CMW Research Program
Research Objects
The object is where a research question becomes something another person can encounter.
Research does not live only in papers or formal studies. Across this program, ideas also become maps, games, publications, interfaces, workshops, visual systems, digital experiments, and public experiences.
Research objects are works that give an inquiry a form other people can enter, use, interpret, challenge, or alter.
A research object may translate an existing proposition, pressure it under a new condition, become an instrument for a later study, or expose a question that the written research has not yet resolved.
Its presence in the program does not mean the object proves the claim associated with it. The relationship between proposition, practice, interaction, and evidence is made explicit on each object page.
What each object contains
Question
What part of the research program the work enters, and what in it remains unresolved.
Condition
What familiar arrangement the object holds, alters, reorganizes, or makes perceptible.
Form
How the work itself performs the inquiry.
Interaction
What becomes available for observation, disagreement, interpretation, or later research.
Research status
What the work currently is, and what it is not. A conceptual object, a delivered practice, a prototype, or a formal research study under consent.
Related work
The publications, practice sites, propositions, or other objects that surround it.
One object, several roles
A work can do more than one kind of job, so the roles below describe what a thing does rather than sorting it into one drawer.
Editorial
Develops or translates an argument through editorial form.
Instrument
Structures an encounter in a way that can generate observations, responses, decisions, artifacts, or other traces.
Prototype
Tests how a proposition behaves when built into an interface, system, rule, or environment.
Facilitation
Creates a repeatable lived condition through facilitation or programming.
Map
Organizes relations so that something difficult to perceive becomes inspectable.
Game
Makes choices, consequences, uncertainty, conflict, or coordination playable.
Interface
Mediates what becomes visible, possible, selectable, or consequential.
Archive
Organizes what persists, disappears, remains attributable, or becomes retrievable.
A zine can be editorial and an instrument at once. The Chakra Map is a map, an instrument, an interface, and a prototype, and it currently carries a study.
Current objects
01 · The Chakra Map
- map
- instrument
- interface
- prototype
FORMAL RESEARCH · ACTIVE STUDY
Seven chakra centers become a digital body. Structured questions and written reflection produce provisional readings, the figure responds through color, movement, density, and position, and the participant can move the interpretation after seeing it.
Primary question
What happens when a system interprets you, shows you the interpretation, and lets you change it?
Learn about the Chakra Map as a research object → Research status, protocol, and version record
Enter the Chakra Map → The object itself, at chakras.charlesnarles.com
Research Study Information & Participant Disclosure → What the study collects, what each permission authorizes, how long records are kept, and how to leave