Exploration 2 - Arts-based Research

 

            Back in my undergrad years, I used to associate social justice and art with murals, graffiti, etc. I was not familiar with arts-based research at all. Needless to say, I had a very limited understanding of socially engaged arts-based research examples. Of course, since then, I got more and more familiar with arts-based research and even conducted one for my master’s thesis – even though it was not social justice elated. I think that because of my academic background in Painting and Visual Arts, I tend to think of arts-based research as always something visual. Reading more about different arts-based research methodologies and examples expanded my vision and introduced me to multi-sensory examples as well as narrative ones. However, when I was looking for a socially engaged arts-based research example for this exploration, I still searched for visual examples. I do not know if this is because of my fine arts background but I think I am still attached to murals in some nostalgic way - I even did a socially engaged mural as a group project for a class back in my undergrad years. So, I think that the motive behind my search was looking for an interactive mural, or a moving image mural (this is my attempt to merge video games and murals I guess). Since my research interests are focused on video games, I looked for an example that uses new media as the arts-based research tool. Or, in other words, an example that uses the mechanics of video gaming as the art medium, and, gaming itself being the (maybe limited?) art practice. This kind of art practice is of course limited by the rules and mechanics of the created video game. However, in such practice, can the practitioner/gamer have the opportunity to embody the artists’ intentions (in this case socially engaged intentions) while engaging with the content of the video game/arts-based research?

            With these thoughts in my mind, I found video game designer and artist Brianna Lei’s Butterfly Soup (2017). Butterfly Soup is an indie visual novel game about queer teen girls playing baseball and exploring love. The dialogues between the characters depict around issues of gender, race, identity, and abuse. The dialogues between the characters depict around issues of race, gender, identity, and abuse. There are various gender identities represented among the LGBTQ characters and they are not stereotypically represented, which is often the case in especially visual novel type video games. I associated this socially engaged arts-based research example with arts-imagination. Keifer-Boyd (2011) describes arts-imagination as a studio art practice that uses creativity and imagination to understand everyday situations or to form a research theory (p. 10). In the article, Keifer-Boyd gives Augusto Boal’s (1985) Theatre of the Oppressed as an arts imagination arts-based research example:

            By inviting audience members with suggestions for change onto the stage to demonstrate their                 ideas, Boal, a Brazilian cultural activist, discovered a method that empowers people to generate             social action. Through participation, audience members are not only able to imagine change but             are able to practice that change and reflect collectively on proposals for change. (p. 11)

            I think that playing a socially engaged video game such as Butterfly Soup might have similar effects as discussed above in the quote from Keifer-Boyd’s article. I am not making a direct comparison between these two examples but rather trying to find similarities. In both of these examples, social justice is based on practice, whether it is participating it on stage or participating from the buttons of the video game console. Yes, in a video game, the imagination is limited to the creators’, but the (critical) intent of such a game can give the opportunity to practice it through playing with it. This is something I cannot yet discuss broadly because I am not sure if socially engaged video games can be considered as arts imagination arts-based research examples. But I definitely find them similar to the examples given in the arts-imagination section in the article.


    Keifer-Boyd, K. (May 01, 2011). Arts-based Research as Social Justice Activism: Insight, Inquiry,        Imagination, Embodiment, Relationality. International Review of Qualitative Research, 4, 1, 3-19.

Draft of Problem Statement

The purpose of this action research study is to use video games as tools/mediums for collaborative (critical) artistic inquiry. I will conduct this study with college-level art students -who are also gamers - in which they will be both engaged in playing the chosen game(s) and will be contributing to the collective drawing we will be doing in a studio setting. This study aims to explore the process and reflection of critical engagement in video games on artmaking through the gaming console and the medium of drawing. Just like a creative team of a video game, we will be exploring and creating an artistic reflection of the chosen video game(s)' worldling. It will also aim to be a critical reflection of the gaming process of the chosen video game(s). During this constructive process, students will be able to engage in their gaming processes artistically and critically and they will be able to work with what is beyond the (visual) surface of video games. 

Problem Statement 2

In this action research project, I will explore and critically reflect on three different avatar self-making that I embody during my affective engagement in the video games I play. I will document through screen captures and recordings of play, translate through art-making, especially drawing, as well as consider the gaming console as apparatus and the gaming environments from a new materialist perspective of the impact of non-human agency on my self -making.


Comments

  1. AThompson16 February 2021 at 17:01

    Hello Burcak,
    I have a couple things -
    I'm very interested in your idea of a moving image or interactive mural. I wonder how VR or AR would play into something like that.
    Also, when you mentioned the games where identity and representation are key, I immediately thought of games like the Sims, where the character design is very in depth, and players can create everything from a fairly realistic representation of themselves, or create something otherworldly or even grotesque. I, myself, remember that often being the most interesting aspect of those games.
    I've been thinking recently about having my students create character sheets for themselves, in a similar way to the #MeetTheArtist trend that crops up on social media once in a while. I wonder how things like identity would change how someone interacts with public art or VR/AR.

    ReplyDelete

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