Abstract
This paper critiques action research and similar models of investigation into design practice. It argues that action research is compromised. On the one hand it is too scholastic while, on the other hand, too caught up in practical ends. In viewing research into practice as a scholastic “project” action research privileges values of rational over irrational transactions favouring goals of remediation rather than understanding in the explanation of practical production. Integrating the theoretical work of Cornell realist Richard Boyd with Gilles Deleuze’s systematic interpretation of Foucault’s theory of knowledge-power, this paper advances a functional account of artistic practice. Rather than a linear process proceeding from inception to outcomes, artistic practice is portrayed as a set of interdependent agencies held in homeostatic relation. The paper goes on to illustrate the practical agency and functional relations underlying two related examples of creative practice in design.
Brown, N. (2000). The representation of practice. In Working papers on art and design, Vol. 1. Used with permission of the University of Hertfordshire, (http://www.herts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0016/12283/WPIAAD_vol1_brown.pdf).
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Brown, N.C.M. (2017). The Representation of Practice. In: Studies in Philosophical Realism in Art, Design and Education. Landscapes: the Arts, Aesthetics, and Education, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42906-9_19
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