I often struggle with wording. Especially when it comes to the art of question posing for further research. It is implied that you already know something about the topic, so for this an initial gathering of information is key. In response to that you formulate questions; doors that will lead you into the right rooms. I always try to draw doors on things that are extremely hard to enter via any immediate/ usual mode of entering. Getting frustrated by this I decided to employ a third party to initiate decision making and focus: A box!
Results are obviously dependent on what you put in the box. You may not produce answers but you will generate new ways of looking at things, which ideally is the essence of research itself. It becomes a way of choosing by way of using. Maintaining always an element of control over the content yet relinquishing the power over how it is used: the rhetoric. Inviting an organised kind of chance and opening up possibilities to see into things/ words and the power they alone hold in the execution of an idea.
In 'the art of question posing', initial thoughts, keywords and autonomous ramblings were hacked and placed in the box. A selection of roughly 5 words were chosen at each interval, grouped and moved about on the page. Generating the semblance of a question forming. Middle/ joining words were added if necessary. This became a method of framing a basic syntactic enquiry.
By isolating the words and releasing the rule of sentence structure, words were smashed up against each another having had no previous relationship to one another. (Like a more harmonised version of the public transport system at rush hour.)
By reading into these word formations, the process of creating meaning occurs:
"Every reading modifies its object."
"To read is to wander through an imposed system (that of the text, analogous to the constructed order of a city or supermarket)."
"The 'book' is a result (a construction) produced by the reader."
(Michel Charles, Rhetorique de la lecture referenced by Michel de Certeau in The Practice of Everyday Life, London, 1984)
Some of these are more intelligible than others, a quick interpretation has been stapled to each a successful word bunching. This quick, freestyle method became a generative process which then led to a series of more refined research questions, for e.g:
- Can 'Fashion' exist beyond representation? And in what mediums (or non-mediums) can/ does it currently exist?
If you put bananas in the box you wont get back apples, but you might get a banana split!
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