In relation to Tape 8, it proceeded by way of an investigation into the responses of different viewers, in different circumstances, to Drawings 2, 3, 4, 10, and 14. Respectively, these drawings were the original large-scale intuitive response to Tape 8, two 'fragments' of 2, which focused specifically on the key forms, simplification (trace) drawings of Drawings 3 and 4, and Drawing 14. In the first instance, a group of four viewers, the 'spontaneous group', were shown the drawings and their conversation was recorded and transcribed. This group had no previous knowledge of the drawings or the nature of the research project and were required only to voice their responses to the drawings as pieces of artwork. They were informed as to where and how each drawing was related to the other in practical terms but beyond that they knew nothing of how the drawings originated. For the second part of the analysis, four different viewers were shown, individually, the same set of drawings and their responses were recorded. This time the conversation was not so much a spontaneous reaction as it was guided by a series of open questions. Interviews were conducted on a one-to-one basis with the author and were not time-limited. This second group, for the sake of a better term, was called the 'control group'. The intention behind its inclusion was to allow for a comparative analysis of the findings from both groups, in order to balance the investigation and to demonstrate that the relation between viewer and art object was inherently personal and subjective, involving the construction of meaning on an individual basis irrespective of the circumstances. Questions put to the control group were informed by the results of the previous research, by the original research question and by the general formative influences on the research as a whole. They were intended to be open, and free of any technical or philosophical jargon, in order to allow the greatest freedom of response for the viewer. Two couples made up the spontaneous group. Their conversation lasted approximately twenty-five minutes and came to a natural end. The recorded conversation was systematically analysed through the practice called, in grounded theory terminology, 'open coding'. This type of analysis involves a close and detailed reading of the text before a variety of techniques is employed in order to reveal key concepts that are subsequently refined and revised into themes. Themes are abstract, often vague constructs, which can be identified before, during or after data collection. They arise from the literature that underpins the research process, from the characteristics of the phenomena, from accepted norms or value constructs, and also from the researcher's theoretical orientation and personal experience with the subject matter. After the initial sorting and categorizing of the data, the process culminated in the identification of thirteen specific themes. These were derived from the key words actually used by the participants in response to the drawings. As for the content analysis, the initial list of themes was revised and refined and the subsequent qualitative identification of two, more inclusive themes, 'Face' and 'Machine', along with their sub-categories, was arrived at on the basis of the quantitative findings of the word frequency count. Established through an in-depth study of the interpretative dialogue in relation to the elements in the drawings, these key themes were found to refer to specific forms and groupings of forms in the drawings. Once the key themes had been decided upon, a separate line count of the transcript was taken and their incidence in the text was recorded on the basis of their frequency. It was found that the key theme 'Face' and its sub-themes occurred with almost twice the frequency of the other key theme 'Machine'. Based on the proposition that the interpretive responses to a 'Face', which entailed a level of personification, led to greater emotional identification than to a 'Machine' it was therefore concluded from this primarily quantitative evidence that the viewers were more emotionally involved with the drawings than they were emotionally detached. This conclusion was also borne out qualitatively, as evidenced in the structure of the conversation, which demonstrated that the emphasis moved from the 'Machine' theme on to the 'Face' theme as the dialogue continued. Where emotion is understood as being referent to the degree of positive or negative emotional involvement with the drawings, this shift in the character of the relationship the viewers had with the drawings was a crucial factor for the purposes of the research. It demonstrated increasing emotional identification and involvement with the drawing, such that interpretation was clearly shown to be a route through meaning toward understanding and emotional stability. Furthermore, it showed that understanding itself is not a static phenomenon, but something that is developed over time, as when a viewer orients herself emotionally toward a drawing. Emotion, inseparable from the temporal experience of viewing the drawing, was therefore a crucial factor in the 'dialogue' between viewer and the art object. It constituted a third, very important theme that, although not directly derivative of word frequency, was nevertheless manifest through the process by which the viewers were moving towards meaningful understandings in relation to both the drawings and to themselves. Conclusions In every methodological approach to the visual text during the initial stages of the research process, the key elements proved to be the same specific forms in the drawing. These corresponded to the narrative structure of the original conversation and thereby constituted the relationship between the visual and the verbal texts. These themes were identified again in the pragmatic investigation where the results of analysis with the spontaneous group validated the initial findings; their emotional involvement was invariably derived from their perception and responses to the relationships between the key forms. Despite the lack of opportunity for discussion, which for the spontaneous group did bring out important feelings and associations that were expanded upon and developed through dialogue, the individuals in the control group maintained the specific focus through their interpretative responses to the drawings. The pragmatic approach therefore developed the intratextual and intertextual relations between the texts and began to explore the extratextual aspects of the visual data through a focus on the dynamic effect of the drawings themselves, with little regard to their origin. It is at this point that the individual drawings became palimpsests, 'texts' which effaced older versions, and the conclusions drawn from this latter stage of the research point towards the capacity of drawing practice in itself to be a useful analytical tool with applications beyond the realm of fine art. Returning to the main objective of this paper, which is to demonstrate the crucial role of 'artefacts', in the research procedure, it is clear from the above that the drawings were very much a part of the process as a whole and contributed far more than the illustration of a concept. Both conversation and drawing practice were understood in this research as forms of communication intimately linked through meaning and, as meaning and interpretation are inherent in the correlation between the verbal and the visual, the practical and theoretical elements involved in the investigative process of the research were mutually dependent. The synthesis that characterised the process was fundamentally based in the actual concept that it was exploring, but the circularity of the research procedure did not mitigate its importance in terms of its capacity to generate new ways of thinking about both practice and its results. The drawings, tangible results of practice, were shown to facilitate a profound form of communication that went beyond conventional language, and can therefore be understood as dialogical phenomena that both derive from and embody the emotional and intuitive reasoning that is at the very heart of linguistic reasoning. Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge my gratitude and appreciation for the financial support and general encouragement that I have received from both Loughborough University and the Universidad Veritas throughout this project References Deleuze, G., F. Guattari 1999. A thousand plateaus, capitalism and schizophrenia. The Athlone Press London. Saussure (de), F. 1959. Course in General Linguistics. Duckworth. Egger, W. 1996. How to Read the New Testament. Hendrikson. Hutchby, I., R. Wooffitt 1998. Conversation Analysis: Principles, practices and analysis, Polity Press, Blackwell Publishers Ltd. Merleau-Ponty, M. 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge London NY. Rose, G. 2001. Visual Methodologies. Sage Publications. |
to cite this journal article: Saorsa, J. (2004) The language of practice, research and the artefact. Working Papers in Art and Design 3 Retrieved <date> from URL http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research/ papers/wpades/ vol3/jsfull.html ISSN 1466-4917 |
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