FUTURISM AND COLLAGE (1909-1915) Futurists integrated radical effects of the machine age and technological inventions. Their collages vigorously combined found materials into art of passionate rebellion, noise, energy, motion, and dynamism.
DADA AND COLLAGE (1915-1923) Reacting to the brutality of World War I, the most active collage artists in the early 20th-century were in the Dada movement. Dadaists ridiculed the culture of their time through deliberately absurd performances, poetry, and visual art.
RAY JOHNSON AND MOTICOS (1927-1995) In an interview for the inaugural issue of the Village Voice, Ray Johnson discussed what moticos were and what they weren't. "I've got a big pile of things at home which will make moticos. They're really collages - paste-ups of pictures and pieces of paperÉ but that sounds too much like what they really are, so I call them moticos. It's a good word because it's both singular and plural and you can pronounce it how you like." (Wilcock, 1955) Johnson's moticos, or collages, are exhibited more often in museums and galleries than his mail art because curators place the moticos in the category of fine art. In contrast, curators treat Johnson's mail art more as a long-term performance or avocation, rather than as individual art objects. This short history of collage brings us to the beginning of this research project and consideration of collage as a way to creatively use grounded theory methods to pull together diverse and changing sets of data.
HONORIAÕS RESEARCH AND COLLAGE (1999 Ð 2001) I use grounded theory as a method of data collage. Collage combines diverse components that the artist brings together. For a collage artist such as myself, grounded theory combines the creative attraction of collage with my academic training in observation, data collection, appreciation of tacit knowledge, data coding and analysis, and contributing to knowledge. I use grounded theory to build up a picture, or theory, from diverse meaningful fragments. The data fragments come from four general sources as pictured in the following diagram.
Illustration 2 Venn diagram of data sources shows 3 overlapping Internet-based sources and the art work collection as an outside source During the three years of this study I used three sources of Internet data depicted in Figure 2 as three overlapping ovals. The three Internet-based sources are artists' Web sites, message boards, and interviews via email. The fourth source of data is represented as a triangle entering the overlap of the ovals from above. This fourth source is a collection of art works sent through the mail. The art works offer views from the outside of the Internet sources because the art works are objects made from paper, glue, paint, and ink, that portray comparisons of the Internet to traditional correspondence art. The observational data from message boards and Web sites act as a dynamic literature review. In addition to the art works and Web sources, I conducted 3 pilot interviews in person and 36 interviews (appendix) in a series of email exchanges. To best illustrate mail art's diverse communication, I deliberately collected data in two formats: the first is a series of interviews from artists who use the Internet in their practice of art, and the second is 166 actual pieces of correspondence art. To obtain interview data, I sent e-mail questionnaires to fifty people who I knew used the Internet for correspondence art. I also mailed invitations in the form of printed stickers to 100 artists and enclosed extra stickers. Stickers and small card give-aways are common distribution techniques. Stickers are effective because they can be added to other artists' envelopes. I hoped the sticker invitations would be passed along in the networking tradition to expand the sample within the population of correspondence artists. Beyond these individual mailings, I posted the questionnaire online at the Electronic Museum of Mail Art and on 5 correspondence art message boards. Thirty-one artists completed interviews and answered follow-up questions. In addition to artists who are already well-represented in the literature of correspondence art, such as Guy Bleus and Vittore Baroni, I sought to include active women artists and new generation correspondence artists. Active solicitation of women and new artists ensures that the interviews represent the most accurate range of correspondence art activities on the World Wide Web and in the mail during 1999-2001. The categories and implications that emerge from these various data sources are embedded in essays in chapter 5 and in the analysis of the artworks in chapter 6. These four data sources provide a rich array of types of information, all of it constantly changing and shifting as new elements are added to the mix. All these sources in motion can be put together with creativity and rigor by using the techniques of collage and grounded theory.
GROUNDED THEORY AND COLLAGE Grounded theory is a qualitative research method used to analyze social processes and human interactions. Grounded theory methods result in explanations of social processes and structures that are derived (grounded) in the empirical data. One of the two founders of the grounded theory method, Barney Glaser states, "Grounded theory deals with what is going on in the action system studied" (Glaser, 1992) p. 49. In this study the "action system" is the Correspondence Art Network and "what is going on" is the response of artists in the system to the Internet. In grounded theory methods, meaningful building blocks emerge from the raw data as the researcher constantly compares the literature, interviews, and observations for common or unique categories and for underlying theoretical structures. Michael Myers is the Associate Dean in the University of Auckland Business School in New Zealand with research interests in qualitative research in information systems, and social and organizational aspects of information technology. Myers points out that grounded theory is "a continuous interplay between data collection and analysis." (Myers, 2002) Helen Kara is a social scientist in Great Britain and director of a professional research consultancy that offers external evaluations to social programs. Kara reflects on how grounded theory evolved from the quantitative research environment of the 1960s.
Grounded theory was developed in the 1960s as a reaction to the dominance of quantitative research methods in which a theory is formed then an empirical study is carried out to discover whether the hypothesis is proven. Grounded theory is the opposite: a theory is systematically verified by the collection and analysis of data. (Kara, 2002)
Grounded theory is used in nursing studies, education, political science, psychology, economics, business management, information systems, and the arts. The methodology is a flexible system with which to process qualitative data and has been adapted to study performing arts and the fine arts. Grounded theory research is guided by theoretical sampling. Theoretical sampling is an active process in which discoveries (made during data gathering, observation, and literature review) direct the researcher to her next area of inquiry or potential data source. Glaser explains theoretical sampling:
Theoretical sampling is the process of data collection for generating theory whereby the analyst jointly collects, codes, and analyzes his data and decides what data to collect next and where to find them, in order to develop his theory as it emerges. This process of data collection is controlled by the emerging theory.ÉThe initial decisions are not based on a preconceived theoretical framework. (Glaser, 1967) page 1
Theoretical sampling on the World Wide Web is greatly facilitated by search engines. A key word search for "mail art" or "mail artist" quickly provides an extensive list of Web sites with correspondence art content. It is the grounded theory researcher's role to evaluate the search results based on her knowledge of the field of study and the relevance of the new information to the research questions. In this research, theoretical sampling provides a system to carve a path through the data; to include or exclude facts, stories, artworks, and emails concerning correspondence artists' uses of the Web. The concept of emerging theory is used to explain how grounded theory differs from other methods. Bob Dick, Action Research scholar from Griffith University and Southern Cross University in Australia, addresses emergence in his online tutorial to grounded theory.
What most differentiates grounded theory from much other research is that it is explicitly emergent. It does not test a hypothesis. It sets out to find what theory accounts for the research situation as it is. In this respect it is like action research: the aim is to understand the research situationÉ.[and] to discover the theory implicit in the data (Dick, 2002).
A collage emerges as the artist builds up layers of juxtaposed elements by adjusting many parts until the composition is complete. Grounded theory building is also a cumulative operation in which analysis begins at the very start of the research project; data collection, analysis, and theorizing continue concurrently throughout the research. The analysis shows the most promising areas to explore and provides feed back when a category has been fully explored. Both collage and grounded theory systems provide a structure to navigate through many diverse sources of information. While incorporating simultaneous and parallel decisions, grounded theory, like collage, invites creativity. Kara maintains that grounded theory offers a unique balance of creativity and rigor, "Grounded theory is a scientific discipline which is also very creative. Alternating between collecting and analyzing data requires both creativity and scientific rigour." (Kara, 2002) This combination of creativity and scientific exploration, not only fits with my specific strengths as an artist and a researcher, it also fits with the constantly fluctuating qualities of the Correspondence Art Network. Researchers in the arts such as Anne Marshall, use grounded theory because the method allows for creative research designs to emerge and for insights to flourish. The art researcher employs creativity to portray the roles of artists and their productions in their own contexts. In addition, the inquiry may reveal other contexts that the researcher discovers during the process. One example of the need for creativity in this project is the fact that some artists can be clumsy when they express themselves in words. In contrast, the same artists can be quite eloquent and concise when expressing themselves in art works. Using the artworks as data, coding the art works, and assigning categories to them requires the flexible, yet rigorous, creative research methodology that grounded theory provides. In her essay on grounded theory in the performing arts, Marshall comments on using the method as a way of expressing creativity while at the same time researching artists and their work: [Creativity] is a vital component. It requires the researcher to break through assumptions and create 'new order.' It encourages researchers to develop skills in 'naming categories' rather than making lists, to let the mind wander and make free associations, to generate stimulating questions and to come up with interesting comparisons. This kind of approach discourages the accumulation of intellectual baggage (i.e. 'received knowledge') and encourages flashes of insight, sudden hunches, brilliant ideas and profoundly different theoretical formulations (Marshall, 1997). Creative use of grounded theory gives structure to this investigation of networks in states of constant change.
Illustration 3 is a chart illustrating the flows of this research. The upper level shows collage and grounded theory as interconnected concepts. Just below the top and overlapping the grounded theory and collage are the concepts of creativity and scientific rigor. From these ideals, theoretical sampling is the next level that sets the path leading to a central area of interconnected data sources with links to and from elements of observation, message board monitoring, interview data, mail art Web sites, and art data. A link flows from the central concentration of interconnected data to the concept of constant comparison that initiates a feedback loop below. The loop circulates around the categories that emerge from the data, to member checking (asking the participants if the data represents their situations), and finally, from this feedback loop theory and implications emerge.
Illustration 3: Flow chart of grounded theory methods applied in this study
In both grounded theory and collage techniques there are a number of things happening simultaneously. Pieces of the whole are moved around and put next to each other and moved away from each other to find their final relationship in terms of the composition. I analyzed the interview data for trends and patterns using the grounded theory method of memo writing to develop relationships between the categories that I found in the interviews, literature review, and art. The end result of the memo writing process is a series of essays on how the Internet affects twelve artists work. These essays reveal artists' uses of the Internet in context with their previous work and contain patterns shared by other artists as verified in the raw data collection presented in the appendices. I continue to monitor message boards and join new ones as they appear while continually finding more mail art web sites. This ongoing literature review, interwoven with the data collection and analysis is possible in grounded theory and it never settles until the participants agree the picture is as accurate as possible. Member checking is one way to confirm that the categories and patterns derived from the raw data accurately portray the attitudes of the participants. I sent the finished essays in Chapter 5 to the participants to verify that the essay correctly represents his or her ideas. These member checking emails often expanded and enhanced the interview data. Both grounded theory and collage are open processes but each produces a final product that is a multifaceted picture or theories of a situation. The knowledge and confidence of the researcher will lead her to recognize when her analysis and presentation of the relations of parts form a comprehensive composition that can be appreciated and used by professionals in the field of study. Glaser provides guidance for finalizing the research.
The continual intermeshing of the data collection and analysis has direct bearing on how the research is brought to a close. When the researcher is convinced that his conceptual framework forms a systematic theory, that it is a reasonably accurate statement of the matters studied, that it is couched in a form possible for others to use in studying a similar area, and that he can publish his results with confidence, then he is near the end of his research. He believes in his own knowledgeability and sees no reason to change his belief (Glaser, 1967) pages 224-225.
Glaser's description of the end result of a grounded theory project is a fitting way to describe mail art research because much of correspondence art research has been done with artists themselves expressing their tacit knowledge about their systems and their art movement. Correspondence artists are confident of their knowledgeability and beliefs. Translating this confidence into a rigorous comparison is exciting because, although the data abound in fragments and isolated details, there is no serious research on the effects of the Internet on the Correspondence Art Network. This study will be useful to other researchers who wish to apply their own creativity to the masses of data about correspondence art and emerging new technology.
Honoria Madelyn Starbuck, 2003
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EMMA Index : Research : Dissertation : Abstract | Introduction | Methods | Message Boards | TAM | Participants