Steven Scrivener Cognitive Surprise

Steven Scrivener, The Art Object does not embody a form of knowledge.  Working Papers in Art & Design.  2002.  http://sitem.herts.ac.uk/artdes_research

Knowledge artefact - designed with the intention of communicating knowledge, not that knowledge is stored in these artefacts.

Artefacts embody knowledge which can be extracted.  Knowledge - that which is true, justified belief.

Knowledge artefacts represent by the intention by a subject to inform an audience and the audience can recognised it is intended to inform.

"The idea of the viewer finishing the work is important ... meaning is always shifting, anyway you can't control the meaning of a work" (Pirman, 1997: 21)

The viewer completes the work by postulating meanings.

Generally art objects are not understood as knowledge artefacts.  There is a requirement for high level of shared understanding from knowledge artefacts.

Scrivener believes art objects give more about insights into emotion, human nature and relationships.  Artworks enable sensations and feelings regarding how things were, are, or might be.  Artworks provide both ways of seeing and ways of being.

Research --> knowledge and understanding
Artmaking --> artefacts for interpretation

My work ?

Original investigation --> knowledge of what was/is the experience of specific women's lives
Art Making --> ways of seeing and being in relation to what was/is/might be the case

Art research: original creation undertaken in order to create novel apprehension - ie ways of seeing, rather than knowledge.

Therefore Scrivener states the art object cannot be a knowledge artefact because it does not store knowledge (one right answer?) but enables information to be seen anew from the perspective of the viewer.

I think I agree with this.  My artwork/samplers are trying to enable the viewer to see the value in ordinary woman, by using textiles and narrative to demonstrate it.  There are several of them, as there is more than one right answer.  As the artist and maker, the attributes I choose to portray, show I am trying to get the viewer to see the value of women from my perspective.  So it's not a knowledge artefact because I'm not saying there is knowledge (in the one right answer sense) but is trying to give a different perspective to that usually given.  Additionally my work is pushing the viewer to have 'sensations and feelings regarding how things were, are or might be'.  Maybe even identifying their own women, and interpreting them differently.

However my thoughts from my bike ride, are that art objects could be Situated Knowledge artefacts.  If Situated Knowledge is about "understanding some things from somewhere", and that knowledge in the domain of a minority group is as valid, as that in the domain of a majority group, then the requirement of a situated knowledge artefact is to give a high level of shared understanding to a specific group.  Much political art could be in this category.  Additionally I think it is arguable that the artwork from any ethnic group, which can be read and understood by them because of their cultural visual literacy, could a Situated Knowledge artefact.