4. METHODS
4.2. The role of experimentation
to experiment will be discussed. MacFarlane and Martin (2002) propose that experimental methodology has influenced all species including humans since the dawn of life on earth. They argue that the experimental method of forming and testing hypotheses is crucial to scientific thought. Franklin &
Perovic suggest experimental practice may extend forming and testing of hypothesis and even may provoke paradigm shifts.
Adopting the perspective of the natural sciences, they suggest an epistemology of experiment, a set of strategies that can be used to argue for the correctness of an experimental result. Their claim being that if experiments are to play important roles and if we are to believe in them, the results of the experiments ought to be correct (2015).
Their focus on the correctness of the results of the experiments is in opposition to ideas about experimentation in artistic research.
Experimental activity in the artistic fields is
concerned with openness to new possibilities, being alert to new directions and always being willing to propose new questions, tolerance for risk-taking and acceptance of failure. In artistic research, the experiments are not necessarily conducted to find correct results but rather to reveal or create new possibilities (Brown & Katz, 2009). There seems to be discrepancy between how experimental activity is understood depending on field specific points of view.
Within artistic practice based research experimental activities also have been argued to hold a significant role while the epistemology of the experiments has not yet been extensively critically examined. As mentioned by Pajunen et. al. (2013, p. 2),
“the new turn towards the epistemology of experiments has been driven by
‘naturalistic’, bottom up, grassroots or shop floor-level accounts of what really goes on in the laboratory. But while there [is] a plethora of arguments based on physics, there are fewer arguments based on other academic disciplines”.
An alternative point of view to that of the natural sciences as requested by Pajunen et.
al. is contributed by Bertolotti. Coming from a multidisciplinary perspective of applied philosophy Bertolotti distinguishes between generative and demonstrative experiments.
Generative experiments include all scientific experiments. They may be aimed at verifying a theory or generating a new one or they may be “entirely explorative”, conducted “simply out of curiosity to see
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what will happen” as also suggested by Hacking (1983, p. 154). Demonstrative experiments are carried out to explain or present a theory to an uneducated target group. Bertolotti establishes the two categories as poles in a continuum rather than as opposites. His agenda is to emphasize the importance of sociality on science (Bertolotti, 2015). Very much in accordance with Bertolottis’ ideas Graham stresses the importance of creativity to science as he puts it: “Hypothesis in science and history have to be checked against the facts, but scientists also “float” ideas, engage in guesswork, and follow up lines of thought according to their sense of the problem”
(1997, p. 63).
The different approaches to experimentation and to the epistemology of experimentation mentioned above are relevant to this practice based research although none of them have been followed exclusively. It seems safe to claim that experimental activity is indispensable not only to science but equally to artistic research and to generation of scientific knowledge and artistic insight by expansion of aesthetic spaces of opportunity.
It is important for the sake of clarification to distinguish between different roles of experiments i.e. technical, aesthetical, structural, material, conceptual etc. The specific roles of the individual experiments carried out in this project are described in further detail in chapter 5. For now, I will explain two major overall objectives in the experimental activities.
The first is concerned with establishment of an experimental framework. E.g. the pressing technique, which has traditionally been used for production of tableware, has previously been difficult to experiment with, due to the relatively high price of pressing molds. Pressing molds are traditionally made from metal or graphite, both being expensive options. An experiment with high temperature castable concrete was made to test if this relatively inexpensive material could replace metal and graphite and thus facilitate cheap and quick experimentation with the pressing technique.
The second objective is concerned with expansion of aesthetic spaces of opportunity.
E.g. introduction of deliberately generated obstacles in the artistic process may prove to be conducive to expansion of aesthetic spaces of opportunity. Deliberately generating obstacles to force oneself in new artistic directions of exploration is quite common for artistic practitioners, and may be classified as a primary generator as suggested by Darke: “It has been suggested in this paper that designers do not start with a full and explicit list of factors to be considered, with performance limits predetermined where possible. Rather they have to find a way of reducing the variety of potential solutions to the as yet imperfectly-understood problem, to a small class of solutions that is cognitively manageable. To do this, they fix on a particular objective or small group of objectives, usually strongly valued and self-imposed, for reasons that rest on their subjective judgment rather than being reached by a process of logic. These
Recycle. About Sustainability in Glass Craft & Design ● Maria Sparre-Petersen ● KADK 2016
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then give rise to a proposed solution or conjecture, which makes it possible to clarify the detailed requirements as the conjecture is tested to see how far they can be met” (1979, p. 43). In the pursuit of generating aesthetic innovation, such a primary generator could be a deliberately generated obstacle in the form of introduction of recycled soda-lime glass.
The character of experimentation has alternated between “entirely explorative”
aesthetic experimentation, experiments carried out to test techniques, materials or applications, experiments directed at questioning preconceptions and skepticism towards the idea of recycling as a sustainable alternative to making from fresh raw materials and experiments involving implementation of the results of the technical and aesthetical experiments.
The approach to the experimentation has followed Bertolotti’s idea of the generative experiment while adding a dimension of reflectivity to the definition of this category;
the reflective dimension expanding on or synthesizing the results of the generative dimension. Some experiments have been carried out with a specific question, theme or aesthetic exploration in mind, and some have been more spontaneous. Some experiments have had a clear structure with a well-defined preconceived logical purpose, procedure and outcome, others have made sense in hindsight, and yet others have started out making sense and ended up not making sense.
Experimentation with recycled soda lime glass in the glass workshop has constituted the core of the explorations. Information developed in my personal experimentation have fed into teaching situations where students have been elaborating on the experiments while changing details to find better solutions to specific challenges.
The active engagement of students, professionals and laypeople in experimental activities in the glass workshop has expanded the scope of the results of the research following a methodology very much in accordance with the action theory mentioned in the previous section.
Concluding remarks
An epistemology of experiment for artistic practice based research is yet to be developed that embraces the parts of artistic research that do not make sense. Meanwhile, ideas about experimentation from other fields, although lacking reflection upon the non-sensical aspects of artistic experiments, can provide a conceptual background for contextualizing ideas about the sensible aspects of explorative artistic experimentation.
The overall role of the experimental activities in this particular research, in accordance with the research questions, has been to explore if and how introduction of principles of sustainability may contribute to aesthetic innovation by expanding the aesthetic space of opportunity and to identify if and how glass design and craft may contribute to sustainable development.
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