A study in cognitive ecology for a print-mediated artistic practice

My practice-led research shows how the rubric of cognitive ecology can be used to develop an experimental ‘print-mediated’ artistic practice. Referred to as “the study of cognitive phenomena in context” by Edwin Hutchins, cognitive ecology extends how cognition has typically been studied within the cognitive sciences, beyond the controlled confines of laboratory walls. As John Sutton and Evelyn Tribble write, cognitive ecologies are: the multidimensional contexts in which we remember, feel, think, sense, communicate, imagine, and act, often collaboratively, on the fly, and in rich ongoing interaction with our environment. Following Hutchins’s statement, that when it comes to the study of cognition, the correct unit of analysis is the ‘cognitive eco-system’, my practice-led research explores how the idea of making a cognitive eco-system, might be used to develop an experimental artistic practice over an extended period of time. This was a response to a need I had to transform my artmaking processes into a robust mode of life-long learning, after a prolonged period of retreat from a ‘culture of critique’. I tested the robustness of this idea by using an artmaking context in which my individual artistic cognition had largely not occurred in, to date, namely, a printmaking studio on university grounds. Through a combination of written and practical components, I was able to show that conceptualising my artistic practice as an extended unit of analysis, that went beyond the studio walls, helped to activate and then integrate my artmaking processes with a corresponding web of conceptual elements. By answering the research question, ‘what would my cognitive eco-system look like, in artistic practice?’ my inquiry allowed me to imagine and then create a conceptual framework that operates as a pathway into the practice of art.