Research Atlas - Bram Loogman, Brigiet van den Berg, Nina Jan

How best to create an online platform for artistic researchers? This project was initiated to create a space of documentation, collaboration and publication within the context of artistic research at the Academy. 

Why the Research Atlas?
With the support of the Comenius Senior Fellow grant (2018/2020), we launched a project to create an online platform for the student-researchers of the Master of Film: Artistic Research in and through Cinema. This online platform had specific needs: it had to provide student-researchers with the ability to work, collaborate, share and publish their research. Could the platform become a potential pedagogical tool, a publishing space, and a medium facilitating collaborative research practices?

The Research Process
At the core of this design process was identifying and exploring the specific needs of the student-researchers and 12 years of their richly-layered research projects. Keeping in line with the ethos of the Master’s programme, a methodology was developed in collaboration with the designer/researchers Bram Loogman, Brigiet van den Berg and Nina Jan to organise the process not for the student-researchers but rather with them; bottom-up rather than top-down. Another determining principle was the desire to design a platform that would be audio-visual. Most platforms are text-driven, using images merely as illustration. The platform envisaged here befits the nature of the research done – in and through cinema – and thus is thought through from an audio-visual/cinematic point of view. To read more about the process, you can deep dive into our publication 

How does it work?
The first phase of the project resulted in the Research Atlas: a working prototype of an archive to be used by the current student-researchers as a source of knowledge on research topics and projects undertaken by earlier Master student-researchers. It provides references, examples and potential collaborators for current student-researchers. Future phases of the project aim to focus on the further development of the Atlas platform as a working and publication space. 

Who was involved?
Brigiet van den Berg is a designer. Her practice is built around the concept of research by design and design by research, where making and thinking are intertwined and continuously respond to each other. 
Bram Loogman is a filmmaker and software developer, often combining the two disciplines. He has made installations, performances, exhibitions, experimental films, music videos, and web projects. 

Year

2018