Unlearning

Keynote speaker for a one day symposium in Fine Art and Photography at De Montfort University, Leicester. The symposium looked at research as a rigorous process of investigation leading to new knowledge. It was aimed at visual arts practitioners wanting to account for their practices as forms of research. Two key questions were addressed: 1. How can arts practitioners account for the rigour of the methods they use in practice? 2. To what kinds of knowledge can their practices lead? Coutts' keynote looked at the concept of 'Unlearning' used by Marie Luisa Knott to explore what Hannah Arendt first had to do in order to rethink the atrocities carried out by the Nazis in the 20th Century. To be able to think anew means also to find a means for undoing what has previously been thought. Coutts looked to Arendt amongst other thinkers and artists, and used examples from within her own practice, to reflect on rigour in research and methods for legitimising a range of visual practices.

Digital Humanities Research Through Design

Humanities Computing gave rise to the Digital Humanities, which brought considerations of a wider scope of the digital turn to humanities research. Increasingly, the area is understood to include the field of design, exemplified by definitions that describe the Digital Humanities as a “generative enterprise”. We suggest that design contributes not only to the making of digital artefacts. Design practiced with the aim to generate new knowledge constitues a research method. Design research contributes to the Digital Humanities expertise in addressing complex problems and methods for making the knowledge that is generated during a design process explicit.