Encounters with Theory as Conceptual Medium and Creative Practice explores the relationships and intersections between verbal and visual ways of researching, challenging the privilege of the written word in academe.
Rooted in a grant-funded artistic research course, the data and experiences shared here illuminate the transformative power of visual thinking and visual literacy as a research data, analysis as well as artifact. The book begins by outlining the author's background as an artist/researcher/teacher, laying a foundation for the positionality and thinking within the book. The later chapters, offered as vignettes, share the explorations and subsequent discoveries of emerging scholars from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines. A/R/Tography takes a front seat serving as a messy and fluid architecture for theory put into practice. Engaging tension as a catalyst for disruption, the book explores how staying present, intra-acting with ideas, concepts, and theory through visual material exploration expands attention and illuminates data in different ways, affording unexpected insight and discovery. In addition, the image-rich pages invite readers into reading the visual in conversation with the verbal, on equal terms. One is not in service of the other, rather a conversation of literacies.
With its emphasis on the visual and materiality as a method of thinking, this book will be of interest to anyone interested in or practicing artistic research. One does not need to have an arts background to engage in visual dialog.
Industry Reviews
"Uniquely useful for graduate education, Ruopp offers a framework for exploring how visual tools can help make sense out of dense theoretical readings, often required for masters and doctoral students about to engage with research. Encounters with Theory is an invitation to rethink the power of the visual and how new understandings of complex theories can emerge through different modes of visualization. Deeply grounded in her practice as artist, teacher and researcher, Ruopp writes with candor and humility, clarity and intelligence. Follow her thinking into collaboration with graduate students. Learn about generative, creative, multi-disciplinary, and even uncomfortable processes can lead to new insights. Muse over visual evidence as well as verbal exchanges entwined with theoretical readings. As Ruopp asserts, researchers have much to gain when the verbal and visual are afforded equal billing in the pursuit of data analysis, knowledge acquisition, and new ideas." -- Karen Lee Carroll, Ed.D, Dean Emeritus, Center for Art Education, Maryland Institute College of Art, USA
