"Research is like Swimming", Ioana Vreme Moser at Salon Digital 40
the french word recherche denotes the process of browsing through loads of information with a more or less specific question or interest in mind. in english this process is often referred to as research. however, this usage can easily be confused with scientific research which might result in an unproductive fuzziness. therefore we denote the process of searching, investigation, inquiry, browsing, float, meandering, search and occasionally finding as recherche.
note that a recherche can and should be conducted with different levels of precision or fuzziness. in the very beginning of a project it is very helpful to just float around, vaguely glance at things, flip through magazins, or serendipitously follow leads. at a later point in a project a recherche might be much more goal oriented, for example when trying to find out about related or similar projects or ideas. in other words sometimes a recherche should have a clear goal and sometimes it should not.
- artistic and design works
- mass products
- scientific research
- technologies ( techniques, skills, methods, and processes )
- tools
- algorithms
- ( physical ) materials
- keywords
- theories + theory objects
the most obvious thing to recherche is other artistic and design works. however, a recherche should not be limited to just that.
although a traditional recherche usually starts in either a library or on google, it is well worth noting that this cannot be the sole resources. in a sense conducting a recherche is a process which is also inspired and driven by a certain kind of creativitiy and is a skill to be developed.
- plain internet searches ( i.e via search engines and keywords )
- user-generated information hubs ( e.g LLM, blogs, instagram, crowd funding platforms etcetera )
- public information hubs ( e.g wikipedia, patent databases, research databases1, artistic research databases2, etcetera )
- physical libraries3 + archives ( e.g books, magazins, catalogs etcetera )
- conversations with different kinds of people ( e.g interviews )
a good starting point is for example the page Things You Should Know as An Interaction Design / New Media Art Student or Useful Information for Digital Media Students, a collection of probably useful things.
- in dedicated tools ( e.g miro, google doc, pinterest, padlet, etcetera )
- on a blog
- in a custom-made format ( e.g markdown-based notation system )
- in a moodboard or collage
- in a sketch- or scrapbook
- in a Zettelkasten ( see Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten )
in addition to such infrastructures ( be they physical or virtual ) certain methods have proven to help organizing the found material ( e.g tagging with keywords, categorizing, hyperlinking, etcetera ).
the bottom line here is that organizing, archiving and presenting, once again is highly individual and creative endeavor. as designer and/or artist it is vital to explore such concepts and develop one’s own ways.
some artist have even made a career of finding idiosyncratic forms for their research ( e.g Mark Lombardi or Disnovation: Shanzhai Archeology )
while other people voice concerns about the idea in general e.g Claire Bishop: Information Overload on the superabundance of research-based art.
This document is available as a public document at How to Conduct a Recherche?.
Footnotes
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e.g the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Digital Library which is accessible as an academic when in an academic network like eduroam. "ACM, the world's largest educational and scientific computing society, delivers resources that advance computing as a science and a profession." ↩
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e.g Research Catalog ↩
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e.g the HfK Library in Speicher XI on the top floor. it can also be browsed online as one of many bremen libraries Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Bremen but should first and foremost be visited in person. ↩