During this lesson, we were introduced to the idea of working on a portfolio; particularly through the process of practice-based research. Whilst being fairly new to the term ‘practice-based research’ I quickly came to the understanding that it was a process in which I was very familiar with; a process that I found myself engaged with often. Mark explained how lots of things can be a ‘topic’ or ‘site of research’. For example, performance, text/voice, an actual site or even the body can be topics of research.
Applying these concepts to my own practices made me realise that visiting churches for example was a form of practice-based research, talking within these spaces that I was visiting was a form of practice-based research. Ultimately, I realised that essentially becoming accustomed to a task or activity relevant to my interests was a form of research. Whilst this gave me comfort, that even doing little things counted as research, I find elements of practice-based research too passive personally. I don’t want to allow myself to fall into a cycle of researching passively just because it could be labelled ‘practice-based research’.
Towards the end of the lesson, Mark encouraged us to create a blog post about a key text and artwork that exists within our individual interests and relate it to our prototypes.
An artwork that feels very relevant to my practice is Bill Fontana’s ‘River Sounding’.
The work features audio recordings of the Thames that play alongside visual material within the usually closed-off spaces of Somerset House in London.’
‘River Sounding’ had a fairly profound impact on my practice when I first discovered it. It further opened my mind to the idea of re-contextualisation and whilst I was aware of this concept previously, it only seemed to click after I researched it. I loved the way in which the work communicated such a dense history of the Thames so accurately, sonically.
This made me think about my interests that I wanted to somehow be able to work into some sort of prototype for a project as part of my portfolio, and it made me think about the idea of re-contextualising the sonic characteristics of early Christian / Byzantine churches, specifically liturgical practice and how the evolving architecture of these spaces shaped liturgy and worship. I want to be able to confront contemporary artists about how they view their practice and how it is fundamentally (though not wholly) a progression from these changes in worship from early AD to the mid 1500’s.
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