Artistic Research Methodology

1. Core Methodological Position

Practice-Based Research Through Absence

The Laboratory operates at the intersection of practice-based and practice-led research, with a crucial inversion: where conventional artistic research generates knowledge through making, we generate knowledge through documenting what has been unmade.

Primary contribution: The artefact itself is the absence—mapped, documented, preserved in its void state. Understanding requires direct encounter with the structural gap, not representation of what once filled it.

Knowledge claim: Absence is not epistemological failure but ontological condition. The research demonstrates that R = P(⊘)—Reality equals Presence structured by Active Absence.

Output form: Hybrid—the Atlas of Absence functions simultaneously as artistic artefact, research instrument, and philosophical proposition.

2. Research-Creation Entanglement

Theory-Practice Simultaneity

Following research-creation methodology, we reject the precedence of either theory or practice. The theoretical framework (⊘ as generative force) and the practice (mapping structural voids in Leschnitz) evolved in mutual constitution.

The entanglement:

• Encountering a void generates theoretical insight
• Theoretical framework reveals previously invisible voids
• Neither precedes; they spiral together

Documentation protocol: Every marker in the Atlas carries both empirical evidence (what is absent) and theoretical weight (why absence matters). The map reads as both data visualization and philosophical text.

3. Decolonial Methodology

Postcolonial Persistence in Upper Silesia

The Laboratory positions itself within decolonial artistic research, recognizing that Silesian identity constitutes a suppressed epistemology within European discourse.

Methodological commitments:

→ RELATIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY
We do not extract stories for external consumption. The Atlas serves the land and its layered memories, not academic credentialing.

→ PLURIVERSAL PRACTICE
Three linguistic-cultural realities coexist: Polish administrative present, German historical substrate, Silesian lived experience. The research holds all three without forcing synthesis or declaring winners.

→ REFUSAL OF RESTORATION
Decolonial methodology here means refusing to "fix" what was broken. Restoration is another form of colonial violence—imposing new coherence on productive incoherence.

The paradox of documenting erasure: To name an absence risks filling it. Our decolonial commitment requires that documentation intensifies rather than resolves the void.

4. Radical Non-Intervention

The Methodology of Calculated Withdrawal

Primary method: Strategic absence of the researcher

Protocol:

1. The researcher does not visit the site
2. The researcher does not interview residents
3. The researcher does not propose solutions
4. The researcher documents from maximum distance

Why non-intervention?

• To fill a gap is to destroy it
• Presence contaminates the void being studied
• The researcher's absence mirrors the subject's absence
• Distance preserves the integrity of what is not there

Remote sensing techniques:

• Satellite and street-view archaeology
• Digital trace analysis (what data should exist but doesn't)
• Linguistic ghost detection (words that survive only in silence)
• Algorithmic void mapping (pattern recognition inverted)

5. AI-Art Research Methodology

Machine Learning as Void-Detection Instrument

Framework: Extended Creativity Through Absence

We deploy AI not as creative partner in generation but as investigative partner in detection. The machine's "vision" becomes our probe into structural voids.

Methodological inversion:

• Standard ML: Find patterns in existing data
• Laboratory ML: Find patterns in missing data

Hybrid authorship question: Who authors the Atlas—the researcher who directs attention, the algorithm that detects voids, or the historical forces that created them? The methodology embraces this undecidability as productive.

Algorithmic phenomenology: Using AI systems to examine what human perception normalizes. The machine reveals absences our acculturated eyes have learned to overlook.

Critical AI position: We acknowledge that AI systems carry their own absences—training data gaps, algorithmic blind spots, encoded biases. The tool's limitations become part of the research material.

6. Ecological Methodology

Disciplined Non-Presence as Research Practice

Connection to bio-art and ecological research: The Laboratory's non-intervention methodology parallels ecological art practices that create through withdrawal. Compare: the 20-year meadow experiment—value created through sustained absence.

Ecological principle applied: Just as an unmowed meadow develops complexity through non-intervention, Leschnitz's cultural ecology reveals itself through our refusal to impose presence.

Interspecies parallel: The land itself becomes research partner. We attend to what the territory knows that its inhabitants cannot articulate—the "memory of the soil" beyond human testimony.

Systems-based thinking: Absences in Leschnitz form an ecosystem. One void enables another. The Atlas maps not isolated gaps but the relational web of what-is-not.

7. Speculative Methodology

The Atlas as Speculative Instrument

Design fiction orientation: Each marker in the Atlas is a "diegetic object from an alternative present"—what Leschnitz is, structured by what it was prevented from becoming.

Experiential futures (inverted): Rather than prototyping possible futures, we prototype impossible pasts—encountering the Leschnitz that was erased before it could fully exist.

Critical futures application: The Atlas interrogates dominant narratives about Upper Silesian "normalization." It asks: What assumptions must remain unexamined for the current reality to seem natural?

Speculative absence: Some markers document not what was removed but what was prevented from arriving—the "pre-emptive void" where potential was cancelled before manifestation.

8. Post-Digital Methodology

Hybrid Materiality of the Void

Digital-physical entanglement: The Atlas exists as web interface (digital) mapping physical absences in a material landscape. The medium mirrors the message—presence structured by absence.

Process archaeology: We excavate computational processes as creative material. The database schema (markers.db) encodes ontological assumptions about what deserves documentation.

Glitch ontology: 404 errors, broken links, missing files—these become research data. The infrastructure's failures expose absence within our documentation of absence.

Networked practice: The Atlas functions as distributed memory. Each visitor's encounter activates different void-configurations. The research exists only in the network, never complete in any single access.

9. Embodied/Somatic Practice

The Body's Knowledge of Absence

Phenomenological position: Absence is not merely conceptual but felt. The body knows what the mind cannot articulate—the weight of what should be present but is not.

Remote embodiment paradox: Our non-intervention methodology denies bodily presence at the site. Yet the research attends to somatic knowledge—the phantom limb sensation of cultural amputation.

Cartographic notation: Map markers function as somatic notation—each point inscribes a bodily experience of loss that exists for the inhabitants but cannot be directly accessed by the researcher.

Visitor embodiment: When users navigate the Atlas, they perform an embodied practice—mouse movements, screen engagement, temporal dwelling. This becomes part of the research's phenomenological record.

10. Documentation Protocols

Recording What Does Not Exist

Reflection protocol for each marker:

1. DESCRIBE: What is not there?
2. ANALYZE: What patterns of absence emerge?
3. THEORIZE: What does this void structure?
4. PROJECT: What further absences does this reveal?

11. Quality Criteria

Evaluating Research on Nothing

Rigour: Systematic engagement with absence—not replicability but consistent attention to void.

Contribution: Advances understanding of absence as ontological category, not merely epistemological failure.

Context: Situates Silesian absence within broader discourse on postcolonial erasure, structural violence, and cultural memory.

Ethical accountability: The research serves the silenced, not the researcher's career.

Critical reflexivity: Acknowledges that documenting absence risks completing erasure through inscription.

Ecological responsibility: Non-intervention preserves the integrity of the studied void.

12. The Spiral Pattern

Methodological Movement

The research follows a spiral pattern through:

MAKING → REFLECTING → THEORIZING → (NOT) MAKING

Each cycle deepens encounter with absence. Unlike productive spirals that accumulate artefacts, our spiral accumulates restraint—each turn increases the discipline of non-intervention.

The threshold moments: Points where the practice reveals what cannot be known through presence. The methodology demands we recognize these thresholds and resist crossing them.

Strategic absence as outcome: The highest research achievement is the void we successfully do not fill.

13. Landscriptum Integration

Reading the Script of the Land

The Laboratory operationalizes Landscriptum methodology:

Definition: Reading territory not through surface features but through omissions—the land as text written in negative space.

Application: Each Atlas marker is a character in this inverted script. Navigation through the map constitutes reading—but reading what was never written, never permitted to be written.

Signature practice: The researcher's signature is absence. We inscribe ourselves through what we refuse to inscribe about the site.

14. Micro-Actions

Minimum Viable Research Gestures

Principle: Maximum effect through minimum intervention

Examples documented in the Atlas:

• The evacuation of a punctuation mark
• The removal of a doorknob
• The silencing of a bell
• The erasure of a threshold

Micro-action research protocol:

1. Identify the smallest possible intervention
2. Trace its radiating effects
3. Document the void it reveals
4. Resist the temptation to interpret

15. Five Interconnected Investigations

The Whole Model of Thinking Framework

The Laboratory is pillar 3 of five investigations into consciousness and meaning emerging from structured absence:

1. LINGUISTIC IMPRISONMENT — Liberation through gaps between languages
2. DREAM EPISTEMOLOGY (Traum) — Dreams as valid knowledge without rational constraint
3. POSTCOLONIAL PERSISTENCE (Colony/Laboratory) — Identity intensified through systematic erasure
4. TECHNOLOGICAL TRANSCENDENCE (Datasculptor) — Sacred essence persisting when medium dissolves
5. MINIMUM VIABLE RESISTANCE (Micro) — Power through strategic withdrawal

Methodological coherence: All five pillars share the core insight: what matters most cannot be present in conventional ways. Meaning emerges from structured absence, not accumulated presence.

Appendix: Methodological Glossary

⊘ (Active Absence)

Generative void that structures presence; not empty set (∅) but productive gap

Conspicuous absence

Void so present it becomes the defining feature

Data shadow

The shape visible where expected data should exist but doesn't

Linguistic ghost

Untranslatable terms persisting in silence between languages

Phantom limb (urban)

Architecture removed, leaving felt presence in the fabric

Pre-emptive void

Potential cancelled before manifestation

Remote sensing (inverted)

Detection instruments aimed at what doesn't register

Thought desert

Cognitive terrain where historical trauma prevents articulation

Void archaeology

Excavation of what was removed rather than what remains