In the last blogpost I collected a list of AI tools that can support thesis research. But even the best tools are useless if the input is unclear. The quality of literature research depends heavily on the search terms you use. And because my topic sits between several disciplines, I can’t rely on one single keyword to find relevant sources.
So today I’m building a keyword landscape. The goal is simple: create a vocabulary for my thesis topic that works across different research databases and fields. Instead of searching only for “everyday installations,” I’m collecting neighboring terms that describe the same phenomena from different perspectives.
Here’s my growing keyword map:
Core topic words
- everyday installations
- accidental compositions
- unintentional art / unintentional aesthetics
- found arrangements
- urban still life
- mundane objects / everyday objects as art
Communication design / perception / meaning
- visual communication
- meaning-making / construction of meaning
- semiotics (sign, signifier, signified)
- visual literacy
- attention / salience / noticing
- framing / context effects
- interpretation / audience reception
Space / public environment
- public space
- urban intervention
- spatial storytelling
- informal design
- street culture / everyday urbanism
- place-making
Photography / documentation
- documentary photography
- typology photography
- photographic framing
- archive / visual archive
- cataloguing / classification systems
Institution / legitimacy
- artworld theory
- institutional critique
- museum framing
- authority signals / credibility cues
- curation vs. discovery
Just building these clusters already helps to structure the topic more clearly. It also makes it easier to connect practical work (photography and observation) with theory (semiotics, perception, institutional framing).
The next step is combining these keywords into stronger search phrases, depending on what I need: theory, methodology, or case studies.
Examples:
- “semiotics everyday objects public space”
- “context effects perception contemporary art”
- “visual framing photography meaning-making”
- “institutional critique Duchamp everyday object”
This keyword map is not a final list. It will grow over time as I read more and discover new terms. But it already functions as a working system. It gives my research a structure and makes literature search more targeted, instead of random.
