Southern Cross University
ePublications@SCU
Theses
2007
Big blue ball : pictures, people, place ; connecting
the world through creativity
Donna Wright
Southern Cross University
Publication details
Wright, D 2007, 'Big blue ball : pictures, people, place ; connecting the world through creativity', PhD thesis, Southern Cross
University, Lismore, NSW.
Copyright D Wright 2007
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Big Blue Ball – Pictures, people, place
Connecting the world through creativity
Book 1
An international arts-based research project
that explores the nature of meaning-making
and the role of creativity in providing
innovative sites for sharing understanding
about intercultural existence.
All rights reserved.
N o p a r t o f t h i s p u b l i c a t i o n m a y b e r ep r o d u c e d i n a n y f o r m
w i t h o u t p er m i s s i o n i n w r i t i n g f r o m t h e au t h o r .
© 2 00 4 -20 0 7 Wrig h t, Do n n a
Big B lu e Ba l l – P ic tur e s, p e o ple , p la c e : Co n n e c tin g t h e wo rld th ro ug h c re a tivi t y
Big B l ue Bal l – Pi c tu res , pe op le, pla ce
Connecting the world through creativity
A dissertation submitted
in partial fulfilment of the requirements for
the higher research degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Donna Wright
School of Arts and Social Sciences
Southern Cross University
Lismore, Australia
CONTENTS
Abstract
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Concept Map
Part 1: Building a Theoretical Framework
Cultural semiotics
Towards a unifying theory of meaning
The semiosphere
The creative function - boundaries and peripheries
Ambiguity and approximate equivalences
Visual culture engaging intercultural communication
1
12
13
18
24
26
29
30
Part 2: Research Methodology
Art practice-based research
Cultural semiotics applied to practice
Pictorial semiotics - mapping rules in picture making
Visual culture as site for intercultural discourse
35
38
42
46
Part 3: The Process
Creative
Stage 1:
Stage 2:
Stage 3:
practice as critical process
Making pictures for intercultural exchange
A global interchange
Placing pictures - mapping new meanings
48
50
62
69
Part 4: New work – making more pictures on the periphery
Studio exchange – Paris
78
Part 5: Expanding ideas – intercultural dialogues continue
Presentation of project outcomes
International exposure
84
88
Conclusion
New Information for repositioning cultural identities
References
Bibliography
Appendices
90
93
99
109
ABSTRACT
This three-part publication series presents the epistemological processes and
outco mes of an international arts-based research project titled Big Blue Ball:
Pictures, people, place. The project uses the creative function to investigate the
nature of meaning-making. In particular, through collaborative engagement with
a divers ity of cultures, it explores the significance of creativity and creative
practice in setting up sites for shared unders tanding in a contemporary and
globally interactive world. The project was developed and carried out by Donna
Wright during her PhD Candidature at Southern Cross University , Lis mo re,
Australia, between 2004 and 2007.
Making use of practice-led research s trategies, and drawing on creative arts
practice, the project has exploited the inherent capacity of the creative function
to support innovation. The project des ign offers a new model of intertextual
processes of creativity that opens up spaces for intercultural negotiation, by
linking spatial conceptions and processes for semiotic mediations, to multiple,
interconnected med iu ms for the production and reception of new infor mation.
This in turn provides a context in which to support knowledge discovery that
may facilitate intercultural aw areness and unders tanding.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to acknowledge the S chool of Arts and Social S ciences, Southern
Cross University for ins titutional support during the PhD candidature. Special
thanks go to my supervisor, John S mith, for providing a long leash and open
paddock during most of the first three years, and a tight reign for the last leg
towards the finishing line.
Most imp ortantly , the succes s of Big Blue Ball: Pictures, people, place is du e
to the enthusias m and dedication of the participants; mo re than 100 y oung
adults repres enting over 65 nationalities. Acknowledgeme nt and appreciation is
extended to these young people who took time out of their own busy lives to
express their thoughts, feelings and ideas, and to contribute to broadening our
understanding of our contemporary intercultural world. Project participants
represented in this publication are lis ted below in order of nationality .
Albania
Australia
Azerbaiján
Azerbaiján
Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Bahrain
Belize
Borneo
Brunei
Burma
Burma
Cameroon
Cayman Islands
China
China
China
China
China
China
China
Colombia
Colombia
Dominica
Egypt
Fiji
Fiji
France
French-Canada
Germany
Germany
Germany
Germany
Arben Asllani
Chani Ridley
Elnara Babayeva
Tural Aliyev
MD Sharawan Taman Dhali
Fazle Elahi Ebne Nasir
Faisal Aljalahma
Stephanie Young
R a i n a d i Da m u r s y a h
Md Ridauddin Hj Ibrahim
Theingi Tun
Aye Myint Win
Pascal G Bekono
Sarah Nasser
Ren Wei
XiaoShu Zhang
Xiao Hou
Shize Liu
Dong Ma
Hui Shen
Dandan Sun
María Alejandra Gaviria Reyes
Kenneth Ochoa
Delroy Sewotoy
Mai Samaha
Bernadette Coniogo
Latileta Qoro
Melanie Ovaert
Simon Gargonne
Ewe Terton
Kate Terton
Danielle Flynn
Christiane Wildt
Haiti
Francklin Pierre
Haiti
Honduras
Hong Kong
Hong Kong
India
India
India
Indian Fiji
Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia
Iran
Iran
Jamaica
Jamaica
Jordan
Kenya
Lebanon
Libya
Malawi
Malawi
Malaysia
Maori-New Zealand
Malta
Mexico
Moldova
Nigeria
Nigeria
Norway
Pakistan
Pakistan
Papua New Guinea
Osée Résidor
Norma Elvira Carías Montiel
Yu Hoi
Ka-Man Carmen Yim
Kamalpreet Singh
Gurinder Singh
Vinita Agarwal
Ashneel Khatri
Priscilla Hermali
Henra Nugraha
Intan Nurcahya
Layla Soroush
Shakeh Avanes Sarookhanian
Tamoy Singh
D e n n i s t o n E we n
Anas Alabbadi
A n t o n y S i m b o wo
W a s s i m Ka n a a n
Hassan Lagilla
Code Admore Sangala
Kenneth Msiska
Pauline Hui Ying, Ooi
Mariana Whareaitu
Charlo Seychell
Maria Renee McRoberts
Ghenador Sontu
J o h n b o s c o Ke n A m a k e z e
Mbachu Chichi
Silvia Karlsen
Nukhbat Malik
Amjad Ali Baloch
David Ephraim
Philippines
Romania
Russia
Saudi Arabia
Slovenia
S o u t h Af r i c a
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Sweden
Sweden
Syria
Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan
Thailand
Thailand
Tonga
Tunisia
Turkiye
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
USA
Uzbekistán
Vietnam
West Sahara
Yemin
Zambia
Geri Niemi
Stafei Florentina
George Kesselman
Adel Abu Haimed
Urśula Jaśovec
C a s s a n d r a Hu n t e r
Asanga Pradeep S.Coorey
Elia Michael Mbiko
Heléne Pihlström
Katarina Lindström
Rhoda Azizoghli
Aska Weng
Szu-Hui Wu
Wang I Sheng
Yu-Ling Lin
Tony Hsu
Prahm Janpasa
Saran Lumwanna
Kane Satui
Marouen Mraihi
Ramazan Cin
Paul Ssendagire
Oleksiy Kuzmenko
Lamya Hussain Gargash
Karen Sommers
Sevara Turaeva
Nguyen Thi Ngoc Bich
Oruntomigbekele Fasina
M o h a m m e d S a l e h A l i A l - R u mi n
Thandiwe Ngoma
INTRODUCTION
Big Blue Ball: Pictures, people, place is a practice-led research project tha t
investigates the making of meaning in a contemporary intercultural lifeworld,
where global cultural flows are increasingly interconnecting and transfor ming
our societies. Through the develop ment of a practice-based research strategy
that draws on the visual and creative arts, Big Blue Ball: Pictures, people, place
has aimed to build on our understandings of both the nature of mean ing-making
and the significance of creativity and creative practice in setting up sites that
can support innovative thinking about contemporary cultural issues of a
globally interactive world.
Big Blue Ball – Pictures, people, place actively engages dialogue with a diverse
range of cultures through individuals res ponding to pictures. The project has
creatively explored how meaning can be reconstructed through cross-cultural
exposure and intercultural exchange. Through a process of cooperative
engagement with cultural divers ity , and assisted by the communication tools of
the visual and creative arts, the project has allow ed for the emergence of
hy bridised interpretations, brought about by the collision and/or interaction of
different meaning spaces already formed in project participants by embedded
cultural memory codes.
The theoretical framew ork for this research project has positioned images as
being central to the repres entation of the world; therefore the structure of th e
project’s methodology has aimed to go bey ond es tablished modes of
interpretation in order to allow meanings to come forward by exploiting th e
1
visual as a cultural resource, and by drawing on self-reflexivity to reveal ho w
embedded cultural narratives are imbued with the values of a contemporary
lifeworld. Through an arts-bas ed, practice-led methodological approach to
theoretical inquiry, the project ties qualitative research techniques to practice,
and to the experiential proces ses that operate in the field of the visual. In doing
so practice-based research s trategies take on varied artistic for ms with th e
experience of art-making and visual-imaging facilitating creative dialogu e
across cultures, contributing to the creation of new knowledge that might
enhance the potential for breaking dow n cultural barriers, therefore providing a
situation conducive to setting up sites for shared unders tanding.
Participants in the Big Blue Ball project have been drawn fro m a broad cultural
cross-section of the global community ; over 100 y oung adults fro m more than
65 nationalities have taken part in the research to date and it continues to
regularly engage new members fro m around the world. Eight images ,
specifically developed and adapted for this project, and referred to as pr imar y
cultural texts, are provided to project participants for interpretation ( Fi g 0 .1 ) .
These images have been mod ified through a process of infor mation reduction,
using digital editing and traditional painting techniques, which has effectively
lifted them out of their original semiocultural context, thereby increasing
uncertainty and amb iguity in meaning-generation. Because of the heterogeneous
nature of cultural conventions, and with the absence of a co mmon cultural
me mory code, the project’s aim has been to activate the creative function,
triggering negotiations of meaning during the interpretation proces s. As the
creative function is considered a universal quality of hu man expression, indeed
of all life for m, the project exploits creative process es, so that fresh ideas abou t
how meanings are negotiated in a contemporary lifeworld can emerge.
2
Fig 0.1 Primary cultural texts 1 - 8
T h e s elec ted p r im a r y cu ltu r a l tex ts ar e s u p p lied to p ar t ic ip an ts as A - 4 co lo u r
r ep r o du cti o n s an d in d ig i tis ed el e ctr on ic f o r ma t. P r o jec t p ar tic ip an ts ar e as k e d
to s e arch o u t an d lo cate th eir p r ef err ed mean in g s by d r aw in g o n th eir f a miliar
cu ltu r al s y s te ms , s o ci al pr a ctic es an d lan g u ag e s tr u ctu r es . E nco u r ag in g th e u s e
o f the co mmu n ica tio n te ch n o lo g i es d ev elo p ed w ith in th e cre a tiv e an d v is u al
ar ts h as g iv en p ar ticip an ts th e o p p o r tu n ity to ex p an d in t er p r etiv e p o s s ib iliti es ,
dy n a mi ca l ly activ atin g cr eati ve p r o ces s es , an d al lo w in g f o r a d iv er s ity o f
r ep r es en ta tio n th at mig h t mo r e ad eq u ate ly ser v e to illus tr ate th eir id e as .
P r oject me mb er s h av e r es p o nd ed b y w r iting d es cr ip tiv es , po e try , n ar ra tiv es
an d f r ee w o r d as s ocia tio n s ; in En g lis h an d in th eir f ir s t lan g u ag e. P ain tin g s
h av e b ee n p r od u ced , d ig itis ed i mag es h av e b e en cr eate d , i ma g es hav e b een
hy b r idis ed an d o th er p i ctu r es an d ph o t o s h av e r e p la c ed th e m.
3
The project is then extended by way of a continued interchange of ideas,
through visual discourse between my self, as researcher and artist, and project
me mbers . Making specific use of the co mmunicative method of hand-made
picture making, infor mation frag ments of participants’ visual interpretations ar e
recorded as hand-painted miniatures, on s mall, magnetic-backed, wooden
blocks, 100x100x10 mm in size ( F i g 0 . 2 ) . As interpretations are collected fro m
around the world, visual co mponents are dialogically explored, and associations
made through the intertextual relationships between the original texts, creative
respons es fro m project me mbers, and my s elf, as researcher and artist. Having
prior knowledge of the construction of the primary cultural texts, the co mpleted
blocks are allusionary , in that they allude to, and contain within them, a past
knowledge-bas e. In a s imilar way , the blocks explicitly reference participants ’
respons es through an unders tanding of their means of production. They
therefore provide a sy nchronic process betw een the pr imary cultural texts and
participants’ interpretations. This practice-based process has been used to
constructively broaden cultural perspectives, towards diversity aw areness.
When the project is exhibited publicly , these hand-painted pictures serve to
provide a set of semiotic building blocks that can be renegotiated and
reconfigured by the viewer, who, through engagement w ith the exhibition, can
choose to beco me a cooperative play er in a continuing intercultural transaction.
Over 170 blocks are made available; arranged as an interactive s emiotic
play ground, interlocutors engage with the blocks, moving them around on the
table and up the wall, allowing for fresh ideas and meanings to emerge and b e
reconfigured as an ongoing creative dialogue. This provides for the opportunity
to use the media of visual culture to contribute to intercultural unders tanding,
by activating people’s minds through participation in the play ful construction
of fresh connections between cultures and individuals.
4
Fig 0.2 Stage three processes produce hand-painted miniatures referred to as ‘imagetexts’
Robert Solso states that, ‘When we create or experience art, in a very real sense
we have the clearest view of the mind’ (1996:xv). He suggests that the brain is the
basis of both our emotions and our thinking, providing the associations necessary
for perception and rational thought. Among other things, the brain provides us
with the capabilities for seeing, feeling, and understanding art. When we view the
visual image, signals are sent out to many areas of the brain, where associations
are made between the image, and our extensive knowledge- store of our internal
self and the external world. Harry Broudy (1987) refers to this as the imagic store.
Visual impressions therefore engage the observer’s cognitive foundation giving
meaning to experience (Solso 1996).
Graeme Sullivan (2005) suggests that when we use visual images we construct a
narrative that allows an opportunity to stretch the expressive range of meaningmaking. Interpretive possibilities are broadened because conceptual, structural,
and sequential decisions are formed predominantly through pictures . Karl Jung
maintained that art was socially significant because ‘it is constantly at work
educating the spirit of the age, conjuring up the forms in which the age is most
5
lacking’, and that the function of the artist is ‘to discover what it is that would
meet the unconscious needs of the age’ (1922 in Pope 2005:74).
Big Blue Ball: Pictures, people, place has aimed to build on our understanding of
the contemporary phenomenon of intercultural existence, and how we might
perceive global interactivity in everyday life. The argument put forward in this
dissertation asserts that the creative practice of viewing and making art, can
offer a distinctive communicative language for inquiry and exploration into all
that presents itself to us, carrying with it the ability to reach across cultures and
generations, and connect us in ways that the media of oral and written
communication may not. With this proposition put forward for investigation, the
research framework was modelled using a number of physical methodological
components that fundamentally incorporated visual and creative arts research
practices to identify and examine the making of meaning across cultures within
the context of a contemporary intercultural landscape. The project’s research
outcomes form a collection of visualized ideas, data, texts and objects that may
help us to define ways in which we imagine and relate to contemporary global
culture.
The research findings are documented and presented as a three-part publication
series:
Book 1 takes the form of an exegesis which presents the research framework,
including the key focus of enquiry, the theoretical foundation, disciplinary
and wider contexts, and the methodological principle, processes and
outcomes that have resulted in a practical model for investigating the nature
of meaning-making and the significance of creativity and creative practice in
setting up sites for shared understanding.
6
Book 2 documents the intercultural interpretations collected during the
course of the research from over 100 project participants representing more
than 65 nationalities from around the world;
Book 3 reproduces 170 hand-painted miniatures that emerged as a
consequence of a creative interchange between myself as artist/researcher and
participants’ interpretations of the project’s primary cultural texts.
This is Book 1 of the series. It is broken up into five focus areas. Part one
provides the theoretical framework for the project. An initial foundational
analysis of meaning-systems and the nature of meaning-making was carried out
in order to provide the project with a strong basis on which ideas about
communication could be explored and research methodologies developed. The
project was then situated in the philosophical orientation of cultural semiotics,
drawing on the concept put forward by Russian semiotician, Yuri Lotman, that
we are immersed in, and constrained by, an all encompassing semiosis, which he
defined as the semiosphere (1990). The semiosphere, rather than acting as a
single coding structure, evolves as a multidimensional, highly complex and
adaptive conglomerate of interconnected, but different, social sub-systems and
semiocultural spaces, marked by a diversity of communication elements and
networks, and specialized functions.
The project’s methodology draws specifically on Lotman’s idea of the innovative
creative potentiality that is activated on the periphery of a culture where semiotic
activity is intensified because there are constant incursions from texts coming in
from other cultures. Texts are defined in this context as human communication
practices that use conventional sign systems and are therefore subject to attention
and interpretation. These disruptive, textual encounters build up tension on a
culture’s semiotic boundary and it is these confrontations and interactions
between different socio-cultural codings that activate the creative function,
7
drawing out creative resolutions that can take the form of new ideas and even
new languages. Lotman argued that it is from this creative process that new
meaning-systems come into being.
This theoretical premise allowed the project to incorporate a range of diverse, yet
complementary positions currently being explored in the fields of cognitive
psychology, neuroscience, biology, sociology and anthropology, which
encompassed cultural semiotics, socio-cultural theory, social systems theory,
bio-semiotics, visual studies, cybernetics and related theories of complexity,
emergence and creativity. As this multi-disciplinary approach to research
progressed, the emergence of similarities and connections in perspectives and
perceptions of culture and communication were mapped and then synthesized, in
order to support the development of a practice-based research methodology that
would exploit the richness inherent in visual and creative arts research practices.
The theoretical framework therefore incorporated recent connections emerging
from biology, neuroscience, anthropology and cognitive psychology; that
imagination, aesthetic perception, and the allusionary function of images is
central to our everyday life experiences, and that the associative quality of
images particularly, gives them interpretive uses that enable us to dynamically
engage with our environment on multiple semiotic levels. These positions
support the key proposition of this research, which is that visual culture is
central to our understanding of ourselves and our lifeworld, and provides a
critical link to making sense of the unfamiliar and to extending meaning and
connection to others therefore providing us with practical processes to facilitate
a sharing of meaning across cultures.
Part two of the exegesis identifies the practice-based methodological principle
developed in support of the project’s theoretical position. This features a range
of qualitative research methods that encourage the use of responsive processes of
8
inquiry that can be found in the arts and the humanities. In particular, creative
and visual art practice-based research methods provide an interactive, reflective,
analytical context in which to draw out new knowledge and understanding.
Therefore, the research strategy for the project relies on creative channels of
communication and artistic and imaginative experiences as essential elements for
knowledge creation. The multidimensional quality of creative arts practices can
enhance the potential for breaking down cultural barriers, providing sites for
sharing ideas and increasing understandings. This in turn encourages discoveries
about creation and interpretation as cultural and individual expression.
The primary purpose of the project’s methodology is to actively engage with
cultural diversity to encourage the sharing of ideas in order to communicate more
effectively and equitably across cultures, in an increasingly complex
interconnected world. The methodological principle developed for this purpose
employed visual culture and creative practice for a range of practical strategies
that would facilitate project outcomes. The project is complex in its physical
construction of multiple visual semiotic sites effectively providing a series of
platforms from which to explore transcultural discourse, and from which to build
on understandings about our contemporary world. With the emphasis on
creativity and creative practice, the project is set up like a game, an intercultural
playground, where the accent is clearly on play and enjoyment of the process.
The methodological structure mimics the idea of the semiosphere’s centre
operating as a conformity enforcer, while the periphery engages with the new and
the unfamiliar, generating diversity and innovation.
Through the use of the communication tools of the creative and visual arts,
individuals from around the world have responded to the project’s collection of
eight primary cultural texts, shown in figure 0.1, as a way of exploring how
meaning can be reconstructed through cross-cultural exposure and intercultural
exchange. Stage one of the practical research component of the project involves
9
the making of this collection, and this process is discussed in detail in Part
three. Stage one of the project also encompasses the participant recruitment
process, where the project gathers momentum through an ongoing international
communication exchange that has resulted in the representation of over 65
nationalities. Stage two of the project assembles the interpretations collected
from around the world and presents them as a snapshot of our contemporary
intercultural lifeworld. These creative expressions are presented in Book 2 of this
publication series, which is designed to be viewed in conjunction with this
document.
Stage two of the creative exchange does not complete the project, rather, it can
be seen as another departure point, as the interchange continues onto stage three,
where visual discourse takes place between myself, as artist and researcher, and
project members, through a dialogic eduction of the collected interpretations,
opening experiential opportunities to engage with an ever-more widening
international collective. This stage of the project has produced 170 hand-painted
miniatures which are reproduced in Book 3 of this publication series.
Part four discusses the evolving cross-cultural links as they continue to
strengthen and reposition themselves. These include an international studio
exchange at Centre International d’Accueil et d'Echanges des Recollets in Paris
in June and July 2007, where a series of paintings were produced that synthesised
research outcomes. This expanded, and different body of work, the process of
which is discussed in Part five, was included in an exhibition and interactive
workshop presentation held at the American University in Paris (AUP), during
the 5 t h International Conference in New Directions in the Humanities, in July
2007.
Part five outlines the management and presentation of project outcomes. The
visualized ideas, data, texts and objects that emerged as a consequence of the
10
project’s research processes have been presented at international conferences,
exhibited nationally and internationally, and peer-reviewed articles have
subsequently been published in various academic journals. As an ongoing venture
in transcultural cooperative exchange, these outcomes are accessible to an
international audience via a dedicated interactive website where ideas and
insights can continue to flourish. The website, www.blueballproject.net, is
designed as an interactive site where the public has the opportunity to be a
passive spectator, or to choose to actively participate in an expanded interchange
of ideas, through on-screen manipulation of the project’s 170 hand-painted
miniatures, produced out of stage three processes. The user, or player, making
individual choices from the project’s collection of 170 blocks, can physically
drag each selected block into a gridded canvas, thereby assembling new visual
configurations that may allow for the emergence of unexpected ideas.
The methodological objectives of this inquiry do not concern studio-based
research, in that they do not address contemporary critical debates and practices
which inform and position contemporary art practice in relation to studio work, or
art historical contextual platforms. Although I make use of the practical tools of
the visual arts, my position is as an academic researcher who utilises the
communication technologies, investigative techniques and creative capabilities of
visual arts practice and visual culture generally, to identify issues, pose questions,
develop ideas and hypotheses, and to produce images that can hold those inquiries
in order for the art object to act as a vehicle for both telling an individual story
and for providing a space where more questions can be raised. Big Blue Ball:
Pictures, people, place has been developed as a research model that fundamentally
relies on that which is common in all of us, regardless of our cultural systems, our
social practices and our language structures; the creative function. Constructed as
an intercultural playground for planetary creativity, the project has used creative
practice to build bridges for engaging dialogue with a rapidly changing world.
11
CONCEPT MAP
Fig 0.3 A Concept Map of the project connects theory, practice and outcome
12
PA R T 1
BUILDING A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Cultural semiotics
The research model developed for the project is primarily situated upon the
theoretical foundations of cultural s emiotics, as developed by the Tartu School
in Estonia. S emiotics is an interdisciplinary field that looks at the action of
signs and the sign character of natural and cultural pheno mena. Historically ,
semiotics can be traced back along two paths; one through linguistics by way of
Ferdinand de Sauss ure’s sémiologie, and the other, through philosophy , by way
of Charles Sanders Peirce’s sémiotique, a ter m originally coined by John Locke
as Semeiotike, in his 1689 treatis e titled An Essay Concer ning Human
Understanding. As Deely explains, a science of s igns was developed following
Saussure, which ‘centered exclusively on literary texts and other artifacts of
culture which were alway s treated on the patterns of language’ and as s uch h e
suggests has limited semiology ’s potential because it relies on a linguis tic
direction as the semiotic mo del and in particular the verbal sign ( 19 90) . On the
other hand, Peirce developed a scientific philosophy of semiotics that
enco mpassed the theory of grammar, logic and rhetoric, and this philosophical
approach to the study of signs came to do minate the discipline. Charles W.
Morris also developed a s imilar theoretical standpoint in relation to the study of
signs that used the divisions of sy ntax, semantics and prag matics. Deely notes
that the second path through Peirce, Morris and other like- minded
contemporaries s aw in the field of semiotics ‘a broader and much mo re
13
fundamental process, involving the phy sical universe itself in hu man semios is,
and making of semiosis in our s pecies a part of semiosis in nature’ ( 1 99 0) .
Regardless of differences in direction semiotics takes, Deely maintains that ‘at
the heart of semiotics is the realization that the whole of human experience,
without exception, is an interpretive structure mediated and sustained by signs’
( 19 90 ).
Cultural semiotics , or the semiotics of culture, has been utilized in this
instance, drawing s ubstantially on Rus sian semiotician, Yuri Lotman’s unify ing
theory on text, language, culture, communication and new meaning-sy stems .
Lotman’s notion of the semiosphere is sy nthes ized into the project’s
methodology and us ed as an imaging platfor m fro m w hich to launch practical
investigations. Cultural semiotics pos tulates that hu man meaning-systems, or
semiocultural spaces, are immersed in and constrained by an all enco mpassing
semiosis, which Lotman has identified as the s emiosphere ( 19 90). The
semiosphere as established in Universe of the Mind ( 19 90 ) is des cribed as th e
meaning-making structure that surrounds us. Vladamir Alexandrov express es
Lotman’s view of a semiosphere as the notion of our planet being ‘enmeshed in
a vas t and multileveled poly phony of voices, texts and languages’ ( 20 00: 2) . Our
meaning-systems, or semiocultural spaces, are in constant contact with texts
co ming in from other cultures. These incursions have an effect on the intern al
structure of the worldview of each of the affected cultures, by providing a
continual process of collision, interaction, transaction, transition and renew al
( L ot ma n 19 90) . Thus, the semiosphere is not a single coding structure, but rather
a multi-level, highly co mplex and adaptive conglo merate of interconnected but
different social sub-sy stems and semiocultural spaces, marked by a diversity of
co mmunication elements or networks, and specialized functions. Lotman
proposes that the semiosphere is ‘the res ult and the condition for the
develop ment of culture’ ( 1 99 0: 1 25 ).
14
Lotman perceived the semiotic structure’s ultimate organizational attribute as
self-description and highlighted that while the sy stem gains advantage in
greater structural organization, it loses its principles of uncertainty which
‘provide it with flexibility , heightened capacity for infor mation and the
potential for dy namic development’ ( 1 99 0: 1 28 ). N iklas Luhmann's ( 19 84) theory
of self-organisation, a social sy stems theory adapted fro m biology , introduced
into sociology the self-organising sy stem fro m the theoretical developments of
Hu mberto Maturana and Fransisco Varela ( 1 97 2; 1 98 0; 1 98 7), in relation to the
biological autopoies is. Luhmann utilised the process of autopoies is to
understand the self-maintaining dy namics of social systems . In Luh mann’s selforganising sy stem, when there is an uncertainty that cannot be fully perceived,
the s elf-organis ing network propels its own process recursively by restructuring
its organisation in the present on the basis of these interactions, thus
reflexively creating deviations in meaning. Loet Ley dsdorff’s critique of this
sy stem s tates that ‘through language the distinction between uncertainty and
meaningful infor mation is co mmunicated reflexively , and the cons equent
codification may be changed without beco ming confus ed’ ( 20 00: 1 ).
For Maturana and Varela, sy stems are structure-determined shaped by structural
coupling, the result of which is a self-directed and enclosed sy stem that has
nonetheless been influenced and shaped by its engagement with its environ ment
over time as much as the environ ment has been for med by its interactions with
the system. This notion correlates with the self-des criptive attributes of
Lotman’s semiosphere. Maturana and Varela characterized the nature of
language as a continuing and situated activity that is self-referring and circular
in its organisation, and this reflects the way in which two mutually perturbing
sy stems can affect one another’s structure, in turn affecting the behaviour that
is manifested.
15
Vladimer Vernadsky's concept of the biosphere (1926; trans 1998) also correlates
with Lotman’s theoretical proposition of the semiosphere. Vernadsky’s biosphere
(cited in Lot ma n 1990:123) maintains that the earth as a self-contained sphere is a
total system of societies of interrelated living organisms and beings, and life is
innate and present in every particle of the planet. Vernadsky’s definitive text,
The biosphere, was published in Russian in 1926, but was not made available as a
full English translation until 1998. While Alexandrov (2000) sees Lotman’s
correlation of the notion of a semiosphere with Vernadsky’s biological
phenomenon of the biosphere as flawed because of fundamental differences
between the two, he nonetheless admits that Lotman’s concept of the semiosphere
is as far-reaching, in that it attempts to describe how all levels of culture are
integrated ‘from the relations between the hemispheres of the brain, to dialogue,
to the production and consumption of cultural artefacts, to large scale changes in
national cultures’ (2000).
This research project draws on Lotman’s idea of a culture’s periphery or filter
being the area that provides the most innovative semiotic activity. In the Tartu
School model of cultural semiotics, a culture’s centre controls the myth-forming
mechanism of that society, constructing and organising texts into an integrated
structural model of the world. The centre orders life into meaningful stability
that is highly valued as the normalised condition in which the culture’s society
operates. The outside is considered to be disorderly and chaotic. A culture’s
periphery is the frontier area where semiotic activity is intensified because there
are constant invasions from this ‘outside’. The periphery of a culture comes into
contact with and negotiates meaning out of structurally independent units
(Lot man 1990). Therefore, from the centre to the edges untranslatability increases.
Tension builds up on the boundaries of semio-cultural spaces where there is a
confrontation and interaction between different socio-cultural codings and this
reactivates semiotic dynamism. Clark explains that ‘it is the lack of fit between
16
texts, languages, and cultures that creates the conditions for semantic enrich ment
[and] the creation of new meaning’ ( 1 99 2: 3 ). These disruptive encounters draw
out creativity and new ideas and new languages can emerge. It is fro m this
creative function that new meaning-sy stems can co me into being ( L ot ma n 19 90).
In order to work fro m the theoretical position of cultural semiotics, an initial
foundational analysis of meaning and meaning-sy stems was carried out to
provide a supportive skeletal structure in which ideas about communication
could be explored and research methodologies developed. The project’s
fundamental assu mp tions about meaning-creation, meaning-sy stems and hu ma n
co mmunication were strengthened by the continuing theoretical investigations
of bio-semiotics ( Ue x kü l l 1 940; H of f mey e r 1 99 6; K ul l 1 99 8) . T he a nal y si s dr ew on
Jordan Zlatev’s efforts to provide a unified bio-cultural theory of meaning. In
his paper titled Meaning = Life + Cultur e: An outline of a unified bio-cultural
theory of meaning (2 00 3) Zl a t e v synthesized ideas fro m evolutionary and
develop mental psychology , bio-s emiotics, cultural semiotics, social sy stems
theory and cybernetics. H e presented an hypothesis for an integrative theory of
meaning which focused on the concept of value within both a biological and
socio-cultural context. In addition to this, the integrative theoretical mod el
called conscious AWAREness put forward by Robert Solso (2 00 3) in relation to
cognition, art and the evolution of consciousness, was also s y nthesized into this
foundational analy sis. Solso shares with this author a fas cination with the way
the function of art can operate as a modality through which w e can better
understand the conscious mind, and particularly how creativity , through art, can
evolve meaning-sy stems that can be shared interculturally .
17
Towards a unifying theory of meaning
The project’s concept of meaning as it is applied to the way in which hu mans as
cultural beings learn, retain, reflect on, and make use of signs and sign sy stems
in order to co mmunicate, is built on the premise that interpretation of texts, that
is any human co mmunication practice that uses conventional sign systems, takes
place in a culturally mediated and codified space. M eaning is encoded into
belief systems which are value-laden and affect the actions of the individual,
and the individual’s capacity to create meaning. Therefore, hu man thought and
behaviour are culturally patterned and passed on as nor mative values and ideals
to future generations. In Global Brain ( 20 00: 50- 51 ), Howard Bloo m explains,
‘With mammals came another network plug-in: parent-offspring linkage in a
high-speed data trade […] Parents could mind-suckle their y oung – pass ing to
s mall fry their experiences, the behavio[u]ral memes they’d stored in me mory’.
Jacob von Uexküll coined the word ‘U mwelt’ in 1940 to describe a model of the
interpreted world of an organis m. A lexei Sharov provides a simple example of
Uexküll’s Umwelt, in that ‘an ant and a cow perceive the s ame environ ment
( meadow) in a very different way . Gras s stems are food for the cow and bridges
for the ant’ ( 1 99 8: 4) .
Interpretation is for mulated through a transactional process where meaning is
negotiated betw een the text, which we might here correlate with Uexküll’s
carr ier of significance , message options located in the text, which are
constrained by cultural conventionality , and the interpreter, who is the recipient
of the text. Any individual interpreter of a text will bring into the negotiation
space cultural s ubjectivity when constructing a preferred meaning. Th e
interpreter also comes to the space ar med with a range of mediation tools
appropriated and adapted over time through cultural practices and lived
18
experiences . These mediation tools are thereby culturally conditioned, and ar e
fashioned and utilized to fit the individual’s Umwelt or lifeworld.
A hierarchy of meaning-sy stems is built over time and imbedded through
evolution and epigenetics, that is, heritable changes in gene function that occur
without a change in the DNA sequence, so that each preceding level of meaning
is taken for granted and integrated into, and thereby contained within the levels
of meaning-sy stems that follow. This forms the ontogenetic develop ment of the
hu man being and is factored into the evolutionary process ( Zl a t e v 2 00 3) . In this
way culture is shared as implicit and learned hu man behaviour. Lotman sugges ts
that a text ‘is alw ays created by so meone and for so me purpos e and events ar e
represented in the text in an encoded for m’ ( 1 99 0: 2 17) . This allows for inference
to take place during interpretation. Umberto Eco proposes that every text w ill
describe or presuppose a possible world that can be inferred by co mparing it to
the lifeworld of the interpreter. The interpreter will then try to bring a sense of
order to its meaning (2003).
Cultural memory evolves as a coded system over generations and enco mpass es
the embedded and transferable values and beliefs of a culture. Hu man
co mmunication is therefore fundamentally conventional and sy stematic. Th e
advantage of this conventionality , is that cultural memory codes form a
patterning of interrelated ideas, sy mb ols and behaviours that can easily be
shared, learned and trans mitted cross-generationally. John Bodley notes that
because of this cros s-generational quality of culture it can be characterised as a
‘superorganic entity , existing bey ond its individual hu man carriers’ ( 1 99 4: 8) .
Bodley draws on the argument shared by Alfred Kroeber ( 19 87) that ‘each
individual is born into and is shaped by a culture that pre-exis ts and w ill
continue to exist well after the individual dies’. Whils t culture is complex it is
the epigenetic ability to encode cultural memory that allow s each generation to
19
integrate new information fro m the periphery , and to build into the sy stem new
ideas and new values. As Lotman states:
Any dynamic process involving human beings fluctuates between the pole
of continuous slo w change, typical o f processes on which th e
con sciousness an d the will of humanity has no influence and which are
often simply ig nored becau se their p eriodicity is longer th an that of one
gen eration; an d the pole of conscious h uman activ ity resulting from
individu al efforts of mind and will. The one pole can no more be detach ed
from the other th an n orth and south. The oppo sitio n b etween th em is a
condition for their existence (1990:225-6).
This line of reasoning is built from the premise that meaning begins out of a
relationship between an organism and its environment. This relationship is
determined by the value that particular elements of an environment hold for that
organism. Environmental aspects include physical elements and cultural
elements. Zlatev suggests that physical elements are perceived via innate value
systems and are activated in order to preserve the life of the organism, or
individual. When organisms develop more complex collective organisations, or
societies, the environment continues to contain the existing physical elements,
but also develops cultural elements, which add value to the existing structure.
Interestingly, and in support of this premise, neuroscientist, Matthew Lieberman,
and his research associates, have recently identified a phenomenon within the
evolution of the mammalian brain whereby existing systems developed to respond
to physical elements within the environment were utilized to provide for the
more complex cultural elements that evolved to facilitate social cohesion. Their
findings suggest that the physical pain response system that had already evolved
in animals long before social relationships were important was a perfect system
already successfully functioning, and this was simply co-opted for responding to
social pain, like rejection and exclusion (Lieberman & Eisenberger 2004).
20
Lieber man and Eis enberger suggest that social connection is one of our mo st
basic needs and its absence not only caus es emotional pain, but also caus es
physical pain. Various experiments , including those carried out by Harlow on
rhesus mo nkeys in 1958, demonstrate a need for co mfort and inclusion over th e
need for food. It shows a primary imp ortance for maintaining social clos eness
or social contact. While the need for social clos eness may have originally
evolved to support basic survival mechanis ms, it is clear that this drive is now a
separate, autono mous need. Eis enberger and Lieberman propose that the
lifelong need for social connection is an evolutionary trait that is interpreted as
essential to survival, therefore social exclusion or rejection, like other un met
needs, is experienced as painful. Their hy pothes is is that ‘the pain mechanis ms
involved in preventing phy sical har m were co-opted during our evolution to
prevent social s eparation’ ( E i s e nbe r ge r & Li e b er ma n 2 00 5) . They refer to pain
overlap theory to suggest that social and phy sical pain share the same
underly ing neurological sy stem, and that this overlap has cons equences for the
way the brain detects, interprets and responds to social exclusion. During our
evolution the brain has ‘piggy -backed’ onto the pre-existing physical pain
sy stem, borrowing the pain signal to prevent the danger inherent in social
separation (L i e ber ma n & E i se n be r ger 20 04 ).
Over time, human beings have developed extremely complex associations, which
we refer to as societies. In order to perpetuate the preservation of the society,
and therefore the survival of the organism, social cohesion must be maintained.
Complex associations then necessitate a shared communication process, and this
process is achieved through the creation and sharing of signs and sign systems
which become integrated into the society as conventional value systems (Zlatev
2003). Howard Bloom (2000:42) describes this phenomenon as ‘conformity
enforcement’ and has identified it as one of five essential elements of a
‘collective learning machine’. As a society becomes more complex so to the
conventional value systems that supports its continuity.
21
Cultural elements need to be acquired and are progressively developed into
conventional value-systems and these are overlaid onto the existing hierarchy of
meaning-systems. Thes e conventional value-systems take the for m initially of
signals, and then develop into more co mplex signs and sign-systems. Once
acquired these conventional value-sy stems can be utilized to deter mine meaning
relations. Therefore, both innate (physical) and acquired (cultural) valuesy stems direct and evaluate the hu man being’s behaviour and its adaptation by
serving as control mechanis ms . The hu man being contains and responds to
primary phy sical elements in addition to cultural elements ( Zl a t e v 20 03) .
Solso suggests that our brain provides information to us through the activation
of memory units that are elements of a larger collection made up of selfknowledge, general knowledge and collective knowledge. CognitiveStructuralist, Jean Piaget (1926), proposed that we ama ss infor mation and
knowledge of the world as a res ult of our continued interaction with it. This
co mplex organisation of knowledge he ter med a schema. We continually
construct and collect schemas to form what Bartlett (1932) further ter med our
schemata. Our individual schemata continually expand and reshape thems elves
and thes e schemas influence how we interpret new information and recall
me mory over time. Perceived impressions are as sociated with and connected to
other imp ress ions and then organized into meaningful memory units. Previous
experience and learning deter mines the strength of thes e connections ( 19 96;
2 00 3) . Solso defines this as an aspect of consciousness, in that consciousness
‘allows humans to gain access to know ledge through recall (and recognition) of
both personal infor mation and knowledge of the world’ ( 20 03: 31 ).
An individual co-exists in a co mplex social system and so must poss ess the
capacity to learn the s igns contained within the conventional value sy stem, and
retain this information, in order to participate in the society of which it
22
belongs. Solso describes this aspect of our collective survival system as the
ability for hu mans to be cons cious, not only of their own actions, but also of
another’s cons ciousness as well, which he s ugges ts provides us with the
capability for empathy:
In evolutionary terms, across y ears of coop erative acts, su ch as mutual
hunting activities or gath erin g of foodstuffs, surv iv al was impro ved if one
memb er could more or less k now what his or her partner w as thinking in
add ition to observing and understanding what she was doing […] As th e
need for even more cooperative actio n intensified […] a greater deg ree of
“intuitiv e” sen sitivity was required […] Feelings count, and kno wing about
ano th er’ s conscio us pain (as well as h is p leasure) was an important step in
the socializatio n of the species (2003:33).
This socialisation of the s pecies necess itated the ability of hu mans to learn,
retain, reflect on, interpret, and make use of conventional signs and sign
sy stems in order to reinforce a group mentality that could maintain a co mmunal
consciousness, thereby enhancing the chances of both individual and mutual
survival. Solso notes that ‘by reason of co mmo n neurology and similar social
experiences , clan members share a similar knowledge base’ ( 20 03: 3 3) . Or as
Bloo m puts it, ‘the brain which underlies the mind is jigsawed like a puzzle
piece to fit the space it’s given by its loved ones and by the larger framework o f
its culture’s patterning’ ( 20 00 :7 4) . Zlatev suggests that this is an evolutionary
and an epigenetic process that gradually develops into an integrated hierarchy
of meaning-sy stems that becomes embedded into the cultural fabric of a society
on an ontogenetic level, operating in w hat can be identified as a s emiotic s pace,
and which is referred to by Lotman as the semiosphere.
23
The semiosphere
The semiosphere supports multi-various social relations and socio-cultural
practices which function as rituals, rules and nor ms . Thes e communication
practices, based on shared, implicitly agreed-upon mean ing, beco me
internalis ed cultural conventions, and in turn form the bas is for self-correction
and self-regulation (Zl at e v 20 03) . The s emiosphere therefore contains an
intrins ic internal value system, controlling perception, behaviour and selfdirected learning which serves to pres erve and self-regulate the sy stem’s
organisation. In this way, Lotman’s semiosphere integrates hu man culture into
the natural world and within a narrative continuu m ( A l e xa n dr ov 20 00 ).
The semio sphere is necessary for the existence and functioning of language, and
language is a neces sary evolutionary step forward in facilitating the effective
sharing of signs and s ign systems that make up the innate and conventional
value systems within progress ively more co mplex s ocieties. Language
necessitates the use of sy mbolic s ign-systems so conventional value-sy stems
beco me more sy stematic, loaded with cultural value. The move towards the use
of sy mbols as a mo re efficient co mmu nication process marks a shift in the way
in which cultural beings make use of signs and sign sy stems. As Zlatev explains
it, cultural beings can now differentiate betw een express ion and content, in th at
the expression, the use of particular signs, can s tand in for or replace the
content. The use of particular signs represent so mething else, and the
knowledge of this re-presentation is shared by the memb ers of the society and
the participants in the co mmu nication event. This shared knowledge is known to
be shared, and is shared through the construction of sy mbols. Sy mbols for m a
relationship between expression and content, which beco mes a cultural
convention, constrained in a sy stem that helps to stabilise meaning (Zl at e v
2 00 3) .
24
Solso suggests that this evolution towards an ‘externalised sy mbolic universe,
capable of imagination and sy mbolic or abstracted representation effected
technological progress , co mp lex language development, and art ( 2 00 3: 4 9- 5 4) . He
believes that these profound cultural changes w ere only achieved becaus e the
hu man brain was now capable of co mp lex and abstract thought . In relation to
art, he goes on to state;
At a fundamen tal level, a brain that could image non-p resent objects an d
rend er likeness of tho se objects w as a necessary in gredient for the
production o f cave art an d sculpture. That ty pe of b rain would require a
comp licated nervous sy stem capab le of p erceiving, sto ring, an d processin g
vast amounts o f in formation. It would require the capacity to image the
world and act sy mbolically (2003:59).
The develop ment of sy stems of sy mbols produced not just a new method of
co mmunicating but also a new way of thinking and of using the brain. Sols o
believes that the hu man brain evolved in such way as to be capable of
envisioning the world in abstract terms, facilitating the use of sy mbols to
replace real objects, and to co mmu nicate through both oral and written
language. This paved the w ay for hu man beings to produce art that was both
aesthetic and sy mbolic ( 2 00 3: 4 1) . He goes on to suggest that a consequence of
the evolution of the hu man brain into a more complex and effective
co mputational sy stem, capable of sy mbolic representation, was an
inquisitiveness and a tendency to seek out deeper understandings about th e
world and all it enco mpassed; in ess ence an improved intellectualis m capable of
imagining.
Zlatev suggests that when conventional mimetic and sy mb olic meaning-sy stems
beco me internalized, it results in a s emiotic mediation that acts as a bridg e
between the hu man being and the immediate world ( 2 00 3) . Paradoxically, the
25
higher level of conventionality contained within sy mbols allows the hu man
being more creativity , and thus more freedom to reflect and construct. Through
cognitive evolution and complex epigenetic and evolutionary social sy stems
develop ment, we have acquired a sy mbolic sy stem uniquely structured for the
establishment of abstract concepts, class es and hierarchies, acting as a for m of
social interaction, generating roles and role relationships. Constrained in a
sy stem, the meaning of sy mbols can be fixed and shared socially , beco ming
fully conventional ( Z la te v 2 00 3) . Varieties of conventional meaning-systems , or
socio-cultural s emiotic s paces, where me mbers can communicate effectively ,
subsequently develop and flourish within the larger s emiosphere. Th e
semiosphere is therefore required for the functioning of progress ively more
co mplex societies that now rely on specific cultural conventions to provide
shared meaning and engage the communication process for infor mation
exchange.
The creative function - boundaries and peripheries
However, hu mans also have the ability to reflect on information and cons truct
new meaning. In fact, as Zlatev ( 20 03) has noted, it is the conventionality of the
meaning-systems of a culture that allows for more creativity in the hu man
being, and thus mo re freedom to reflect and construct. Creative intelligence, or
the creative function, is activated and is present when a text co mes into being
fro m this process of reflection. Solso (2 00 3) sugges ts that while there is a
universal principle of perception and cognition, the enor mous diversity in th e
interpretive capacities of humans indicates that we are als o highly distinctive in
our creativity . The second of Bloo m’s five essential elements of the collective
learning machine is divers ity generation, which play s a vital part in this
26
creative process of designing and constructing new variations in meaning
( 20 00 ). Whilst culture is co mplex, it is the epigenetic ability to encode cultural
me mory that allow s each generation to integrate new infor mation fro m the
periphery , and to build into the sy stem new ideas and new values. As Bloo m
notes, ‘conformity and diversity work together for the better ment of the larger
whole’ ( 2 00 0: 5 3) .
The research methodology of Big Blue Ball: Pictures, people, place draws on
Lotman’s idea of a culture’s periphery being the area that provides the most
innovative semiotic activity . Therefore, of particular interest to the project has
been the notion of a shift in focus fro m the text to its periphery , where the text
is influenced by transcultural engagements. Lotman argues that the language
structures which are immers ed in the semiosphere ‘relate to each other alon g
the spectru m which runs fro m comp lete mutual trans latability to co mplete
mutual untranslatability ’ ( 19 90: 12 5). Unfamiliarity precipitates an uncertainty
that cannot be fully perceived through the conventional codified meaningsy stems. An untranslatable pheno menon activates the creative function, thus
generating new information, creating innovation in the communication process.
Semiotic mediation, acting as a bridge between the hu man being and the
immediate environ ment, provides a space for imagination, reflection, adaptation
and the construction of new signs and sign sy stems, allowing for new languag e
structures to emerge to facilitate shared experiences, and to support newly
for mulated cultural conventions.
Untranslatability increas es fro m the centre of a semiocultural space to th e
periphery where a culture comes into contact with other cultures ( L ot ma n 1 99 0) .
The centre of a culture can be seen as Bloom’s conformity enforcer where
‘enough cookie-cutter similarities’ are stamped ‘into the members of a group to
give it an identity ’ ( 2 00 0: 4 2) . However, while the sy stem gains advantage in
27
greater structural organis ation, it loses its principles of uncertainty which
‘provide it with flexibility , heightened capacity for infor mation and the
potential for dy namic development’ (L ot ma n 19 90: 12 8) . C entres of semiocultural
spaces aspire to the level of self-description and therefore beco me selfregulating and rigid in their organisation. They lose dynamis m, beco ming
inflexible. Lotman argues that ‘the function of any boundary […] is to control,
filter and adapt the external into the internal, [and] this invariant function is
realized in different way s on different levels’. Through this process, external
spaces beco me structured ( 20 00: 1 40 ). The function of the semiotic sy stem’ s
centre is to normalise, thus transforming new information into internalised
cultural conventions.
Semiotic dy namis m is reactivated in the field of tens ion built up on the
periphery , and this is where new languages or meaning-sy stems co me into
being . Lotman states that ‘because the semiotic space is transected by nu merous
boundaries, each message that moves across it must be many times translated
and transfor med, and the process of generating new infor mation thereby
snowballs’ ( 20 00 : 1 40) . The peripheries are the frontier areas where s emiotic
activity is intensified because there are constant invasions from the outside.
Lotman argues that ‘every system which fulfils the entire range of semiotic
possibilities not only trans mits ready-made mess ages but also serves as a
generator of new ones’ ( 1 99 0: 2- 13 ). As Lotman notes, ‘Any culture is constantly
bo mbarded by chance isolated texts which fall on it like a shower of meteorites
[… ] N ot the texts which are included in a continuing tradition which has an
influence on the culture, but isolated and disruptive invasions […] They are
important factors in the stimulus of cultural dy namics’ (L ot ma n 1 99 0: 18) .
28
Ambiguity and approximate equivalences
The project’s methodology als o draws on the premise that when two cultures are
placed in a situation of exchange and influence, translation between one and the
other, while necessary , is ultimately impossible, and this precipitates a
negotiation process which results in the creation of approximate equivalences .
Lotman sees these approximate equivalences as ‘one of the mo st important
features of any creative thinking […] forging new semiotic connections’
( 19 90 : 37). As Hilary Clark ( 1 99 2: 3) describes it in her review of Universe of the
Mind, ‘two aspects make up any semiotic pheno menon, neither of which can be
fully translated into the other, y et these demand to be translated if the s emiotic
structure is to function’ . Clark explains that ‘it is the lack of fit between texts ,
languages, and cultures that creates the conditions for s emantic enrich ment,
[and] the creation of new meaning’ ( 1 99 2: 3 ).
As Hjelmslev ( 19 43 ) has pointed out, every language expresses its own cultural
values and conventions and therefore its own worldview, its own structural
sy stem of the world . Since each language is structured differently two semantic
sy stems are mutually inaccessible therefore translation is imposs ible. This
means that there can only be negotiation in meaning when cultures co me into
contact with each other, although as Eco (2 00 3) points out, this negotiatio n
process does not exclude the presence of rules or of conventions . Eco refers to
Pierce’s notion of content, for m and interpretation, in that interpretations add
value to the content of the interpreted expression because every interpretation
will focus on the content from a different point of view ; ‘thus all interpretatio n
of the s ame expres sion cannot be mutually sy nony mous, and every expression
resembles a ho mo ny mous ter m convey ing a different interpretation’ ( E c o
2 00 3: 1 3) .
29
Therefore, if one takes two cultures and places them in a situation of exchange
and influence, translation betw een one and the other, while fundamental, is
ultimately imposs ible, therefore resulting in the creation of approximate
equivalences. Meaning- making is adaptive and cooperative, and as a
consequently , is flexible and open. D isruptive encounters with the unfamiliar o r
the untranslatable, rather than shutting down the sy stem, w ill draw out
creativity and new ideas and new languages can emerge and be gradually
absorbed into the centre. It is this generative process that is vital to cultural
change and divers ity .
Visual Culture engaging intercultural communication
People understand the world in relation to contexts that hold existing
representations of knowledge. Through me mory and our imagination w e can
recall, reassemble and replay images and ideas, res tructuring old infor mation
and co mb ining new infor mation we encounter to create novel representations .
This process of reconstruction helps us fit the unfamiliar into our stable
perception of the world making similar but different patterns, and through this
process, building images that are re-presented in new ways. So metimes this
practice produces misinterpretations and other times it draws out approximate
equivalences that can assist in building a bridge tow ards mutual understanding .
Because individuals exist ins ide larger socio-cultural contexts, imme rsed in an
interdependent world of knowledge, this ability to adapt new infor mation and
30
share ideas connects us to other hu man beings and to other realities bey ond our
periphery ( C ar t er 2 00 3; V o sni a do u & B r e w e r 1 98 7; F re e d ma n 2 00 3) .
Meaning is made through the activation of memory-units that Solso s uggests are
frag ments of a larger picture. The way these me mory -units connect is
determined by individual learned experiences, but also by hidden co mponents
that are inbuilt, collective impres sions. This schema of organised knowledge
acts as an intricate, s tructured network of abstract mental fragments tha t
represent an individual’s understanding of the world. It is this collective,
hidden memory store that gives the mind remarkable capacities to cope with
co mplex thinking processes. Solso also suggests that it is thes e hidden units
that allow hu mans to repres ent sophisticated concepts such as the interpretation
of a work of art (1996). H e believes that pictures , for instance, are viewed
within this richly interconnected context, and that the context is a crucial
element in the w ay we make sens e of, or give meaning to, the visual image. As
he states, ‘The brain sees richer things in a picture and cons equently fills in the
missing details. It does so through the activation of “hidden units”, bits and
pieces of knowledge that constitute a schema. Fro m this schema a multitude of
inferences are made about the picture’ ( 1 99 6: 2 58 ).
Broudy (198 7) s ugges ts that we possess a collective and contextual imagic store
which is held in our me mory , enabling us to unders tand references to imag es
and objects and to build on past knowledge by creating new images and objects
to co mmunicate new ideas. Broudy believes that imagination, aesthetic
perception and the allusionary function of images is central to our every day life
experience. The associative quality of images particularly , gives them
interpretative uses that enable us to dynamically engage with our environ ment
on multiple semiotic levels. Visual culture is therefore central to our
understanding of ours elves and our lifeworld, and provides a critical link to
31
making sense of the unfamiliar and to extending meaning and connection to
others.
Solso proposes that the phy sical context of visual objects activates our basic
perception calling into play our extensive store of pers onal know ledge, logic,
and emotions. The mind is structured as a data processing sy stem based on th e
organisation of infor mation in long-term memory. This schemata is governed by
rules that enable the mind to make s ense of an object, scene or idea, through
our unique accu mu lated store of personal histories and experiences of the
world. ‘Knowledge is not haphazardly arranged in the brain, but is
sy stematically organized around themes, or schemes, that are important
structures in the understanding of art as well as all of reality ’ (S ol so 1 99 6: 11 61 21) . Therefore, we interpret art through a filter, created by our personal
schema , which is culturally patterned but open to the flow of new infor mation.
Kerry Freed man describes it this w ay :
We con tinu ally create personal and cultural meaning from visual culture
which reflects knowledg e, beliefs, and attitudes stimu lated by an
ov erlap ping array of images w e migh t have seen in the p ast. We cro ssreferen ce other images and other forms of cu lture in the process o f mak in g
meaning […] through art making an d v iewing we shape our th inking about
the world an d ourselves ( 20 03: 91- 93 ).
T he w o r k of ar t or t he pr a ct i c e of ma ki n g a r t i s si t uat e d i n s pe ci f i c d i s c ur si v e
sc h e ma s t hat ca rr y se mi ot i c pec ul i ari t i e s w h i c h s er v e t h e f un ct i on o f th e soc i e ty ,
c onst r a i n e d by p art i c ul ar c ul t ur al v al ue s. Wi l l i a m J. T M i t c hel l st a t e s t ha t ‘ vi si on
i t s el f i s a c ul t ur a l c o nst r u ct i on; i t i s l i k e a l a n gu a ge t ha t y ou ha ve t o l e ar n how t o
s pe a k [… ] vi s i o n i s not j ust a me c ha ni c al o per at i on of t he ey e ba l l , b ut a c o mpl e x
c og ni t i ve pr oc es s t h at ha s t o be l e a r ne d’ ( I nt er vi ew i n D i k ovi t s k ay a 20 06: 24 4).
B e c a us e i ma g e s ar e c ul t ur a l ca r ri er s t hey can eff e ct i vel y f aci l i t at e e ffi ci e n t
32
r e pr e se nt at i on s of s pec i f i c c ul t ur al vi e w poi nt s a nd i d e nti t i e s. Al ph e n ( 20 05) f urt her
s u gge st s t ha t a rt i s a c ul t ur a l c r ea t or i n t ha t it h a s t h e pow er t o shi f t o ur t hi nk i n g a nd
t o c ha n ge t h e w a y we vi ew our se l ve s, o ur w or l d a n d o ur i n te ra ct i on w i t h i t.
C o ngl et on ( 2 00 4: 2 95) su pp or ts t hi s a s se rt i on. S he sta te s, ‘si nc e t h e ae st h et i c
e xpe ri e nc e en t a i l s bot h aff e ct i ve a nd c o gni t i ve a ct i vi t y , i t ca n l ea d t o de e pl y
i n t e gr a t e d t h ou gh t [ …] ar t do e s n ot e xi st in a v ac uu m, b ut r e st s o n h u ma n e x pe ri e nce ,
b ot h t he a r t i st ’ s a nd vi e w e r’ s c ul t ur al , hi s t or i c a l , a n d p sy chol ogi c al c o nt e xt s’ .
Big Blue Ball: Pictur es, people, place makes use of visual culture because it is
shaped by cultural conditions and so it can reveal a culture’s uniqueness. At th e
same time, visual culture has the ability to cross cultural boundaries and to
make comment on and about the periphery . Freedman notes that ‘border
conflicts, particularly conflicts at the borders of cultural difference, are often at
the centre of contemporary visual culture’ ( 20 03 :8 9) . She also suggests that we
us e art to co mmunicate with others through artistic narrative, to mediate
knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours . Because art can effectively
mediate other cultural forms , it can also provide connections between people
and cultures, and between past and pres ent.
Intercultural appreciation in the co mmunication process res pects the various
collective and individual identities between cultures and through the creation of
experiential spaces for shared meaning, the reconstitution of information, ideas
and values produces new contexts. These new contexts can provide us with a
space for making sens e of uncertainties in new environ ments through the
opportunity to interact and negotiate. They also provide underly ing conceptions
that anchor and stabilis e meaning, allowing the imagination to create, enhance
and enrich our knowledge about the world. Freed man suggests that ‘the ability
to interpret and respond to global visual culture in a sophisticated manner is
essential in the contemporary world’ and that ‘the social life of visual culture is
33
being redefined on a global scale as hybrid cultures are es tablished and visual
technologies shape the freedom of infor mation crossing international borders’
( 20 03 : 21, 10 4) .
In summary , the develop ment of a research mod el for Big Blue Ball: Pictur es,
people, place has incorporated a range of diverse y et compli mentary positions
currently being explored across academic disciplines. Through this multidisciplinary approach, the emergence of s imilarities and connections in
perspectives and perceptions of culture and communication were identified and
then sy nthesised in order to theoretically sustain the develop ment of a practical
model that can support a practice-based research methodology that positively
exploits the richnes s inherent in the creative arts.
34
PA R T 2
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Ar t pr actice-based r esear ch
The methodological principle developed for Big Blue Ball: Pictures, people,
place integrates practice-based research strategies that make use of the
experience of art making and vis ual imaging to facilitate creative discourse
across cultures. The outcome of the application of this s trategy is the
generation of know ledge and understanding that is both socially and culturally
meaningful, that can provide an environ ment that is conducive to s etting up
sites for s hared unders tanding. This research model uses a constructivis t sy stem
of practice-based methods which encourage creative for ms of expression that
can provide for a multiplicity of way s of encountering and repres enting
intercultural experiences.
The research model incorporates multiple, visual semiotic sites that provide a
series of platforms from which to explore intercultural discourse and from which
to build on understandings about our world. The model allows the project to
operate like a game, an intercultural playground, where the accent is on
encouraging encounters with creativity. The methodological structure mimics the
idea of the semiosphere’s centre operating as a conformity enforcer while the
periphery engages with the new and the unfamiliar, generating diversity and
innovation.
35
Creative art practice-based research methods have provided an interactive,
reflective, analytical context in which to draw out new knowledge. This method
of utilising the practical communication tools of the creative and visual ar ts
provides an experiential environment for the develop ment of new
understanding. Sullivan ( 20 05: 7 3) sugges ts that art has the express ive capacity
to give vision and for m to thoughts, ideas, and feelings , and argues that ‘the
capacity to create understanding and thereby critique knowledge is central to
the visual arts and that artists are actively involved in these kinds of research
practices’.
He goes on to state:
If the goal of research is to see inq uiry as having the cap acity to ch ange
hu man und erstanding , then our sights need to be set on a bigger picture
[...] this q uest fo r und erstanding sees in dividual and social transfo rmation
as a worthy human enterprise for “to know” means to be able to think and
act an d th ereby to change things. It can be further inferred that the process
of making art and interpreting art adds to our understanding, as n ew id eas
are presented that help us to see in n ew way s (2 00 5: 74) .
Art practice-based research methods are utilised as a way of encouraging
discoveries about creation and interpretation as cultural and individual
expression, both fro m those involved as participants in the inquiry and fro m th e
researcher, as arts practitioner. Kerry Freed man ( 20 03: 21) s ugges ts that
‘cultural difference is profoundly illustrated and supported through the visual
arts’ . She also reiterates the importance of imagination not only to individual
artis tic production and interpretation but also in the way in which it pulls us as
hu man beings tow ard collective social experiences; ‘old s y mbols mix with new
and group feelings mix with the pers onal as imagination beco mes the storehous e
for, and a mediu m in which visual culture is created and interpreted’ ( F re e d ma n
2 00 2: 3 2) .
36
The interdis ciplinarity of art practice also allows the project and its participants
enor mous creative s cope, providing opportunities to make use of the best s uited
co mmunication techniques as agencies toward individual express ion of ideas .
Sullivan’s practice-bas ed research model which he refers to as vis ual sys tems
practices characterises the spirit of the project’s methodological principle.
Visual s ys tems practices is an holistic methodological approach that har monis es
both the co mplexity and simplicity inherent in visual arts research, and presents
theory and practice as a tandem process of conceptualising and vis ualising
‘structures, pheno mena, networks of relationships, passions, and perspectives ,
and all manner of theories and practices that are part of our dy namic learning
life’ ( 20 05 :1 04 ).
Art practice-based research methods apply the creative function towards
explorations about how meaning can be reconstructed through cross-cultural
exposure and intercultural exchange. This approach is designed to encourag e
discoveries about meaning-making and interpretation as cultural and individual
expression. Research generally can be cons idered a cultural practice that is
situated in a contextual framework. An interpretivist worldview sugges ts that
all knowledge is socially constructed fro m subjective experience and inference,
and therefore while meaning is s ought and made w ithin a context, the
subjectively experiential process allows for multiple meanings to be
acco mmo dated (S c hut z a n d L uc k ma n n 1 97 3) . Sullivan (20 05: 96 ) notes that
‘ meaning is made rather than found as hu man knowing is transacted, mediated,
and constructed in social contexts’ . Art practice acts as an agency for creating
and constructing interpretations as inquiries take place, and the flexible,
perfor mative quality of making art can generate new ideas while embracing a
diversity of pos itions and perspectives.
The dis cursive method of interpretivist inquiry places art practice as the makin g
of subjectivist meaning w ithin a making- meaning theoretical dimension. This
37
discursive do main of inquiry is therefore infor med by the dimension of theory
that explores through the various processes of meaning making. A dialectic
method within an interpretivist do main of inquiry places art practice as the
change dimens ion betw een agency and action. As a change agent, meaning mad e
through making art is both constructivist and transfor mative, and as the
knowledge is grounded in the practice of making through knowledge that is
culturally contextualised it ‘enters into co mmu nities of users whose interes ts
apply new understandings fro m different personal, educational, social, and
cultural pers pectives’ (S ul l i v a n 20 05: 10 0).
Cultural semiotics applied to practice
Lotman’s notion of the semiosphere is sy nthes ized into the project’s
methodology and us ed as a platfor m from which to launch practical
investigations, including the development of data collection techniques. The
project’s research methodology draws on Lotman’s idea of a culture’s periphery
being the area that provides the mos t innovative semiotic activity . It also draws
on the premise that when two cultures are placed in a situation of exchange and
influence, translation between one and the other, while necessary , is ultimately
impossible, and this un-translatability activates a negotiation process which
results in the creation of approximate equivalences. The project exploits th e
lack of fit during transcultural discourse to draw out these approximate
equivalences thereby encouraging the emergence of new infor mation that can be
shared interculturally. This concept supports the central hy pothesis of the
thesis, and the res earch methods developed for stage one of the project
38
facilitate this process by cons tructing a semiotic site that places project
participants in an environ ment of cultural ambiguity , the results of which make
up the project’s collection of intercultural interpretations which are reproduced
in Book 2 of this publication series .
Solso ( 19 96) suggests that vis ual features that are viewed out of context require
deeper levels of infor mation gathering for a satisfactory identification. Visual
dissonance, a ty pe of psy chological tens ion, occurs when we experience a
discrepancy between what w e expect to see and what we actually see and when
our expectations are not fulfilled a resolution to the tens ion is required either
through reduction, reinterpretation or change. Visual dissonance can pro mpt us
to find a more co mplex message or construct a new meaning . This correlates
with Mitchell Waldrop’s ideas concerning complexity and emergence in that we
engage in spontaneous self-organisation and adaptive behaviour in an effort to
bring chaos and order into balance ( 19 94) . His notion that ‘the edge of chaos is
where life has enough stability to sustain itself and enough creativity to deserve
the name of life’ ( 1 99 4: 1 2) supports Lotman’s engagement with the periphery as
a site for semiotic innovation.
Stage one of the project’s research mo del involved the creation of visual texts
for interpretation by participants who would be repres entative of the many
nations that make up the world. A substantial collection of pictorial
reproductions w ere initially collected fro m the mass- media, and were
scrutinis ed for their potential to act as vehicles for cultural ambiguity . A
selection of images was identified fro m the larger collection for the
develop ment of the project’s primar y cultural texts. Us ing traditional painting
techniques and digital editing, these were then cropped, modified, and reduced
of information in order to loosen them out of their original contextual
anchoring, thus providing new sy nthesized images, reduced of any specified
39
semio-cultural coding. This final collection of eight reconstructed images went
forward to the interpretation stage. A detailed dis cussion on this process is
presented in Part three.
Using the theoretical premis e of cultural semiotics, the idea was to construct a
new dialogic space where uncertainty and amb iguity in meaning generation
would be exploited. Based on our earlier theoretical discuss ions, it was
expected that a co mmon translation of these pr im ary cultur al texts would not b e
possible because the images would be exposed to variant cultural me mo ry
codes. Translation difficulties were deliberately presented to participants in
order to activate the creative function, forcing them to search out approximate
equivalences when carry ing out interpretations.
Fig 2.1 Using digital editing and traditional painting
techniques the original picture is cropped and further
modified in order to reduce information and contextual
anchoring, providing a new synthesised image that is void
of any defined semiocultural coding.
(Original image by Peter Ebsick, National Geographic,
July 1996, p45)
40
The project’s data collection method therefore utilis ed the notion of a shift in
focus from the text to its periphery , where the text is influenced by crosscultural engagemen ts. Although there is an ambiguity of meaning contained
within each of the primar y cultural texts, participants will still bring to the
interpretation process inherent cultural conventions and value sy stems, and a
set of negotiation devices that are culturally conditioned, maintaining a
continuity that provides a stabilising effect for meaning generation. Because
contextual infor mation is withheld from participants they need to draw fro m
their contextual selection in order to disambiguate the unfamiliar elements of
the texts ( Ec o 2 00 3) .
Because our perceptions and interpretations are for med out of defined cultural
identities and viewpoints, phy sical features of vis ual culture are ‘quickly
analysed and organised into meaningful relationships’ ( Fr ee d ma n 2 00 3: 6 6 ) .
Freed man suggests that the ey e scans for familiar stimulus based on our
me mory store, and when we see an unexpected and alien for m ‘we often focus
our attention on it, attaching it to our related knowledge of for m, in order to
make meaning’ ( 2 00 3: 6 7) . Sullivan also notes that when our ‘pers pectives are
radically disrupted existing frames of reference are unable to account for th e
new experience’ ( 20 05: 36 ). This activates a reflexive respons e that in turn
encourages reflective deliberation on the unfamiliar in order to make it
familiar, and thereby building on cons cious self-knowledge.
Freed man obs erves:
Our first respo nse to v isual fo rm is to determine whether it is familiar an d
whether and how we will engage with it [...] We ten d to look longest at
things th at are intriguing , bu t not overwhelming [therefore] people who
view a work of art that is apparently unrelated to any thing they have seen
befo re migh t resp ond as if it is threatening […] Unfamiliar images can
41
result in misunderstanding and d iscomfort at the same time that it can
enh an ce and enrich (2003:65 -69).
The primary cultural texts developed for the interpretation s tage of the project
are designed to operate on a s emiotic line between contextual chaos and order,
ambiguity and familiarity , thus generating an uncertainty that may naturally
urge participants to engage or trans act with the images for infor mation
exchange, searching out spaces in between, or bey ond, to allow change to take
place, and innovation to be activated.
Pictorial semiotics – Mapping rules in picture making
The use of art as a res earch methodology is integrated into all stages of th e
project; a diversity of creative and visual arts practices and processes assist in
setting up an experiential environ ment that can support the co mplexity inherent
in co mmunication and collaboration across and within multiple cultural
sy stems. While there are alternative contemporary and historical approaches to
the s emiotics of the image, pictorial semiotics, in this instance, can provide a
set of practical guidelines tow ards the use of particular picture- making
practices, and these guiding principles have been adopted for the project’s
practical research methods, particularly as they pertain to s tage one; th e
construction of the pr imary cultural texts, and s tage three; the visual
interchange betw een mys elf as artis t and researcher and participants’
interpretations, although the underly ing principle of picture specificity as
defined in pictorial semiotics is relevant to all facets of the res earch.
42
Pictorial semiotics , is an area of semiotic inquiry that has spanned so me 40
y ears, since Roland Barthes ( 19 77 ; 19 88) carried out a semiotic analy sis of a
pictorial advertisement by Panzani spaghetti. Pictorial semiotics extends the
sy stems of signification to include enquiry into the ‘nature and specificity ’ of
picture meaning. A s a field of semiotics, pictorial semiotics is concerned with
the study of the peculiarities which distinguish pictorial meanings fro m other
for ms of signification, and the way s in which pictorial meanings differ fro m
one another. It strives to explain what is distinctive to pictures in relation to
signs generally , in addition to identify ing the specificity of various
subcategories of pictures (S on es so n 19 92 ; 20 04 ).
G ö r a n Sonesson (2004) suggests that semiotics, as a particular point of view,
can be applied to the different for ms and conformations produced by hu mans in
their efforts to gain access to and to navigate successfully through life. Bal
(1994) us es the ter m focalization as a structure of semiotic mediation. In
respect to visual images the focalization is on the direct content of visual
signifiers, such as the dot, line, light and dark, and co mposition. Focalization is
also already an interpretation, or subjectivised content becaus e what we see in
our minds-eye has already been interpreted. With a visual image, the s ame
object can be interpreted by different focalizers, which allows for complex
readings that can mediate between what a culture sugges ts and what experiences
are really actuated.
Sonesson also asserts that to be able to describe what is particular about
pictures we need to gain an understanding of the difference between pictur e
ty pes. This is in relation to the idea that different ty pes of pictures have certain
mapping rules and by defining the peculiarities that are apparent in each of
these mapping rules w e can understand the nature and specificity of each
picture type. H e divides these mapping rules into local and global. Local
43
mapping rules pertain to the particularity of hand- made picture-making, or
chirography. As he states, ‘each curve of the line which is drawn, and every
mo ment of its continuation, depends on a micro-decision which governs the
hand’ ( 1 99 9: 1 3). It is the hand that creates the marks, whether it is by the use of
the fingers or on a secondary level when mediated by a mark-making tool.
Because the hand-made picture- maker initiates the creation of the picture, she
is able to ‘ make a new decision about the particular way in which expression
and content are mapped to each other at each particular point of the pictorial
surface’ ( 19 99: 12 ).
Global mapping rules encapsulate the technographic, for instance, photography,
where decisions about expression and content initially apply to the content as a
whole, and there is an intervention by the hand on the machine. Soness on
explains that, ‘even though the action of the hand is mediated by the pencil, th e
co mpass or the engraving instrument, it is the hand that creates the marks line
by line and point by point, w hereas the intervention of the hand in the case of
the camera is global, maintaining the camera and pushing the button at a given
mo ment’ (1 99 9: 1 3). The ter ms chirograph and technograph are draw n
collectively from James Gibson ( 19 78 ) and Roman Gubern ( 1 98 7). Gibson’s
studies in perceptual psy chology during the 1960s and 1970s brought him t o
conclude that there are two ty pes of pictures. He claimed that if the picturemaking mediu m is the hand, or a hand-held, mark-making tool like a brush, pen,
pencil, or cray on then the picture would be identified as chirographic. If the
picture is made by using a camera and its associated equip ment, then it would
be ter med a photograph.
However, Sonesson has some reservations in ascribing such a definitive
categorization, particularly since the definitions leave out other important
technological develop ments in the his tory of picture-making prior to the
44
invention of photography , most notably drawing aids such as the camer a
obscura, the camera lucida and the phy sionotrace. He prefers to draw additional
value from the term tech nograph, as propos ed by Gubern ( 1 98 7b). A
technographic picture, which would include the photographic, cinematographic
and videographic, would be identified as one that was machine- made, as
opposed to the hand- made chirograph. Sonesson ( 1 99 9) also includes in this
category mechanical devices like the physionotrace which is seen as a precursor
to the camera .
Sonesson goes on to suggest that while computer-aided picture-making is
machine-made as in technography , there is in fact an essential departure fro m
the photograph in that the creator of the co mputer- manipulated picture is able
to draw on local mapping rules, more familiar with the chirographic pictur e
making process. The co mpu ter-aided picture retains s ens itivity to the handmade picture’s capacity for concreteness ( S on e ss o n 1 99 9) . Sonesson asserts th at
even though the co mputer as a machine should be categorized as
technographical, and therefore follow global mapping rules, and even though
the co mputer’s capabilities are more advanced technologically than the camera,
the process of co mp uter-aided picture-making doesn’t force a global res olution.
Local decision making co mes into play when manipulating an image on th e
co mputer screen or when mediating the compu ter picture via a mouse or a
digital tablet ( 1 99 9) . Gubern ( 1 98 7a ) has ascribed the computer-aided pictur e
the ter m synthetic picture and this ter m is taken up by Sonesson to differentiate
between the three construction types. Sonesson suggests that the sy nthetic
picture offers a technographic method that pres erves the perceptive capabilities
of the hand- made chirograph. Hand-made pictures regulate thems elves on
similarity through a reliance on what Gibs on ( 1 97 8) ter ms the hand-ey e-sy stem.
Sonesson proposes that the sy nthetic picture contains both technograph ic
indexicality and the hand-ey e local decis ion- making sens itivity of the
chirograph ( 19 99) .
45
The project deploy ed a range of practical meth ods to investigate the contexts
that surround the making of meaning acros s cultures. Drawing on a visual
systems practices approach ( S ul l i va n 200 5) , t h e pr o j e ct positively exploited the
creative process, utilizing the peculiarity of the particular mapping rules
specific to certain picture-making techniques . Thes e enco mpassed hand- made
pictures, painting, photography and co mputer-aided, sy nthetic pictures. The
decisions to us e particular art practice techniques on the part of the researcher
were driven by global and local considerations of specific requirements
pertaining to stage one of the project, the construction of primary cultural
texts; and stage three of the project, the production of the hand-painted
miniatures on s mall wooden blocks. Practice-based decisions made bey ond stag e
three have been respons ive of the consequential co mmu nication opportunities
that the project continues to generate.
V isual cultur e as site for inter cultur al discour se
The making and viewing of a visual image activates communicative exchanges
which arise out of specific discursive schemas that carry semiotic peculiarities.
These serve the function of the society, constrained by particular cultural values.
The cultural context is a crucial element in the way we make sense of or give
meaning to the visual image. This project requires participants to creatively
respond to a selection of visual images; the primary cultural texts. Visual culture
and creative practice allow participants to operate within a site conducive to
imaginative exploration and expression. The knowledge of our lifeworld is
carried around with us, situated by our culture and grounded in our individual
46
experiences. Therefore, participants respond to the primary cultural texts through
an interpretive discourse that is carried out as a contextualized internal narrative.
Big Blue Ball – Pictures, people, place utilises the specificity of picture meaning
and the inherent creative function of picture making as its practical methodology
for intercultural exchange. The project has specifically utilised pictures for the
interpretation process because pictures, as cultural objects, contain an
intertextuality, yet also activate a process of information exchange that
inherently contains interpretive ambiguity. This can promote an unpredictability
that can provide an environment conducive to innovation.
Freedman assigns images much more complexity than written language because
of their immediacy and the way they influence us on subtle levels. She suggests
that ‘they affect us in ways that may not be realized through simple (recognition)
perception and are more highly memorable than written or verbal texts’ (2003:96).
She believes that art for instance, can induce intellectual surprise and generate
new experiences; people use their imaginations to create art and when we view it
the connection between emotion and cognition ‘challenges us to think about our
relationship to it’ (2003:96). As Congleton also suggests, ‘art demands that we
not remain cold spectators. It can take hold of us and shake us, challenging us to
reach beyond our known sphere by expanding our “experience”’ (2004:295).
As a site for mediating intercultural exchange, the project has been designed and
constructed as a connectionist model, bridging concepts and associations to
interactions and networks. The site then allows for perceptual subjectivities to
emerge out of multiple cultural contexts. As Sullivan notes, ‘We live in an era of
hybridity […] complex contexts are ever present and a significant challenge for
today is finding pathways along, through, and around boundaries, both real and
perceived’ (2005:192).
47
PA R T 3
THE PROCESS
Cr eative pr actice as critical pr ocess
Creative arts practice can provide an educationally relevant site for apply ing
global ideas as it has the capacity to reconstruct meaning and create new
knowledge that can transform the individual on a cultural level. The project’s
inquiry at all stages is driven by a desire to explore new fields for both
critiquing and creating knowledge, where the various visual for ms us ed for the
purpose of res earch can contribute to our understanding by acting as interfaces
that facilitate multiple interpretive decisions. As Sullivan notes, ‘There is
benefit to be had for individuals, co mmun ities, and cultures fro m the
imaginative ins ights offered and the potential changes made possible by art
making’ ( 20 05: 17 1).
Art practice-based research can make use of a range of art making techniques to
pose questions, develop ideas and hy pothes es, and through this co mmunicative
process, produce images that can hold those inquiries. In this way , the ar t
object can act as a vehicle for both telling an individual story and for providin g
a s pace where mo re ques tions can be raised by others. Visual arts res earch
practices can allow for imaginative investigation into a broad range of is sues.
48
As Sullivan notes :
The n ew transdiscipline allian ce between artists and o th ers is clearly seen
in connections b eing fo rged among artists, socio lo gists, scientists, and
technolog ists […] The interchange of roles and practices is loosen ing
con cep tu al chains and discipline claims, and opening up n ew po ssib ilities
fo r ex change that are responsive to the imaginativ e ch allenges of an
intellectual climate th at is issues-driven rather than content-based
( 20 05 : 1 88) .
Research within the arts, and in particular arts practice-bas ed res earch, is often
valued according to criteria that can add a different perspective to a particular
line of enquiry . This is becaus e the research methodologies developed within
the visual and creative arts generally provide the research co mmunity with
alternative exploratory pathway s, leading to unconventional and often
surpris ing contributions. Stephen Wilson ( 1 99 6) suggests that becaus e artis ts
value social co mmentary , they are more likely to incorporate a broader range of
cultural issues into their research. In addition, because co mmunication is a
focus for the arts generally , it means that artists can often more successfully
connect with a wider public than their research peers in other fields. Above all,
and of particular relevance to this res earch, is that artists are, as Wilson puts it,
‘… more likely to incorporate criteria such as celebration and wonder [and ]
artis tic valuing of creativity and innovation mean s that new perspectives might
be applied to inquiries’. He goes on to note that, ‘… artists must keep alive
artis tic traditions of iconoclas m, critical perspectives, play , and sensual
co mmunication with audiences. They must be w illing to undertake art
explorations that do not neatly fit in historically validated media and offer their
work in new contexts’ ( 1 99 6: 1 ).
49
Stage 1: Making pictures for intercultural exchange
Big Blue Ball – Pictur es, people, place utilises the inherent creative function of
picture- making as a practical methodology that encourages discourse and the
sharing of ideas amongst a diverse range of cultures. The project creatively
explores how meaning is negotiated when the project’s primary cultural texts
are exposed to the variant cultural memory codes of individual participants.
This is based on the premis e that becaus e of the heterogeneous nature of
cultural conventions and the absence of a co mmon cultural me mory code, the
creative function in each individual w ill be activated, triggering negotiations of
meaning during the interpretation process. Stimulated by cultural ambiguity ,
interchanges of imagination allow for novel constructions of meaning to emerge
and be shared.
A subs tantial co mp ilation of images were initially collected for the project.
These were gathered fro m magazines and publications dating fro m the 1970s.
The images cons is ted specifically of photographs found in Wes tern, paper-based
publications. All of the photographs repres ented hu man-made environ ments or
objects; cultural artefacts. The images were then identified for their richness of
visual infor mation and for their potential to undergo a reductive process in
order to enhance cultural ambiguity . Of course, with all epistemological
processes, the res earcher will alway s be s ituated in a particular cultural context
and will operate out of that worldview, making decis ions based on imbedded
cultural memory coding and previous knowledge. This is unavoidable, and must
be taken into consideration when making deter minations and assu mptions abou t
that which is outside, or on the periphery .
50
However, making use of neurobiological studies relating to seeing and
cognition, and rely ing on initial phy sical expectations, rather than the inherent
heterogeneous nature of cultural conventions, can at least provide a stability
and a platfor m fro m which to begin a selection process that is fundamentally
thwart with contradictions. In Biology of s eeing (2002) Margaret Livingstone
provides a neurobiological framework to understand visual infor mation
processing. She s tates clearly that vis ion is an infor mation processing activity
that is inherently the same in all hu man beings (2002:53). This can objectify the
stage one process of o mission and modification of visual infor mation in the
images selected to be used in the project. That said, visual repres entations do
produce meaning and this meaning-making process is alw ay s dependant on
cultural memory and imb edded knowledge through learned experience.
Taking inherent and unconscious cultural bias into consideration, a final
selection of eight pictures were chos en to be used in the interpretation stage of
the project. This number was decided because firstly , involvement in the project
would require a co mmit ment to an investment of time by participants, and
depending on the mediu m used for the interpretation proces s, this time invested
could be considerable, especially if participants chose to express their ideas
visually through the making of artworks. In addition, participants are voluntary ,
therefore, the onus is on the res earcher to provide an environ ment that is
focused at all times towards a res pect and appreciation of the voluntary nature
of contributions by participants.
The project produced specially modified pictures for the interpretation stage by
integrating three art practice-based construction ty pes: photography , painting,
and co mputer- mediated graphics. The final eight images selected for
modification w ere digitally scanned, cropped, and then further manipulated
through traditional painting techniques and co mp uter-aided graphics tools, with
51
the purpose of enhancing ambiguity in meaning, whilst retaining infor mation
richness. This practice of progressive modification has essentially stripped the
pictures of their original contextual anchoring, whilst retaining valuable
cultural content that can be renamed and repositioned, effectively creating new
meaning spaces in which fresh interpretations can co me forward. The processes
of creating ambiguity in the primary cultural texts, shifted the images fro m the
stable to the dy namic. These unfixed images were then placed into clearly
articulated boundaries that have been theoretically established within the
research framework using cultural semiotics and the notion of the s emiosphere.
Therefore, the primary cultural texts emerged as a consequence of a
transfor mative process that travelled the following path: the original cultural
artefacts were pos itioned as art objects through the lens of the photographer.
These were presented to a mass audience through the print technologies of mass
media. These art objects, now multiple reproductions, w ere then folded back to
be view ed as cultural artefacts and again creatively reprocessed and
transfor med into different art objects. These new images were presented to
participants as primar y cultural texts, to be re-focused on and transfor med by
participants into new creative expres sions. Throughout these transfor mative
processes content is retained but shifted through context repositioning, allowing
for spaces in-betw een to emerge for the purpos e of play ful encounters with the
imagination. The primary cultural texts, reproduced into a new mediu m and
distributed to multiple locations around the world, allow for project members to
participate in a new collaborative process of re-imaging, refashioning and
repositioning; a shared and continuing process of change and transfor mation,
through exchange and negotiation.
The collection of eight primary cultural texts, which are reproduced below,
have been provided to participants in the for m of electronic images and A-4
colour photocopies, thereby offering project me mbers the opportunity to
52
explore creative poss ibilities by allowing them options in co mmunication
devices and techniques. It has also provided a dy namic and open environ ment
where cooperation and reciprocity may flouris h without any single viewpoin t
do minating. As Pope points out ‘..whenever there is a genuine exchange there is
alway s a potential for change, with alternatives bey ond as well as between’
( 20 05 ).
The exchange has been focus ed at all times towards a res pect and appreciation
of the voluntary nature of the contribution by participants, and the emphasis on
play and the inclusive celebration of individual expression. As a project that
has hinged on cooperation and equality it is aligned with the generally accepted
guiding principles that are inscribed within Pope’s cooperative view of
creativity , which states that cooperation should be a s haring and ongoing
process of change through exchange that values and respects the voices and
positions of others. This requires that ‘the other’ be embraced within as well as
bey ond ‘the s elf’. It recognises the differences and the right to express
alternative choices and acknowledges and invites dissent and disagreement in
order for collaboration to flourish ( 20 05: 66 ).
53
Primary cultural text 1
Fig 3.1
54
Primary cultural text 2
Fig 3.2
55
Primary cultural text 3
Fig 3.3
56
Primary cultural text 4
Fig 3.4
57
Primary cultural text 5
Fig 3.5
58
Primary cultural text 6
Fig 3.6
59
Primary cultural text 7
Fig 3.7
60
Primary cultural text 8
Fig 3.8
61
Stage 2: A global interchange - project participants
express their worlds
Participants in the research are y oung adults between the ages of 18 and 40
y ears; most are in their tw enties. While participant recruitment has drawn on a
range of co mmunication technologies it has fully utilis ed the potentiality of
co mputer-mediated co mmunication processes in order to reach out to diverse
global regions. This is not to say that the project’s success in dependant on
digital processes. Face-to-face co mmunication w as initially used to activate th e
networking process with students, family , friends, friends of friends etc
spreading the word, which was then supported by a range of communication
devices including email correspondence. However, internet foru ms and
international websites provided an opportunity to post the project details,
enabling people fro m around the world the opportunity to learn about the
research and to make contact with my s elf and vice versa. A particularly
inspirational s ite, Taking IT Global has been extremely effective in engaging
y oung people fro m all around the world. This site is linked to UNESCO.
Accessing virtual co mmunities that have already been established to pro mo te
intercultural understanding, have ensured success in the percentage of
participants fulfilling their commitment to the project.
Once this initial contact is made with potential contributors, a process of
ongoing dialogue begins, where detailed infor mation about the research, the
project generally and expected outco mes are exchanged. They are made aware
of their potential role in the project and are advised of the ethical
considerations put in place for the protection of those involved in the project.
The process of dialogic exchange involving their respons es to the pr imary
cultural texts is explained to them so that they have a clear unders tanding
62
regarding the collaborative nature of the research. If they are interested and
willing to take part, they are then sent an infor mation s heet, a cons ent for m and
a rando m selection of the eight primar y cultural texts (s ee appendix A-C). They
are also advised that they cannot be registered as participants in the project
until they carefully read the infor mation sheet and return the cons ent form,
agreeing to have their name, age and nationality made public in various related
publications and viewing sites. For practical reasons, this initial co mmunication
exchange is carried out in the language of English, although dialogue between
so me participants can be assisted via an English translator.
The project is essentially set up as a game, an intercultural playground where
the emphasis is clearly on enjoy ment of the process. The structure mimics th e
idea of the semiosphere’s centre operating as a confor mity enforcer while the
periphery engages with the new and the unfamiliar, generating diversity and
innovation. This is similar to Pope’s ideas on the relation between creativity
and cons traint as w ays of expressing the dy namic between bound game and free
play. He suggests that, ‘...it is precisely through game-like cons traints – as long
as they are not too many and too inhibiting – that play ful creativity is
stimulated to emerge’ ( 2 00 5: 12 2) . Project participants are constrained by a set
of rules, but the rules are loose enough to allow for freedo m of creative
expression. The game provides participants with a set of pictures , the pr im ary
cultural texts. Participants can only use those pictures supplied to them. They
do not have the opportunity to access other interpretations, therefore, they are
not influenced by cross encounters. This provides the boundaries in which th e
game can be play ed. As Sharples ( 1 99 9: 41) notes, ‘cons traint is not a barrier to
creative thinking, but the context within which creativity can occur’.
Project participants are asked to interpret the primary cultur al texts, but have
been offered few cues as to the direction they are to take; only that each has th e
opportunity to freely explore ideas towards locating their preferred meanings by
63
drawing on their familiar cultural systems , cultural memory codes, social
practices and language structures. They are advised that they can make use of
the tools of the creative and visual arts in order to express themselves bey ond
pros e. Participants have the opportunity to utilis e visualis ation strategies to
shape their ideas and infor m their actions. Seeing and knowing through images
and negotiating the visual world is part of every day experience regardless of
nationality . Responding to the primar y cultural texts using creative practice
techniques can encourage the expans ion of imaginative possibilities, offerin g
participants a fertile environment for creative reflection and representation of
ideas.
S ar a h N as se r
C ay m an I s l an d s
Fig 3.9
64
De nn is t on Ew e n
J am ai c a
Fig 3.10
Robert Solso ( 20 03) believes that the brain, consciousness, cultural
develop ments, and art are co-evolutionary and that both the mind and art
coexis t w ithin the same sy stem, in a single phy sical universe. Nonetheless, th e
way an individual thinks about art or interprets a visual object will be
influenced by personal experiences, histories and genetic predispositions .
Context therefore is an imp ortant factor in the understanding of pictures, so
while the for mulation of ideas is a creative process that depends on individual
65
imaginative preferences, the practice is also mediated by collective cultural
contexts. We search out meaning that coincides with our view of the world.
While participants have been encouraged to attempt an interpretation for each
primary cultural text, it is stressed that it is more important to the project that
they feel co mfortable with their level of involvement. Again, the emphasis is on
enjoy ment of the process. S o me of the project me mbers have interpreted all
eight pr imary cultural texts while some memb ers have chosen to interpret
fewer. Respons es are returned in a range of formats; most have been emailed
back either as word docu men ts or image files ; others are posted and these are
usually hand- made responses, like original paintings or craftworks. For
instance, Katarina Lindströ m from Sweden returned via post a collection o f
respons es that included s mall oil pas tels, hand-stitched assemblages of fabrics
and a paper collage. H er six responses are reproduced below as Figure 3.11.
Fig 3.11
66
As responses are returned they are collated into the larger collection an d
for matted for a range of viewing sites. All visual repres entations ar e
photographed and/or electronically scanned so that they can be mo ved around
across a variety of media.
The responses represented in Book 2 have been executed without any reference
to other participants’ interpretations. Each participant has worked alone in
expressing ideas and visualizations that best signify their individual thoughts
and feelings in response to the pr imary cultural texts. This has been an
important strategy for the project’s integrity in relation to maintaining the
theoretical position fro m which the methodological structure has been built.
Confrontation and interaction between different socio-cultural codings activates
semiotic dy namis m. Because of the deliberate cultural ambiguity of the pr imary
cultural texts participants experience a visual dissonance and resolution to this
tension is required either through reduction, reinterpretation or change.
Disruptive encounters with the unfamiliar or the untranslatable, rather than
shutting down the system, will draw out creativity and new ideas can emerge.
This generative process, vital to cultural change and divers ity , is what th e
project exploits, the results of which make up the project’s collection of
intercultural interpretations.
Whilst there is a creative co-operation that extends and threads its way throug h
the sharing of a common subject, the project’s primar y cultural texts, there is
an intricate autonomy built up that incorporates playful contributions of
individual expressions. These express ions of individual gestures can then be
contained and shared w ithin a co mmu nal context, the emergence of which has
created so mething that is greater than the sum of its parts. The project’s
dedicated website opens the collection to a w ider international audience and
offers the opportunity for the rules to change and a different process of
67
intercultural exchange to be activated. Future participants in the project w ill
approach the primary cultural texts with a familiarity and a contextuality that
did not previously exis t. Therefore interpretations received fro m this point will
be influenced by cross-cultural engagements.
Nonetheless, now re-created as a new game, the project can be sent back ou t
into a larger context still, to be shaped and reshaped again, and again, emerging
and re-emerging as different creative co mmunicative potentialities. That is
creative practice as process. In James Cars e’s Finite and infinite games: A
vision of life as play and pos sibility ( 1 98 7) he approaches the concepts of play
and creativity and notes differences in the intent of a play er, in that a ‘finite
play er’ plays co mp etitively with the objective of bringing the game to an end,
while an ‘infinite play er’ play s with and for others in a collaborative and
cooperative game that has no determinate end in sight. Carse suggests that the
paradox and the ‘joyfulness’ of infinite play lays in learning to start so mething
that has no predetermined conclusion; there is, therefore, a s elfles sness abou t
infinite play that opens up creativity to greater poss ibilities bey ond its first
conception ( C a rs e 1 98 7; J oh ns o n 2 00 1; P o pe 2 00 5) .
The participant-interpretation stage of the project does not conclude the project.
Rather, it can be seen as a new departure point for further co mmunicative
possibilities. The interchange of ideas continues onto stage three of the project,
where visual dis course takes place between my self, as artist and res earcher, and
project members. This process involves the visual documentation of frag ments
of the collected interpretations, in order to convert the collection into another
for mat. This new for mat can facilitate continuing creative exchange, opening
experiential opportunities to engage with an ever- more-widening international
collective.
68
Stage 3: Placing pictures - mapping new meanings
The third stage of the research engages visual arts practice as a modality
between the participants’ thoughts, feelings and ideas, and the researcher, as
visual arts practitioner. This is where the project is expanded, by means of a
continuing interchange of ideas through visual dialogue between my self, as
artis t and researcher, and project members. Making specific us e of the
co mmunicative method of hand- made picture- making my own creative
reflections of negotiated interpretations are recorded on s mall, magneticbacked, wooden blocks, 100x100x10 mm in s ize ( Fi g 3 . 1 2 ) . As interpretations are
gathered up fro m around the world vis ual co mponents are dialogically explored
and associations are made through the intertextual relationship between the
original texts, creative res ponses from project memb ers, and my self as
researcher and artist. Having prior knowledge of the cons truction process of the
primary cultural texts, the blocks implicitly allude to the original images sent
out for interpretation, whils t also explicitly referencing participants’ respons es .
The blocks therefore provide a sy nchronic link between the primary cultural
texts and participants’ interpretations.
The collection of hand-painted blocks for m 170 individual miniatures which I
refer to as imagetexts. Thes e imagetexts are made publicly available at various
exhibiting sites . Arranged as an interactive semiotic play ground, interlocutors
have the opportunity to continue the co mmunication process by engaging with
the blocks, moving them around on the table and up the w all, reflexively
constructing new configurations, allowing for the poss ibility of fresh ideas and
meanings to emerge and re-emerge as an ongoing creative dialogue. Again, the
emphasis is on open ended ‘infinite play’. Thes e hand-painted pictures can be
69
renegotiated and reconfigured by each new play er, broadening dialogue through
engagement with the exhibition. The paintings are produced on s mall wooden
blocks that are protected by a hard, clear lacquer. They fit neatly in the palm of
a person’s hand, are accessible and easy to handle.
Fig 3.12 170 hand-painted blocks can be reconfigured to form new meanings.
70
The theoretical framework for this research project has been positioned with the
premise that images are central to the repres entation of our worlds. The
methodological s tructure has extended modes of interpretation in order to allow
meanings to co me forward by exploiting the visual as a cultural resource and by
drawing on s elf-reflexivity to reveal how embedded cultural narratives are
imbued w ith the values of a contemporary lifeworld. The making and viewing of
art essentially offers an integrative experience that can express the relationship
between material, process and idea, connecting body and mind, and providing a
way of coming to know the world ( D e wey 193 4; F re e d ma n 20 03; S ul l i va n 2 00 5) .
Sullivan points out that ‘ meaning is not contained within a form its elf, but
exists within a network of social relations and discourse [and the] interpretive
landscape of “intertextuality ” serves as a means by which meanings beco me
distributed and debated’ ( 2 00 5: 4 3).
The associative quality of images particularly gives them interpretive us es that
enable us to dy namically engage with our environ ment on multiple s emiotic
levels. Stage three has utilised visual arts practice as a communication mediu m
that has acted as an agency for intercultural understanding by shifting contexts
and constructively expanding cultural perspectives , continually reshaping how
reality is perceived and meanings are for med. The collage of images reproduced
in Figure 3.13 on the following page repres ents a snapshot of visual
interpretations sub mitted in response to primary cultural text 2. They illustrate
the diversity of both individual and cultural expressions that can be generated
by the imaginative processes w ithin the do main of the visual. The next
illus tration, Figure 3.14, shows a s election of the hand-painted blocks that have
been produced as associative references to these negotiated interpretations.
These extracted frag ments of infor mation are pas sed on to the next level of th e
co mmunication proces s which extends to the public through its varied
interactions with the exhibition of the project’s 170 blocks.
71
Pr i m a r y c u l tu r al t e xt 2
Fig 3.13 Visual interpretations submitted in response to primary cultural text 2.
72
Fig 3.14 Hand-painted blocks produced as associative references to the negotiated
interpretations for primary cultural text 2.
73
There are a nu mber of reasons why the traditional method of painting was
employed for stage three of the res earch. Firs tly , participants mad e use of a
range of vis ual and creative techniques to express their ideas and thes e hav e
been submitted in various formats. Therefore, in order to provide a cons is tent
visual collection for the next stage of intercultural exchange I needed to make a
decision on the choice of mediu m in relation to collective access ibility and
potentiality for extended creative practice. Painting was chosen becaus e it
co mmunicates through the plas ticity of the material and through the optical
presence of allusion, whilst maintaining the stability of familiarity through its
canonical conventionality . The production of the blocks was not an attempt to
create new conventions, but rather to reinforce existing ones, providing an
agency for stability and continuity .
Due to its local decision- making attributes, painting also allows for contextu al
ambiguity while dictating a fixed position, even when it takes on
representational s ty listic qualities. This is because of the chirographic
characteristic of the mark- making qualities of painting. Through the painting
process, artists can make distinctive decisions about what is to be reproduced
fro m their lifeworld, and what is to be rejected, emphasising some aspects or
peculiarities while excluding others. This local decision-making characteris tic
of painting means that the rendering process is variable and context-selective in
that the features derive fro m personal, his torical and cultural conditions.
Therefore, because of the local decis ion- making qualities of hand- made picturemaking, each detail of a painting holds a particular point of view situated in a
context but that viewpoint does not need to be known or understood by the
viewer in order for the viewer to find meaning. Paintings are indexical of th e
forces contributing to produce them and of the forces contributing to their
meaning so that this frag mentation allows for an unfixed identity (S o nes s on
1 99 9) .
74
Each hand-painted block indicates a selected fragment of the whole of a
participant’s interpretative expression. On one level there is an iconic quality to
this process, as each individual painting represents and is identified as a sign,
particularly because the context in which the blocks are s ituated is s pecifically
set up for an interpretive action to take place. However, local decision making
is employed in the choice of frag ment to be repositioned as a new artefact an d
the choice of rendering effects of the painted surface. Therefore, each painting
indicates a particular ty pe of sign and there is a relational intention in the
production process . Sonesson ( 1 99 6) contrasts iconicity as that which begins
with the single object and indexicality as starting out as a relation which would
give indexicality a perceptual quality . This indexicality is associated w ith its
local decision making qualities which Sonesson attributes to the notion that the
mapping rules of a painting, as a chirographic picture, use lifeworld concepts
that require there to be a set of rules that apply to mapping perceptual
experience through the direction of the mind and the hand and that thes e
mapping rules imply a particular view of the world. In this aspect the blocks, as
paintings, are indexical as distinct fro m iconic (G i b so n 198 0; S o ne ss on 1 99 9) .
The paintings also act like miniatures in that they are there to illu minate
individual ideas and provide the imagination with additional pathway s for
innovation and insight. Miniatures have a long and established history within
the arts of literacy-bas ed civilizations. The presence of miniatures as an
established art for m do minates most early literate civilisations including Egy pt,
Greece, China and India. Illuminated manuscripts fro m Ireland, Italy and other
parts of Europe survive and are dated as early as 400AD. The art of miniatures
continued throughout European history and was particularly prevalent during
the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and to a large degree and in addition to
Chinese painting traditions, influencing early Islamic art through the great
Pers ian miniatures and the renowned miniature paintings of the M oghul E mpire.
75
Miniatures have traditionally synthesised the narrative to the pictorial, acting
as visual fusion to poetic expression and literary illu mination. The use of this
art practice gives the blocks an illus trative quality and making use of th e
painterly technique of photo-realis m provides a s ense of accessibility to a wider
audience. Painting is also tactile and personal and so may draw the viewer into
the artis t’s space. This intimacy may encourage the view er to engage with the
co mmunication process as a co-creator.
Fig 3.15 The indexicality inherent in painting allows for a continuing process
of selection and omission.
76
The decis ion to produce s mall paintings that could be handled by spectators
reinforces this sense of engagement and fulfils an impo rtant element of the
project’s philosophy of cooperation and sharing in the creative proces s. The
hand-painted blocks are personal and portable; in one way they take on a
utilitarian purpose, and the interactive as pect provides a culturally diverse
audience an open invitation into the visual arts domain through a space that
provides the opportunity for play ful expressions of individual difference and
alternative viewpoints . The 170 blocks weigh only 12 kg and stack to a size that
can easily be transported around the world as personal luggage. The advantag e
to this is that they can be s et up any where enabling much greater accessibility
to a geographically divers e public.
Fig 3.16 The hand-painted blocks are personal and portable allowing
for a more intimate engagement and greater accessibility.
77
PART 4
MAKING MORE PICTURES ON THE PERIPHERY
Studio exchange in Paris
Fig 4.1
During June and July 2007 a studio was set up at Centre International d’Accueil
et d'Echanges des Recollets in Paris as an international exchange. The 17 t h
century convent was refurbished by the French govern ment in the 1990’s to
serve as an international c e nt re f or vi si t i n g a rt i st s, s ci e nt ist s, i nt e l l ec t ua l s a n d
u ni v er si t y st u de nt s. The studio exchange was s ponsored by Ass oci at i on R e g ar d
78
C o nt em p or ai n. This studio-based activity provided an opportunity for me, as an
Australian academic and artis t, to
profess ionally and to navigate within a
constructing a new creative platform
directions and approaches for responding
engage on an international level
different social and cultural context,
fro m which to inspire unexpected
to the project outcomes.
Eight paintings w ere produced during this exchange which sy nthesis ed th e
project outco mes in relation to each primar y cultural text by merging the
intercultural creative dialogues to date. Each painting provides an individual,
immersive reaction to research findings about intercultural exis tence as
expressed by the many nationalities embodied in the project. This extension to
the project is intended to show how the co mmu nication practice of making art
can broaden understandings. The co mpleted paintings acco mpanied the
exhibition and interactive workshop at the 5 t h International Conference on New
Directions in the Humanities at the A merican University in Paris in July 2007.
These paintings further support the ideal of using art practice-based research as
a valid approach to new meaning-creation emphasising its valuable contribution
to the knowledge econo my .
The project website also served as a creative diary . A web page within the s ite
provided for photos to be posted and updated regularly , to docu ment the
progress of the studio activity , thus maintaining connectedness with project
participants and the public audience.
79
Fig 4.2 Painting #1
Fig 4.3 Painting #2
80
Fig 4.4 Painting #3
Fig 4.5 Painting #4
81
Fig 4.6 Painting #5
Fig 4.7 Painting #6
82
Fig 4.8 Painting #7
Fig 4.9 Painting #8
83
PART 5
EXPANDING IDEAS – INTERCULTURAL
DIALOGUES CONTINUE
Presentation of project outcomes
Visual art-based processes and outcomes have required new media tools to
address the range of possibilities for the transmission of information and the
generation of new ideas. While it is not the project’s principal research
methodology, new media technologies play an integral role in locating, accessing
and engaging with participants from geographically and culturally diverse parts
of the world and provides a virtual space for the efficient movement of
information. New media technologies have also been utilised to collate and
present visual outcomes in ways that foster innovation and inclusiveness.
Presenting the project in innovative and challenging ways is crucial because of
the international nature of the research and the visual art based dialogic platform
that propels the project forward.
Because of the organic and open-ended nature of the research the presentation of
project outcomes has required a shift in focus from the traditional exhibition
methodology, towards a more mobile, interactive and international approach,
therefore a dedicated website has been designed and developed for the project
and is accessible via www.blueballproject.net. A regularly updated web-based
exhibition of the project outcomes is necessary to connect project participants
from around the world and to meet the needs of a contemporary global audience.
84
The website ensures the project’s continuation and will provide the opportunity
for intercultural dialogues to continue by enabling new participants to join and
contribute their ideas and their viewpoints. The accessibility and the truly
international nature of the internet will ensure the collection can continue to
grow and it is hoped that the project will eventually represent every nationality
in the world.
The collection of hand-painted magnetised blocks, referred to as imagetexts,
comprise 170 individually resolved paintings. Each painting can stand on its own
as a professionally executed miniature. Just as the choice of medium was
considered an essential element to complete the third stage of the project, so too
was the decision to produce small paintings that could comfortably fit into a
person’s hand. By painting the semiotic imagetexts on small blocks that could be
easily handled and moved around, it was hoped that the viewer could become
more intimate with each block and feel confident to engage with the exhibition.
Each painted block has been finished with high grade varnish so that each loses
the preciousness of an exhibited artwork ensuring that participating spectators
engage enthusiastically with the collection. After all, the paintings have been
produced to be handled, scrutinised, moved around, and repositioned in order to
present multiple narratives to an engaging audience. The physical dimension of
the paintings also allow for the works to be stacked and packed as a compact
light weight unit that can easily be transported around the world as cabin
luggage.
The collection of hand-painted miniatures is also incorporated into the project’s
website. Set up as a Picture Play the user, or player, making individual choices
from the project’s collection can physically drag each selected block into a
gridded canvas, thereby assembling new visual configurations that may allow for
the emergence of unexpected ideas. These creative reconstructions by an
unknown, participating public can be saved and stored on the website’s database,
85
and can be printed out by the player, providing an intertextuality that can extend
and enrich the communication process. Additionally, participants have the
opportunity to continue exploring intercultural interchange through the new
communication platform that the project’s website provides.
The visual
configuration below (fi g 5 .1 ) has been executed by one of the original
participants, Melanie Ovaert, who represented France. She accessed the project’s
website in her hometown of Lille and re-engaged dialogue by responding to the
project’s larger collection of ideas via the imagetexts made available on the
project’s website through the Picture Play. This enabled her to creatively explore
new ideas and find expression through a different visual medium.
Fig 5.1
Picture Play response
from the project’s website
‘Rainbow’
Name: Mel from France
Countr y: World
Comment: love the concept
to play with all the paints
86
The use of new media technologies has also been chosen to exhibit the large
visual collection of participants’ responses. With the use of a laptop and a s mall
data projector, an electronic virtual presentation of varying dimensions can b e
projected onto any wall, anywhere in the world. This allows the entire project
to be compact, lightweight and extremely portable. It also ensures that the
collection maintains a professional pres entation quality and can be regularly
updated, in transit.
5.2 Visual interpretations can be projected onto any wall,
anywhere in the world.
87
Inter national exposure
Big Blue Ball: Pictures, people, place was first pres ented to an international
audience in July 2006 at the 4th International Conference on New Dir ections in
the Hum anities at the University of Carthage in Tunis ia. This annual
international conference has been established to critically address the broad
range of themes and issues that impact on the various fields that currently mak e
up the Humanities. The conference paper introduced the project’s key focus of
enquiry , the theoretical foundation and the methodological principle and
processes. The paper was acco mpanied by a virtual presentation of the
participants’ visual responses collected at that time. An article titled ‘Big Blue
Ball: Pictures, people, place – An intercultural playground for creative
conversations’ followed up the conference presentation and was published in
the International Journal of the Humanities, Vol 4, No 2, 2006.
The final outco mes of the research were presented at the 5 t h Internationa l
Conference on New Directions in the Humanities at the A merican University in
Paris (AUP) in July 2007. The co mplete exhibition travelled to Paris and was
exhibited at AUP during the conference. The exhibition co mprised a looped
presentation of participants’ image-bas ed responses that w ere projected onto th e
wall via a data projector and view ed as a digital showcase. The entire collection
of interpretations including both visual and text-bas ed expressions were
access ible via the project’s w ebsite. A selection of the hand-painted blocks w as
assembled as a hands-on interactive dis play where conference delegates and the
public could engage in a playful encounter with the collection encouraging the
processes inherent in ‘infinite play ’. This activity was incorporated into the
conference presentation providing conference delegates with the opportunity to
88
us e the media of visual culture to contribute to an expanding intercultural
discourse. The exhibition and conference presentation also included the eight
paintings produced during the six week international studio exchange at Centre
International d’Accueil et d'Echanges des Recollets.
A paper specifically relating to divers ity awareness in transcultural
co mmunication practices was presented at the 7 t h International Conference on
Diversity in Communities, Organisations and Nations in A ms terdam in early
July 2007. The conference is considered a major international foru m in which to
critically examine the concept of diversity as a positive aspect of a globalised
world, and as a mode of social existence that deepens and fulfils hu man
experience.
Additionally , articles on the project’s art practice-based research strategies
have been published in the International Journal of the Humanities and SLEID:
Studies in Learning, Evaluation, Innovation and Development. An article o n
research outco mes relating to emerging interconnections through transcultural
flows has been published in the Inter national Journal for Diversity in
Communities, Organis ations and Nations.
89
CONCLUSION
New Infor mation for repositioning cultural identity
Big Blue Ball: Pictures, people, place has aimed to better understand complex
meaning-systems development and adaptation within a contemporary,
intercultural context. It has achieved this by offering a new model for
intertextual processes of creativity that provides multiple sites for semiotic
mediation. The project’s model has allowed for creative explorations into how
meaning is reconstructed through cross-cultural exposure and intercultural
exchange. Collaborative spaces for intercultural negotiation link spatial
conceptions and processes to multiple, interconnected mediums for the
production and reception of new information. These spaces have encouraged a
continuing discourse that promotes deeper understandings about our global
community.
Research strategies have positioned images as being central to the representation
of the world, therefore the structure of the project’s methodology has allowed for
a research model to emerge that can successfully exploit the visual as a cultural
resource. The experience of art-making and visual-imaging has facilitated
creative dialogue across cultures, providing an opportunity to broaden the
expressive range of meaning-making. This has in turn provided a context in
which to support knowledge discovery that may facilitate intercultural
understanding. These creative practices have expanded our awareness of
90
differences and similarities in existing cultural lifeworlds and with this new
awareness comes the opportunity to share understandings and to break down
cultural barriers.
The project’s theoretical framework incorporated a range of diverse yet
complementary positions currently being explored in the fields of cognitive
psychology, neuroscience, biology, sociology and anthropology, and
encompassed cultural semiotics, socio-cultural theory, social systems theory,
bio-semiotics, visual studies, cybernetics and related theories of complexity,
emergence and creativity. This multi-disciplinary theoretical approach allowed
for the emergence and identification of connections in perspectives and
perceptions of culture and communication. These were then mapped and
synthesised to support the development of a research model that could sustain a
practice-based research methodology that exploited the richness inherent in the
visual and creative arts.
The performative quality of practice-led research has provided an experiential
dialogic space that is flexible and alert to the needs of the moment. This process
has activated more questions, continuing discursive debate within and outside the
field of inquiry, thereby contributing innovatively to the broader knowledge
economy. Through the specific use of the media of visual culture, the project has
effectively placed contemporary art practice in a position to act as a vehicle for
innovative approaches to our continuing investigations into the human
communicative process and its complex systems of mutual understanding. The
project’s varied and innovative methodological processes have provided both a
specificity and a plasticity which have produced visual artefacts and creative
dialogues that can position a moment in our time; in our making of meaning that
is part of our evolving, collective humanity. What has been gathered from our
contemporary intercultural landscape has been many times transformed and
passed through to the future, helping to design and shape things to come.
91
As an artistic journey , Big Blue Ball: Pictures, people, place can continue to
grow, gathering new ideas and novel w ay s to imaginatively express our
connected hu manity. With the ideal of ‘infinite play ’ in mind, transcultural
engagement remain s open-ended. As this docu ment goes to print, 100 me mbers
of the global co mmunity have contributed to the project fro m over 65 nations,
with others still in the interpretation stage. The project continues regularly to
enlis t new me mbers and intercultural dialogue is flourishing, taking on new
dimensions and providing more opportunities to build relationships across
cultures.
Throughout its exchanging transfor mations, the project has been constrained by
an ethic which maintains an undercurrent that is a continuing and sustained
co mmit ment to intercultural awareness and cultural tolerance. In Creativity:
Theory, history, practice ( 20 05: xv i ) Pope’s opening preliminary definition of
creativity is ‘the capacity to make, do or beco me so mething fresh and valuable
with respect to others as well as ourselves’. His principles in relation to
cooperative action can be found embedded in this project, in that the project, in
all its stages, recognizes the rights of others to their own voices and positions
by embracing all, the collective, within as w ell as bey ond the ‘self’. This is
described by Russian For malist, Mikhail Bakhtin as a process of ‘co-being’ in
the form of a shared and evolving cons ciousness, and is further defined by Pope
as ‘co-beco ming’. Big Blue Ball: Pictures, people, place is an ongoing,
cooperative, international exchange that creatively moves itself onto new paths,
transfor ming and evolving dy namically and dialogically fro m the ground up. It
is the creative practice in collective action, stimulating, infor ming and engagin g
with emerging intercultural narratives of the many -way flows of a globalised
world.
92
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chaos, Penguin, London.
Whitak er, Randall 1995. Autopoietic theory and social systems: Theory and practice in
<http://www.acm.org/sigois/auto/Main.html >
Wilson, Stephen 1996. ‘Art as research: Cultural i mportance of scientific research and
technology development’, San Francisco State University, at
<http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~swilson/artist.researcher.html>
Zlatev, Jordan 2003. ‘Meaning = Life (+Culture): An outline of a unified biocultural
theory of meaning’ in SGBWP5: Working papers of the project, Language, gesture and
pictures from the point of view of semiotic development, Department of Linguistics and
Phonetics, Lund University , Sweden.
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APPENDIX A
Information sheet sent to potential participants
Big Blue Ball – Pictures, People, Place
A cultural playground for planetary creativity
The Project
M y n a m e i s D o n n a W r i g h t a n d I a m a P h D c a n d i d a t e a t S o u t h e r n C r o s s U n i v e rs i t y . M y
Supervisor is Mr John Smith, School of Arts and Social Sciences. His contact details appear
b e l o w . A s p a r t o f m y d e g r e e I a m r e q u i r e d t o c o n d u c t re s e a r c h . I a m r e s e a r c h i n g h o w
m e a n i n g ca n b e c o n s t r u c t e d t h r o u g h c r o s s - c u l t u ra l e x p o s u re a n d i n t e r -c u l t u r a l
c o m m u n i c a t i o n p r o c e s s e s . T h e r e s e a r c h p r o j e c t i s t i t l e d ‘ B i g B l u e B a l l : Pi c t u r e s , p e o p l e ,
p l a c e ’ a n d i t e n c o u r a g e s c r e a t i v e i n t e r a c t i o n a m o n g s t p e o p l e f r o m d i f f e re n t c u l t u re s a r o u n d
t h e wo r l d .
P r o j e c t m e m b e r s a r e p r o v i d e d w i t h u p t o e i g h t i ma g e s . T h e s e a r e s e n t t o p ar t i c i p a n t s a s
c o l o u r p h o t o c o p i e s o n A- 4 p a p e r a n d i n e l ec t r o n i c f o r ma t . Pr o j e c t me mb e rs a r e a s k e d t o
i n t e r p r e t t h e i m a g e s , b u t a r e g i v e n f e w c u e s a s t o t h e d i re c t i o n t h e y a re t o t a k e ; o n l y t h a t
e a c h h a s t h e o p p o r t u n i t y t o s e a r c h o u t a n d l o c a t e t h e i r p r e f e r r e d i n t e r p re t a t i o n s b y d r a w i n g
on their familiar cultural systems, cultural memory codes, social practices and language
structures.
P r o j e c t m e m b e r s c a n i n t e r p r e t e a c h i m a g e b y w ri t i n g , d r a w i n g , p a i n t i n g , d i g i t a l
m a n i p u l a t i o n , b y t u r n i n g t h e i m a g e i n t o a c o l l a g e ; i n f a c t , a n y wa y t h a t m a y h e l p t o
c r e a t i v e l y d r a w o u t i d e a s a b o u t t h e m e a n i n g o f e a c h i m a g e . T h e i ma g e c a n e v e n b e re p l a c e d
by another one entirely; one that may better represent the thoughts and ideas that the image
has evoked.
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T h e p r o j e c t e x t e n d s i t s e l f , b y wa y o f c o n t i n u i n g d i a l o g u e b e t w e e n m y s e l f , a s r e s e a rc h e r a n d
visual artist, and project members, through my own creative responses to the negotiated
i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s t h a t h a v e b e e n r e t u r n e d b y p a r t i c i p a n t s . T h i s t a k e s t h e f o r m o f h a n d -p a i n t e d
f r a g m e n t s o f p a r t i c i p a n t s ’ v i s u a l i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s t h a t a re re p ro d u c e d o n s ma l l b l o c k s . T h e s e
h a n d - p a i n t e d f r a g m e n t s o r i m a g e t e x t s a r e t h e n o f f e re d t o t h e p u b l i c v i a v a r i o u s e x h i b i t i n g
sites, including the project’s dedicated website. In this way the public can continue the
communication process – through interaction with the blocks they are connecting back to the
participants’ thoughts, feelings and ideas.
P r o j e c t m e m b e r s ’ r e s p o n s e s wi l l b e c o l l e c t e d a n d w i l l c o n t r i b u t e t o w a r d s t h e f i n a l t h e s i s ,
and will be presented at conference seminars, national and international exhibitions, and
o t h e r a s s o c i a t e d p u b l i c a t i o n s . W h en p r o j e c t m e m b e rs a g r e e t o b e p a rt o f t h i s r e s e a r c h t h e y
w i l l b e r e q u i r e d t o s i g n a c o n s e n t f o r m c a l l e d a ‘ P a r t i c i p a n t A g r e e m e n t F o r m ’ . T h e y wi l l b e
given the opportunity to remain anonymous.
R e s e a r c h d a t a i s c o n f i d e n t i a l . P ro j e c t
d a t a / r e s p o n s e s w i l l b e k e p t w i t h m e a n d w i l l b e k e p t f o r a m i n i mu m o f f i v e y e a r s .
Southern Cross University PO Box 157 Lismore NSW 2480 Australia
Donna Wright [email protected]
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http://www.scu.edu.au
John Smith [email protected]
APPENDIX B
Consent form
Big Blue Ball – Pictures, People, Place
Connecting the world through creativity
PARTICIPANT AGREEMENT
P A R T I C I P A T I O N I N P H D R E SE A R C H P R O J E CT
CONDUCTED BY DONNA WRIGHT
S O UT H E R N C R O S S UN I V E R S I T Y , L I S M O R E , A U S T R A L I A
Thank you for agreeing to be part of this research project. Your role in the project is as a cocontributor to the development of creative ideas about shared communication for our contemporary
world.
You are part of the Big Blue Ball project team. Our cultural exchange will be a
collaborative, creative process and your ideas will form an integral part of the project. Because
your involvement in the project is a creative response and may include your own artworks, or
written ideas, your contribution to the project will be fully acknowledged in all publications,
exhibitions and presentations associated with the project. You will be listed as a project team
member.
As a Big Blue Ball Project team member you will be given a selection of up to 8 visual images that
are representative of a culturally diverse, globalised, world population. The images will be
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distributed as A-4 colour photocopied reproductions and/or electronically. You will contribute to
the project by responding to the images in a way that allows your ideas about their meaning to take
shape. You can write about the image, creatively work into and change the image so that it better
represents your ideas, or you can replace the image entirely with another that offers a more familiar
translation. Written responses may only require an hour; visual responses may take much longer.
You have until ___________ to complete your responses, although this is flexible, and there are a
number of deadlines, as various publications and presentations are produced. We will be in regular
contact via email throughout the project, so any concerns that may arise can be quickly resolved,
and any questions you have can be answered. I will update you regularly on how the project is
progressing.
Remember, your involvement is voluntary. If you wish to withdraw from the team at any time, for
whatever reason, just send me an email to [email protected].
The ethical aspects of this study have been approved by the Southern Cross University Human
Research Ethics Committee (HREC). The Approval Number is ECN-05-123. John Smith, School of
Arts, is the supervisor for this project. His contact is [02] 66260 3901 or email [email protected].
If you have any complaints or reservations about any ethical aspect of your participation in this
research, you may contact the HREC through the Ethics Complaints Officer, Ms Sue Kelly, phone
[02] 6626 9139, fax [02] 6626 9145, email: [email protected]. Any complaint you make will be
treated in confidence and investigated, and you will be informed of the outcome.
On the back of this form is the formal Participant Agreement and Consent. You are required to
complete this section and return it to me before we can begin. Please read the information carefully,
and if you have any questions or queries, please contact me before signing. It is important that you
fully understand your role in the project.
Participant Agreement and Consent…..page 2
Please ensure that you retain, or are provided with a copy of your signed Agreement and Consent.
Please complete the details below and return to the following address;
Donna Wright
Blue Ball Project
[this sectio n ha s been deleted for p rivacy and protection o f th e autho r]
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or via the project’s email address at [email protected]. If you are returning the
Participant Agreement and Consent, COMPLETED, via email, then this will constitute acceptance of
your role on the project team.
NAME____________________________AGE______NATIONALITY____________________
ADDRESS____________________________________________________________________
EMAIL ADDRESS_____________________________________________________________
I ___________________________________________________ have read the information and the
conditions of participation in the Big Blue Ball Project, and I agree to participate in the Big Blue
Ball Project as a project team member. I am over the age of 18 years. My personal contact details
will not be disclosed or used in any way, other than for the requirements of the project.
Additional Consent:
Any information that is obtained in connection with this study and that can be identified with you
will remain confidential and will be disclosed only with your permission. Please circle whether you
agree or disagree to your identity being disclosed.
I hereby AGREE / DISAGREE to my name being publicly disclosed in publications, exhibitions and
presentations associated with the Big Blue Ball project.
Please sign here:
_____________________________________________Date:___________________________
I certify that the terms of involvement in the Big Blue Ball Project have been explained to the
participant, and that the participant understands the terms prior to signing the form and does not
require further explanation from an independent person .
Signature of researcher__________________
Date__________________________________
Southern Cross University PO Box 157 Lismore NSW 2480 Australia
http://www.scu.edu.au
Donna Wright
[email protected]
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APPENDIX C
Introduction letter to participants
Big Blue Ball – Pictures, People, Place
A cultural playground for planetary creativity
Dear Participant,
Thank you for agreeing to be a team member on the Big Blue Ball project. I hope that you
have fun with it and enjoy the process. Please contact me on the email address below if you
need to talk or to clarify any details.
Included in this package are
•
•
•
8 colour photocopied images either posted or sent via email.
A n I n f o r m a t i o n S h e e t t h a t e x p l a i n s t h e p r o j e c t i n mo r e d e t a i l ;
A P a r t i c i p a n t A g r e e m e n t f o r m w h i c h y o u wi l l n e e d t o c o m p l e t e a n d r e t u r n t o me .
Y o u r r o l e i n t h e p r o j e c t i s a s a c o - c o n t r i b u t o r t o t h e d e v e l o p me n t o f c r e a t i v e i d e a s a b o u t
s h a r e d c o m m u n i c a t i o n f o r o u r c o n t e m p o r a r y w o r l d . Y o u a re p a r t o f t h e B i g B l u e B a l l
p r o j e c t t e a m . O u r c u l t u r a l e x c h a n g e w i l l b e a c o l l a b o ra t i v e , c r e a t i v e p r o c e s s a n d y o u r i d e a s
will form an integral part of the project.
Your involvement in this cultural exchange requires you to:
1) Look at each image separately;
2) Think about what that image means to you, for example –
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•
•
•
•
What thoughts or ideas does it bring up for you?
W h a t p i c t u r e s o r m e m o r i e s d o e s i t e v o k e?
D o e s t h i s i m a g e l e a d y o u t o t h i n k a b o u t o t h e r i ma g e s t h a t a re f a mi l i a r t o y o u ?
When you look at the image, does it remind you of an event in your past?
3 ) W i t h t h i s i n f o r m a t i o n y o u a r e n o w r e q u i r e d t o i n t e r p re t t h e i m a g e i n a w a y t h a t w i l l b e s t
r e p r e s e n t t h e s e t h o u g h t s , i d e a s , p i c t u r e s a n d m e m o ri e s :
You can do this a number of ways –
• You can simply write about how the image affects you, and you can do this on top of
the picture, around its edges, or you can attach a separate sheet with the image. You
c a n u s e y o u r o wn l a n g u a g e o r a m i x t u r e o f b o t h E n g l i s h a n d y o u r o w n l a n g u a g e .
•
Y o u c a n c h a n g e t h e i m a g e b y d r a w i n g o r p a i n t i n g i n t o i t , p a s t i n g o t h e r i ma g e s e t c
onto the image, turning the image into a collage, or generally manipulating the image
i n a n y wa y y o u c a n t h a t wi l l h e l p y o u t o d r a w o u t t h e i d e a s i t h a s s t i mu l a t e d f o r y o u .
You can manipulate the image on the computer.
•
Or you can replace the image with another one entirely; one that you think better
r e p r e s e n t s t h e t h o u g h t s a n d i d e a s t h a t t h e i ma g e h a s e v o k e d i n y o u .
You can send the images back as you interpret them, or you can wait until all have been
done and then send them back together, to the address at the top of this letter, by email, or I
can arrange to pick them up.
T h e b i g g e s t p r o b l e m i s g o i n g t o b e t i m e , a n d I r e a l l y a p pr e c i a t e t h a t t hi s i s s o m e t h i ng
t h a t y o u h o l d v e r y d e a r ! I t i s i m p o r t a n t t h a t y o u f e e l c o m fo r t a bl e w i t h y o ur l e v e l o f
p a r t i c i p a t i o n a n d t h a t y o u d o n ’ t f e e l p r e s s u r e d . So , i f y o u a r e ha v i n g t r o u bl e c o m pl e ti n g
t h e p r o j e c t , p l e a s e l e t m e k n o w . I w i l l k e e p i n r e g ul a r c o n t a c t v i a e m a i l t o s e e ho w
things are going.
O n c e I h a v e r e c e i v e d a l l t h e i n t e r p r e t a t i o n s b a c k f r o m t e a m me mb e r s , I w i l l b e c o m p l e t i n g
t h e r e s t o f t h e p r o j e c t , a n d t h i s w i l l i n c l u d e t h e t h e o r e t i c a l c o mp o n e n t , m y o w n a rt i s t i c
r e s p o n s e s t o y o u r i d e a s , a n d t r a n s f o r m i n g t h e s e r e - c r e a t i o n s i n t o wo r k s o f a r t – y o u r a r t i s t i c
r e s p o n s e s w i l l b e u s e d i n t h i s p r o c e s s . Y o u r r e s p o n s e s w i l l a l s o b e i n c l u d e d i n t h e p r o j e c t ’s
final documentation, and exhibitions of the project outcomes will be held on completion of
the project.
B e c a u s e y o u r i n v o l v e m e n t i n t h e p r o j e c t i s a c r e a t i v e r e s p o ns e a n d m a y i n c l u d e y o u r
o w n a r t w o r k s , y o u r c o n t r i b u t i o n s w i l l b e f u l l y a c k n o w l e d g e d i n a l l p u bl i c a t i o ns ,
e x h i b i t i o n s a n d p r e s e n t a t i o n s a s s o c i a t e d w i t h t h e pr o j e c t . Y o u w i l l be l i s t e d a s a
project team member.
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W h e n y o u s i g n t h e P a r t i c i p a n t A g r e e m e n t F o r m y o u a r e a l s o c o n s e n t i ng to y o u r
c o n t r i b u t i o n s b e i n g m a d e p u b l i c t h r o u g h t h e i r i nc l u s i o n i n p u bl i c a t i o ns , e x h i b i t i o n s a n d
presentations associated with the project.
H o w e v e r , y o u w i l l a l s o h a v e t h e c h o i c e a s t o w h e t h e r y o u w i s h y o u r na m e to b e p u bl i c l y
disclosed, or whether you wish to remain anonymous.
Y o u c a n a l s o w i t h d r a w f r o m t h e p r o j e c t a t a n y t i m e , f o r w ha t e v e r r e a s o n , b y e m a i l i ng
me.
R e s e a r c h d a t a i s c o n f i d e n t i a l . Re s e a r c h d a t a / r e s po n s e s w i l l be k e pt w i t h m e a n d w i l l be
stored for a minimum of five years.
I f t h e r e a r e a n y q u e s t i o n s , o r c o n c e r n s t h a t y o u m i g h t h a v e , p l e a s e c o n t a c t me o n t h e e m a i l
address below and I will be happy to discuss them with you.
Thank you again, and have fun!
Kindest regards,
Donna Wright
Big Blue Ball Project
[email protected]
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COPYRIGHT 2004-2007 DONNA WRIGHT
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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