The visual essay and the place of artistic research in the humanities

Abstract

What could be the place of artistic research in current contemporary scholarship in the humanities? The following essay addresses this question while using as a case study a collaborative artistic project undertaken by two artists, Remco Roes (Belgium) and Alis Garlick (Australia). We argue that the recent integration of arts into academia requires a hybrid discourse, which has to be distinguished both from the artwork itself and from more conventional forms of academic research. This hybrid discourse explores the whole continuum of possible ways to address our existential relationship with the environment: ranging from aesthetic, multi-sensorial, associative, affective, spatial and visual modes of 'knowledge' to more discursive, analytical, contextualised ones. Here, we set out to defend the visual essay as a useful tool to explore the non-conceptual, yet meaningful bodily aspects of human culture, both in the still developing field of artistic research and in more established fields of research. It is a genre that enables us to articulate this knowledge, as a transformative process of meaning-making, supplementing other modes of inquiry in the humanities.

Paratextualizing Games

“…Allucquere Rosanne Stone took this appropriation of expensive computing power to indicate the complementation and modification of the industrial work ethic by a new popularization of the playful. 56 This change has generally been evident in Western culture since the 1960s: 57 From Eric Berne's bestseller Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships (1964) 58 to Joe South's hit song Games People Play (1968), which it inspired, and Clark C. Abt's book Serious Games (1970) 59 to the New Games movement that Stewart Brand initiated in the atmosphere of San Francisco's hippie culture and which stayed popular from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. 60 Technological as well as economic factors fueled this process of ludification.…”

“…As the manual notes, "if a world has extensive seas, choose to play a civilisation with advantages in ship building or speed … If you are competing with the Persians, prepare for eventual clash with War Elephants." 56 The player can make use of these suggestions, along with the mechanics from the technology tree, to craft their own strategy guide, which is likely to produce better results than trial and error alone. Whether or not the player uses this strategic potential for a quick victory or a challenge (e.g., fielding units against their counters), the manual and technology tree empower players to take advantage of the cultural and military affordances of ancient civilizations, to consider why these led to certain outcomes as detailed in the game's campaigns (e.g., Athens' empire, built on its navel strength).…”

“…55 The target domain of its referential system here would be the "entire brand of Super Mario and its evolution across time and platforms." 56 They continue to argue that this makes the SMM an homage that "ask to deconstruct the target domain (the franchise) through its own rules." 57 This, of course, depends on what one considers to be the rules here.…”

New species in the Mediterranean: a visual essay on human impact on biodiversity

“…It is also a way to express values and promote discussion, a supplementary form of knowledge (Kay 2013;Roes and Pint 2020).…”