By El Priest and Hanna Randall
In April, the SHL hosted a PhD Spring Symposium on experimental, interactive and playful research methodologies, which was organised by El Priest and Hanna Randall. The day was full of workshops, papers, and art marking. We had art materials freely available on the table for attendees to use as and when they liked; aiming to engender a sense of freedom, playfulness and creativity.
The day started with El’s paper and workshop on queer archiving and zine making. The paper focused on alternative epistemology and knowledges produced through queer methods of history making. Participants were encouraged to consider their own experiences and relationships as a source for emotionally engaged history making, to the end of producing a more community-informed account of the past. The zine making workshop and free use of the art materials helped attendees relax and make connections with one another in a creative environment.
We enjoyed a paper from Anthony Trory who discussed his research project on designing interactive prototypes to use as the materials in school-based learning science experiments. Anthony’s research aims to improve understanding of how a designer can optimise a child’s progression from concrete to abstract using the theory of ‘concreteness fading’. Put more simply, he’s been developing a pirate-themed augmented reality iPad app that teaches primary school children how the internet works. We also enjoyed a paper from Ross McKendrick on psychogeography and the city as archive. Beginning with a research methodology rooted in an understanding of the city as an archive, and following Michael Sorkin’s conceptualisation of architecture as a ‘legible’ form, Ross thinks about how to conduct a ‘counter-archival’ practice in the city. By documenting uses of the city not prescribed by original planning ideals, the counter-archive can become a democratic tool which community stakeholders can utilise and contribute to as they see appropriate.
After lunch, Rich Thornton and Effie Makepeace led us through a theatre/drama workshop that was designed to introduce participants to the idea of theatre as a participatory and creative research method through a series of non-threatening, practical and fun games, exercises and discussion. We engaged with tools adapted from Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, such as Image Theatre, as way to demonstrate their potential through gentle practical discovery. We also paid attention to the queer and decolonial potential of prioritising knowledge which emerges from the body and how this might feed into other quantitative and qualitative methods.
To end the day, artists Leonie Rousham and Ishwari Bhalerao facilitated a workshop on making prints using DIY photo developers using plants like calendula, cow parsley, hawthorn, willow and dandelion. Each participant’s print was intended to be their unique device to imagine/reflect upon/reframe their own relationship to time. These prints, made on photographic paper, change how they look over time, depending on their exposure to light. In the SHL garden, we discussed plants like Calendula, Dandelion, Willow, Hawthorn and Cow Parsley which have their own unique relationships to time, their medicinal properties, folklore and other fun facts. For example, calendula derives from the word ‘calen’ meaning ‘first day of the month’ as it blooms in every month of the year, and the willow tree, which grows near the water, shape shifts according to tidal bodies of water, the moon and our bodies. The above-mentioned plants contain phenols, which gives them the ability to react with photo-paper when mixed with a few other things. After choosing some plants to work with, participants made their own photo-developer and used the plants to draw and make marks to create photo prints which doubles up as a time telling/travelling/defining/defying device.
The day allowed people from different disciplines, universities and creative practices to meet, discuss and have fun. We focused on centring the playful and creative in research practice in order to create an enjoyable and accessible environment for people to share their ideas. The event was hugely successful and lots of new friends, ideas and art pieces were made!
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