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
> Private Bag MBE P145, Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand
> Ph: +64 21 456 379 | Fx: +64 21 291 0200
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>
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