Journal of Writing in Creative Practice - Volume 3, Issue 2, 2010

Developing the recent interest in art-writing, this one-act play explores one aspect of that area: specifically, an artist's writing. The monologue adapts Mieke Bal's notion of art history, written from the place of its objects, to invoke the idea of an artist's writing as writing by and as an artist. Contending that this is writing as aesthetic form, the play's Speaker proposes that an artist's writing is distinct from other forms of discourse about art precisely by virtue of its aesthetic dimension. The speaker defines aesthetic via Hegel's notion of the arts as a symbolic discourse in which the signifier is visible, and motivated by its signified. In a Hegelian scheme, this makes the arts inferior, and hence makes the task of defending aesthetic writing, which takes up the rest of this drama, all the more urgent. The case is made with reference to pedagogic pragmatics, cultural politics, ethics and therapeutics: Barthes' pleasure of the text with which the text concludes.

Discourses on epistemology in a variety of disciplines have established the need for diverse and case-specific approaches to writing. This need is as actual in practice-based research, and the relevant fields would benefit from better support of creative experimentation with academic expression. In order to demonstrate that advances in this area are necessary, this article examines advice and criteria for writing offered by a typical writing guide. The discussed examples demonstrate that while the recommendations of such guides are useful, their emphasis on standardization is also limiting. The article contrasts the advice common to writing guides and other prescriptive documents with the current state-of-the-art practice in qualitative research, pointing out productive alternative approaches.

The beginnings of design histories are inconsistent. While industrial design histories tend to begin with European industrialization in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries, other design disciplines claim a longer genealogy. Art, interior design and graphic design narratives each claim the Paleolithic caves in Southern France and Spain as their mythical birthplace: Altamira, Lascaux and/or Chauvet are used as a conventional starting point in standard textbook histories. A close analysis of the beginnings of several conventional design histories provides a starting point for addressing the cave's place in design history. While historical writing is rarely considered as a poetic practice, in this article, I will examine the poetic construction of the cave as a space for both the projections of contemporary ideas about design and, more importantly, the starting point of a narrative that anxiously binds progressive civilization to specifically European cultural roots.

Everyday practices in a range of public and private settings have been the subject of research and reflection in anthropology, sociology and education; such practices exhibit both routinized and individual behaviors. Examing everyday practices from a design perspective is less well developed in the literature. As contribution to the practice turn the concept of everyday design is proposed as practice that builds conditions and structures for everyday activity. This practice is not limited to pragmatic action but also embraces cognitive processes. Gathering several theoretical and empirical findings we offer a conceptual framework that presents purposes, subjects, objects and processes of everyday design.

Despite the broad interest in film as an essential aspect of contemporary life, there is no generally accepted and theoretically rigorous method for film analysis suited to a broad range of scholars. The rich tradition of hermeneutics provides such a method. Using Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutical theory to interpret film requires a structure anchored in five key themes. These five themes are (1) explanation and understanding, (2) symbol, (3) metaphor, (4) narrative and (5) imagination. These five themes permit us to understand how a text or film communicates and builds meaning. Each of Ricoeur's five themes offers a specific way to understand the text, in this case, the film. All five themes work together to demonstrate the text or the work as a communicative and artistic whole, a single unit of several interlocked parts. This article will examine the five themes to show how they function together, establishing their role in interpretation. As an example, I apply Ricoeur's hermeneutics to Clint Eastwood's (1992) Western Unforgiven.

The Secret Lives of Buildings, Edward Hollis (2009) New York: Metropolitan Books, ISBN-10: 0805087850 ISBN-13: 978-0805087857 Hardback RRP: $28.00 [For the UK: Portobello Books Ltd ISBN-10: 1846271282 ISBN-13: 978-1846271281 Paperback RRP: 9.99]

On Creative Writing, Graeme Harper (2010) (Series Editor, Graeme Harper), Bristol, UK, New Writing Viewpoints, ISBN 978-1-84769-256-6, (125 pages), 19.95