As the session closes, the presenters turn up the sound on the three monitors. The tide has reached the rock’s high-water mark. Fog has almost obscured the sailboat. The moon has risen high above the cove, its path across the water illuminating every ripple.
– Do you want to check and see that I’m not obstructing the view? – You couldn’t possibly be obstructing the view.
– Yeah. There you are, every bit of you. (All three laugh.) – We can rearrange the shot if we want to.
– I like that Bill Viola thing of just sitting and watching something do what it does. (A rather long pause)
– And now we are mute.
– We do what we do. (Laughter again.)
– We don’t often quiet down, so (becomes formal as if speaking to audience) I hope you enjoyed that moment of silence.
“Tak-a-tuk-a-ta-dim? Tak-a-dim-tuk-a-dim.”
About the Authors
The (1+1+1) Collective originated at Acadia University in 1998 when three women,
who then worked together in the school of education, said, “Let’s make a video!” In spite of the distresses and dilemmas of life, and the distances that now separate us, we continue to revel in the joy of “the electricity of ideas loose in the air,” and to indulge our desire that the world should be so much more than the narrow slivers that most of us are offered. We use a group name to challenge unquestioned assumption within scholarly publishing; namely, that collaboration necessarily entails a “lead” or “head” researcher. We list our names in alphabetical order. Our decisions are made by consensus and, when consensus proves difficult or impos- sible, we use a chance operation. The (1+1+1) Collective are Miriam Cooley, associate professor of Art Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta; Michelle Forrest, associate professor of Philosophy of Education at Mount Saint Vincent University; and Linda Wheeldon, lecturer in Foundations and Counseling Education at Acadia University.
Questions
1. The authors write that research involves the following: “The pleasure of creative experience is the exhilaration of play, the electricity of ideas loose in the air—the illusive, fragmentary capturing of image and sound on magnetic particles, revealed in pixilated moments of light.” How does this notion of research requirements compare with what you have read about research in the past?
2. How do the images and resonances of time, space, and physical geography and their impact on knowledge creation in this chapter compare with those in Piquemal and Allen’s chapter (Chapter 9)? Do you find these arguments have resonance with your own approach to research? 3. Is research also an artistic creation, not owned by anyone, the product of
all research which came before it and leading to all research after it? How does this notion of research “fit” with academic guidelines and the rules of copyright?
4. How might Ockham’s axiom “it is vain to do with more what might be done with fewer” relate to research with human subjects?
5. The “nominal three” is an image which seems to recur in research. More than any other number, it appears, researchers “find” three categories, or report on a trinity of conclusions. How does this reflect your own notions of research? What is it about the nominal three that makes it so appealing?
Notes
1 For more on John Cage, see Perloff & Junkerman (1994).
2 Bryan Magee (1998) says of William of Ockham (1285–1347): “He believed there was necessity in logic but not in the natural order of things. In nature even unbroken regularities are contingent; they need not have happened. We cannot reach knowledge of the world purely through logical argument or speculation; we have to look and see how things are. Ockham opened the path to empiricism, the path we think of as ‘scientific.’ The principle of Ockham’s razor: of two alternative explanations for the same phenomena, the more complicated is likely to have something wrong with it and therefore, other things being equal, the more simple is the more likely to be correct. Therefore in working out an explanation we should assume the minimum we need to assume. Entities should not be posited unnecessarily.” The qualifier “other things being equal” is crucial here. “Einstein hit the point brilliantly when he said: ‘Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler’” (p. 61).
3 Flew (1979) explains that Ockham first drew from Aureolus’ concept of ficta, that is, of entities with only intentional being, but later rejected this in favor of Walter Chatton’s identification of universals with the acts of understanding themselves (p. 374).
4 Feyerabend goes on to say: “It is just such an ‘unprejudiced’ way of learning that a field study is supposed to achieve. Returning from the field study to his own conception in his own language, such as English, an anthropologist often realizes that a direct translation has become impossible” (pp. 272–273).
5 Sir Sandford Fleming: born Fife, Scotland 1827, died Halifax, Canada 1915, pioneer, surveyor, inventor, railway engineer and originator of standard time.
6 We were struck cold using chance operations to create “Ockham’s Razor: (1) (1+1) (1+1+1)” when Swissair Flight 111 crashed into the sea seconds from our local place of collaboration.
7 In her liner notes to The Zen Kiss, Chandra writes that in the Speaking in Tongues pieces “I’m breaking up patterns and throwing you off the beat, being as mad and chaotic as possible, yet I’m also keeping you hooked using the psychology of the rhythm. I have started to build in other percussive elements … anything that will get you to question the nature of these percussive syllables rather than accepting them because you think they’re traditional. . . . It’s a very playful process to chop up rhythms and stick them back together. It’s almost like giving a voice to the chatter that goes on in your mind.”
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