Subject: Re: [iDC] Praxis-based Ph.D.s

mark bartlett mark at globalpostmark.net
Sun Jan 14 22:37:26 EST 2007


yes, many thanks to MM for this highly useful summary.

makes me think that the age old practice of "minutes" might be  
evolved in the list-serv medium, in the form of "thread-editors."  It  
could be a "scalable" role, from -- artists, new media scholars,  
ethnographers, communication and info scientists, etc., similar to  
respondents on conference panels --  to, since we're contemplating  
educational restructuring,  VA's - Virtual Ariadne's, who would take  
up a new role alongside TA's, for the benefit of everyone.

m


On Jan 14, 2007, at 4:43 PM, Danny Butt wrote:

> Thanks Margaret for the summary and leading the discussion. There  
> are many insightful points made by all here and I wish I had time  
> to acknowledge each of them/you in more detail within the temporal  
> constraints of the mailing list format.
>
> Ultimately I share the view put forward by Simon and Margaret that  
> creative practice makes a contribution to a field of knowledge/ 
> experience and should ideally be recognised as such within  
> institutional hierarchies. But I think Simon makes a very important  
> point about the ultimately conservative nature of academic  
> institutions and the very idea of authenticating contributions to  
> knowledge, and that this is in tension with the creative  
> practitioner's approach to knowledge, particularly the artist, for  
> whom (to quote NZ critic Jon Bywater) "eccentric and catachrestic  
> readings of work... are not only common but arguably productive".  
> Here I value Pamela's excellent distinctions between the PhD/MFA  
> educational genres.
>
> This tension is constitutive of the artist/museum relationship as  
> well of course, but I think there is a different kind of political  
> problematic at work for people such as Margaret and Mary Anne when  
> initiating creative-practice PhD programmes. From my point of view,  
> the practice-based PhD will inevitably contribute to the corrosion  
> of various mechanisms of disciplinary authority embodied in the  
> dissertation. We would then expect a push-back effect from  
> disciplines that are threatened by these developments  and I think  
> it would be good if, collectively, we were able to speculate on  
> some of the effects of this political struggle on the institutional  
> power of art departments located within research universities. To  
> bring practice into the research game will bring with it certain  
> levels of managerial oversight and accountabilities to  
> institutional bodies outside the art environment, and I have to  
> remain agnostic about the overall benefits from such risky moves,  
> even as I suggest that some experimentation with these is  
> necessary. Perhaps we will eventually look back with fondness to  
> the idea of the MFA as the terminal degree for the artist/educator?
>
> In that last paragraph I'm thinking through a potential homology  
> with Spivak's account in "Death of a Discipline" of the  
> institutional trajectory of cultural studies in relation to  
> comparative literature and area studies. It's an account I find  
> compelling in its articulation of how difficult the baby/bathwater  
> dynamics are with interdisciplinary work, and how full of  
> unintended consequences the short-term pressures for institutional  
> change can be.
>
> Warm regards,
>
> Danny
>
> On 14/01/2007, at 1:38 PM, Margaret Morse wrote:
>
>> Dear IDCs,
>> 	We need more models of the practice-based Ph.D., including more  
>> from myself.  Thanks to Mary Anne and the on the art-practice  
>> Ph.D. degree within a polytechnical institute and Simon on the   
>> British Ph.D. model, plus more summary approaches to other  
>> programs by Chris and Mark.
>> 	Danny raised the professional school model; I wonder myself  
>> whether the profession of artist is akin enough to the guilds of  
>> engineers, lawyers, doctors, public health officials, academic  
>> administrators, etc. to make the professional degree an option.   
>> The art market plays out more selectively and differently than the  
>> market for the services above.  In the US, professional school  
>> students often owe significantly higher tuition, paid by their  
>> corporation or through loans recouped through later earnings.  On  
>> the other hand, would the Plymouth model, CiAA and other  
>> instantiations be an example of an existing, successful  
>> professional model of the practice-based Ph.D.?
>> 	I am wondering why it is taking me so long--other than my health-- 
>> to get down to business and describe my department's Ph.D.  
>> proposal.  On one hand, I am worrying about how much to reveal of  
>> what is a 107 page formulaic (format mandated for Ph.D. proposals  
>> in the California system) and not entirely processed proposal.  I  
>> am not sure how truly a public document it is yet.  Furthermore,  
>> the emails keep coming (thank deity) and I don't want to get  
>> behind in something I am (very light- handedly) moderating.
>> 	So, I will share my take on the posts. Then I need to prepare  
>> highlights of the proposed UCSC Film and Digital Media Ph.D.-- 
>> obviously another day's work.  Two things are different about it  
>> than what has been discussed so far below:  1-rather than having  
>> to choose one possibility in the mix of academic and creative  
>> research offered by Danny Butt, we have allowed for all three.   
>> One option is indeed an art project itself as creative research  
>> without an additional thesis.  Furthermore, academic research  
>> itself may be expressed in media format. I will copy the section  
>> on this and our rationale in the Ph.D. description.  2- We  
>> envision the MFA as one possible gateway to the Ph.D. Would this  
>> satisfy Tom or Mark? I believe Mary Anne's Ph.D. also envisions  
>> this possibility.  (Our MA would be the default degree for those  
>> who do not qualify to proceed to the dissertation project.)
>>
>> In the meantime, provocative questions have been posed and  
>> positions taken.  I'll identify and compile three of the areas of  
>> discussion raised so far below:
>>
>> 1.  The MFA versus the Ph.D.
>>
>> Tom Sherman: "While the boundaries between roles in a digital  
>> culture are fast
>> disappearing, the gap between the street and the university is  
>> certainly getting wider. My question is are these PhD studio  
>> programs closing more doors than they are opening?"
>> 	Mary Anne  answered with positive contributions a practice-based  
>> Ph.D. can make.
>> 	Chris raised the problem of the devaluation of the MFA again  
>> fairly vehemently in a later post, posing a barrage of questions  
>> around:
>> --careerism and the "professionally sanctioned digital artists"  
>> who seek academic and corporate positions
>> --whether the practice-based Ph.D is a model of academic art akin  
>> to 19th institutions?
>> --is this a mean of differentiating art in the research university  
>> from art schools? (marketing?)
>> --How will this PHD be operative within the art market system - is  
>> it necessary?
>> --"Is this move a more accurate reflection of larger cultural and  
>> socio-economic values?"
>>
>> The issue of 2 year/3 year MFA came up earlier (Mary Anne)-the 2  
>> year inadequate for anything but a breathless learning project but  
>> mandated economically by both institution and students, the 3 year  
>> preferred as providing a more adequate creative/academic  
>> foundation. Should the MFA-- never accepted at equivalent value to  
>> the Ph.D. in academia-- be enhanced in value or abolished in favor  
>> of the MA-Ph.D. system?  Chris: "But, of course, with a PHD, a  
>> much wider range of employment options seems probable, no?"   
>> Mark's suggestion, a Ph.D.-M.F.A. dual degree.
>>
>> Both Tom and Simon question the motives and necessity for most  
>> Ph.Ds.:
>> --Simon: "If the [Ph.D. applicant] candidate answers that they  
>> wish to establish a new approach to
>> creativity, where academic research becomes a central element in  
>> their working practice and they wish to contextualise significant  
>> aspects of what they do in that environment then I assume they  
>> appreciate what a PhD is for."
>>
>> 2.What body of knowledge does this practice-based Ph.D. signify or  
>> draw on? Is there a contradiction between academic and creative  
>> practices?
>>
>> --David raises a question about knowledge claims of a practice- 
>> based Ph.D.
>> --Danny's first question brought up the research/practice  
>> relationship with a degree program,  reiterated in Chris's  
>> question "institutionalized bifurcation of research and practice -  
>> how will that be actualized within the PHD?"  Danny posed three  
>> options:
>> "1) The PhD is fundamentally a research training qualification,  
>> and in different countries and institutions the research/creative  
>> practice homologies are more or less developed. Is the practice  
>> component seen as i) research in itself, ii) somehow equivalent to  
>> research but not exactly the same, or iii) not research but a  
>> reflexive form of practice which requires academic writing to  
>> secure its contribution to knowledge (or transferability)? In my  
>> view, there are no right answers to these questions but they are  
>> more or less determined by the institutions responsible for the  
>> money, with governments taking a much stronger role in the  
>> Commonwealth countries than in the US, and a range of different  
>> approaches among the non-English speaking countries which others  
>> will know more about than me. The point is that one needs to have  
>> a viable definition of research, and be prepared to make a strong  
>> case for the role that practice plays in the research qualification.
>> --Danny's subsequent question on how  practice should be evaluated  
>> and the url of a Ph.D. design list.  Simon notes the importance of  
>> benchmarks.
>> --Chris:  Further discussions is necessary as to what practices  
>> these programs may embody and, subsequently, produce Š or continue  
>> to reproduce in terms of academic legacies and the self- 
>> replication of research trajectories.  How does one reconcile this  
>> with the implicit underpinnings of creative practices - how does  
>> one redefine such a discipline via the mechanisms of an  
>> institutionalized infrastructure and ideologies?
>> --Mark: Beyond the sociopolitical effects of devaluing an MFA,  
>> Mark questions "imposing inherently wrong academic models, which  
>> effectively snuff out what is in fact, not just a series of  
>> courses and academic thresholds, but a culture of knowledge making  
>> practices that as with all cultures, are constituted by informal  
>> modes of producing themselves."
>> 	Furthermore, he is constructing "a genealogy for a specific  
>> epistemological practice that has emerged since then, but has not  
>> yet been recognized as a coherent discourse network ( roughly in   
>> Foucault's sense)... Artists, traditionally, have objects but not  
>> knowledge." He, like Chris, sees this as  19th c as the  
>> epistemological model. Meanwhile,  " The post-1840 discourse  
>> network for which my work establishes a genealogy, constitutes a  
>> counter-tradition. It does indeed exist, but has not been  
>> recognized as a coherent discourse, in part because its elements  
>> lie scattered about and have never been collected.
>> historical contexts that need to be addressed, and on which to  
>> build and make the case for constituting structures, curricula,  
>> and evaluative strategies for praxis-based knowledges, at a  
>> theoretical - epistemological - level. I think this would be  
>> pragmatically useful for program proposals, along the lines of  
>> including a "history" section. And I think it is imperative to do  
>> so. My point is that there is a need to historicize these projects  
>> of curricula/structure design, that the genealogy i've extracted  
>> is but one among many, and i would like to see a taxonomy of such  
>> genealogies developed." I welcome Mark's project and await news of  
>> more of his findings in his book or when he is ready to share  
>> them.  Note that both Danny and Simon could be cross-referenced here.
>>
>> 3. This area of question that is more diffuse and harder to  
>> formulate having to with whether the world and /or media art have  
>> changed in a way that makes the practice-based Ph.D. more  
>> plausible and useful
>> Mark notes "The higher status that literary knowledge has, is a  
>> historical problem."  Does print and  literature indeed still  
>> possess higher status? Have more styles of learning and modes of  
>> communication become part of the ground of everyday life and  
>> academia?
>> --Robert suggests that there is something different about studying  
>> new media--mentioned in my previous post.  Digital arts certainly  
>> elide the legitimacy of borders based on medium.
>> --Tom: Digital technologies and networks have knocked down so many  
>> doors. Interdiscipinary studies continue to try to break down  
>> disciplinary segregation in universities.
>> --Simon: In the case of practice based PhD's this process is still  
>> in development. It will probably never stop if such PhD's are of  
>> value, but as a new approach to formal research this PhD model is  
>> in an intense period of discovery and uncertainty. Evaluative  
>> methodologies are in flux and debate over what is
>> and isn't appropriate rages (as well as any academic debate can  
>> rage?).
>>
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>
>
> -- 
> Danny Butt
> db at dannybutt.net | http://www.dannybutt.net
> Suma Media Consulting | http://www.sumamedia.com
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