navigating in heterogeneitywhere decisions and reconfigurations can be traced as a list of actions or a graph of the
chosen trail through the mindmaps as the research develops.
Conclusionsit has been my intention to show how art- based research can use architectural, time
contingent, multi- dimensional thinking to develop research, with construction and
composition set in the foreground, in symbiosis with perception and conceptualization.
There is an urgent need to develop strategies that can deal with heterogeneity and non-
linear investigative processes, where the re- thinking and re- configuration of problems
are as important as answers. The research process is seen as a continuous, collective
act with the product (the journal article, the exhibition, or the phd thesis in different
forms) as an intermediate statement. The body in ‘embodied realism’ is emphasized as
a reference point for exploring the world, but at the same time the interaction between
bodies (things, persons, the relative other, etc.) and other artefacts (representations,
images, etc.) is stressed, as this interference produces the dynamics with which the
research configurations are established.
apart from architectural thinking as a multidimensional mode to construct, perceive
and conceptualize complex situations, five other themes were discussed. in their making
and communication of ‘fuzzy’ research problems, performance and performativity subvert
traditional hierarchies between theory, method and action, as well as between answer
and question, argument and example. They also help to combine different modes of
representation in research.
Staging explorative experiments use invention, intervention and discovery as the main
driving forces when setting up and actively examining specific situations. This may
reveal the unexpected, repressed or hidden, and it trains the researcher in rapidly
switching between associative and systematic thinking, to develop an intuitive precision
and different types of logic.
Modelling and simulation as interactive tools of enquiry in heterogeneity stress
questions of what a model can do, rather than what it represents. it helps the researcher
to consciously operate with fiction, linger actively in uncertain states of the process,
and take a question or a material into extreme conditions or liminal, intermediate
states. modelling often moves between disruptive and converging mechanisms and
may serve as a contrapuntal tool to interfere with, and compose, research material that
generates new meaning.
Critical construction and reflection, including remodelling, is necessary as a strategy
to maintain research integrity and to navigate in heterogenic knowledge production,
not only for ethical reasons but also to confront and re- examine the research situation
with subversive or alternative interrogation in order not to jump to conclusions but
to deepen and develop a material. it may also be a conscious position from which the
researcher starts an investigation. drawing from michel Foucault, critical remodelling
can make fruitful analogies to discourse theory.
at the end, assemblages were presented as a gradual creation of configurations for
research situations. The theme could just as well have been a starting point for this
chapter, as assemblages can act as layout, mindmap and instrument for navigation
in heterogeneity for the other approaches discussed. Through key points, links, and