Unit 4 VISUAL CULTURAL RESEARCH

Visual cultural research provides context, depth and inspiration for creative practice. Your art or design project is still the primary research output, however, visual cultural research plays a vital role in supporting that practice. 

CONTEXT Artists and designers swim in the waters of culture. All art and design practices arise from a context which includes the broader culture, the artist/designer’s background, training and personal life, the time period, the social, political and economic context. So it’s no surprise that our cultural production is formed by what is happening in the cultural moment. 

Our creative output also enters into conversation with this cultural context. The work’s meaning depends on how it employs signs within that context. The work becomes part of a broader cultural conversation and part of a specific disciplinary conversation. Doing research allows you to see where your work fits in these contexts. Conversations have to include both speaking and listening. Research is one of the ways we listen in the cultural conversation.

DEPTH Visual cultural research helps you to develop depth and nuance in your creative research (your art/design project). If you don’t have a strong understanding of the issue that you are exploring in your creative research then you risk treating it in a cliche or superficial way.

For example, if your art project about climate change is based on a very superficial or inaccurate understanding of climate change it is unlikely that your project will be successful in terms of social impact or artistic merit. This doesn’t mean that you have to become a climate scientist to do an art project on climate change. But it does mean that you need to respect and acknowledge the conversation happening in the field in order to be able to contribute in an informed way.

In other disciplines you might do a literature review before you commence a project. A literature review surveys the published research by recognized scholars relating to their particular research question to find out what’s known about the topic and what needs to be addressed still. In this course your Artist Influences, Bibliography and Exhibition Reviews serve as a kind of informal lit review, helping you see what’s been done and what areas still need to be explored.

INSPIRATION Visual cultural research is just downright inspiring! As Tharp covered in her chapter “Scratching,” visual cultural research is an important way that we create the right conditions for inspiration to strike us. Whether you are looking at the ways that an artist uses a specific material, or how an artist creates the experience of movement in a drawing or how a designer uses design thinking to tackle an environmental problem, visual cultural research ignites our imaginations.