Non-Traditional Research: Background Contribution Significance

I wanted to show you an interesting part of my job. Whenever i make a substantial artwork I can decide if it’s strong enough to submit to Swinburne as a Non-Traditional Research Output (NTRO). It’s only worth doing if the work demonstrates tangible innovation and significant public and peer impact.

The submissions process is quite in-depth, with a lot of extra work required to clearly demonstrate thought processes and the discrete application of theoretical frameworks. Below are some recent research statements and a selection of supporting documents summarising the comics’ contributions to knowledge.

Kicked Out During Coronavirus (2020)

Research Background

Theorists in the field of autobiography maintain a direct link between uncensored honest communication and the creation of ‘truth’ and engagement. This comic uses ‘confessional’ autobiographic techniques of first-person narration and subjective perspective, however, this approach risks alienating readers and contaminating objective commentary. This is managed by couching the story within a broader context of tenancy hierarchies, and by mapping real-time experience to storytelling structure; asking, is it possible to engage and inform a broad demographic using autobiographic comic storytelling?

Research Contribution
Innovation and new knowledge

The output hybridises confessional storytelling and autoethnographic approaches, contributing to an archive of artistic response to Covid-19 and addressing a real-world problem of lack of information around tenants’ rights during the pandemic. It manipulates medium-specific syntax and visual literacies such as narration, spatiality, colour, line quality, shape language and metaphor, curating an unfolding series of events into a recognisable story structure, and balancing personal and objective narrative approaches to engage and inform.

Research Significance
Evidence of excellence

After publishing on social media, ABC Radio National commissioned it as a collated digital story. Metrics like correspondence and site statistics, despite not being a measure for excellence, show high engagement across a wide audience. The work has facilitated discussion around tenants’ rights and advocacy, including an interview with Ozanimate, one of Australia’s leading animation websites, and further collaboration opportunities with reputable NGOs including Tenants Victoria and HALT. The importance of the work is indicated by interest from the Washington Library of Congress to include it in their global ‘coronavirus art collection’.

How to Have Better Arguments (2019)

Research Background
Field, context & research question

In an age with increasing challenges across environment, economy and governments, there is a heightened awareness of the importance of communication and cooperation between groups. This work marries content and form, depicting non-biased inter-group communication techniques with visual signs and symbols that are non-specific to race, culture and gender. Through a non-linear, interdisciplinary and collaborative process, it asks what are the most appropriate representations of inter-group communication concepts that will be engaging, inclusive, and ‘sticky’ in the minds of mainstream readers, while staying faithful to the research it is communicating?

Research Contribution
Innovation & new knowledge

The comic seeks to communicate intergroup communication tools with sensitivity to all groups. Visual signifiers of tools were designed to be easily understood regardless of culture, and fair in representation with race, group, and gender equally represented. These signifiers are designed to relevant to the concepts, and aesthetically pleasing in order to be engaged with and remembered.

Research Significance
Evidence of excellence

The success of this research’s aim to engage a general audience is demonstrated in metrics, being accessed more than 36 thousand times, republished by Swinburne University, University of Queensland, Australian News Bulletin, Modern Australian, MENAFN, and shared more than 5000 times on Facebook. As a reengineering of academic literature, it is similarly successful, being retweeted by leading experts in the field including Hugh Possingham, Chief Scientist of The Nature Conservancy, and endorsed by renowned communication psychology professor Friedemann Schulz von Thun. These metrics speak to the work’s relevance among leaders in the field, and its appeal among mainstream audiences.

Entwined:
A Recurrent Romance (2019)

Research Background
Field, context & research question

Entwined: A Recurrent Romance is a 32 full-colour sequential-art narrative artefact created and published within the independent ‘underground comix’ field, known for divergent approaches to mainstream comics. Entwined makes use of underground comix model through self-publishing and distribution, and uncensored discourse on birth-control and the relevance of god/s in a modern context. There is scant research by practice-based auto-ethnographic researchers into the discrete creative processes of sequential art narrative world building and a lack of independent Australian comics repositioning the superhero genre outside of traditional North American approaches. This creates a challenge for the field in finding wider exposure outside of its niche audience, which Entwined seeks to address.

Research Contribution
Innovation & new knowledge

Entwined makes use of Practice Based Research (PBR) and Traditional Research (TR) methodologies to clarify and compartmentalise creative practices within an iterative, co-designed workflow. Compartmentalised workflow stages have enabled the creation of a taxonomy of representations, incorporating independent (solo) creative practices with mainstream (co-design) methods of iteration and production towards a co-designed, reflexive action research methodology in independent comics. As such, Entwined is a hybrid artefact of independent and mainstream creative practices with a clearly defined structure of traditional and non-traditional research phases.

Research Significance
Evidence of excellence

The creative phases and traditional research approaches of Entwined were presented at the International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference 2019 in Manchester. This is a world-leading conference in comic scholarship with a peer-reviewed selection process. The comic was successfully crowdfunded Kickstarter by the public and peers and has been shown at selected comic conventions including Papercuts, Homecooked, and Indie Comic-Con.