Communities, vaLues, Conventions and aCtionsengineering, for example, the ‘leaching test’ is currently administered as a means of
verifying the stabilization/solidification of hazardous waste in pollution prevention
and control. The technique and analysis involved in the leaching test is therefore
part of the professional training that should be adopted by all researchers in the area.
This does not happen in areas of creative practice. in order to meet this academic
expectation, it would therefore be necessary to find a pragmatic way of evaluating
the appropriateness of a method for a person and their work. The academic response
for determining the appropriateness of method is based on how the answer is a
consequence of, and relevant to, the question, in the context of the expectations of
the audience. For the creative practice community, the option for a method is not as
formulaic. This may be because the creative community is less answer- driven and more
process- driven. if the creative practice community is not interested in formulating an
answerable question, then method does not arise as a meaningful link between these
two for that community.
non- linguistic communication is a convention of creative practice, however, when
adopting existing research models, practitioner- researchers find themselves having to
justify the use of the non- linguistic part of their practice in their academic research.
if the academic discourse of argument- building is used, one needs to find an essential
role for every element in that argument. however, images are not always essential and
may fall into different categories depending on their role. For example, an illustration
may accompany a text such as Alice in Wonderland, but it is also possible to read an
un- illustrated version and not be worse off. indeed, some people might prefer to do so
in order to create their own mental images. For the appreciation of the work, images
are optional. on the other hand, there are successful examples of the use of imagery
instead of words for communication. For example, the international furniture store
iKea could use multi- lingual written instructions for how to assemble their furniture,
but instead have developed an effective system of visual communication using images
alone.
The non- linguistic is not only a product equivalent and substitutable for text. For
the creative practice community, practices more commonly enable discovery through
non- linguistic means, through sound or through imagery, in which something is
discovered that could not have been discovered by any other means. For example,
when designing the parque güell in Barcelona, gaudí hung chains from the ceiling,
photographed them, then turned these images upside- down and copied the arches
that were formed, thus determining the catenary curves that would be used in the
construction. as a practitioner, gaudí had an embodied sense of the aesthetic ‘rightness’
of these curves. in this example, non- linguistic forms were used to create knowledge
that was relevant to the practice community. This knowledge, of the ‘rightness’ of the
curves, was created directly using visual means. on the other hand, it is possible to use
non- linguistic methods to create knowledge that can be replicated through text- based
media. in graphical statics, non- linguistic forms are used as an alternative method for
calculating forces in structures. graphical statics is a method that does not function
numerically but is a diagrammatic technique for making calculations in which one
draws lines and measures angles and lengths. it is a visual method for gaining non-
visual knowledge about structures. although this may be a fruitful paradigm within
which images contribute to knowledge, the first book ever published about graphical