— Caption
Short definition of key terms in order to provide a framework of their theoretical and disciplinary scope
Author citations that propose consensus-building definitional elements from bibliographic sources
Texts written by artists and researchers, based on experiences in their field of study
Bibliographic citations for further reading
Scientific methodology based on the carrying-out of experiments. This approach consists of all procedures and processes implemented within a research context, in order to verify a theory or hypothesis.
Cite: “Experimentation”, Performascope: Interdisciplinary Lexicon of Performance and Research-Creation, Grenoble: Université Grenoble Alpes, 2021, [online]: http://performascope.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/en/detail/177829
Category :
⇆ Related terms :
Created : 2021-06-14.
Last modified : 2022-06-29.
« Les expérimentations sur des sujets humains se caractérisent en outre en général, tout particulièrement en sciences humaines et sociales, par des biais résultant des interactions inconscientes et des interférences inaperçues entre les attentes ou les présupposés des expérimentateurs et ceux des sujets. Enfin, elles peuvent parfois poser des problèmes éthiques ou politiques : dommages ou risques « psychologiques » pour les sujets, problèmes résultant de la tromperie ou de l’injustice dans la situation expérimentale, ou encore, plus fondamentalement, difficultés que pourrait entraîner la décision de « tester » empiriquement un dispositif qui pourrait par ailleurs légitimement relever d’un choix purement politique ou déontologique. »
Catherine Allamel-Raffin, Stéphanie Dupouy, Jean-Luc Gangloff, « Introduction. Philosopher sur l’expérimentation scientifique : bilan et perspectives », Philosophia Scientiæ, 23, 2, 2019, pp.11-12
« Nous n’hésiterons donc pas à inscrire au compte de l’erreur […] toute expérience, même juste, dont l’affirmation reste sans lien avec une méthode d’expérimentation générale, toute observation qui, pour réelle et positive qu’elle soit, est annoncée dans une fausse perspective de vérification. »
Gaston Bachelard, La Formation de l'esprit scientifique, Paris : Vrin, 1938, p.11
« Experimentation. The investigator consciously and voluntarily alters the conditions of the phenomena studied. »
Frances Hall Rousmaniere, «A definition of experimentation », The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, 3, 25, 1906, p.676
« […] the difference of a performative approach is that it relishes this failure, ‘no matter’, and uses it to mount a serious political critique of the restrictions that methodological protocols might impose on what count as knowledge. It therefore advocates resolute experimentalism – ‘try again, fail again, fail better’ »
John-David Dewsbury, « Performative, non-representational, and affect-based research: Seven injunctions », The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Geography, Dydia DeLyser, Dydia DeLyser, Steve Herbert, Stuart Aitken, MikeCrang, Linda McDowell dirs., Los Angeles : SAGE, 2010, p. 321
∵
Geography
Pauline Guinard, Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Sciences Po Grenoble, PACTE, 38000 Grenoble, France
Associate professor of geography at the École normale supérieure of Paris, Pauline Guinard conducts research on the relationships between cities and the arts. For several years, she has endeavored to study the role of emotions within the production of contemporary cities, using a practice-based research process.
For the past few years, I have been interested in the role of emotions within the relationships that individuals and groups cultivate with space, urban space in particular. What is it about a place, a neighborhood, or a city that attracts us, frightens us, or even saddens us? Why are these spaces associated, for certain people, at different moments of the day, the year, etc., with such-and-such emotion? Studying emotions in geography supposes that we have certain methods at our disposal that are capable of grasping this emotional and, more broadly, sensory dimension of our relationships to spaces. This methodological challenge is all the more crucial since –as Anne Volvey, Yann Calbérac, and Myriam Houssay-Holzschuch have shown– the tools mobilized up until recently by geographers are essentially discursive (interviews, questionnaires, discourse analysis, etc.) and visual (observations, maps, photographs, etc.). Thus, how do we as geographers achieve to grasp emotions in all their dimensions, when they are often multi-sensorial and not necessarily verbalized? Taking emotions into account therefore entails a (re)invention of the methods available to geographers.
It is in response to this issue that, in 2019, Jean-Baptiste Lanne and I began conducting a series of experimental methodology workshops within the framework of the “Geography of Emotions” seminar, aimed at collectively elaborating methods for capturing and analyzing emotions. For each session, a guest speaker offered up an investigative methodology, often drawing upon artistic media (poetry, theater, drawing, etc.). These approaches were then tested collaboratively among the workshop participants, before a discussion of their contributions and limits. During one session, for instance, Lise Landrin invited us to explore her approach on “triggering theater”, as a means of accessing emotions (our own and those of others) through words as well as with our bodies. Such experiments require that a trusting relationship be built among all participants, independent of their status (teacher, researcher, student, artist), so as to allow the expression of emotion outside of judgement. This turn toward artistic methods, which call more directly upon the sensory and subjective, widened the range of possibilities on the methodological level. In addition, this experimentation made it possible –following a trial-and-error process– to test the potentialities of each method in order to validate, amend, or invalidate its various aspects. The experimental nature of these proposed methods of emotional comprehension also led participants to accept error as part of the experience and thereby part of the learning process and the production of knowledge. Failure was, therefore, no longer conceived of as the end of something, but rather as a step, oftentimes a necessary one, in the construction of knowledge and emotional savoir-faire.
The interest of experimentation, and even more so of creative experimentation, is furthermore based in the fact that it encourages more collaborative approaches to flourish. The participation of diverse audiences in these experiments, and the validation of their diverse sets of knowledge, can in effect be a means of reducing the incertitude of the experimentation process, thus pushing it even further.
More from this author:
Pauline Guinard, Jean-Baptiste Lanne, “Emotions from and beyond the classroom. An experiment in teaching and sharing emotional methodologies in a geography course”, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 2021, [online]: https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2021.1977916 (12/10/21)
Cite this item: Pauline Guinard, “Experimentation”, translated by Lauren Fabrizio, Performascope: Interdisciplinary Lexicon of Performance and Research-Creation, Grenoble: Université Grenoble Alpes, 2021, [online]: http://performascope.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/en/detail/177829
Romain Cadario, Raphaëlle Butori, Béatrice Parguel, « Avant-propos : méthode expérimentale en sciences humaines et sociales », in Méthode expérimentale : analyses de modération et médiation, Romain Cadario, Raphaëlle Butori, Béatrice Parguel dirs., Louvain la Neuve : De Boeck Supérieur, 2017, pp.17-21, [en ligne] : https://www.cairn.info/methode-experimentale-analyses-de-moderation--9782807313378.htm (09/06/2021)
Konstantinos Chatzis, Claudine Fontanon, « L’expérimentation « en plein air » ou « grandeur nature » : Une pratique scientifique au service de l’action (XIXe-XXe siècles) », Documents pour l’histoire des techniques, 20, 2011, pp.7-14, [en ligne] : https://journals.openedition.org/dht/1615 (29/03/21)
Béatrice Fleury-Vilatte, Jacques Walter, « Terrain, expérimentation et sciences sociales », Questions de communication, 7, 2005, pp.147-160, [en ligne] : https://doi.org/10.4000/questionsdecommunication.4627 (12/10/21)
Harriet Hawkins, Geography, Art, Research, Oxon : Routledge, 2020
∵