Worthy of Gordius: The knotty problem of configuring creative practice as research.

Creative practice – critical or otherwise - in an academic context presents a problematic that delivers a contested space between the very nature of practice and the expectations of academe. I contend that creative practice is essentially ontological – perhaps pre-ontological - while the foundation and expectations of academic practices are epistemological.
Validating frameworks for academic practices are formed in regard for what Nietszche refers to as the ‘Western Knowledge Project’ - with the volition to ‘find, create or produce new knowledge (scientia)’ – ‘extend the body of knowledge’. The academic practice through which ‘knowledge’ is produced is ‘research’. The validating frameworks for research practices present a procrustean bed for creative practice; creative practices need to be shaped to ‘fit’ a bed designed for other forms. We, academics working in creative disciplines, are required to form, reform – or is it mal-form – practice, stretch or lop off bits of it - so that it may fit.
What kind of practice and/or what bits of practice we submit as research has been a question we have had to face in advancing research programmes in our discipline. What distinguishes a ‘research’ practice from a ‘professional’ practice has been an issue that we have had to think through in devising our educational offer – e.g. what distinguishes, for instance, a research degree from professional practice degree is a knotty issue we have taken a particular line on. We have also had to think through this ‘creative practice – research practice ‘problematic’ in how we build our own (individual or group) academic research programmes.
In this talk I will illustrate through example the different ways we have approached this ‘research problematic’ in our educational offer and, generally, in the divers research activity in the Design Department at Goldsmiths – different ways in which we have offered up our practices to the academic validity frameworks that set ‘ideal shape’ (sic) for ‘research’ in design.

Terry Rosenberg is Head of Design at Goldsmiths. He is a practising artist and design theorist. His research pivots around two thematic loci - namely, the ‘representation of ideas’ and ‘ideation through representation’. He is interested in how we model thought (the settled) and how we think (un- settled idea) in representational models. He regularly presents papers at conferences on these themes, has contributed chapters to books and has published books on drawing.
In addition, he is actively engaged in researching through designing things. He is the Project Leader on one of the research projects in a Leverhulme funded research programme (http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/media-research-programme/). The project titled the ‘Mediatised View’, is to design devices that enrich and engender experiences through re-mediation of public space, particularly addressed to London. The devices are ‘discursive objects’ engaging with, amongst other things, the performance of the spectral in mixed reality constructions and the effect of new technologies on the production of socio-cultural space.