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The more art, the more science: narrative interpretations of art (and life)
University of East London, UK <solveigh_goett@hotmail.com> |
volume 5 contents
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abstract ° full paper | |
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Narrative as a way of making sense of the world is as old as humanity, story telling a time-honoured method in the toolbox of tacit knowledge. While narrative as an inherently human mode of constructing and communicating meaning might well have, through gesture and image, preceded language in the history of humanity, as a method of scholarly research it has been a fairly recent addition to the methodologies of the human sciences.
Findings from the neurosciences suggest that thinking itself is a process of narrative interpretation, a fabrication in search of coherence rather than rational reasoning. Narrative research, Mark Freeman (2007) argues, as a more personal, involved and subjective approach might be more scientifically valid than research conducted from a detached perspective through abstraction and generalization - hence the paradox 'the more art, the more science.' This paper considers, in words and images, through samples and examples, how narrative methods and models might foster connections beyond perceived differences and open up new perspectives for practice-based research, 'a form of inquiry that helps understand the uniquely human process of making meaning' engaging with 'experience as it is lived, felt, reconstructed, reinterpreted, and understood' (Sullivan 2005). Drawing on her own textile-based research interwoven with narrative threads from other fields, the author explores story lines in the fabric of life and art. Whether artists embroider the truth, mend the fabric of life or tear it apart, cut threads or weave webs, narrative might open up new perspectives on interpreting intentions, processes and outcomes that link everyday tacit knowledge to intellectual discourse and the singularity of each artefact and life story to the universality of human concerns and practices. |
to cite this journal article: Goett, S. (2008) The more art, the more science: narrative interpretations of art (and life). Working Papers in Art and Design 5 Retrieved <date> from <URL> ISSN 1466-4917 |
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