The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts

differentiaL i ConograPhy

The most beautiful ones do. We think lines are the basic components of things

and events. so everything has its geography, its cartography, its diagram.

[...] There are various spaces correlated with different lines, and vice versa

(here again, one might bring in scientific notions like mandelbrot’s fractals).

different sorts of lines involve different configurations of space and volume.

(deleuze 1995: 33)

The deleuzian multiline or multiplicity- based network, produces a specific mode of
analysis:

based on two components: a two- line streaming mode of analysis based on the

thought of philosopher henri Bergson and the form of motion produced by

quantum mechanics and its emission of particles and exchange of packets of

energy producing the concept of non- localizability. [...] deleuze’s multiplicity

mode of analysis creates a fascinating visualiza tion of a figure of thought where

a correlating, open system of two streams of interacting concepts [...] [are]

all based on the inter play of lines, dimensions, strata, planes, spaces, and pla-

teaus.

(Balkema 2006: 13)

Thus, the streaming two- line mode of analysis, and its related multiplicity mode
of analysis, yields two continuously interacting domains producing a stream of novel
concepts and insights.
artistic researchers seem to deploy such methodology of a streaming two- line
mode of analysis dealing with the two interacting lines or domains of activation of
imagination and knowledge production. different from academic research, the
perspective of artistic research cannot be determined beforehand. Therefore, artistic
research creates the interaction, intermingling, and traversing of these two lines of
analysis in an operational, process- based, and experimental way while producing a
variety of unexpected perspectives.
The perspective of the first line, activation of imagination, is clearly underscored by
the modernist definition that the artist has the capacity to observe what others keep
unnoticed. after all, through mere visual means, the artist succeeds in making visible
what ordinary vision fails to see. Because of that, the everyday categories of perception
become dislocated in a flash. The artist compels us to see – for one moment – the world
in a different way; according to different norms, according to different habits; images
ultimately replacing reality are replaced by images as novel visibilities. With that, art
determines a variety of polymorphic ways for flexible observation. The artistic image
provides an open view while liberating the spectator from a frozen perspective. ‘essence
or existence, imaginary or real, visible or invisible, art disrupts all our categories by
revealing its dream universe of sensuous essences, of striking similarities and silent
meanings’ (merleau- ponty 1964: 35).
The perspective of the second line is expressed in the postmodern maxim that, in
their research of visuality, artists should pose the epistemological question of what art
is. or better put, in their transcendental research, artists should investigate whether
the institutional or territorial foundations of the concept of art should be deconstructed