CULTURAL VALUE METHODOLOGY

WORKSHOP

Birkbeck April 2013

BETWEEN ART AND SOCIAL SCIENCE?

INTERPRETIVE METHODS

Lynn Froggett

Professor of Psychosocial Welfare

University of Central lancashire

Street Drinking, New Media and Community Engagement

Cultural Value for reflective and engaged citizens

Research Team:

Lynn Froggett

Mervyn Conroy

Alastair Roy

Julian Manley

Constitution of Real and Virtual Public Space

Three Lenses:

Assets based Policy Ethical underpinnings Socio-cultural - depth hermeneutic

Partner Organisation in Liverpool:

FACT

(Foundation for Art and Creative Technology)

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How to write a scenic composition

Immerse yourself in the data Take a distance from it Call the experience to mind When it feels right write a one side account

of ‘as it comes’ Free associatively draw on the imagery it arouses Retain the original gestalt if you craft it

Scenic Understanding

The ‘scene’ - a complex whole - arises at the point of interaction between the subject and environment. It is always the primary object of perception before specific figures or ‘interaction forms’ differentiate from the matrix of relations that compose it

Alfred Lorenzer

The Novel

I walk through peeling down- at- heel Liverpool …then the enveloping purple of the studio. The body will be cared for amidst the fleshlessness of new media. The caterers, recovered drinkers, are sociable, engaged, nurturing, redeemed.

I feel wary of the technicians tinkering assuredly with keys, plugs, widgets and interfaces……

Internet Chat …guy who owns a bar, I think. Long curly hair – authentic? Bit posh. Artist? … angry bar woman - self-righteous. Mike bearded like Roger the compere. So’s Ali. Bingeing to alcoholism … shock horror every time someone mentions cost to the tax payer. Cut your foot on glass. In Spain they have plastic glasses to binge.

They’re pay attention to my text, message, tweet, whatever... Lynn has come online. Yikes!

Fantasy fiction

The world of new media is like the Jabberwocky -exciting, unpredictable - nonsense to the uninitiated. Like the Mad Hatters tea party people talk in riddles: platforms, web-clouds, information super highway, social media, new media. We just want to stay in the room with people who talk our language…

The Rap Poem

How many are watching

Observing and talking

Don’t know what they’re thinking

Words dribbling down screen

Bringing their presence in

Radio Roger is reminded

Turns and reads

While the room bleeds …

Interpretive procedure

What is being said? How is it being said? Why is it being said in this particular

way? What is the composition doing?

Crisis of Representation: no view from nowhere

Interrogates notions of objectivity which rely on a subject object split in favour of a view in which all research implicates the position and view of the researcher

Imperative of researcher reflexivity Research as a situated and processual

activity

moral/ethical/political context permeates the research process

methodological pluralism for multi-faceted lenses on the object.

‘rigour’ re-cast from validity and empirical generalisability’ to verification, plausibility, coherence and theoretical generalisability.

The scene is ‘in-between’ subjective imagination and social reality.

It partakes of the participating consciousness and unconscious of the researcher/observer and cultural resources held in common with the reader/audience which render it intelligible.

‘if we want to understand the analysand’s life practice, including his concrete social reality, we must follow the path laid down by his subjective ideas and fantasies about relations’. ‘we must become attuned to his scenic interaction forms as these unfold before us’ (1977 p125). These, which make up the scenic composition, ‘lie between the “inside” and the “outside”’ and ‘their interplay accounts for everything .. [it] provides the basic model’ (1986, pp41-4)..

Reference

Froggett, L. & Hollway, W. (2010) Psychosocial Research Analysis and Scenic Understanding. Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society, 15(3), 281-301.