Spatial Awareness

Robert Nelson states that, (Nelson, R. 2013) “people engage in research from a variety of motives, but ultimately, the rigors of sustained academic research are driven by a desire to address a problem and find things out and to establish new insights.”

Nelson suggests that in performance academia there is a continuous circle of research and new insights and performance which thus leads to more research.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nelsons dynamic model explains that to engage in practice as research in the arts you need to have a basic understanding of how to make work – practitioner knowledge. In order to create work engaging in practice you need to apply cognitive academic knowledge, for example in the form of the works of a theatre practitioner, which then enables you to work under their ideas, which you can then critically reflect on. This process can then develop again as when you critically reflect more insights are uncovered and you can go either back to the practitioner and create work again to then reflect on and refine, or begin the process from scratch with a new set of ideas you want to research.

This idea is called Practice as Research. The key elements of practice as research can be broken down into two areas. Practice-based research is the process by which a creative artifact is the contribution to the knowledge. Whereas practice-led research is concerned with the nature of practice and using the knowledge to create an artifact rather than experimenting and creating a new profound performance mode.

As a group we will undergo a process similar to Nelsons model, where we will engage with the work of Forced Entertainment, then critically reflect on what we have created in order to create a new piece of performance in the next teaching block. Our work will go from practice lead – where we study and play with elements of Forced Entertainments work such as time and duration, generating text and composition. To then practice-based in teaching block two, where we will choose to focus on one or two concepts we really enjoyed researching and performing in order to create a new performance artifact based on the original work of Forced Entertainment. 

 

In engaging with the Practice as Research model we hope to adopt the skills of a reflective practitioner. Reflective practice involves the process of analysing a given practice, in this case performance, in order to learn from the process and ultimately apply those findings to future practice. It is a vital source of knowledge for practical progress and development.

“Reflective practice is more than just a thoughtful practice. It is the process of turning thoughtful practice into a potential learning situation which may help modify changes and approaches to practice’. Reflective practice entails the synthesis of self-awareness, reflection and critical thinking.” (Thompson, 2008, p.31) In developing these skills we will be better equipped for the next teaching block, Practical Performance Project.