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Evaluating beyond measure: the
Visual Matrix
A Situations - Uclan Partnership:
!  Claire
Doherty
!  Lynn Froggett
!  Julian Manley
!  Michael Prior
!  Alastair Roy
Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research
Council Cultural Value Programme
Cultural Value Programme Theme:
Reflective and Engaged Citizens
!
Compare the cultural value of two contrasting
forms of public art
!
Did they support reflective and engaged
citizenship? If so, how?
!
Develop and test a research method based on
imagery and visualisation: the Visual Matrix
Comparing the focus group and
the visual matrix
!  Chaired
versus participant led
!  Argumentation versus associations
!  Experience distant versus experience
near
!  Positions versus associations
!  Acknowledged vs emergent
!  Order versus creativity
!  The
visual matrix reflects some of the
processes artists are familiar with and
aims to respond to their intentions and
concerns.
!  It
provides access to the aesthetic and
emotional impact of a work and the
social processes it sets in motion
!  address
quality and depth of
engagement rather than quantity and
breadth, and can be used alongside
other methods adapted for that purpose
!  Complex
artworks demand complex
evaluation, and the visual matrix
responds to complexity, and can be
effectively applied with a modicum of
practice and training
!  Claims
are made that artists can help us
see things differently, step out of role
and set in train transformative
processes. The visual matrix can show
whether and how these things happen
and help build a case for effects which
are difficult to ‘measure’ yet are often the
principal aim of a work.
!  The
visual matrix is effective at
understanding how a particular
demographic and social group responds
to a particular artwork. Matrices with
different groups show how they may
make differential use of its various
layers, dimensions or entry points.
!  Many
methods (e.g focus groups,
interviews, surveys) gather opinions
‘after the fact’. The visual matrix evokes
the experience of an artwork and can
elicit complex, ambivalent, contradictory
responses that in ordinary talk are hard
to put into words.
!  Most
people don’t find it easy to talk of
experience of an artwork so grading
scales are often used to rate reactions
to pre-set questions. The visual matrix is
based on imagery and visualization and
enables people to express a nuanced
relation to an artwork without recourse
to expert language.
!  the
visual matrix enables a shared
experience of public art to emerge in a
group setting, in the moment, with other
people whose attention is also directed
to the artwork. This is especially
appropriate where the purpose of public
art is to set in motion social processes,
and the purpose of evaluation is to
understand how this occurs
!  The
visual matrix is participatory by
definition. The process of making sense
is also begun by the participants so that
useful knowledge is genuinely coproduced.
!  The
visual matrix can detect the intrinsic
qualities of an artwork in relation to
processes which may accompany it
such as public engagement programs
and collateral (instrumental) effects
Concept/object
NWI Visual Matrix
Response to NWI
in terms of life
experience, and
generational
consciousness;
Concerns of ecosustainability and
global citizenship
Concept/object
Verity Visual
Matrix
Matrix worked wih
metaphor:
pregnancy as
symbol of town’s
generativity
Creative Illusion:
NWI Matrix
Creative Illusion:
Verity matrix
Young people
populated the
emptiness
imaginatively.
Adults struggled
with ‘barrenness’
but moved to
reflection
Verity’s fecundity a
potent metaphor
giving rise to
memories of
unrealized
expectations with
the town’s decline,
the sense that at
last it might be able
to produce
something out of
itself
Public Engagement: NWI Matrix
School engagereflected in
assurance of
participants: aware
of its embassy, web
presence and
community activity.
The adults
struggled to use its
many entry points,
but reflected on
the feelings of
disappointment it
evoked
Public
Engagement:
Verity matrix
Discussion of
excitement
generated, at
arrival; awareness
of how the town’s
relationship to her
had changed over
time as she had
weathered,
naturalised and
come to ‘belong’
Legacy: NWI
Matrix
Awareness of ecosustainability; new
thinking and moral
responsibility as
global citizens in
the school; for
adults something
disquieting in
collective memory:
‘an island in the
mind’ and its traces
(‘the round the
island race’ had
been repeated a
year later).
Legacy: Verity
matrix
Discussion of
excitement
generated, at
arrival; hope that
putting them ‘on
the map’ and the
new spirit of
optimism would
bring prosperity
and opportunity