Headloading: Exploring Creative Transmediation as a Methodological Direction in Visual Art Research

Abstract This article describes a study which explored a methodology suitable for studio-based visual art research. The study drew upon an ethnographic and cultural phenomenon manifesting in a social media conversation, with art practice emerging through a process of transmediation. The exploration proposes a methodology which integrates interdisciplinary concepts, such as semiotics, within related practice-led frameworks in order to further develop processes available to practical researchers in visual art. This approach essentially retools aspects of transmedia and intertextual practices, resulting in a methodology for art practices as “visual transmedia discourse”. As a means of storytelling and practice-based visual research it enables the extension of semiosis across platforms and contexts of display. In this article, the steps explored for the methodology are exemplified by considering headloading as a sociocultural phenomenon and using art practice by one of the authors, Trevor Morgan. Artworks were created by reinterpreting the theme, particularly as sociopolitical commentary on Facebook, contextualised with artworks by other Nigerian artists and personal experience of the practice and the context. This article also demonstrates how visual data and the emerging art pieces are analysed using Barthes’ semiotics of denotation and connotation.