'Research Images as Art / Art Images as Research' 2014/15
The Doctoral School would like to thank everyone for entering our competition and for contributing towards what was an excellent exhibition – we've had very good feedback and certainly had fun organising the event.
I would like to say that I am truly honoured to have been selected as this years winner and am hugely appreciative for the opportunity through this competition to put the spotlight on the beauty found within research rather than only giving shine to the final product or result.— Mr Chris Falla, Bartlett School of Architecture
I just wanted to thank everyone involved in Images as Research for providing such a brilliant opportunity for students across the school! It was a pleasure to take part, and see such breadth of entries from various departments. And of course I'm extremely excited to have my work appreciated by the judges! It's a real pleasure.— Olga Koroleva, Slade School of Fine Art
Read comments from Professor Sharon Morris, Chair of the Judging Panel:
First of all great pleasure to have been looking at such a wide range of images from across UCL – how good to see representations from all Faculties
In the process of shortlisting we became aware that the images, which carried the greatest visual impact and the images which invited closer investigation were those that raised questions in our mind... And that seems very fitting for a Research Images competition
This has been the first time that I have engaged with the process and coming from the Slade School of Fine Art I was particularly interested to see a range of research images that were not necessarily made with the intention of being considered as Fine Art. I run the doctoral programme at the Slade and so I am particularly attuned to how images can communicate research as well as being instrumental in the research process.
One of the challenges presented by research across different fields at UCL is that of the representation of research data. All the images have a form of representational function – but those dealing with the transformation of complex data, or the presentation of medical imaging, appeared to have the greatest difficulty in finding new conventions of representation. I think I'm right in saying that we all felt that the range of colours and the interactions of a default range of colour for these data representation has become over-familiar. We were therefore delighted to find images, which transposed data with greater sophistication and imagination.
If the image is itself going to constitute a mode of research, or a research object, then we would hope that the image demonstrates new knowedge according to the definition of all diagrams.
In accordance with the above we have selected our 6 runner up images, and also our winner, who we believe has produced an image through research that stimulates the viewer's mode of enquiry – First of all it grabs our attention not by the noise of colour but by its subtle seduction; then we ask ourselves What is it? What does it represent? And in its delicate and subtle visual qualities - How is it made? Aha! a murmuration, a flock of starlings – and then the further look? Do they really behave like this? And the conclusion – Wow I never knew that! And also we appreciated the care by which this image has been manipulated to bring out all the resonances of the digital processes...
— Professor Sharon Morris, Slade School of Fine Art
