Books by Anne Douglas
This small book offers a visual and verbal reflection on the process of artistic practice and the... more This small book offers a visual and verbal reflection on the process of artistic practice and the ephemeral traces left by these. It is part of the exhibition 'Calendar Variations', held at Woodend Barn, Banchory, Scotland in April 2011. It considers the links of artistic practice with experience in the world and improvisation. This started in the summer of 2010 with an artistic project, Calendar Variations, a dynamic interpretation through drawing of the score, Calendar, 1971 by the artist, Allan Kaprow. The resulting work developed by researchers at Grays School of Art, Robert Gordon University, co-incided with the musical project, 'Unexpected Variations' in Belgium at the Orpheus Research Centre in Music, Gent. A deep interaction between the artist-anthropologist Anne Douglas and the artist-philosopher, Kathleen Coessens, members of both artistic research groups, as well as the commitment and collaboration of the visual artists, shaped the artistic project into an engaged dynamic movement between the different communities involved.
Journal Articles by Anne Douglas
Art, Design &Communication in Higher Education Vol 10 No 2 (179-189), 2012
Improvisation is a way of knowing that is experiential, pivotal to the body’s movement and growth... more Improvisation is a way of knowing that is experiential, pivotal to the body’s movement and growth in the world, allowing us to manage constraint and freedom in a rich world of possibility. Within this paper we trace a trajectory from improvisation in life to improvisation in art. By focusing on practitioners who work with improvisation in precise ways in the fields of anthropology, ecology, visual art and music, we explore how improvisation and experiential knowledge are profoundly interconnected. To achieve this, we use the four characteristics of improvisation developed by Ingold and Hallam (anthropologists) as a framework for the evaluation of art practices of improvisation including the authors’ own project work. We expand the framework through Dewey’s analysis of art as experience. The article concludes with an evaluation of how the techniques and processes of improvisation from the case examples may be useful ways to shed light on the workings of experiential knowledge
Critical Studies in Improvisation / Études critiques en improvisation, Vol 8, No 2 (2012), Dec 2012
"Replacing artist with player as if adopting an alias is a way of altering a fixed identity. And ... more "Replacing artist with player as if adopting an alias is a way of altering a fixed identity. And a changed identity is a principle of mobility, of going from one place to another…" (Kaprow 2003 p 125-6)
This paper explores an experiment in improvisation in which the practices of music, the visual arts, philosophy and anthropology come together. Calendar Variations 2010-11 draws different kinds of artists into creative experiences through the use of verbal scores. The score invites participation in a process in which the outcome is indeterminate. Not only that the experiment itself raises a question within the group of artists and participants about the nature of artistic practice itself and whether any single aesthetic approach is more appropriate than another.
The experiment frames the following questions: Why do we have/institute improvisation in life? Can art particularly inform those situations in life in which the unscripted and contingent challenge us to rethink in situations in which we may be encountering failure either in what is around us or failure in ourselves to cope?
Drawing in particular on Allan Kaprow’s articulation of Experimental Art (Kaprow 2003) informed by Ingold and Hallam’s construct of improvisation as a metaphor for existence (2007), I propose that the radical questioning of certainty in experimental art practices offers a different insight into improvisation, one that deals with experiences of failure. The paper concludes that sustaining uncertainty about what the arts might be has given rise to two possible understandings of visual art, one based on contemplation and the other on time and duration. Our creative imagination is challenged by the collisions and complementarities of these different understandings to sustain a perpetually mobile state of creativity, akin to 'adopting an alias as a way of altering a fixed identity' (Kaprow 2003).
Book Chapter by Anne Douglas
Sound and Score, University of Leuven Press, Oct 1, 2013
This chapter addresses an interest in how artists deploy method in the development of knowledge t... more This chapter addresses an interest in how artists deploy method in the development of knowledge through artistic creativity. Working across music and the visual arts, the author asks - What do 'score' and 'drawing' as ways of developing an artistic idea have in common across the practices of the visual arts and music? The common ground is probably an interest in exploring 'time' and 'space' in some sense differently. Is it significant that some artists make both scores and also drawings? The first part examines perceptions of the score by three musicians - Paulo de Assis, Juan Parra Cancino and Mieko Kanno. Together they represent the perspectives of performer and composer. De Assis is a pianist. Cancino and Kanno work in collaboration with each other as composer/performer respectively. They enable the author, as a visual artist, to gain some insight into how contemporary musicians think about and work with scores in music making and the importance of the visual/spatial in particular instances of music making. The second section examines a particular work of the visual artist, John Latham, Timebased Roller with Graphic Score 1987 and his referencing of the score as a metaphor for time and event in conjunction with space and material. The writing does not present a conclusive theory or argument but rather a set of observations drawing on the way that artists actually think and work.
Research Reports by Anne Douglas
The Artist as Leader Research report, AHRC, 2009
The Artist as Leader was a two stranded project initiated by Cultural Enterprise Office and Perfo... more The Artist as Leader was a two stranded project initiated by Cultural Enterprise Office and Performing Arts Labs (PAL) in collaboration with On The Edge Research. Douglas and Fremantle were responsible for developing research to underpin a professional development programme working with Scottish and UK artists, organisational leaders and policy makers.
Douglas and Fremantle co-authored The Artist as Leader Research Report, drawing on interviews with more than 30 artists, organisational leaders and policy makers to explore issues associated with leadership, practice and policy. Key case studies within the research included Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison, Suzanne Lacy, John Latham and Barbara Steveni (Artist Placement Group) and Jude Kelly, South Bank Centre. Fremantle and Douglas undertook the analysis of the interviews and contextualised the findings in relation to the development of Cultural Policy. The report is divided into 2 Sections: Section 1 reviews changes in Cultural Policy (post war to present) as a oscillation between access and participation; Section 2 identifies three approaches to leadership in the arts evidenced by the interview material.
Artists Information Company , 2007
Conference Presentations by Anne Douglas
“As human beings, and the only species perhaps to have this capability, we can cast our imaginati... more “As human beings, and the only species perhaps to have this capability, we can cast our imagination back and forth but always from a point in the present. This interpenetration of past, present, future gives form to how we act in the world. We can imagine timescales beyond what we will ever experience in a single life. Our imaginings are structured by rules of society within which we locate ourselves as individuals, creatively and productively. The rational is mediated through sensibilities such as conscience, intuition, the artistic and poetic, taking us into new domains—truth, the universal.” (Douglas 2012)
In this interpretation of John Latham’s work Time-Base Roller with Graphic Score, 1987, the artwork, indeterminate and open in relation to time and experience, emerges as a critical counterpoint to ‘the time of the future perfect in which everything has had to have been done already’ (Siebers 2012). In what sense does improvisation, as a latent implication of Latham’s work and as a significant quality of contemporary artistic endeavour, offer a distinctive lens through which to imagine time and experience?
The complex tonality and variability of improvisation in the arts inform an analysis of an artistic experiment developed by the author. Sounding Drawing 2012 is an improvised call and response between the modalities of drawing and sounding involving Scottish and Belgium musicians and visual artists.
This analysis draws on the critical writings of artists who improvise. For example, Peters views freeform improvisation as tracing the origin of freedom (through Kant) to a freedom yet to be attained but shared by all, sensus communis. (Peters 2009). The Harrisons, ecology artists, view improvisation as a means to ‘keep going’ by adapting to whatever circumstances may offer shared across culture and nature (Harrisons 1985).
"Replacing artist with player as if adopting an alias is a way of altering a fixed identity. And ... more "Replacing artist with player as if adopting an alias is a way of altering a fixed identity. And a changed identity is a principle of mobility, of going from one place to another…" (Kaprow 2003 p 125-6)
This paper explores an experiment in improvisation in which the practices of music, the visual arts, philosophy and anthropology come together. Calendar Variations 2010-11 draws different kinds of artists into creative experiences through the use of verbal scores. The score invites participation in a process in which the outcome is indeterminate. Not only that the experiment itself raises a question within the group of artists and participants about the nature of artistic practice itself and whether any single aesthetic approach is more appropriate than another.
The experiment frames the following questions: Why do we have/institute improvisation in life? Can art particularly inform those situations in life in which the unscripted and contingent challenge us to rethink in situations in which we may be encountering failure either in what is around us or failure in ourselves to cope?
Drawing in particular on Allan Kaprow’s articulation of Experimental Art (Kaprow 2003) informed by Ingold and Hallam’s construct of improvisation as a metaphor for existence (2007), I propose that the radical questioning of certainty in experimental art practices offers a different insight into improvisation, one that deals with experiences of failure. The paper concludes that sustaining uncertainty about what the arts might be has given rise to two possible understandings of visual art, one based on contemplation and the other on time and duration. Our creative imagination is challenged by the collisions and complementarities of these different understandings to sustain a perpetually mobile state of creativity, akin to 'adopting an alias as a way of altering a fixed identity' (Kaprow 2003).
Allan Kaprow, as a visual artist who was very influenced by John Cage, has something to offer the... more Allan Kaprow, as a visual artist who was very influenced by John Cage, has something to offer the idea of experimentation in musical practice and its research. To experiment meant to raise a question about certainty in artistic practice, creating forms of activity that challenged preconceived ideas about how art comes into being, radicalising processes and shifting cultural attitudes. This particular notion of experimentation switches the direction of artistic endeavour from expertise centred in a particular medium, style or genre of practice to a new kind and quality of activity that re-negotiates/resituates practice in the world. I argue that this flipping represents a shift from efficiency that emerges out of certainty to an aesthetics of waste/doubt where doubt acts as a catalyst to a new beginning and increases diversity in the creative process.
Where are there examples of these conceptual pairings of certainty- efficiency and waste-doubt in current forms of artistic practice? How do they play out? The paper will focus on the Kaprow's conceptualisation of ‘experimental art’.
By drawing on a domain that is not music in relation to experimentation, the paper aims to offer a view that situates artistic experimentation in research as profoundly related to questioning certainty by means of art practice.
Papers by Anne Douglas
This paper attempts to advance some of the ideas proposed in our initial paper on 'artistic ... more This paper attempts to advance some of the ideas proposed in our initial paper on 'artistic ' research procedure (Gray & Malins, 1993) and brings together some of the most recent references and ideas in our continuing work on this topic. Rather than provide answers or be prescriptive, we hope it will function as a catalyst for debate. The paper sets out the importance of procedure for research, examines the 'methodologies ' used to date in formal Art & Design research in the UK, and outlines some of the recently completed research for the award of Ph.D. The development of these 'artistic ' procedures is taking place simultaneously with advances in other disciplines: as Social Science evaluates a number of alternative paradigms of inquiry, Scientific Philosophy is moving away from a Newtonian position to embrace Complexity. The paper concludes by suggesting that
Drawing can be explained in at least two ways: exemplifying trace, an inherent capacity or collec... more Drawing can be explained in at least two ways: exemplifying trace, an inherent capacity or collection of characteristics in an individual (Nancy 2013) e.g. Rembrandt's drawing versus Van Gogh's drawing, the drawing of a particular thing in the world by a particular individual; or as an open-ended, improvisatory movement through the world that marks a line (Ingold, 2011). This may be physical, metaphysical, virtual or real. This participatory artlab set out to create a collision between these different approaches to drawing and to use this experience to open a debate about drawing and anthropology. The 90 minute workshop offered participants points of access into different aspects of drawing which include: collaborative, ephemeral, imagistic and relational. It also opened into a discussion on the implications of these experiences for an ontology of creativity and for the practices of art/anthropology.
In his 1978 movie Manhattan, Woody Allen's character, lying on a coach in his apartment after... more In his 1978 movie Manhattan, Woody Allen's character, lying on a coach in his apartment after a break up of a relationship, records his thoughts on life: 'An idea for a short story about people in Manhattan who are constantly creating these neurotic problems for themselves to keep them from dealing with more terrifying unsolvable problems about the universe... ...to be optimistic Why is life worth living? That's a very good question. Well, there are certain things I guess that make it worthwhile. Like what? Okay, for me, I would say, Groucho Marx, to name one thing and Willie Mays, and the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony, and Louie Armstrong's recording of 'Potato Head Blues,' Swedish movies, naturally, 'Sentimental Education' by Flaubert, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, those incredible apples and pears by C{acute}ezanne, the crabs at Sam Wo's, Tracy's face...' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxLUWUhmBAM By exploring what he really ...
In this third keynote I want to rise a little to the surface while rising to the challenge that b... more In this third keynote I want to rise a little to the surface while rising to the challenge that both speakers have offered the arts. All three presentations share in common the importance of the stories we tell ourselves. These stories influence and shape how we act in the world. Some stories, like that of inhabiting Starship Enterprise (and the energy on which it depends), may be pathological, literally killing us by consuming the resources on which all life on earth is dependent. Research, too, may be a story we tell ourselves, one based largely within a positivist paradigm that is not only extremely powerful, but also a significant contributor to climate change through its economist drive. What we have created through positivism is a culture of expectation in which problems of the present and future are imagined in two opposite ways: 1 problems can be resolved through technology or 2. problems are not resolvable (by implication technologically) in a future in which collapse is mo...
Imaginative Ecologies, 2021
Research report on an AHRC project (Siebers PI) investigating cultures of temporality in communit... more Research report on an AHRC project (Siebers PI) investigating cultures of temporality in communities, in cooperation with an art centre in Aberdeenshire and a SEN school in London.
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Books by Anne Douglas
Journal Articles by Anne Douglas
This paper explores an experiment in improvisation in which the practices of music, the visual arts, philosophy and anthropology come together. Calendar Variations 2010-11 draws different kinds of artists into creative experiences through the use of verbal scores. The score invites participation in a process in which the outcome is indeterminate. Not only that the experiment itself raises a question within the group of artists and participants about the nature of artistic practice itself and whether any single aesthetic approach is more appropriate than another.
The experiment frames the following questions: Why do we have/institute improvisation in life? Can art particularly inform those situations in life in which the unscripted and contingent challenge us to rethink in situations in which we may be encountering failure either in what is around us or failure in ourselves to cope?
Drawing in particular on Allan Kaprow’s articulation of Experimental Art (Kaprow 2003) informed by Ingold and Hallam’s construct of improvisation as a metaphor for existence (2007), I propose that the radical questioning of certainty in experimental art practices offers a different insight into improvisation, one that deals with experiences of failure. The paper concludes that sustaining uncertainty about what the arts might be has given rise to two possible understandings of visual art, one based on contemplation and the other on time and duration. Our creative imagination is challenged by the collisions and complementarities of these different understandings to sustain a perpetually mobile state of creativity, akin to 'adopting an alias as a way of altering a fixed identity' (Kaprow 2003).
Book Chapter by Anne Douglas
Research Reports by Anne Douglas
Douglas and Fremantle co-authored The Artist as Leader Research Report, drawing on interviews with more than 30 artists, organisational leaders and policy makers to explore issues associated with leadership, practice and policy. Key case studies within the research included Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison, Suzanne Lacy, John Latham and Barbara Steveni (Artist Placement Group) and Jude Kelly, South Bank Centre. Fremantle and Douglas undertook the analysis of the interviews and contextualised the findings in relation to the development of Cultural Policy. The report is divided into 2 Sections: Section 1 reviews changes in Cultural Policy (post war to present) as a oscillation between access and participation; Section 2 identifies three approaches to leadership in the arts evidenced by the interview material.
Conference Presentations by Anne Douglas
In this interpretation of John Latham’s work Time-Base Roller with Graphic Score, 1987, the artwork, indeterminate and open in relation to time and experience, emerges as a critical counterpoint to ‘the time of the future perfect in which everything has had to have been done already’ (Siebers 2012). In what sense does improvisation, as a latent implication of Latham’s work and as a significant quality of contemporary artistic endeavour, offer a distinctive lens through which to imagine time and experience?
The complex tonality and variability of improvisation in the arts inform an analysis of an artistic experiment developed by the author. Sounding Drawing 2012 is an improvised call and response between the modalities of drawing and sounding involving Scottish and Belgium musicians and visual artists.
This analysis draws on the critical writings of artists who improvise. For example, Peters views freeform improvisation as tracing the origin of freedom (through Kant) to a freedom yet to be attained but shared by all, sensus communis. (Peters 2009). The Harrisons, ecology artists, view improvisation as a means to ‘keep going’ by adapting to whatever circumstances may offer shared across culture and nature (Harrisons 1985).
This paper explores an experiment in improvisation in which the practices of music, the visual arts, philosophy and anthropology come together. Calendar Variations 2010-11 draws different kinds of artists into creative experiences through the use of verbal scores. The score invites participation in a process in which the outcome is indeterminate. Not only that the experiment itself raises a question within the group of artists and participants about the nature of artistic practice itself and whether any single aesthetic approach is more appropriate than another.
The experiment frames the following questions: Why do we have/institute improvisation in life? Can art particularly inform those situations in life in which the unscripted and contingent challenge us to rethink in situations in which we may be encountering failure either in what is around us or failure in ourselves to cope?
Drawing in particular on Allan Kaprow’s articulation of Experimental Art (Kaprow 2003) informed by Ingold and Hallam’s construct of improvisation as a metaphor for existence (2007), I propose that the radical questioning of certainty in experimental art practices offers a different insight into improvisation, one that deals with experiences of failure. The paper concludes that sustaining uncertainty about what the arts might be has given rise to two possible understandings of visual art, one based on contemplation and the other on time and duration. Our creative imagination is challenged by the collisions and complementarities of these different understandings to sustain a perpetually mobile state of creativity, akin to 'adopting an alias as a way of altering a fixed identity' (Kaprow 2003).
Where are there examples of these conceptual pairings of certainty- efficiency and waste-doubt in current forms of artistic practice? How do they play out? The paper will focus on the Kaprow's conceptualisation of ‘experimental art’.
By drawing on a domain that is not music in relation to experimentation, the paper aims to offer a view that situates artistic experimentation in research as profoundly related to questioning certainty by means of art practice.
Papers by Anne Douglas
This paper explores an experiment in improvisation in which the practices of music, the visual arts, philosophy and anthropology come together. Calendar Variations 2010-11 draws different kinds of artists into creative experiences through the use of verbal scores. The score invites participation in a process in which the outcome is indeterminate. Not only that the experiment itself raises a question within the group of artists and participants about the nature of artistic practice itself and whether any single aesthetic approach is more appropriate than another.
The experiment frames the following questions: Why do we have/institute improvisation in life? Can art particularly inform those situations in life in which the unscripted and contingent challenge us to rethink in situations in which we may be encountering failure either in what is around us or failure in ourselves to cope?
Drawing in particular on Allan Kaprow’s articulation of Experimental Art (Kaprow 2003) informed by Ingold and Hallam’s construct of improvisation as a metaphor for existence (2007), I propose that the radical questioning of certainty in experimental art practices offers a different insight into improvisation, one that deals with experiences of failure. The paper concludes that sustaining uncertainty about what the arts might be has given rise to two possible understandings of visual art, one based on contemplation and the other on time and duration. Our creative imagination is challenged by the collisions and complementarities of these different understandings to sustain a perpetually mobile state of creativity, akin to 'adopting an alias as a way of altering a fixed identity' (Kaprow 2003).
Douglas and Fremantle co-authored The Artist as Leader Research Report, drawing on interviews with more than 30 artists, organisational leaders and policy makers to explore issues associated with leadership, practice and policy. Key case studies within the research included Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison, Suzanne Lacy, John Latham and Barbara Steveni (Artist Placement Group) and Jude Kelly, South Bank Centre. Fremantle and Douglas undertook the analysis of the interviews and contextualised the findings in relation to the development of Cultural Policy. The report is divided into 2 Sections: Section 1 reviews changes in Cultural Policy (post war to present) as a oscillation between access and participation; Section 2 identifies three approaches to leadership in the arts evidenced by the interview material.
In this interpretation of John Latham’s work Time-Base Roller with Graphic Score, 1987, the artwork, indeterminate and open in relation to time and experience, emerges as a critical counterpoint to ‘the time of the future perfect in which everything has had to have been done already’ (Siebers 2012). In what sense does improvisation, as a latent implication of Latham’s work and as a significant quality of contemporary artistic endeavour, offer a distinctive lens through which to imagine time and experience?
The complex tonality and variability of improvisation in the arts inform an analysis of an artistic experiment developed by the author. Sounding Drawing 2012 is an improvised call and response between the modalities of drawing and sounding involving Scottish and Belgium musicians and visual artists.
This analysis draws on the critical writings of artists who improvise. For example, Peters views freeform improvisation as tracing the origin of freedom (through Kant) to a freedom yet to be attained but shared by all, sensus communis. (Peters 2009). The Harrisons, ecology artists, view improvisation as a means to ‘keep going’ by adapting to whatever circumstances may offer shared across culture and nature (Harrisons 1985).
This paper explores an experiment in improvisation in which the practices of music, the visual arts, philosophy and anthropology come together. Calendar Variations 2010-11 draws different kinds of artists into creative experiences through the use of verbal scores. The score invites participation in a process in which the outcome is indeterminate. Not only that the experiment itself raises a question within the group of artists and participants about the nature of artistic practice itself and whether any single aesthetic approach is more appropriate than another.
The experiment frames the following questions: Why do we have/institute improvisation in life? Can art particularly inform those situations in life in which the unscripted and contingent challenge us to rethink in situations in which we may be encountering failure either in what is around us or failure in ourselves to cope?
Drawing in particular on Allan Kaprow’s articulation of Experimental Art (Kaprow 2003) informed by Ingold and Hallam’s construct of improvisation as a metaphor for existence (2007), I propose that the radical questioning of certainty in experimental art practices offers a different insight into improvisation, one that deals with experiences of failure. The paper concludes that sustaining uncertainty about what the arts might be has given rise to two possible understandings of visual art, one based on contemplation and the other on time and duration. Our creative imagination is challenged by the collisions and complementarities of these different understandings to sustain a perpetually mobile state of creativity, akin to 'adopting an alias as a way of altering a fixed identity' (Kaprow 2003).
Where are there examples of these conceptual pairings of certainty- efficiency and waste-doubt in current forms of artistic practice? How do they play out? The paper will focus on the Kaprow's conceptualisation of ‘experimental art’.
By drawing on a domain that is not music in relation to experimentation, the paper aims to offer a view that situates artistic experimentation in research as profoundly related to questioning certainty by means of art practice.