How can a practice-based exhibition operate as experiment, knowledge production, and reflexive process in exploring the present?
Methodology and Practice
This phase of the research was realised through a work-in-progress exhibition at Bath Spa University (Locksbrook Campus), where the Danger Soft Mud project was presented to BA and MA students. Within the context of a practice-based PhD, the exhibition functioned not as a final presentation but as an active research environment in which methodological assumptions could be tested under real perceptual conditions. The installation brought together multiple representational systems, including large-scale printed visualisations, moving image works, and a custom-built mechanical device, in order to examine how temporal experience is constructed, fragmented, and reinterpreted across different media.
The project is grounded in a year-long process of systematic observation. Over 365 consecutive days, a fixed-point photographic method was employed, maintaining a stable spatial configuration while allowing temporal variation to emerge as the primary variable. Alongside this visual dataset, parallel records were produced, including daily weather conditions and subjective emotional states experienced at the moment of image capture. This resulted in a hybrid dataset combining quantitative environmental information with qualitative, introspective data. The coexistence of these registers enables a comparative investigation between externally measurable temporal processes and internally perceived duration, establishing a methodological bridge between empirical observation and phenomenological experience.
A significant stage of the research involved the transformation of this dataset into visual and spatial form. The production of infographics and charts introduced a level of abstraction in which continuous temporal experience was discretised into structured, analysable units. These visualisations do not merely communicate information but actively construct a temporal model in which continuity is replaced by segmentation and non-synchronous distribution. The presentation of all 365 photographs within a single large-scale composition further intensified this condition by collapsing an entire year into a unified visual field. In doing so, the work eliminated any privileged temporal position, suggesting that what is conventionally understood as the present cannot be isolated within a continuous flow but exists only as a retrospective or distributed construct.
The moving image components of the exhibition extended this investigation by reintroducing temporality through duration and sequence. One film focused on the structure of daily routine, foregrounding repetition and cyclical time, while the other arranged the 365 photographs into a linear progression, emphasising accumulation and irreversible succession. These two temporal models operated simultaneously yet incompatibly, revealing the tension between cyclical and linear conceptions of time. Rather than resolving this tension, the films made it perceptually accessible, situating the viewer within a temporal system that resists unification.
A central methodological element of the exhibition was the use of a parallel flip book machine, designed as a perceptual experiment. The device presented two synchronised but distinct sequences: one consisting of the photographic series and the other of recorded emotional states corresponding to the moments of capture. While temporally aligned, the two sequences did not produce a coherent synthesis. Instead, their divergence generated a perceptual disjunction, requiring the viewer to negotiate between visual and affective temporalities. This configuration demonstrated that temporal experience cannot be reduced to a single, unified present, but emerges from the interaction of heterogeneous and only partially compatible temporal layers.
The exhibition space itself functioned as an extended methodological framework. As viewers moved through the installation, they encountered shifts between static, dynamic, and mechanical forms of representation, each encoding time differently. This spatial progression introduced an additional temporal dimension, as the duration and sequence of viewing became integral to the work’s operation. The exhibition therefore acted as a performative system in which perception, movement, and temporality were continuously recalibrated, effectively transforming the gallery into a site of experimental observation.
The designation of the exhibition as a work in progress reflects its role within an iterative research process. Rather than presenting conclusive outcomes, this phase allowed for the testing of relationships between data, representation, and perception, generating material for further reflection and development. Documentation of the installation and critical self-analysis form part of an ongoing feedback loop, informing subsequent stages of the project. This iterative structure aligns the research with experimental methodologies while maintaining the openness and adaptability inherent to artistic practice.
Through this configuration, the Danger Soft Mud project advances the proposition that the present moment cannot be empirically isolated or phenomenologically stabilised. The combined use of longitudinal data collection, visual abstraction, temporal sequencing, and perceptual experimentation demonstrates that what is perceived as the present is in fact a distributed construct, emerging from the interaction of asynchronous temporal systems. The exhibition thus operates not as a representation of this claim, but as its material and experiential enactment within the context of practice-based research.
Methodologically, my exhibition operates as an experiment (empirical level), a mode of knowledge production (epistemological level), and a reflexive cycle (research process level).