artcasting: reflections on inventive digital evaluation
TRANSCRIPT
Artcasting: reflections on inventive digital evaluation
Jen Ross
Jeremy Knox
Chris Speed
Claire Sowton
Chris Barker
Digital Education & Design Informatics, University of Edinburgh
S Boulton, for the Northern Echo -http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/14110057.Bowes_Museum_trials_new_app_designed_to_change_the_way_visitors_view_art/
ARTIST ROOMS
avoid the urge to think of the museum experience as a linear process, cleanly divisible into contextual chunks. Above all else and like life itself, the museum experience takes many twists and turns and defies easy pigeon-holing. All of the contexts overlap and merge; in many ways the visitor experience is more circular than linear. (Falk & Dierking 2013, pp.17–8)
[I]t’s this thing of how long is a piece of string. If you want to measure a piece of string you need to know what it is that you’re going to tie up with it. And the problem is nobody knows what it is they’re measuring in the cultural sector. So the string is just a dysfunctional length - artcasting interviewee
I think you always have to ask yourself, what is the point of this? If it’s just literally something to put in a drawer we don’t need 50 pages. How can we do this in a sensible manner? … a lot of the time these reports get produced and they get put in drawers and I really have no idea what happens to them. - artcasting interviewee
“I’ve sworn I will never, ever answer a questionnaire ever again in my life… it just interrupts the experience of the event…” – artcasting interviewee
“I think when it’s something that feels more creative and kind of participatory it doesn’t feel like evaluation” –artcasting interviewee
research questions
• How does offering visitors a way to align their impressions of the ROOM with specific places help them articulate their engagement with the work?
• How can a mobilities approach which asks visitors to make connections between art and place constitute meaningful evaluation practice?
Self-portrait (1980)
In the car (1963)
The lines of music represent the roads and distance of our travel home. The notes are the sounds of the music playing and the way we talk to one another. The colours and patterns are the interesting things we discuss.
Composition 1 (1996) Artwork by workshop participant
artcasts as digital resources
Wall Explosion IIRoy Lichtenstein (1965)
‘I think Ronaldo is an explosive football player’
Reflections on CrashRoy Lichtenstein (1990)
‘This artwork reminds me of a treehouse my brother and I built one summer, in the woods by our house. Ramshackle and held together with string and rope, we were convinced it was the best house ever built! It crashed to the ground within an hour of completion.’
evaluating artcasts
In a climate dominated by the language of targets, outcomes,
outputs, and delivery, using the creative arts can generate
insight from different ways of knowing and bring us closer to
capturing and understanding the evaluation’s story.
(Simons & McCormack 2007, p.295)
a fruitful arts impact research agenda… is not confined to the
demands of an instrumental rationality: [it takes] a critical
approach that aims at an open enquiry of the problems, both
theoretical and methodological, which are inherent in the
project of understanding the response of individuals to the arts
and trying to investigate empirically the extent and nature of
the effects of the aesthetic experience. (Belfiore & Bennett
2010)
"I think people mistake the character of line for the character of art. But it’s really the position of the line that’s important, or the position of anything, any contrast, not the character of it." – Lichtenstein, http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/diagram-artist-roy-lichtenstein
gallerydemographictracerouteappimaginativedashboardreencountered
artcasting routes…
re-encounters push future engagement outwards, beyond the boundaries of the institution. The orientation is not one of encouraging visitors in, but extending the reaches of exhibition outwards, into new times and spaces.
The exhibition is re-enacted in the geofenced location. But also these locations themselves are re-constituted as spaces of the gallery: people walk into the geofence and perform the role of exhibition visitor; the work reappears in a way that produces the location as ‘exhibition space’. Location becominggallery, gallery becoming location(s).
Arts Council England Quality Principles: excellence, authenticity, excitement, child-centredness, interactivity, personalisation, ownership
inventive methods are ‘methods or means by which the social world is not only investigated, but may also be engaged…. the knowledge of change they permit need not be limited to ascertaining what is going on now or predicting what will go on soon, but may rather be a matter of configuring what comes next.’ (Lury & Wakeford 2012, p.6)
Belfiore, E. & Bennett, O., 2010. Beyond the “Toolkit Approach”: arts impact evaluation research and the realities of cultural policy-making. Journal for cultural research, 14(2), pp.121–142.
Falk, J.H. & Dierking, L.D., 2013. The Museum Experience Revisited, Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.
Lury, C. & Wakeford, N., 2012. Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social, London: Routledge.
Simons, H. & McCormack, B., 2007. Integrating Arts-Based Inquiry in Evaluation Methodology: Opportunities and Challenges. Qualitative Inquiry, 13(2), pp.292–311.
references