I began this research project by focussing on collective action as a counterpoint to the effects humanity has had on planetary well-being. One of these effects has been the attempt to quantify everything in order to understand its financial value, rather than attempting to recognise its inherent value, the result is summarised perfectly by Kae Tempest:
“When life is the pursuit of status, and status is measured in wealth, we grade our outcomes of our existence by the possessions we accumulate or the goals we can tick off our bucket lists” (Tempest, 2020)
I believe that this quantification is an extractive practice focussed on individual gain at the expense of something or someone else, and removes all nuance or artistry in pursuit of logic and comparability.
I am unfortunately coming to realise that in my attempt to analyse the group work quantitatively I am guilty of trying to rationalise data which is important in it’s irrationality, as a record of social and creative activity. Fundamentally I have tried to distill these activities into statistics, which not only removes so much of the nuance as to render the data of little use but is also completely counter to the nature of what it is I am measuring and trying to improve.
I also have no results to compare this against; a key aim of quantitative data gathering is to form comparisons and analyse them. It would be extremely helpful to be able to somehow have the students also carry out the design task individually in order to compare their responses against working collectively but this would not be possible without asking them to do additional work for my benefit. With something to compare against I could, for example, discover that the respondents generally found they learned more working collectively than individually.
At this point I have carried out the analysis of the qualitative data I have gathered and in that analysis I have used the questions from the survey I designed to help clarify the data. As a result the exercise of seeking quantitative results has not been a waste of effort as it has acted as a series of lenses through which I can find focus, without removing the artistic and social nuance of the respondents’ experiences.
Also having this revelation about the types of data I should seek and how that relates to what I am measuring would not have been possible without attempting to quantify the (arguably) unquantifiable, so although I am frustrated, I am also grateful to realise that artistic practice should be analysed artistically.