Periodic Reporting for period 1 - THINK DEEP (Thinking Deep-Novel Creative Approaches to the Underground)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2020-07-01 al 2021-12-31
THINK DEEP pioneers a creative practice driven interdisciplinary approach to the underground.
It begins from the dual premise that, firstly the underground (or subterranean) is both the site of current environmental
concerns (e.g. extraction), and the setting for developing solutions to these concerns. But that secondly, currently
we lack approaches that adequately understand the underground, its current use and conservation, and its future
possibilities. Underground scholars have long argued that what is needed is an interdisciplinary approach, as yet,
however, where interdisciplinarity has been achieved, it has largely brought together science and social science.
Unconventionally, THINK DEEP situates creative practices (such as visual art or participatory theatre) together with
arts and humanities theories as the cornerstone of an interdisciplinary response to three pressing underground research
problems:
1. How to sense the underground, an often inaccessible environment?
2. How to contend with varied underground imaginations, which shape underground understanding, use and
conservation?
3. How to understand the speculative nature of ‘knowing’ the underground?
It will address these problems through global case studies from three fields of underground research: geoscience,
underground urban studies, and geoconservation.
Its unconventional ambition enables THINK DEEP to deliver a timely and distinctive new contribution to
underground scholarship that will transform the field’s future research directions. Furthermore, the project’s
pioneering approach will bring about a step-change in relations between creative practices and research more
generally. In understanding and evaluating the creative practice and research relations that sit at its heart, THINK
DEEP enables ground-breaking understandings of these relations, and of their profound possibilities with respect to a
range of research fields, including those which engage pressing environmental issues.
It begins from the dual premise that, firstly the underground (or subterranean) is both the site of current environmental
concerns (e.g. extraction), and the setting for developing solutions to these concerns. But that secondly, currently
we lack approaches that adequately understand the underground, its current use and conservation, and its future
possibilities. Underground scholars have long argued that what is needed is an interdisciplinary approach, as yet,
however, where interdisciplinarity has been achieved, it has largely brought together science and social science.
Unconventionally, THINK DEEP situates creative practices (such as visual art or participatory theatre) together with
arts and humanities theories as the cornerstone of an interdisciplinary response to three pressing underground research
problems:
1. How to sense the underground, an often inaccessible environment?
2. How to contend with varied underground imaginations, which shape underground understanding, use and
conservation?
3. How to understand the speculative nature of ‘knowing’ the underground?
It will address these problems through global case studies from three fields of underground research: geoscience,
underground urban studies, and geoconservation.
Its unconventional ambition enables THINK DEEP to deliver a timely and distinctive new contribution to
underground scholarship that will transform the field’s future research directions. Furthermore, the project’s
pioneering approach will bring about a step-change in relations between creative practices and research more
generally. In understanding and evaluating the creative practice and research relations that sit at its heart, THINK
DEEP enables ground-breaking understandings of these relations, and of their profound possibilities with respect to a
range of research fields, including those which engage pressing environmental issues.
In the early stages of the project six work-packages were identified, with the following activities conducted in each during this reporting period:
WP1: Management: PI Hawkins has focused on project process design including pay policy for artists involved in project activities (the latter supported by PDRA Parrott), handbook development, webpage development, full website to follow now the whole team are recruited; deliverables around ethics and data management based on current project position; academic staff recruited and inducted; ongoing PhD supervision and post-doctoral appraisal processes.
WP2: Creative Practice and Research
PI Hawkins has conducted desk-based research on the intersection between creative practice and research, including conceptual work on ‘mediums of research’ and ‘research aesthetics’. She has also worked with PDRA Parrott to explore questions of ‘framing’ and the ‘infrastructure’ of research when thinking about the relationships between practice and research, and the differences between creative practice based research in which arts practices are part of an academic research inquiry, and arts practice in which research might be integral to making the piece of art, but the art itself is not aiming to contribute to an academic research inquiry. PhD Barbarossa has been researching methods for engaging with unseen spaces, exploring practice-based approaches from religious studies, anthropology, yogic studies. She has been reflecting on how her own evolving doctoral research methods might draw together learnings on practice and research from these fields with thinking around creative practice and research relations.
WP3: Subsurface: Existing work and key new directions
PI Hawkins has conducted a desk-based literature review exploring the existing work on the subsurface and key project themes of sensing, imagining and speculating and identifying key future directions for this work. PhD Barbarossa has been developing the review of existing texts on subsurface rituals from around the world, as the foundation for her research into ‘Linguistic Geographies: Rituals of creation in Subsurface Space’. PDRA Parrott has develop studio-based experiments with questions of everyday geologies and has explored existing writing and practice in this area.
WP4: Case study identification and development
PI Hawkins has focused on relationship building with key project contacts to lay the groundwork for later case-study research.
PDRA Parrott: has focused on the development of her first case study on the everyday geologies of the Kent coast. This has included a regular walking practice that has informed the development of new body of studio arts practice-based research entitle ‘Rates of Decay’. PhD Barbarossa has begun early work with an Elder to learn indigenous tools for the creation of individual geographies of spirit worlds.
WP5: Evaluation: PI Hawkins has done desk-based research and early thinking about how to record and evaluate intra-project discussions.
WP6: Wider opening out of research to environmental issues: No work in this period.
WP1: Management: PI Hawkins has focused on project process design including pay policy for artists involved in project activities (the latter supported by PDRA Parrott), handbook development, webpage development, full website to follow now the whole team are recruited; deliverables around ethics and data management based on current project position; academic staff recruited and inducted; ongoing PhD supervision and post-doctoral appraisal processes.
WP2: Creative Practice and Research
PI Hawkins has conducted desk-based research on the intersection between creative practice and research, including conceptual work on ‘mediums of research’ and ‘research aesthetics’. She has also worked with PDRA Parrott to explore questions of ‘framing’ and the ‘infrastructure’ of research when thinking about the relationships between practice and research, and the differences between creative practice based research in which arts practices are part of an academic research inquiry, and arts practice in which research might be integral to making the piece of art, but the art itself is not aiming to contribute to an academic research inquiry. PhD Barbarossa has been researching methods for engaging with unseen spaces, exploring practice-based approaches from religious studies, anthropology, yogic studies. She has been reflecting on how her own evolving doctoral research methods might draw together learnings on practice and research from these fields with thinking around creative practice and research relations.
WP3: Subsurface: Existing work and key new directions
PI Hawkins has conducted a desk-based literature review exploring the existing work on the subsurface and key project themes of sensing, imagining and speculating and identifying key future directions for this work. PhD Barbarossa has been developing the review of existing texts on subsurface rituals from around the world, as the foundation for her research into ‘Linguistic Geographies: Rituals of creation in Subsurface Space’. PDRA Parrott has develop studio-based experiments with questions of everyday geologies and has explored existing writing and practice in this area.
WP4: Case study identification and development
PI Hawkins has focused on relationship building with key project contacts to lay the groundwork for later case-study research.
PDRA Parrott: has focused on the development of her first case study on the everyday geologies of the Kent coast. This has included a regular walking practice that has informed the development of new body of studio arts practice-based research entitle ‘Rates of Decay’. PhD Barbarossa has begun early work with an Elder to learn indigenous tools for the creation of individual geographies of spirit worlds.
WP5: Evaluation: PI Hawkins has done desk-based research and early thinking about how to record and evaluate intra-project discussions.
WP6: Wider opening out of research to environmental issues: No work in this period.
WP2: The evolving nature of the research process means at present there is little to report that is conclusively beyond state of the art. New conceptual understandings and practical processes for thinking about the intersections of research and practice are emerging but need further evaluation during the project. Limited contributions have been made through seminar papers and a written paper (Hawkins, 'Mediums') that explores how artistic practices are offering new understandings of 'research mediums', and querying what the idea of 'medium' might offer researchers.
WP3: Work done by PI Hawkins and early work done by PhD Barbarossa have laid the foundation for new accounts of the subsurface that the case study work will build on. At present these exist as early stage ‘reviews’ and require further reflection and case study work to test the conceptual ideas being explored.
WP4: PDRA Parrott’s new body of art work “Rates of Decay” offers artistic insight into the challenges of bringing together the scales and spaces of the everyday with those of geology.
WP3: Work done by PI Hawkins and early work done by PhD Barbarossa have laid the foundation for new accounts of the subsurface that the case study work will build on. At present these exist as early stage ‘reviews’ and require further reflection and case study work to test the conceptual ideas being explored.
WP4: PDRA Parrott’s new body of art work “Rates of Decay” offers artistic insight into the challenges of bringing together the scales and spaces of the everyday with those of geology.