Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The body as risk, the body as laughter, the body as pain, the ridiculous body, the inert body, the dead body, the rotten body, the body as power, the body without organs, my body and other's body, a space of ours a mind in between. Transductions that get lost in spaces distant, distincts, scattered, misshapen, shaped. A sound, a color, a perception of existing and of disappearing. What kind of body is this? It does not matter. What matter is to permit perceiving Rosangella Leote, 2018

This special issue of DAT considers thinking in the South. It asks, "Where practice is constituted as inquiry, what might Southern voices look like in Art & Design research?"

The SEE BEYOND method, composed of three modules – Foundation; Enhancement; and Materialization – expands the structure of the project-based method, which is conventionally adopted in higher education courses in design, by incorporating sensory-motor stimuli in the development of each project-based stage. Elaborated over the course of 18 months, SEE BEYOND was first validated by a group of visually impaired people who had no previous experience or contact with academic content and references related to Design. At the same time as this method includes the visually impaired person in the higher education context, it also expands the range of stimuli experienced by sighted students; it expands the perception of the project-based elements necessary to the development of projects in the design field; and enhances the teaching-learning process undergone by students, with or without visual impairments. This article focuses on the major contributions provided by the SEE BEYOND method (1) to the visually impaired students (PVI) – representing the first validation stage for this method; as well as (2) to the sighted students - representing the second validation stage for this method.

Practice-led research enables art and design practitioners approaches to discovering, applying and communicating original knowledge that have direct implications for their practice. Since the 1980s, internationally, the emergence of doctoral, practice-led research has opened the door for such practitioners to develop distinctive methodological approaches to the way they navigate knowing in action. This article discusses one such project. Within it, immersive and reflective methods have been developed to increase the depth of communication between a photographer and the land he records. The thesis, “The Process of Immersive Photography: Beyond the Cognitive and the Physical”, considers relationships between land as a living system and a form of researcher embodiment. This embodiment engages a process of indwelling that draws on physical, cognitive and spiritual ways of sensing and knowing. The researcher’s immersions are documented in a field journal that moves between poetic, narrative and analytical writing registers in an attempt to account for the complexity of what he encounters.

Rumen Rachev’s performance “undoes” the intellectual labour of a PhD student by unsettling the emerging conventions, or systemization of practice-led-research (Buckley and Conomos 2009; Hasman 2006). Rather than following an orderly approach to practice-led research, Rachev’s fluid methodologies (Coleman and Ringrose 2013; Koro-Ljungberg 2016) promote un examen minutieux of what is meant by the ‘production of knowledge’ in the Art and Design field. Through questioning the role of critique in the academic domain, and examining the undoing the academic self via performance, this paper provides an insight into the relations between institutional critique and academic labour, while using the academia as the main stage.

In recent years, a growing variety of new Open Design (OD) projects, communities and businesses has emerged. OD benefits are often associated with design processes democratization, faster innovation and improvement of artefacts design, mass customization and an alternative to traditional businesses models. Three examples were selected from the author’s doctoral thesis analysis to explore the applicability of existing OD projects in the field of architecture and urban design. Four principles were considered: transparency, accessibility, replicability and modularity. Our findings show that although democratization is considered a key-word to OD, its use is still dependent on technologies not easily available for communities in developing countries

The article describes the development of the interactive audiovisual installation, Police, Criminal, Dog, Dentist, inspired by the song of the same title by composer Sérgio Sampaio. On exhibit at the National Museum of the Republic of Brazil, the installation allows the public to engage in audiovisual mixing by touching metal objects. Entirely constructed with open source technologies, the work converts readymades like pans and buckets into media instruments that act upon sound and video projection in real time. Building on the notion of metamedia and profound remixability, the article highlights how the artistic process, which was inspired by Maker Culture and DiY, experiments with the use of software, interactivity and audiovisual media.

This article discusses emerging methodologies in Moana Nui a Kiwa (MNak) (Pasific Peoples) performance art practices in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ). It explores the ways in which artistic research guides research questions and final research outputs within the context of a practice led PhD degree. John Vea’s (Tonga/NZ) underlying research methods reference Timote Vaioleti’s work on ‘talanoa’ as a MNak notion about respectfulness in personal encounters with people. Vea’s performance practice engages with MNak minority groups — exploring tropes of migration and subsequent interaction with hegemony — where ‘co-operations’ with collectives and small groups challenge some traditional research models of leadership and authorship. These indigenous approaches encourage a different reading of theorists such as Chantel Mouffe and her ideas of navigating artistic activism and agonistic spaces of shared cooperation.

This article explores ways that artists work with people in forms of social performance art practices. Approaching, directing and organising people involves an ethics of attentiveness, including modes of listening, that allows for diverse research outcomes. In this context, Lisbeth Lipari’s 2014 book Listening, Thinking, Being: Toward an Ethics of Attunement discusses philosopher Emmanuel Levinas’ notion of the faceto-face encounter with another as a meeting that must embrace difference. Practices of listening and attunement play a critical role in Olivia Webb’s PhD project at AUT University where her art practice engages participants and diverse communities in music and song. For these projects Webb draws from her experience as a trained choral singer and performance artist and asks how listening is translatable across different cultural groups. These practice-led methodologies, based on ideas of participation, actively amend and redirect her projects.

Artistic practice-led research is challenging conventional academic hegemony by providing a space where indigenous knowledge can be valued and respected. Artistic practice in Māori2 thought is more than artefact production. It is a sacred and highly esteemed form of Māori scholarship evidenced by tohunga who are recognised as experts in their fields. The creative process is deeply respected because of its sacred (tapu)3 connotations. Both their work and its associated pedagogical legacy (contained in carving, music, architecture, weaving, or oratory) are understood as interrelated. Valued as thinkers, teachers and repositories of knowledge, the work of tohunga practitioners reaches across generations. Thus, artistic practice-led research, viewed through a Kaupapa Māori4 lens invokes new ways of thinking and doing.