Based on your current experience and ideas how might you answer the question what is research?
Research is the process of investigating a topic by not only looking up information on websites and in books, but also asking several types of questions to yourself throughout the way. When one asks questions to themselves, it allows them to get into the details of the topic and narrow down their ideas.
Over the course of the semester what did you find or develop in your own practice as a maker/thinker/writer?
Throughout my research process, I learned to ask myself questions and ask others what questions they have about my topic because while working on this project, I realized that I kept on asking myself questions in my head while looking up or reading information, but I never thought about actually answering them. However, when I started writing my paper, I noticed that I needed to get into the details of the topic and the only way I would be able to do that is if I started writing down the general questions I have about the topic and slowly drifting into the specific questions. Another practice I discovered through this project was that it was ok if I didn’t know my specific idea from the beginning because through the process I will find out new information about the topic that will guide me to a specific path or even I may end up changing my ideas, which is also fine since it will help me come down to the specifics of my topic and what type of information to focus on.
How did your concept of both research and your own practice change or develop over the course of the semester?
My concept of both my research and practice have changed and developed a lot over the course of the semester because originally I thought research was all about looking up information on websites and books and basically answering the basic question that I came up with when writing my project proposal, but as I looked into the topic more I realized that my question was too general and there can be too many possibilities of the type of research and practice I could with it, which was good and bad in a way, but mostly bad because then I wouldn’t know which area to focus on. Therefore, I needed to do a lot more research on my topic in order for me to come up with a specific question. Ultimately, I learned that asking questions and having several different ideas along the way is fine because it will actually help me narrow down on a specific question, which is what ended up happening to me.
How do you see this in your work overall this semester, and where do you imagine it might go next?
In the beginning, I started off with a very basic proposal of studying the process of museum curation and making my own museum exhibit out of shoebox. Even though my topic didn’t change, my idea developed through the research I did on my topic, which finally led me to study the manipulative strategies museum curators implement in their exhibits to attract visitors for seminar and for studio to study how spatial organization and its design can influence how visitors go through the exhibition and view and feel the artworks. For studio, instead of making my exhibit in a shoe box, I decided to make my own mini model exhibit out of foam board with my own theme and pieces from Parsons first-year students. I really enjoyed and got fascinated by researching on museum curation that if i ever got an opportunity to revisit this topic I would definitely look into it, but probably research on the smaller galleries around NYC or famous museums around the world. I wanted to learn more about the small galleries because after interviewing Radhika, the gallery curator at the Shelia Johnson Design Center, I really became fascinated in the way smaller curation departments deal with their restrictions yet display their exhibitions in a conveying way.
