Monograph

It all began when in my 2009 university performance evaluation rounds, a senior colleague suggested that it might be time for me to think about a ‘monograph’, (I guess considered de rigeur for someone who is a professor in the university ecology). That usually means,

. . . In order to gain respect within the academic community and tenure at a major university, an academic must publish monographs over the course of his or her life. These scholarly treatises provide evidence that the academic is carrying out research in the field and analyzing already published information. A monograph usually brings new light to the subject, and it may contain breakthrough research. It also further refines the academic specialty of the author, and establishes the author as an authority on the topic. [Wisegeek]

. . . It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself. An author may therefore declare his own work to be a monograph by intent, or a reader or critic might define a given text as a monograph for the purpose of analysis. Normally it is used for a work intended to be a complete and detailed exposition of a substantial subject at a level more advanced than that of a textbook. [Wikipedia]

However, like many ‘artists in the academy’, I once did very different professional work before joining the university later in life, transitioning from what they now call a ‘portfolio career’ in music. That is, freelancing around musical performance genres, recording sessions, teaching and composition /production commissions. It was this background that invited my first masterclass in film sound track work at an Australian music conservatorium, later to be augmented by the teaching of classes and eventually a tenured position in 1996.

After working for some 25 years in a often cut-throat industry, I was quickly taken by higher education, the idea of ‘knowledge transfer’, and the new young musicians eager to learn.

Also similar to many of my contemporaries, I found myself drifting further and further away from practicing musicianship, simply because of academic demands – the PhD, grants, administration, strategic planning, email work flow, etc. Odd too, in the light of so much talk and gathering of ‘research equivalent outputs’ right across the university sector in Australia – From the so-called Strand Report, Research in the Creative Arts of 1998, to failed Cat J & H research collections, to the Howard government’s Research Quality Framework (RQF), to the now first Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) collection in 2010 (mirroring the UK’s RAE rankings, in place for many years now).

Despite these initiatives and chasing the idea of ‘practice-based research’, many academic artists struggle to keep up the chops and/or significant ‘alternate’ research outputs (artworks, new music, films etc), given the high teaching and administration demands of the variously ever-interconnected, ‘flexible’, policy-driven, compliance-oriented, document-oriented modern university life. Perhaps easier for some (like myself) to produce and count journal articles and conference papers – in writing, and/or immerse myself in collaborations producing albums for academic colleagues. [See my publications].

Not that I’m complaining. To the contrary, working in the university sector over the last 15 years has also taught me a lot about reflection, analysis and research; about challenging my assumptions and intellect. Here then, again recalling my colleague’s suggestion to ‘think about a monograph’, I want to consider more about the shape for such an undertaking:

mon·o·graph   [mon-uh-graf, -grahf] –noun
1. a treatise on a particular subject, as a biographical study or study of the works of one artist.
2. a highly detailed and thoroughly documented study or paper written about a limited area of a subject or field of inquiry: scholarly monographs on medieval pigments.
3. an account of a single thing or class of things, as of a species of organism.
[Dictionary.com]

I want to flesh out some of what is emerging as a plan for the next 18 months or so. But broadly, as way to fuse and re-examine my music in the light of the intervening 15 years of experience, and to think about the project in terms of a range of practice-led research products, one end point being the production of an original album of music entitled Monograph.

Next blog entry, I think I should back up a little and give a little run-down on The Story so Far, which bought me to this point.