1.3.2008
I am working as a researcher at the School of Art and Design, Aalto University, Finland, preparing my Doctor's degree. I am also part of The Doctoral School of Communication Studies CORE, that funds my research.
Abstract for my research project
Created together − Photographic art as socially formed communication
Research objective and questions
In today’s artworld—and with this I mean especially contemporary photography related art and practises and discourses around that particular medium—it is commonly stated that the viewer has a supreme power over the meanings and interpretations of the artworks. The artwork appears to the viewer as an access point to her or his subjective connotations and significations, to her or his use. This means that from the viewer’s perspective the artwork is for her or his use.
Within my ongoing PhD research I take an alternative and challenging position. I am asking whether certain photographic artworks and the ways they are received and understood by the audience can be studied from broader communicative perspective. From its groundings communicative perspective assumes that if there is communication happening at all, there needs to be something the “sender” and the “receiver” shares. Following this the main question in my research is how do the artist’s and viewer’s perspectives and significations relate to each other. Further I ask what are the differences in interpretations and how can they be explained.
With this study I wish to bring fertile approaches to the field of research of art. Although communication perspective is not absent there very little is known about how the artist’s and the audience’s significations relate to each other.
Research methodology and theoretical perspectives
My theoretical approach is based on communication theories, but the perspective is not tied to classical transmission model, nor it is purely following Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model. I rather develop a communication model that is a combination of transmission, semiotic and ritualistic perspectives freshened up with an input from content-based approach and genre models. Research viewpoint then connects to the cultural studies and reception studies approach. The study is both empirical and theoretical.
I am conducting the study (it includes questionairies, thematic interviews and writings by school classes) in gallery surroundings during the exhibitions and with the artworks that are made by myself. The study then is namely done within an institutional settings. I am conducting the study with three different bodies of work that have been exhibited in acknowledged galleries in Finland and abroad.
The fact that the researcher is at the same time the author of the images under the research, problematizes the classical approach where the researcher distances her or himself from the topic. Within this study both the author’s and viewer’s subjectivity is at the same time revealed and probed.
Main tentative findings
Preliminary findings suggest that the author’s and viewer’s perspectives and significations on the exhibitions in question clearly relate well to each other. It seems so that the artist’s understanding on his own work and the viewers’ interpretation/reading are very close to each other, and that the viewers are quite interested in about the author’s perspectives and intentions.
Following this I consider the photographic artworks as contact points, places where the author and the viewer meet each other. Further, in relation to my findings and theoretical backround, I am developing a concept “signified together” or “created together” to describe the findings of my research.