methodological
• a methodological appendix discussing a number
of intersecting lines that are intended to help
position the thesis within academic and artistic
research practices.
appendix
As I did not want to interrupt the flow of the few
chapters describing the hacktivist lines in the thesis
I chose to make a methodological appendix
consisting of several process lines that form
methodological interchanges to the projects. This
includes the intersecting lines of practice that cuts
through the five main chapters and they should be
read as diagonals through the arguments we
followed in the main chapters. These displaced lines
are on a slightly different course than the ones
describing the abstract machine of hacktivism, even
if they frequently overlap.
They are nevertheless important to include since
they better describe some of my thought processes
and how I place my practical method into several
contexts. These method lines position the work in its
context within artistic research as well as acting as
support to the efforts of others who want to take up
parts of the work that I leave behind as I have com-
pleted this thesis.
The lines in this methodological appendix are trian-
gulations of various approaches to artistic research,
action research, development studies, and participa-
tion, to just to name but a few. These lines are sup-
portive channels for practice rather than tools for
strict analysis. They are meant support processes of
doing as they offer points of reference as well as con-
ceptual tools for discussing practice. They are notdrawn up to filter data or to bring forward a sequential
format for processes to take, but are there to encourage
further exploration and help guide the future endeav-
ours of other practitioners.
We will first start with a discussion about what the per-
spective of lines offers and how it related to practice.
After that we will follow a series of process or method
lines, all connected to practice, diverse actions and
forms of interventions and finally gather these lines
into a mesh of “rhizomatic” validity. At the centre of
this rhizomatic mesh of lines I come to a discussion of
what this means for the redesigning of design practice.
The best way to follow these methodological lines is to
see them more as meandering and liberating “lines of
flight” than as undeviating intersections through the
previous chapters. They are meant to help us break
away rather than build new walls. According to Deleuze
and Guattari (2004) there is a special form of line, one
that escapes control and structure. It is a “line of flight”,
that breaches holes and passages between separated
lines. These lines are escape routes that “deterritorial-
ize” and break up stratified and territorialized systems.
It is a form of transversal mobility pattern, rhizomatic
as it daringly connects separated “branches” of arbo-
rescent, tree-like lines, connecting multiplicities with
other multiplicities. According to Deleuze and Guattari
the lines of flight can be compared to music,