Week 15: 24th – 30th December
When I first applied to do the PhD, I submitted a proposal, 1000 words outlining the plan for my research and how that related to my practice. Just a few short months later, and my initial question seems to have expanded and contracted in so many different ways already.
The reading, thinking about and making art, has had such a profound impact on my ideas and how I make sense of the work I’d made previously as well. The last few weeks in particular have shed a lot of light on how I might define my research question. This means that, although forcing myself to constantly question everything had initially caused some difficulties in producing work, I now feel more confident that I can justify the work I’m creating.
Defining my question
The usual practice in defining a research question is to first construct a literature review, in order to collate previous information on the topic in question, as well as identifying any gaps in documented knowledge. However, as my course also includes a practical element, I decided to undertake a similar exercise with artist books that had a ritual element, as I felt that would better help me to explain the work I was trying to produce.
Online resources
I had previously looked into the artist book resources in the University Special Collections, but at the time had been unable to put my finger on exactly what I was looking for. So decided to do some research online, in the first instance, and came across the Center for Book Arts, an amazing resource of book artists and their work.
However, this now presented a dilemma. All research needs to be referenced in a way that readers can find the original source. This means that, although online resources are readily available, there is some speculation as to the credibility and permanence of the source. As one might expect, some of the links I clicked on within the Center for Book Arts archive for artists personal sites were no longer valid, so I decided to look more into the academic viewpoint on citing information from websites.
Referencing sources
One of the most important things about referencing is consistency, so, as the standard referencing system for the arts is MHRA, this was my focus. Thankfully, there is lots of information about how to structure citations using online sources, and the main issue seems to be around citing personal opinion from blogs as fact.
However, given that the information about the work is provided by the maker, I’ll be looking into treating it as a mix of primary and secondary research, depending on whether or not they include their own influences. Now, comes the arduous (but exciting) task of collating the artists that I think fit with my ideas and hopefully then I can get in touch with them to find out more information about their work, after the necessary ethics training, of course.
