Investigation and Sources of Inspiration

Investigation and Sources

Art and Design has no written exam. Everything is the portfolio, and AO1 is the objective that asks how you develop ideas through investigation. The word doing the work there is *investigation*. Collecting is not investigating. A page of images gathered because they looked good is a mood board; a page of images chosen for a reason, questioned, and then used to change what you make next is an investigation. This module is about the difference between the two.

What counts as a source

Two different ways of dividing sources up, and the second one is the one candidates lose marks on:

Primary or secondary?

You visit a gallery and take your own photographs of a sculpture, from angles you chose, in the light it happened to be in. The sculpture is somebody else's work. Are your photographs a primary or a secondary source?

• Primary. What makes a source primary is that YOU recorded it firsthand, not that you made the thing recorded. Your angles, your framing, your decisions about what mattered
• Secondary, because the sculpture was made by another artist and you are only recording their work
• Secondary, because a photograph is always a copy of something rather than the thing itself
• Neither, since a photograph of an artwork cannot be used as a source in your own portfolio

Three things you can write

All three sentences below are about the same painting, and only one of them is worth marks. This is the single most useful distinction in AO1:

Which sentence scores?

Four students write about the same textile hanging, which is made from strips of worn, faded workwear stitched into a grid. Which sentence shows critical understanding?

• "Using worn workwear rather than new fabric means every square already carries somebody's wear marks, so the grid reads as a record of people rather than a pattern, and the regularity of it starts to feel like a list of names."
• "The artist has used strips of faded denim and cotton workwear, machine-stitched into a regular grid of about forty squares."
• "The hanging is made of old blue and grey fabric arranged in squares."
• "I really like this piece and I think the use of old fabric is very effective and meaningful."

Choosing a source well

Most weak investigations were lost at the selection stage, before a single word was written. Three things separate a good choice from a comfortable one. Relevance beats familiarity. "An artist I like" is not a reason. "An artist who solved the problem I am stuck on" is. Reach beyond what you can already do. A source whose technique you have mastered gives you nothing to develop. Choose one that does something you cannot yet do, and the investigation has somewhere to go. Get first-hand where you can. A gallery visit, a walk with a camera, an object on the desk in front of you: all of these beat a screenshot, because you control what gets recorded and you can go back for more. And always note the attribution. Artist, title, and where you found the image. It costs one line, it is basic honesty about whose work you are using, and a sketchbook full of unattributed images looks like a scrapbook.

Which strengthen an investigation?

Select the THREE that would genuinely strengthen an AO1 investigation.

• Choosing an artist because they solved a problem you are currently stuck on, even though you do not much like their work
• Spending an afternoon photographing and drawing a place yourself, rather than downloading images of it
• Investigating two sources that handle the same subject in opposite ways, and setting them against each other
• Choosing an artist whose style already closely resembles your own, so the connection to your work is obvious
• Gathering twenty secondary images from the internet in one session, to show the breadth of your research
• Investigating whichever artist your teacher recommended, without working out why they fit your project

One source, done properly

A student's project is about coastal erosion. The source is a sculpture, seen firsthand at a regional gallery: a life-size chair cast in unfired clay, standing in a shallow tray of water, slowly slumping over the run of the exhibition. Select. Chosen not because the student liked it but because their project needed a way to show loss happening rather than loss having happened. Record. Photographed on three separate visits from the same spot, so the change is documented. Primary, and impossible to obtain any other way. Analyse. Unfired clay, so it was never going to survive contact with water. The tray is shallow and the damage begins at the feet and travels upward. Question. Why make something guaranteed to fail? Because the destruction is the work: a finished object would show a ruined chair, and this one makes you watch it happen and be unable to stop it. The chair is domestic and life-sized, so it reads as somebody's, not as a shape. Develop. The student's own idea moves from drawings of eroded cliffs to a series made on water-soluble paper, photographed at intervals as it degrades.

What does each question reveal?

Investigating a source

Put the stages of investigating a source into a sensible order.

• Decide what your project needs, and select a source that supplies it
• Record it firsthand where you can: photograph, draw, note, and attribute it
• Analyse how it was made, in specific rather than general terms
• Question why those choices were made and what they do to a viewer
• Change what you make next because of the answer, and say on the page what changed

The analysis frame

Saying what a work looks like is _____, and it earns almost nothing because the examiner can see it too. Saying how it was made is analysis, and it is better. Asking why those choices were made and what they do to a viewer is what the mark scheme calls critical _____. A source you recorded yourself is a _____ source, whoever made the thing you recorded. And an investigation is not finished until it has changed what you _____ next.

Where AO1 becomes AO2

AO1 credits investigation and AO2 credits refining through experimentation. A student has written an excellent critical analysis of an artist's use of layered wax resist. What single further step turns that AO1 work into AO2 work as well?

• Actually trying wax resist themselves, and annotating what happened, because AO2 is paid for the experiment and its result rather than for understanding the technique in the abstract
• Writing a longer and more detailed version of the same analysis
• Investigating two further artists who also use wax resist
• Going straight to the final piece using wax resist, since the technique is now understood

Plan a critical analysis

Choose a source for a project you are working on now, and plan a critical analysis of it. Use at least two of the five questions from the matching step, and reach the last bullet: an analysis that changes nothing has not finished.

• Name the source, and say why your project needs THIS one rather than one you happen to like
• Say whether your record of it is primary or secondary, and attribute it properly
• Analyse how it was made, in specific terms rather than general praise
• Question why those choices were made and what they do to a viewer
• State what you will now make differently because of the answer

AO1 summary

AO1 rewards developing ideas through _____, which is not the same as collecting. Sources may be the work of artists and designers, or environments, situations and _____. Choose them for what your project needs rather than for what you already like, record them firsthand where you can, and always note the _____ of anything made by somebody else. Then question the source rather than describing it, and let the answer change what you _____.