Sexting, Cell Phones and Arts-Based Research

I am currently serving as qualitative researcher on a three-state study of youth views of sexting.  We are just finishing up the youth focus groups, moving into analysis, and getting ready to plan for the adult focus groups in the fall. 

In working on this project, I can't help but think about it from the perspective of arts-based research.  What are the possibilities for thinking with arts-based approaches to this subject.

My primary medium is felt--one of the world's oldest, slowest, most primitive textile techniques.  [And some mixed media].  This is the antithesis of the world that the cell phone typifies (the technology most closely associated with sexting).  Cell phone worlds are fast, quickly shifting...I would even say 'itchy'.  Click, click, click, move on.  Felt is fuzzy, soft, foldable, rollable, of many shapes and sizes.  Cell phones are small, hard, and while they have variety--they most often appear in our minds as little rectangles with shiny digital surfaces. 

My interest in applying art to cell phone got me looking online for what is out there.  I didn't realize how much cell phone clip art exists.  I didn't know anything about cell phone charms...and cell skins (some designs I found were taken from Miami Ink artists!).  I found artists that were making new kinds of installations with discarded cell phones, people who were creating drawings inspired by the inner workings of cell phones, and gallery installations that were created through cell phones--photographs or other capacities.  I cllipped out all the pictures and cartoons of cell phones from copies of my old New Yorkers (as you can tell I was really getting serious!)

I thought about the ways that cell phones and bodies interact.  At first I focused on hands--how do hands hold the cell phone.  I thought of the way that bodies appear in cell phones.  Self-pictures that leave our faces and smiles distorted.  The way that we accidentally snap a part of us (half a head, a foot, etc.) as we try to figure out the camera. 

So, I am clearly on my way to the next, new thing--the cell phone project.  How is it going to intersect with youth views of sexting?  I'm not sure...but it is ready to evolve. 

The 7,024th Patient: Stories of Open Heart Surgery and Recovery

This afternoon I saw the opening of the exhibit named "The 7,024th Patient: Stories of OPen Heart Surgery and Recovery". It was one of the start up activities at the International Congress on Qualitative Inquiry.

Jennifer Lapum, a registered nurse, now academic at Ryerson University, spearheaded this unique exhibit.

I walked through the exhibit twice...it is a thing of wood, steel, plastic, and fabric. You wind your way deeper into the center...as you read and think about the experience of heart surgery...and then unwind at the other end.

In her talk she described the process. They conducted pre- and post-interviews with heart surgery patients, who also kept a journal during the experience. They created composite stories of patient's experiences from the analyzed data, developing what they termed "zones of experience", and then created poetry from the stories.

This work began with Jennifer's dissertation, but this exhibit itself was developed by a team of researchers that combined medical and arts specialists. The question they asked themselves was: How can we help people to understand the experience of heart surgery? What does it feel like to move through this experience? How can an artistic rendering increase the empathy and understanding of this experience for medical personnel and others?

The designer was also there to talk about her use of materials, styles, etc. as a way of developing the viewer's experience. She spoke of the importance she felt of the viewer winding through the experience and how fabric lent this feeling. She tried to give viewers the sense of the hardness of technology and the softness of the human body. She spoke of the use of 'hints of color' within 'the rational white space'.

Jennifer concluded by reading aloud some of the poetry that is printed on the fabric of the exhibit. It was a very different experience for me to hear the poetry not just read it. It came through to me with a new power. I wonder what it would be like to add audio to different parts of the exhibit.

This was a great official beginning of the conference for me. Now I am heading back for the opening remarks, keynote speakers, and barbecue...I am putting my exhibit up tonight in the space adjoining the heart exhibit. It's a bit daunting!

International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry: 2011!

Image via WikipediaIt's that time again and I am getting ready to head to Champaign, Illinois for the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. 

I will be taking part in two activities:

1.  An Arts Exhibition!!!   The Exhibition related to my Journal Project will be up for two days (Friday and Saturday, May 20th and May 21st) in Illini Room B.  I will be giving a "gallery talk" on Friday from 3:30 to 5:00 pm. 


2.  A panel organized by Liora Bresler of the University of Illinois:  Saturday, May 21st
134997  Issues in Arts in Qualitative Research
11:00-12:20 131 English
Chair: Liora Bresler, University of Illinois
Conceptualizing Arts-based Research as Relational Practice, Donal O’Donoghue, University of British Columbia

Contact Improvisation and Lingering Caress in Arts Based Research, Liora Bresler, University of Illinois

The Ethics of Self and Other in Arts-Based Research, Petula Ho Sik Ying, The University of Hong Kong

Technology and Arts-based Research: The Question of Aesthetics within Qualitative Research, Judith Davidson, University of Massachusetts-Lowell

Discussant, Johnny Saldana, Arizona State University

Look forward to being there! 

Mary Catherine Bateson at University of Massachusetts-Lowell

Image via WikipediaThe UMass-Lowell Center for Women and Work will be hosting their annual "Women at the Well" gathering tomorrow.  The theme is creativity, and our keynote speaker will be Mary Catherine Bateson.  I have my copy of "Composing a Life" ready and waiting for an autograph. 


I am very very pleased to have been asked to share some of the works that are emerging from my journal project...now tentatively titled "Interior Conversations:  Technology, Art, and Qualitative Research". 





This is the second time in the last week, I've trotted my items out.  Last week I shared items with my art class at the Essex Art Center.  Here is a photo of those pieces on display. 

For tomorrow I will be showing the piece on the upper left and on the far right.  These are some of the pieces that will compose the exhibit that I will be showing at the International Congress on Qualitative Inquiry. 

Bresler on Aesthetics

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My Journal Project is really percolating along and the outline and ideas are falling into place.  I've contacted several friends to ask for resources and feedback.  Liora Bresler from the University of Illinois sent me three great articles:

"Experiential pedagogies in research education: Drawing on engagement with art works"

"Embodied narrative inquiry: A methodology of connection", and

"Toward connectedness: Aesthetically based research" (this one was published in Studies in Art Education, September 2006). 

What a treat!  And wow were they helpful.

Here is what I am taking away with me:

• Connectedness is something that aesthetics and the arts can lend to qualitative research.  Connectedness in the arts offers a means for us to make sense of our relationship with participants AND the scholarly community.  Connectedness provides a means to fulfill qualitative research's desire for empathic understanding (verstehen) with which we have long struggled.  
• Embodied Narrative Inquiry...by drawing upon arts-based understanding of embodiment to inform qualitative research's use of narrative inquiry we will have access to a much richer conceptualization as researchers.  Embodied Narrative Inquiry allows us to make sense of silence/voice; musical/visual; self/other in new ways that can enlarge qualitative research.  Considering the nature of sound.. the possibilities of musical improvisation...and the characteristics or qualities of musical presentation--all of these offer ways to flesh out the notion of embodied narrative inquiry.  
•  Qualitative Research Instruction:  In "Experiential pedagogies..." Liora shares a wonderful assignment from her qualitative research course.  Students do sustained observations of paintings--one they like and one they dislike.  She shares a large number of the comments made in students' journals or papers and discusses the issues in qualitative research that are raised through this exercise.  I want to do it in my class!  It's a winner.

Thank you Liora...now to integrate all of this good stuff into my arguments. 

Dissertations vs the IPad

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Recently my program has taken up a discussion of the dissertation--what can we agree upon about the form, contents, style, etc.  In other words, what are our standards for this culminating piece of work in the doctoral program.  We are looking at a rubric that another institution developed, and I have to say that it makes the dissertation look pretty darn BORING. 

[Ironically even this ancient manuscript to the right from about 1200 has more color and design interest  than today's dissertation.]

I have nothing against the notion of a strong literature review, compelling question, thoughtful theoretical intersections, excellent methodological description and well described findings and discussions of implications.  Although, I am not sure that we can agree on what this means cross paradigm.  I think what will be even more difficult is how to figure out what this means in light of new digital forms.  I have already run into a variety of difficulties with issues related to discussions of qualitative data analysis software (QDAS), and this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to addressing new forms. 

I think one of the most important challenges to the standard black and white dissertation, though, are the new visual formats.  For the last few weeks, my Google Reader has been bringing me video advertisements of the new Apple IPad and the kinds of content news media are developing for it.  The New York Times and Sports Illustrated are two I've seen, which are dazzling in their color and flexibility.  It's like a newspaper or magazine and a website combined.  But what is even more interesting is that it feels like it has jumped out of the old computer monitor and into a new kinesthetic mode with the ability to touch the screen and make things happen. 

This is not anything like the way the old dissertation looks even in digital form. Take a look at it.

Apple IPad

You'll probably notice as I did that there is not a single woman in the ad...all male speakers. That aside, (and I am sure they studied their demographic carefully before the release) this is how print of the future will look.  The dissertation looks dingy and sad beside it. Visual images are at a minimum.  Indeed, the height of visual orientation in the standard dissertation is the robust use of APA headings! 

Interestingly, though,  the Apple IPad  is loaded with skeumorphs--references to earlier times and technologies.  You turn pages, select a photo from a pile of photos, select books from bookshelves.  You feel like you are in the world of print and furniture of the late 20th century.  Things work in the same way, but they are all virtual--opening, closing, sliding forwards and backwards with the touch of a finger. 

In such a world it appears on the surface that the standard dissertation can find a place, but my question is why?  By this, I don't mean that we should give up and go on as we have for so many years, creating these five chapter documents that get shelved for eternity.  Rather, why, go on with the old form?  What's stopping us from jumping ship? Trying new forms? 

At the University of British Columbia (UBC) College of Education they have been doing experimentation with arts-based dissertations.  This may be the direction to consider.  

Three Cases of Visual Memos

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I have blogged thrice about visual memos I have created:

Visual Memos in Qualitative Research
This is an example of a visual memo developed from writing in my journal about the journal project.  I was thinking about the ways the journal project and its writing was different from formal social science writing.

Visual Memos in Qualitative Research: Part II
 This memo describes the way an image or art approach (prayer ropes) developed through a series of experiences related to the death of a dear friend. 

Visual Memos in Qualitative Research: Part IV
 This memo (a handmade book) developed as a reflection on the experience of teaching a qualitative research class in which visual memos were integrated with every component of the course experience. 

As I think across the visual memos themselves, some of the patterns I see in this work are:

• They are narrative.  They tell a story, reflect on a chain of events, connect diverse strands of thought.  
• They are combinatory.  They bring together diverse elements or thoughts in a single location. 
• They lead to strong juxtapositions.  Bringing together the different pieces leads to new positioning of ideas in relationship to each other.  
• They are sensual.  I react to the nuances of color, texture, shape, line.  Text, too, is sensual for the dedicated reader, but in a different way. 
• They reveal things to me that were hidden from me when I operated solely in my textual mode. 

I've mused about visual memos in this blog also:

Visual Memos in Qualitative Research: Part III

I've also given thought to the visual qualities of different forms of qualitative research analysis--manual modes vs. computer modes. 

Getting Visual With Qualitative Research Analysis

This week I started to think about the literature of memos in qualitative research:

Memos and Qualitative Research: Kathy Charmaz

This is a beginning for me.  There are others to examine.  What I want to bring forward from Charmaz regarding memos is how they exist in the space between data and fixed/mature interpretations.  They are the thing waiting to be heard, to take form. 

Memos...it's a juicy topic. 

Walter Gerson and "The Collaborative Turn"

Run.  Don't Walk.  To get your copy of

The Collaborative Turn

edited by Walter Gershon. 

I've been reading this book over the spring break in anticipation of reviewing it for the

International Journal of Education and the Arts

I don't want to give away the show, but truly--take a good look at this book! 

The Journal Project and Qualitative Data Analysis Software (QDAS)

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The Journal Project (where I am analyzing two years of my private journal entries 2006-2008 using NVivo Software) is a place where I am challenging myself to use the two sides of my brain, so to speak: 1) the side that appreciates qualitative data analysis software (QDAS); and 2) the side that loves the humanistic, arts-based research, autoethnographic side of qualitative research. 

Many people think these are diametrically opposed--that QDAS represents a scientific style of social science analysis...and that non-QDAS represents the other side of qualitative research.  I'm exploring this assumption in the journal project.  I know that for some people in my field, the use of precious, personal, private materials like your own journals...well, it just doesn't belong in that hard, scientific container known as QDAS. 

Now that I am getting toward the end of the first stage of analysis in this project and have done basic coding (in NVivo) for most of my materials, I come back to the question:  What difference does it make to use QDAS to examine any text, but, in particular, what difference has it made to me in analyzing these deeply, personal, totally autobiographical texts?  Has it improved the analysis?  Does it add objectivity to what is flagrantly subjective?  Did I learn more by the use of these tools than I could learn without them? 

I think yes, but the reason isn't very fancy--it goes back to the most basic ways that led people to take up technologies in the first place--it expands the finite power of our bodies, muscles, brains, and senses.  My brain is finite.  My memory spotty and kind of soft at this point.  I can remember the big ideas and patterns and some of the particulars, but I only hold on to what I think is most important.  Without technical aids I would simply relegate the other stuff to the big black bin in the brain. 

QDAS is first a foremost for me a visualization tool.  It is a place where I can build a structure that allows me to connect all of the bits and pieces of experience in containers and limbs that have a relationship to the larger world of ideas.  Coding, tagging, hyperlinking, modeling, relationship building--all of these things that you can do with efficiency in QDAS  are tools for visualization. 

 Using these tools I create a structure that I impose on the materials/data I have collected.  This structure is different than the natural context of the text.  The structure I impose relates to structures, arguments, disciplines that have evolved in human intellectual history.  "Discernment", a key concept to my journal work is a word that comes with a history and cultural experiences.  I took this term and imposed it on my material--using QDAS to create a bin where I could stuff things that I would make 'speak' to this notion. 

Analyis then is kind of violent-it is an imposition.  I thought about the other terms that have floated to the top as I developed a coding tree.  Meltdowns/flashbacks/post-traumatic stress...now that's a fat, juicy category.  Then there is Japan (lived there from 1974-76).  Ohh...Family of Origin...we won't unpack that yet.  You get my drift.  A term like "Family of Origin" didn't occur in my journal (I don't think).  I impose it...and as I impose it, it allows the intellectual ideas associated with the term to intermingle with my real life experience with people. 

QDAS makes the structure visible, and it does a better job at this than manual methods.  It is more efficient at allowing me to create categories...organize, mix them, remix them, separate them, rebuild them.  I imagine what I am doing when I analyze with this tool is to create a kind of skeleton--an animal that has a backbone, ribs, skull (these are the codes and my theories)...my texts are the flesh, hair, blood that are stretched around and over the skeleton.  I create organs and link them with vessels. 

This reminded me of a video I saw of artist Barbara Moody creating a painting, one of a series in which she had drawn a goat.  She drew it over and over and over again, adding to it, shading it, unshading it--the time lapse of the video made the picture change quickly and jerkily, but it seemed like a long recursive process.  This feels to me like the interpretive process in action, trying to find the structure for the emerging piece.

This also reminds me of my many visits to Natural History Museums--and time spent pondering the skeletons of dinosaurs, amphibians, and early mammals.  I look at them and recognize them as beasts with locamotion and common functions...yet they are strange.  Not really things of my world.  The structures created from analysis have that same sense of recognition and strangeness. 

So--was QDAS important to this effort?  Yes.
Would I have gotten the same thing with manual analysis?  I don't know.
Which was better?  QDAS has to be better.  Don't even talk to me about xeroxing, cutting up papers and the rest.
Can QDAS be used for non-evaluative qualitative research studies that are really squarely in the middle of autoethnography and self study?  Absolutely. 

Visual Memos in Qualitative Resesarch: Part IV

Visual memos are haunting me.  I'm looking back into my computer files and finding more and more evidence of them hanging around.  This blog entry is sharing another example of the genre.  This visual memo came at the end of a semester of my doctoral course in Qualitative Research methods, where we had created visual memos to accompany each data collection activity.  The handmade book I created blended visual responses, data collection activities, and the ways these were heightened by the Poet of the Semester, Kay Ryan.  Visuals, texts (mine and Ryan's), and the juxtaposition collage affords to make statements by disjunction and conjunction come together to remind me of the semester and help me to think anew about the pieces.

 

OK--sorry about the pathetic handwriting...it's the thought that counts!

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

Hmmm....it won't let me upload the last image, so I guess this is where it will end. 

I will come back later to annotate the pages.  My homage to Kay Ryan and to whoever else's work might be blended in here. 

Visual Memos in Qualitative Research: Part II

On January 4, 2010 I blogged about Visual Memos.  I shared a visual memo that had evolved as I was thinking about the distinction between academic prose and the journal prose (see earlier blogs on "The Journal Project"--a study of my journals from 2006-2008).  That was what I would call an "emergent interpretation" memo.  In Part II, I'd like to think about the use of visual memos in a different way--for a memo that is not a reminder about one point in time, but looks over a series of events to make sense of them.

This visual memo is titled "Evolution of an Image".  It's genesis was rereading a journal entry from December 2007 about the cancer of a dear friend... and then linking this entry to art experiences and finally back to the art and the life/death of the individual I am writing about.  The individual I am writing about has now passed away.  I am saddened by his death, but glad to be able to share with you about his impact on my thinking...and (and this would give him a chuckle)...his impact on my methodological thinking!  In sharing the visual memo with you in digital form it gives me a chance to annotate it electronically.

 

  

[This may be hard to read--we learn about the cancer and hold a laying on of hands ceremony at the church.]

 

These two events--cancer and Maggie Ayers are, initially, unrelated.  Maggie Ayers is a fantastic mixed-media artist from Northern England.  She has made a series of YouTube videos describing various art activities.  There is actually one on green/blues and her method of creating fiber cocoons.  You can learn more about her at:  http://www.maggieayres.co.uk/ 

 

Felter's Fling--August 2009--is when I begin the pieces began to fall together. As I was looking for a link to Felter's Fling--I found this blog item by one of the instructor's--and my photo was on it!!  I am wearing the felt hat that won me an award.  http://weaversew.com/wordblog/2009/08/24/felters-fling/comment-page-1/

However, if you want the real low-down on Felter's Fling...try this link:  http://www.blacksheepdesigns.com/index.html 

 

At this point, the original experience of the laying on of hands ceremony, the interaction with Maggie Ayers and Felter's Fling...has led to a new understanding of the life/death of my friend and has created a new form that symbolizes this life/death to me.  

 

Visual memos serve many different purposes (as do purely written memos).  Visual memos can range from all visual and no text...to a load of text and limited visuals.  

I intend to think more here about their uses and the forms they take.  

Visual Memos in Qualitative Research

In yesterday's blog, I talked about the Journal Project and my attempts to stretch myself using arts-based research.  Today, I'll share an example--a Visual Memo

As I was writing in the Journal about the Journal Project, I was led to consider the issue of how the journal is a very different container from the academic prose into which I've been so deeply socialized.  Later I extracted this set of entries (xeroxed them out) and sat down to work with them in visual form.  The result of which is what I would consider a Visual Memo.  

Here's where it starts.  I used an old collage.  I cut it up and used the back of it.

My next thought, see below, was about the way I conceptualize the two genres.  Imaginatively speaking, I see the containers as different looking. 

 Within the genre of the journal, I see the contents represented in a different way from that of academic prose.  It's colorful, filled with curved lines.  It has accents, punctuation, and places of heat, depth, and surfacing. 

Academic prose, on the other hand...well you can see for yourself in this visual that is dominated by the structure of the outline, the lines of text, and comments that are carefully separated from the body of the text.

Two things that seem particularly different to me between these two genres--are at the heart of the Journal Project--emotion!  [Feelings, subjectivity, sensitivity, personal concerns and reactions--how else can I name thee?] 

In the journal--I would refer to it as emotion, and it feels, like it looks like, this:

In academic prose, specifically the world of qualitative research, I conceptualize it as subjectivity, a boxed item that has a place within the outline.  Within that box, there seems to be emotional content, but it is carefully contained--like a kind of hazardous waste!

A goal of the journal project is to help me bring these two different worlds of prose (and ideas) together in some meaningful way.  I imagine that this will have to be a process. In this illustration they are just beginning to touch, but they are being drawn together by some kind of surrounding net. 

Over time, I can assume that the forms will create a closer and more integrated merger.  In the merger depicted below--the outline and text of academic prose are distinct and yet one with the curves and colors of the journal...the journal content is held within the framework of the academic prose, which has also expanded in new ways. 

 Thinking about the containers of the journal vs the kind of container formed by academic prose...leads me to my other big container:  the E-Project.  As mentioned earlier, this is a term that I am using to describe the electronic container that Qualitative Data Analysis Software provides as a place to store, organize, and interpret qualitative research materials.  I've given a lot of thought to how I, and my students, came to visualize the E-Project as we used them over time for different kinds of qualitative research work.  Here is a visualization of my sense of the E-Project:

 And now the trick for me is going to be how to think with visual memos in the E-Project.

If you are interested in the notion of Visual Memos, I highly recommend the graphic novel and work available on illustrated journals.  Two sources that I really like are:
1.  Linda Barry's book:  What It Is

2.   Danny Gregory's book:  An Illustrated Life♠