Preliminary practice

The preliminary practice represents the first testing of the framework and consists of four projects that are described, and evaluated. A focus of the work in this preliminary iteration is to interrogate and rethink traits found within existing arts practice that are understood to embody attitudes and approaches of the prevailing model of thinking. In particular, it attempts to challenge

approaches that treat materials as a passive and subordinate resource, and also seeks to disrupt the related conception of the artist as a visionary creator. This new work seeks to embody and encourage an alternative way of thinking and acting that reduces the artist’s influence on the unfolding of work, that diminishes the artist’s imposition of form and control over materials, that foregrounds the inherent characteristics of materials and through doing so disturbs the idea of the artist as a visionary.

• Project one (51 Aqueous dispersals, 2006) explores how the artist, rather than imposing form upon a supposedly inert and passive substance, might have a relationship with materials which is fundamentally collaborative and reciprocal, one where it is the materials voice rather than the artists that is foregrounded.

• Project two (1 litre of soap solution inflated 129 times, 2006) further develops ideas about collaboration and reciprocity between materials and artist so that the inherent qualities within the materials used guide and dictate the unfolding of the artwork rather than the intentions of the artist.

• Project three (From Splashing to Solar stacking, 2006) investigates the idea that an artwork might be loosely orchestrated so that feedback from

the environment leads to the configuration of the work. In this instance the work explores how a liquid system responds to solar energy and as a consequence generates form. The sculpture that emerges from this can be understood as due not to the artist’s intentions or creativity but as a

consequence of a set of connective feedback processes, a fabric, that results in the generation form.

• Project four (Thread system generated by the sound of its own making, 2007) develops further the idea of an autonomous, self-organising artwork which unfolds in real-time, dissolving and reconfiguring itself in response to feedback from its environment.

All four of these preliminary projects explore the potential of setting up the artwork so that qualities immanent to the materials, their response to feedback from the environment, might act to ceaselessly configure, dissolve and

reconfigure the unfolding of the work. At the basis of these projects is an attitude that seeks to encourage the materials to speak to us, to foreground their immanent capabilities and to diminish and deny the artists imposition of form upon these. Pask’s idea of a fabric was a guiding metaphor for the

organisation of this work. It encouraged the work to be set up in ways that appeared loosely configured and indeterminate. The ambition in the work was to seek to set up the conditions for connections and relations with feedback from the environment and to allow this to be the configurer of the work. This approach contrasted with the existing artworks, the starting point for the work, which embodied attitudes that conceived materials as inert and passive and in need of the artist’s hand to orchestrate these and give them form. The resulting projects explore how setting up the artwork so that the material might talk back

might lead to a kind of making that encourages an empathetic knowing usually denied by approaches that perceive matter as inert, passive and chaotic and awaiting ordering.

Work made during this first iteration of practice was exhibited widely and presented at conferences, seminars and workshops. The dissemination of the work through exhibition gave a critical context for study which was productive and significant as feedback gained through this process helped the evaluation and reflection upon the framework. An observation was that the kind of tacit knowledge gained through the making of the artwork was quite different that gained during its exhibition. For example, throughout the experience of making, I was deeply aware of the qualitative difference between the approach of the new work and that of the existing art that I was reconfiguring. However, the method used for the artworks exhibition often embodied an approach that was consistent with, rather than challenging to the typical and normative display of artworks. In the process of displaying the new work the critical reference points and translation of earlier approaches and attitudes were sometimes lost. This identified that a necessary modification to the process aesthetic should be to apply it across all stages of the production and

dissemination of the new work. The findings of this process formed the basis of papers presented at conference and published as catalogues. The

presentation of the work at symposia allowed the critical dialogue between new and existing work to be foregrounded and as such became a crucial part of all subsequent practice. A comparative review of insights gained from these projects and the findings from the other strands led to the development and

adaption of the framework, which was applied during the second iteration of new practice.