Working out a coding/frame method: Cut Up and IPA

Realising that, in order to take the experiential sensed live art findings – held in the resultant intermodal poems from the three co-researched expressive arts groups – into a

108 way of forming a pedagogical framework, the poems needed to be coded. Coding, framing or reprocessing data almost seemed like a form of divination. Should it be a fixed measure through which to filter, classify and concretise notions about data? Should the data

determine the coding as something emerging from its analysis? I did ponder on using NviVo, where themes are chosen and text filtered through these themes; however, as Glaser and Strauss (2008, p.101-3) state, ‘Coding all data first... can provisionally test a hypothesis’ but, in so doing, inhibits the formation of an emergent hypothesis through their ‘constant comparative method’. Glaser and Strauss’ (2008, p.101-3) statement best fits my intention to find emergent theory to support ASC intervention:

If the analyst wishes only to generate theoretical ideas – new categories and their properties, hypotheses and interrelated hypotheses – he cannot be confined to the practice of coding first and then analysing the data since, in generating theory, he is constantly redesigning and regenerating his theoretical notions as he reviews his material.

I chose first to pilot a comparative study using Burroughs and Tzara’s (1920) Cut Up techniques and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) (Smith 2009). I was concerned that these processes were either too free or too constraining. My search for coding analysis, or framing of the raw poetic data, led to my looking at ‘Analytic Bracketing’ that Denzin and Lincoln (2000, p.496) applied to the conventions of visual arts as a ‘contextually scenic and a contextually constructive picture’ – that is, of art as product and process. From what I understand of Denzin and Lincoln’s (2000) concept, analytic bracketing is the bracketing off any form of cognate aesthetic classification, and the subsequent attunement and acceptance of what is sensed in the artwork/poem without cognate filtering. This being so, the intermodal essence of the dance, visual representation and poetic free writing can channel the essence of the original creative act – which, in this case, was the ASC-made mask.

Analytic Bracketing amounts to an orienting procedure for alternatively focusing on the what’s, then the hows, of interpretive practice (or vice versa) in order to assemble a contextually scenic and a contextually constructive picture of everyday language in use. (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000, p.496)

109 Dadaist Tzara (1920) and Burroughs’ ‘cut up technique’ (Skerl, 1985, p.438), Smith et al.’s (2009) IPA and Sools’ (2015) ‘Storyline analysis’ were trialled as potential coding strategies. I rejected these in their fixed state format as models that either totally ignored, or became too reliant on, formal thematic discourse analysis that lost much of what was felt in the interpretation. However, I would revisit Smith et al.’s (2009) IPA and Sools’

(2015) ‘Storyline analysis’ (outlined in Diagram 2 p.111 and Table 2 p.112, which informs Diagram 12 ‘The Hexagram of Inclusion’ p.250. My conceptual framework, Chapter Six, 6.2 p.193-195, and revisited in my discussion in Chapter Eight, p.243-247) as a model for contextualising coding to signpost pedagogic models. An appropriate coding that heuristically accessed the ASC language of perception held in their artwork through ‘scapegoat transference’ had to engage with what was felt in the live art process.

Skerl (1985, p.438) describes William Burroughs’ ‘cut up’ technique:

‘Word and image locks’ control the mind, that is, ‘lock’ us into conventional patterns of perceiving, thinking, and speaking that determine our interactions with environment and society. The cutup is a way of exposing word and image controls and thus freeing oneself from them, an alteration of consciousness that occurs in both the writer and the reader of the text.

Burroughs’ ‘cut up technique’ explores avenues intrinsic in Eisner’s (1981, p.6) notions of

‘idiosyncratic use of form – visual and auditory form as well as discursive to convey the non-literal as well the ways of meaning the investigator wishes to express’ in art-based research (ABR) methods. In an attempt to form and concretise through non-positivistic, non-analytical ways to code the raw data from the Westcliff, Oxford and Kilkenny groups, I looked at both Burroughs’ and the Dadaist poet Tzara’s (1920, p.VIII) ‘cut up’ techniques.

TO MAKE A DADAIST POEM Take a newspaper.

Take some scissors.

Choose from this paper an article of the length you want to make your poem.

Cut out the article.

110 Next carefully cut out each of the words that makes up this article and put them all in a bag.

Shake gently.

Next take out each cutting one after the other.

Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.

The poem will resemble you.

And there you are – an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd. (Tzara, 1920, p.VIII)

IPA aims to ‘focus upon people’s experiences and/or understandings of particular phenomena’ (Smith et al., 2009, p.46). Central to IPA is the concept of the ‘double hermeneutic’ as a principle of interpretation. Smith et al. (2009, p.36) state that ‘the researcher is not the participant and he/she only has access through what the participants report about it, and is also seeing this through the researcher’s own, experientially-informed lens.’ In this research, the ASC participants’ experience is held in the art of the ASC-made mask. The multi or intermodal research tools of dance, drawing and poetics transfer this ASC experience from the mask into subsequent raw data held in the transcript of intermodal poetic responses. This informs fluid description and engagement with the transcript through aesthetic analysis as interpretative, phenomenological, experience. IPA suggests starting analysis through a thematic analysis and subsequent contextualising. A thematic analysis of the three groups’ poems for mask G brought up emergent themes, as illustrated in Diagram 2 and Table 2.

111 Diagram 2 Findings conducive to filtered, ‘I-It’, separatist, deductive analysis, top-down, impacted IPA thematic analysis processing.

 fear

 protection

 power

 community

 feeling

 inner

 escape

 empowered

 coexistence

 acceptance

Findings conducive to filtered, ‘I-It’, separatist, deductive analysis, top down, impacted IPA thematic analysis processing.

112 Table 2 Comparative table of lines of poetry from the three co-Research Groups compared using an IPA Thematic Analysis

Group Westcliff Oxford Kilkenny IPA

Theme

protect yourself protecting I am still alive protection

mask of the power evil getting bigger

and powerful

under a layer ignoring you feeling

feel these four

step by step further trapped I am not scared of you anymore

113 Table 2 took phrases from the three Westcliff, Oxford and Kilkenny research group

intermodal poems and sought themes through IPA methods, which, in their final stages, became a thematic analysis. I was unconvinced of this method’s validity as it overlaid a NT matrix onto the phenomenological living art experience. Seeking to contextualise these themes, I looked to the environment in which the original masks were made, namely the woodland. Bettelheim’s (1959) ideas of ASC and feral states and Abram’s (2010) ideas of wildness and civilisation are apparent in the themes. Furthermore, I look at these themes in context of the NT EF functioning filtered and deconstructive education models, asking how each of these themes might resonate with the two modes of being (sensate and filtered). For example, how does fear in the amygdala resonate in an impacting

deconstructive learning model and a nurturing child-centred learning environment?

3.8 Working out a coding/frame method using visual art and poetry in an intermodal