The Ethics of Invention

Finally for today (it's 7.30 p.m. already), we're moving into the last keynote session, by Paul Carter. He will speak on the ethics of invention, and begins by attempting a definition of the range of practices included under the overall heading of practice-led research. Importantly, all such practices are interested in invention - for which a precondition is a perception of ambiguity, the return of the repressed material. What conventionally functions in one role discloses other possibility - there is an excess of material that escapes semiotic categorisation. This is what enables invention to begin (but of course it is only a starting-point).

Invention involves a double movement of decontextualising reality, and then recontextualising: the found elements are rendered strange and new forms of meaning and categorisation are established. Sometimes this constitutes advance, but in practice-led research it may simply enable new forms to emerge. This distinguishes such invention from other forms of critical inquiry; practice-led researchers cannot put together again what they have shattered - they are interested in the constructedness of knowledge.

Further, then, to describe this practice as a way of knowing the world, as a form of epistemology, raises ethical questions and requires a sociology of invention. There needs to be an ethos, a custom of invention - to understand the social value of what we are doing we must study the social value of creativity rather than its outcomes. Indeed, value is found in the work, the process, not in the product, and practice-based research necessarily recombines study and process. The ethics of invention are not materially based ethics.

Invention and ethics both presuppose a social relation, and so does interest: interest preceeds or is emergent in the process, and goes on producing itself - etymologically it refers to what is in between self and other, to a relationship rather than an outcome. Similarly, curiosity is always interested and self-interested, as is research. Interest is what matters in creative research - but what is interesting and what matters are synonymous in this case.

Paul now moves to a number of examples for this - to begin with, the Solution project in Melbourne's Docklands area. He proposed to the developers that they should understand the heritage of the site not through a static historical residue, but to think of the harbour as a place of exchange, where meeting produces change - a zone of flux and transformation. There was a homology between the cultural, commercial and historical processes which had brought this landscape into being, and the new redevelopment processes - and through this homology a better grounded understanding of the place could emerge. The site could be seen as a colloidal mass (which links to the silt foundations of the harbour area), but the place was also a site of navigation, and thus a half-place connecting to the harbours of the world.

What had been repressed by previous developers at Docklands has now acquired interest - the humid and soft-edged aspects of the area. Rather than to fortify such zones, the soft-edged could be seen as a site of creative transformation (e.g. through amphibious parks) if its history could be regarded as providing a template for redevelopment. The development company LendLease itself was a unit of inventiveness in this context, and could be repositioned through a project such as this as a new form of ('soft-edge') developer with a unique approach. The project itelf, however, could also serve as a perturbation of the calm amidst the existing infrastructure - noticing and addressing the unnoticed.

This highlights three points about practice-based research: it describes a forming situation, that is, it requires the right attitude towards an existing situation which can often be described through a sense of loss, lack, or inconsistency. Such motivation may not originate with the artist themselves, but with external clients. One must recognise the environment in which this work makes sense. Second, practice-based research must articulate the discursive and plastic intelligence of materials. It will likely need to take a 'what if' approach in which already determined needs are set aside during the explorative process. Finally, then, it must also establish a necessity of design, however. This often conflicts with the traditional way design briefs and project criteria are developed, where the tendering body sets itself up as the definer of what is needed; however, such design necessities are more likely to emerge from within the practice-based research process at a later stage.

Paul concludes by saying that we need to combat a model of research which does not accept the epistemological aspects of invention. Creative research studies complexity and defends complex systems against simplification. It addresses research problems even though there are no simple answers.