Issues of Analysis, Intepretation and Repesentation

Abstract

The challenges of undertaking arts-related research include managing the data collected and making the shift from analysis to interpretation. This process is often hidden from the reader or viewer and seen as something that is a private or covert process. Indeed to consider analysis and interpretation as a predetermined set of instructions may feel counter-intuitive to arts-related researchers; an unwanted process which seeks to contain and place boundaries on practices which are expected to be open and spontaneous. Yet we suggest that in working out, investigating and theorizing how to proceed with arts-related research, a conscious awareness of, and sharing of practice is necessary in order to defend one’s work. We also appreciate that traditional methods of qualitative analysis cannot be applied easily, and that the use of appropriate language and a consideration of process is required, in order to help denote what is being done differently in arts-related research. In this chapter we consider analysis, interpretation and representation, along with other arts-related terms such as rendering, portrayal and praxis. We delineate a number of approaches for undertaking analysis, interpretation and representation, which are offered as a means of supporting researchers new to the field, as well as ensuring that arts-related research can do justice to those involved. ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION As noted earlier in Chapter 4, data collection, analysis and interpretation in arts- related research may be viewed as simultaneous acts of revelation and illumination, through the process of unravelling, reordering and restructuring data and process, in order to examine what has occurred, or is occurring. The inquiry may be dealing with abstract forms of representation and traditional methods may be displaced by innovative and interactive ones; therefore the artist researcher might, as Hockney (2008) suggests, ‘ask questions and make theories afterwards’. 63