Material Thinking: The Theory and Practice of Creative Research by Paul Douglas Carter

by Paul Carter

This intimate account of how ideas get turned into artwork—including dance performance, film, sound installation, sculpture, and painting—looks at how the material thinking that art embodies produces new understandings about individuals, their histories, and the cultures they inhabit. Discussing the philosophy of signs (images, text, and their interaction), the psychology of visual perception, and the overarching notion of mythopoeic place-making, this intellectually wide-ranging and anecdotally narrated primer provides a fresh perspective to the concept of inventing. All active practitioners in the fields of performance, media, film, museum, painting, sculpture, and cultural studies will benefit from this look at how artists participate in the conceptual invention of their world.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, School

Paperback

First published April 1, 2005

About the author

Paul Carter was born in England in 1969. His father's military career had the family moving all over the world, re-locating every few years. Paul has lived, worked, gotten into trouble and been given a serious talking to in England, Scotland, Germany, France, Holland, Norway, Portugal, Tunisia, Australia, Nigeria, Russia, Singapore, Malaysia, Borneo, Columbia, Vietnam, Thailand, Papua New Guinea, Sumatra, the Philippines, Korea, Japan, China, USA and Saudi Arabia. Today he lives in Perth with his wife, baby daughter and two motorbikes.

Reviews

[Hasan Gülmez · Rating 5 out of 5]

İ

[Yazmina-Michele de Gaye · Rating 4 out of 5]

a topic of conversation around a warm brazier @ a party lead me to borrow, to b handed back ASAP. These essays require many more days of burrowing in thru the accademic jargon, to take notes to re-read some passages so they sink in...i enjoyed the brief exploration, learnt so much about my own Art processes and made good use of the geometric patterns on the cover in my photo_collages and montages...i guess i should have this one in my own physical library.
Without quoting from the cover reviews, Paul Carter is analysing from the point of view of his own collaborative embeded_ness within the various processes that Artists: film makers, video installation artists, performers, engage in, in materializing their creativity...from the inception of the idea right thru the various stages of bringing the concept into physical reality...
highly recommended