artistic research paper

Tools and Resources
Customer Services
Original Language Spotlight
Alternative and Non-formal Education
Cognition, Emotion, and Learning
Curriculum and Pedagogy
Education and Society
Education, Change, and Development
Education, Cultures, and Ethnicities
Education, Gender, and Sexualities
Education, Health, and Social Services
Educational Administration and Leadership
Educational History
Educational Politics and Policy
Educational Purposes and Ideals
Educational Systems
Educational Theories and Philosophies
Globalization, Economics, and Education
Languages and Literacies
Professional Learning and Development
Research and Assessment Methods
Technology and Education
Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Article contents

Arts-based research.

Janinka Greenwood Janinka Greenwood University of Canterbury
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.29
Published online: 25 February 2019

Arts-based research encompasses a range of research approaches and strategies that utilize one or more of the arts in investigation. Such approaches have evolved from understandings that life and experiences of the world are multifaceted, and that art offers ways of knowing the world that involve sensory perceptions and emotion as well as intellectual responses. Researchers have used arts for various stages of research. It may be to collect or create data, to interpret or analyze it, to present their findings, or some combination of these. Sometimes arts-based research is used to investigate art making or teaching in or through the arts. Sometimes it is used to explore issues in the wider social sciences. The field is a constantly evolving one, and researchers have evolved diverse ways of using the communicative and interpretative tools that processes with the arts allow. These include ways to initially bypass the need for verbal expression, to explore problems in physically embodied as well as discursive ways, to capture and express ambiguities, liminalities, and complexities, to collaborate in the refining of ideas, to transform audience perceptions, and to create surprise and engage audiences emotionally as well as critically. A common feature within the wide range of approaches is that they involve aesthetic responses.

The richness of the opportunities created by the use of arts in conducting and/or reporting research brings accompanying challenges. Among these are the political as well as the epistemological expectations placed on research, the need for audiences of research, and perhaps participants in research, to evolve ways of critically assessing the affect of as well as the information in presentations, the need to develop relevant and useful strategies for peer review of the research as well as the art, and the need to evolve ethical awareness that is consistent with the intentions and power of the arts.

multisensory
performance

Introduction

The term arts-based research is an umbrella term that covers an eclectic array of methodological and epistemological approaches. The key elements that unify this diverse body of work are: it is research; and one or more art forms or processes are involved in the doing of the research. How art is involved varies enormously. It has been used as one of several tools to elicit information (Cremin, Mason, & Busher, 2011 ; Gauntlett, 2007 ; Wang & Burns, 1997 ) and for the analysis of data (Boal, 1979 ; Gallagher, 2014 ; Neilson, 2008 ), and so it serves as an enrichment to the palette of tools used in qualitative research. It has been used in the presentation of findings (Bagley & Cancienne, 2002 ; Conrad, 2012 ; Gray & Sinding, 2002 ) and so occupies a space that could be responded to and evaluated as both art and research. It has been used to investigate art and the process of art-making. The emergence of the concept and practice of a/r/tography (Belliveau, 2015 ; Irwin, 2013 ; Springgay, Irwin, & Kind, 2005 ), for example, places art-making and its textual interpretation in a dynamic relationship of inquiry into the purpose, process, and meaning of the making of an artwork.

The field is multifaceted and elusive of definition and encompassing explanation. This article does not attempt such definitions. But it does risk describing some well-trodden pathways through the field and posing some questions. Illustrative examples are offered from the author’s work, as well as citing of works by other researchers who use arts-based approaches.

My own explorations of arts-based research began many years ago, before the term came into usage. I was commissioned to develop a touring play for a New Zealand youth theater, and I chose to write a docudrama, Broadwood: Na wai te reo? (Greenwood, 1995 ). The play reported the case of a remote, rural, and predominantly Maori school that made Maori language a compulsory subject in its curriculum. The parents of one boy argued against the decision, claiming the language held no use for their son. The dispute was aired on national television and was debated in parliament. The minister agreed that the local school board had the right to make the decision after consultation with parents and community. The dispute ended with the boy being given permission to do extra math assignments in the library during Maori language classes. To develop the script, I interviewed all the local participants in the case and sincerely sought to capture the integrity of their views in my dialogue. I accessed the minister of education’s comments through public documents and media and reserved the right to occasionally satirize them. Just a week or two before final production, the family’s lawyer officially asked for a copy of the script. To my relief, it was returned with the comment that the family felt I had captured their views quite accurately. The youth theater was invited to hold its final rehearsal on the local marae (a traditional tribal Maori ground that holds a meeting house and hosts significant community occasions), and a local elder offered the use of an ancestral whalebone weapon in the opening performance, instead of the wooden one made for the production. The opening performance took place in the school itself, and the boy, together with his parents and family friends, sat in the audience together with hundreds of community people. The play had an interactive section where the audience was asked to vote in response to a survey the school had originally sent out to its community. The majority of the audience voted for Maori language to be part of the mandatory curriculum. The boy and his family voted equally emphatically for it not to be. The play then toured in New Zealand and was taken to a festival in Australia.

At the time I saw the work purely in terms of theater—albeit with a strongly critical social function. Looking back, I now see it was a performative case study. I had carefully researched the context and respectfully interviewed participants after gaining their informed consent. The participants had all endorsed my reporting of the data. The findings were disseminated and subject to popular as well as peer review. The performances added an extra dimension to the research: they actively invited audience consideration and debate.

This article discusses the epistemology that underlies arts-based approaches to research, reviews the purposes and value of research that involves the arts, identifies different stages and ways that art may be utilized, and addresses questions that are debated in the field. It does not seek to disentangle all the threads within this approach to research or to review all key theorizations and possibilities in the field. The arena of arts-based research is a diverse and rapidly expanding one, and it is only possible within this discussion to identify some of the common underlying characteristics and potentialities and to offer selected examples. Because this discussion is shaped within an essay format, rather than through a visual or performative collage, there is the risk of marking a limited number of pathways and of making assertions. At the same time, I acknowledge that the discussion might have alternatively been conducted through arts-based media, which might better reflect some of the liminalities and interweaving layers of art-based processes (see further, Greenwood, 2016 ).

The term art itself compasses a wide and diverse spectrum of products and process. This article focuses particularly on dramatic and visual art, while acknowledging that the use of other art forms, such as poetry, fiction, dance, film, and fabric work, have been variously used in processes of investigation. The word art is used to indicate the wider spectrum of art activities and to refer to more specific forms and processes by their disciplines and conventions.

Why Use Art?

One of the main reasons for the growth of arts-based approaches to research is recognition that life experiences are multi-sensory, multifaceted, and related in complex ways to time, space, ideologies, and relationships with others. Traditional approaches to research have been seen by increasing numbers of researchers as predominantly privileging cerebral, verbal, and linearly temporal approaches to knowledge and experience. The use of art in research is one of many shifts in the search for truthful means of investigation and representation. These include, among others, movements toward various forms of narratives (Riessman, 2008 ), recognition of indigenous knowledges, and indigenous ways of sharing and using knowledge (Bharucha, 1993 ; Smith, 2014 ), auto-ethnographies (Ellis, 2004 ), conceptualizations of wicked questions (Rittel & Webber, 1973 ), processes of troubling (Gardiner, 2015 ), and queering (Halperin, 2003 ). Preissle ( 2011 ) writes about the “qualitative tapestry” (p. 689) and identifies historic and contemporary threads of epistemological challenges, methods, and purposes, pointing out the ever-increasing diversity in the field. Denzin and Lincoln ( 2011 ) describe qualitative research as a site of multiple interpretative practices and, citing St. Pierre’s ( 2004 ) argument that we are in a post “post” period, assert that “we are in a new age where messy, uncertain multi-voiced texts, cultural criticism, and new experimental works will become more common, as will more reflexive forms of fieldwork, analysis and intertextual representation” (p. 15). Springgay, Irwin, and Kind ( 2005 ) assert that a/r/tography is not a new branch of qualitative research but a methodology in its own right, and that it conceptualizes inquiry as an embodied encounter through visual and textual experiences. The use of art in research is a succession of approaches to develop methodology that is meaningful and useful.

Art, product, and process allow and even invite art-makers to explore and play with knowing and meaning in ways that are more visceral and interactive than the intellectual and verbal ways that have tended to predominate in Western discourses of knowledge. It invites art viewers to interact with representations in ways that involve their senses, emotions, and ideas. Eisner ( 1998 , 2002 ) makes a number of significant assertions about the relationship between form and knowledge that emphasize the importance of art processes in offering expanded understandings of “what it means to know” (Eisner, 1998 , p. 1). He states: “There are multiple ways in which the world can be known: Artists, writers, and dancers, as well as scientists, have important thongs to tell about the world” (p. 7). Like other constructivists (Bruner, 1990 ; Guba, 1996 ), he further argues that because human knowledge is a constructed form of experience, it is a reflection of mind as well as nature, that knowledge is made, not simply discovered. He then reasons that “the forms through which humans represent their conception of the world have a major influence on what they are able to say about it” (p. 6), and, making particular reference to education, he states that whichever particular forms of representation become acceptable “is as much a political matter as an epistemological one” (p. 7). Eisner’s arguments to extend conceptualizations of knowledge within the field of education have been echoed in the practices of art-based researchers.

Artists themselves understand through their practice that art is way of coming to know the world and of presenting that knowing, emergent and shifting though it may be, to others. Sometimes the process of coming to know takes the form of social analysis. In Guernica , as a well-known example, Picasso scrutinizes and crystallizes the brutal betrayals and waste of war. In Caucasian Chalk Circle , Brecht fractures and strips bare ideas of justice, loyalty, and ownership. Their respective visual and dramatic montages speak in ways that are different from and arguably more potent than discursive descriptions.

In many indigenous cultures, art forms are primary ways of processing and recording communally significant information and signifying relationships. For New Zealand Māori, the meeting house, with its visual images, poetry, song, oratory, and rituals, is the repository library of mythic and genealogical history and of the accumulated legacies of meetings, contested positions, and nuanced consensual decisions. Art within Māori and other indigenous culture is not an illustrative addition to knowledge systems, it is an integral means of meaning making and recording.

One of the characteristics of arts and arts-based research projects is that they engage with aesthetic understandings as well as with discursive explanations. The aesthetic is a contested term (Greenwood, 2011 ; Hamera, 2011 ). However, it is used here to describe the engagement of senses and emotion as well as intellectual processes, and the consequent collation of semiotics and significances that are embedded in cultural awareness and are variously used by art makers and art viewers to respond to works of art. An aesthetic response thus is a visceral as well as rational one. It may be comfortable with ambiguities, and it may elude verbalization.

The processes of art-making demand a commitment to a continuous refinement of skills and awareness. Art-viewers arguably also gain more from an artwork as they acquire the skills and literacies involved with that particular art form and as they gain confidence to engage with the aesthetic. However, viewers may apprehend meaning without mastery of all the relevant literacies. I recall an experience of watching flamenco in El Puerto de Santa Maria, a township outside Cadiz. My senses drank in the white stone of former monastery walls and the darkening sky over an open inner courtyard. My muscles and emotions responded spontaneously to the urgency of the guitar and the beaten rhythms on a packing case drum. My nerves tensed as the singer’s voice cut through the air. The two dancers, both older and dressed in seemingly causal fawn and grey, riveted my attention. I was a stranger to the art form, and I did not know the language of the dance and could not recognize its phases or its allusions. I did feel the visceral tug of emotion across space. My heart and soul responded to something urgent, strangely oppressive, but indefinable that might have an apprehension of what those who understand flamenco call duende . If I was more literate in the art form, I would no doubt have understood a lot more, but the art, performed by those who did know and had mastered its intricacies, communicated an experience of their world to me despite my lack of training. In that evening, I learned more about the experience of life in southern Spain than I had in my earlier pursuit of library books and websites.

Art, thus, is positioned as a powerful tool that calls for ever-refining expertise in its making, but that can communicate, at differing levels, even with those who do not have that expertise. Researchers who use art draw on its rich, and sometimes complex and elusive, epistemological bases to explore and represent aspects of the world. The researchers may themselves be artists; at the least, they need to know enough of an art form to be aware of its potential and how to manipulate it. In some cases intended participants and audiences may also be artists, but often they are not. It is the researcher who creates a framework in which participants join in the art or in which audiences receive it.

Art, Research Purpose, and Research Validity

So far, the argument for the value of art as a way of knowing is multifarious, embodied, and tolerant of ambivalences and ambiguities. Where then are the rigors that are widely held as essential for research? It can be argued that arts-based research, to be considered as research, needs to have explicit research purpose and needs to subject itself to peer critique.

As has been widely noted (Eisner, 1998 ; Leavy, 2017 ; Sullivan, 2010 ), the making of art involves some investigation, both into the process of making and into some aspect of the experiential world. In research, that purpose needs to be overt and explicit. When the purpose is identified, then the choice of methods can be open to critical scrutiny and evaluation. The design of an arts-based research project is shaped, at its core, by similar considerations as other research.

Arts-based research needs to be explicit about what is being investigated. If the objective is not clear, then the result may still be art, but it is hard to call it research. Purpose determines which of the vast array of art strategies and processes will be selected as the research methods. The trustworthiness of any research depends on a number of factors: at the design stage, it depends on a clear alignment between the purpose of the research and the methods selected to carry out the investigation. In arts-based research, as in other research, it is vital that the researcher identifies the relationship between purpose and selected art tools, and offers recipients of the research clear means to evaluate and critique the reliability and usefulness of the answers that come from the research. This is where choices about strategies need to be clearly identified and explained, and both the aims and boundaries of the investigation need to be identified.

This does not imply need for a rigid and static design. Art is an evolving process, and the research design can well be an evolving one, as is the case with participatory action research (Bryndon-Miller, Karl, Maguire, Noffke, & Sabhlok, 2011 ), bricolage (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011 ), and a number of other research approaches. However, the strategic stages and choices of the emergent design donot need to be identified and explained. Nor does it imply that all data or findings need to be fully explicable verbally. One of the reasons for choosing arts-based methods, although not the only one, is to allow the operation of aesthetic and subconscious understandings as well as conscious and verbalized ones. That is part of the epistemological justification for choosing an arts-based approach. The ambivalences and pregnant possibilities that result may be considered valued gains from the choice of research tools, and their presence simply needs to be identified, together with explication of the boundaries of how such ambivalence and possibilities relate to the research question.

Different Kinds of Purpose

The sections of this article examine common and different areas of purpose for which arts-based research is frequently used, arranging them into three clusters and discussing some of the possibilities within each one.

The first, and perhaps largest, cluster of purposes for using arts-based research is to investigate some social (in the broadest sense of the word) issue. Such issues might, for example, include woman’s rights, school absenteeism, gang membership, cross-cultural encounters, classroom relationships, experiences of particular programs, problems in language acquisition. The methodological choices involved in this group of purposes have been repeatedly addressed (e.g., Boal, 1979 ; O’Brien & Donelan, 2008 ; Finley, 2005 ; Leavy, 2017 ; Prosser, 2011 ; Wang & Burns, 1997 ) in discussions of the use of arts-based approaches to the social sciences. The intention for using arts-based tools is to open up different, and hopefully more empowering, options for exploring the specific problem or issue, and for expressing participants’ perspectives in ways that can bypass participants’ discomfort with words or unconscious compliance with dominant discourses, or perhaps to present findings in ways that better reveal their dynamics and complexity than written reports.

Another smaller, but important, cluster of purposes is to research art-making processes or completed art works. For example, a theater director (Smithner, 2010 ) investigates the critical decisions she made in selecting and weaving together separate performance works into a theatrical collage. Or, a researcher (O’Donoghue, 2011 ) investigates how a conceptual artist working with film and video enquires into social, political, and cultural issues and how he shapes his work to provoke viewers to develop specific understandings. These kinds of studies explore the how and why of art-making, focusing on the makers’ intentions, their manipulation of the elements and affordances of their specific art field, and often engage with aesthetic as well as sociocultural dimensions of analysis. Often such studies are presented as narratives or analytic essays, and it is the subject matter of the research that constitutes the arts basis. Sometimes, such studies find expression in new artworks, as is the case in Merita Mita’s film made about the work of painter Ralph Hotere (Mita, 2001 ), which interlays critical analyses, documentation of process, interviews, and pulsating images of the artworks.

The third cluster involves research about teaching, therapy, or community development through one or more of the arts. Here arts are primarily the media of teaching and learning. For example, when drama is the teaching medium, the teacher may facilitate the class by taking a fictional role within the narrative that provokes students to plan, argue, or take action. Students may be prompted to use roles, create improvisations, explore body representations of ideas or conflicts, and explore contentious problems in safely fictitious contexts. Because it examines both work within an art form and changes in learners’ or community members’ understandings of other issues, this cluster overlaps somewhat with the two previous clusters. However, it is also building a body of its own traditions.

One strong tradition is the documentation of process. For example, Burton, Lepp, Morrison, and O’Toole ( 2015 ) report two decades of projects, including Dracon and Cooling Conflict , which have used drama strategies as well as formal theoretical teaching to address conflict and bullying. They have documented the specific strategies used, discussed their theoretical bases, and acknowledged the evidence on which they base their claims about effectiveness of the strategies in building understanding about and reducing bullying. The strategies used involved use of role and improvisation and what the authors call an enhanced form of Boal’s Forum Theatre. Other examples include the Risky Business Project (O’Brien & Donelan, 2008 ), a series of programs involving marginalized youth in dance, drama, music, theater performance, stand-up comedy, circus, puppetry, photography, visual arts, and creative writing; explorations of cross-cultural understandings through drama processes (Greenwood, 2005 ); the teaching of English as a second language in Malaysia through teacher-in-role and other drama processes (Mohd Nawi, 2014 ); working with traditional arts to break down culturally bound ways of seeing the world (Stanley, 2014 ); and the training of a theater-for-development team to use improvisational strategies to address community problems (Okagbue, 2002 ). While the strategies are arts processes and the analysis of their effect addresses aesthetic dimensions of arts as well as cognitive and behavioral ones, the reporting of these projects is primarily within the more traditional verbal and discursive forms of qualitative research.

Sometimes the reporting takes a more dramatic turn. Mullens and Wills ( 2016 ) report and critically analyze Re-storying Disability Through the Arts , an event that sought to create space for dialogue between students, researchers, artists, educators, and practitioners with different involvements or interests in disability arts. They begin their report by re-creating a scene within the workshop that captures some of the tensions evoked, and follow this with a critical commentary on three community-based art practices that engage in a strategy of re-storying disability. They present arts as means to “counter powerful cultural narratives that regulate the lives and bodies of disabled people” (Mullens & Wills, 2016 , p. 5). Barrett ( 2014 ) reports a project, informed by an a/r/tography methodology, which utilized the classroom teaching of the prescribed arts curriculum to allow students to explore evolving understandings of identity and community. Montages of photographs are a central component in the report, as is a series of images that illustrate Barrett’s reflections on her own role within the investigation.

Using Art to Research Social Issues: Collecting Data

Within a social science research project, art processes might be used to collect data, to carry out analysis and interpretation, or to present findings. Perhaps the most common use is to collect data. The process of photovoice (Wang & Burns, 1997 ), for example, gives participants cameras and asks them to capture images that they consider as significant elements of the topic being investigated. Graffiti might be used to prompt absentee students to discuss their perceptions of schooling. Body sculptures, freeze frames, and hot seating are examples of drama strategies that could be used to facilitate reflection and debate about cross-cultural encounters, feelings about hospitalization, experiences of domestic violence, or an array of other topics.

In each case the art produced becomes the basis for further discussion. This process is quite different from historical concepts of art therapy, where the therapist would give expert insight into what a patient’s artwork means; here it is the participants who give the explanation, perhaps independently or perhaps through dialogue with other participants and the researcher. The embodied experience of construction provides a platform and a challenge to talking in ways that are more thoughtful and more honest than through a conventionally structured verbal interview. The talk after making is important, but the art products are not merely precursors to verbal data, they are concrete points of references to which both participants and researchers can refer and can use to prompt further introspection or deconstruction. The process of making, moreover, is one that allows time for reflection and self-editing along the way and so may yield more truthful and complex answers than those that might be given instantly in an interview. Participants who are second language speakers or who lack the vocabulary or theoretical constructs to express complex feelings, reactions, or beliefs can be enabled to use physicalization to create a bridge between what they know or feel wordlessly inside them and an external expression that can be read by others.

The art tools available for such data gathering are as varied as the tools used by artists for making art. They might include drawing, collage, painting, sculpting materials or bodies, singing, orchestration, Lego construction, movement improvisation, creation of texts, photography, graffiti, role creation, and/or spatial positioning.

Art Processes as Tools for Analysis

Art processes can also be used to analyze and interpret data. Within qualitative paradigms, the processes of collecting and interpretation of data often overlap. This is also true of arts-based research. For instance, Greenwood ( 2012 ) reported on a group of experienced Bangladeshi educators who came to New Zealand to complete their Masters. While they were proficient in English, they found colloquial language challenging, struggling often to find words with the right social or emotional connotations at the speed of conversation. In previous discussions, they often looked to each other for translation. A teaching workshop, held as an illustration of arts-based research, addressed the research question: what have been your experiences as international students? A small repertoire of drama strategies, particularly freeze frames with techniques for deconstructing and refining initial offers, short animations, and narrative sequencing were used. These prompted participants to recall and show personal experiences, to critically view and interpret one another’s representations, and to further refine their images to clarify their intended meaning. The participants flung themselves into the challenge with alacrity and flamboyance and created images of eagerness, hope, new relationships, frustration, failed communication, anger, dejection, unexpected learning, and achievement. They also actively articulated ideas as we deconstructed the images and, through debate, co-constructed interpretations of what was being shown in the work and what it meant in terms of their experience, individual and shared, of overseas study. The interweaving of making, reflection, discussion, and further refinement is intrinsic to process drama; as a research method, it affords a means of interweaving data collection and collaborative analysis. In this case the participants also debated aspects of the validity of the process as research, raising questions about subjectivity in interpretation, about the nature of crystallization (Richardson, 1994 ), about informed consent, and about co-construction of narratives. Analysis shifted from being the task of an outsider researcher to one carried out, incrementally and experimentally, by insider participants. While the researcher held the initial power to focus the work, participants’ physical entry into the work, and their interrogation of the images that were created constituted a choice of how much they would share and contribute, and so they became active and sometimes playful partners in the research. This approach to analysis shares many features with participatory action research (Brydon-Miller et al., 2011 ), both in eliciting the agency of participants and in evolving a process of analysis that is interwoven with the gathering of data from preceding action and with the planning of further investigative cycles of action.

The work of Boal is perhaps one of the best known examples of the use of an art process, in this case theater, as a means of analysis of data. Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed ( 1979 ) details a series of strategies for deconstruction and collaborative analysis. For example, in the process he calls image theatre , participants select a local oppressive problem that they seek to resolve. They create and discuss images that exemplify experience of the problem and their idealized solutions (the data); they then analyze their images to find where power resides and how it is supported. Boal’s theater process calls for experimentation with further images that explore scenarios where power could become shared to some extent and could allow further action by those who experience the oppression. The process finishes with consequential explorations of the first step to be taken by participants as a means to work toward an equilibrium of power. Boal, as the title of his book, Theatre of the Oppressed , acknowledges, draws on the work of his Braziailan compatriot, Freire, and particularly on his concept of conscientization (Freire, 1970 , 1972 ). Boal’s process for analyzing experiences of oppression is not so much a direct action plan as a means of analyzing the mechanisms of specific conditions of oppression and the potential, however limited, for agency to resolve the oppression. The sequenced strategies of creating and discussing alternative images of oppression, power relationships, and action enable participants to deconstruct the socio-cultural reality that shapes their lives and to gain awareness of their capacity to transform it.

Art as a Means to Present Findings

There is a large and growing body of research that presents findings in arts forms. A few examples are briefly discussed.

After collecting data, through interviews and official communications from participants in a case where a district school was being threatened with closure, Owen ( 2009 ) commissioned a composer to write a score for sections of his transcripts and create a community opera. He expressed the hope that this would “transform their tiny stories into noisy histories” (p. 3). Part of the data was sung at a conference I attended. I was struck by the shift in power. What I might have regarded as dull data in a PowerPoint presentation now became a compelling articulation of experiences and aspirations and a dynamic debate between personal lives and authoritarian policy.

The AIDS Memorial Quilt project (Morris, 2011 ; Yardlie & Langley, 1995 ) is frequently described as the world’s greatest piece of community folk art. A claim can be made that, while each panel in the quilt is a product of folk art, the collation of the quilt in its enormity is a work of conceptual art that juxtaposes the fragility and isolation of individual loss with the overwhelming global impact of the AIDS epidemic. The quilt can also be seen as research that visually quantifies the death toll through AIDS in Western world communities and that qualitatively investigates the life stories and values of those who died through the perceptions of those who loved them.

A number of museums throughout the world present visual and kinaesthetic accounts of social and historical research. Well-known examples are the Migration Museum in Melbourne, the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, and the Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism in Munich. A less securely established exhibition is that of images of the Australian Aboriginal Stolen Generation that was collected by the Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation to educate community and schoolchildren, “but only had the funding to showcase the exhibit for one night” (Diss, 2017 ). These and many other exhibitions create visual and experiential environments where the data of history can be not only seen and read but also felt.

In a similar way to how these exhibitions use actual archival photographs, theater may use the exact words of interviews to re-tell real stories. In making Verbatim , Brandt and Harcourt ( 1994 ) collated the words from 30 interviews with convicted murderers, their families, and the families of murder victims. “We went into the prisons to find out what the story was that we were going to tell, and that was the story that emerged from the material we collected,” Harcourt explained (White, 2013 ). “Not only the content, but also the form emerged from that context. We didn’t go in having decided we were going to make a solo show. Form emerged from the experience of the prison system.”

A frequently used form is that of ethnodrama (Mienczakowski, 1995 ; Saldaña, 2008 ). Ethnodrama presents data in a theatrical form: using stage, role, and sometimes lighting and music. Saldaña ( 2008 ) explains that ethnodrama maintains “close allegiance to the lived experiences of real people while presenting their voices through an artistic medium” (p. 3) and argues that the goals are not only aesthetic, they also possess emancipatory potential for motivating social change within participants and audiences.

Sometimes the ethnographic material is further manipulated in the presentation process. Conrad ( 2012 ) describes her research into the Native program at the Alberta youth corrections center in play form as “an ethnographic re-presentation of the research—a creative expression of the research findings” (p. xii). Her play jumps through time, creating fragments of action, and is interspersed by video scenes that provide alternative endings that could result from choices made by the characters. Conrad explains her choice of medium: “Performance has the potential to reach audiences in ways beyond intellectual understanding, through engaging other ways of knowing that are empathetic, emotional, experiential, and embodied, with the potential for radically re-envisioning social relations” (p. xiii).

Belliveau ( 2015 ) created a performative research about his work in teaching Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing in an elementary school. He interwove excerpts of students’ performances from the Shakespearean text with excerpts of their discussions about the issues of power, pride, love, and other themes in a new performance work that illustrated as well as explained primary students’ response to Shakespeare. He later presented a keynote at the IDEA (International Drama in Education Association) conference in Paris where he performed his discussion of this and other work with young students. Similarly, Lutton’s ( 2016 ) doctoral research explored the work and challenges of selected international drama educators using imagination and role play. In her final performance of her research, she took the role of an archivist’s assistant at a fictitious Museum of Educational Drama and Applied Theatre to provide “an opportunity for drama practitioners to use their skills and knowledge of drama pedagogy to tell their own stories” (Lutton, p. 36). She states that her choice of research tool embraces theatricality, enabling the embodiment of participants’ stories, the incorporation of critical reflection and of aesthetic knowledge (p. 36).

The Cheviot, the Stag, and the Black Black Oil , developed by John McGrath and the 7:84 Theatre Company, recounts the history of economic exploitation of the Scottish people, from the evictions that followed the clearances for the farming of Cheviot sheep, through the development of Highland stag hunts, to the capitalist domination of resources in the 1970s oil boom. Within a traditional ceilidh form it tells stories, presents arguments, and uses caricature, satire, and parody. The play is the result of research and of critical analysis of movements of power and economic interests. It is also a very effective instrument of political persuasion: McGrath gives the dispossessed crofters a language that tugs at our empathy whereas that of the landlords provokes our antagonism. Is this polemics or simple historic truth? Does the dramatic impact of the play unreasonably capture our intellects? And if the facts that are presented are validated by other accounts of history does it matter if it does? What is, what should be, what can be the relationship between research and the evocation, even manipulation of emotions?

Emotion—and Its Power

In as much as arts offer different ways of knowing the world, their use at various stages of research has the power to influence both what we come to know and how we know it. Art tools, strategically used, allow access to emotions and visceral responses as well as to conscious ideas. That makes them powerful for eliciting information. It also makes them powerful in influencing audiences.

The photos of the brutality of the police and of the steadfastness of the activists in the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg are examples of powerfully influencing as well as informing data. As well as the events that are recorded, the faces and the bodies speak through the photos. Their exhibition in blown-up size at eye level together with film footage and artifacts create a compellingly powerful response in viewers. Like many others, I came out of the museum emotionally drained and confirmed, even strengthened, in my ideological beliefs. The power of the exhibition had first sharpened and then consolidated my understandings. Was this because of the power of the facts presented in the exhibition, or was it because of the power of their presentation ? Or was it both? When the issue presented is one like apartheid, I am not afraid of having my awareness influenced in multiple ways: I believe I already have an evidence-informed position on the subject. I also applaud the power of the exhibition to inform and convince those who might not yet have reached a position. But what if the issue was a different one? Perhaps one which I was more uncertain about? Might it then seem that the emotional power of the exhibition gave undue weight to the evidence?

The issue here is not a simple one. The presentation is not only the reporting of findings: it is also art. The researcher (in the artist) stays true to the data; the artist (in the researcher) arranges data for effect and affect. Conrad explicitly states her hope that her choice of presentation mode will add impact to her research findings: she wants the presentation of her research about youth in detention centers to engender more empathetic understandings of their experiences and lead, in turn, to more constructive attitudes toward their needs. By putting their words to music, Owen wants his audience to listen more attentively to opinions of the stakeholders in the schools threatened with closure. McGrath wants his audience to side with those dispossessed by the combined power of capital and law. The Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation plans to emotionally move as well as to inform its community. In writing Broadwood , I meticulously presented both sides of the dispute, I deliberately placed music and metaphor at the service of Maori language, and I deliberately used the spatial suggestiveness of the stage to evoke possibilities in the ending. The boy is alone in the library while his classmates are on the marae listening to an elder explain the history of their meetinghouse. The elder gives them an ancient whalebone weapon to hold, the students pass it among themselves, then hold it out across space to the boy. The boy stands, takes half a cautious step toward them and then stops; the lights go down. I intended the audience to complete the action in their subconscious.

In each of these cases, the art form of the presentation allows the artist/researcher to manipulate affect as well as critical cognition. To my mind, this is not simply another iteration of the argument between subjectivity and objectivity in research. Many contemporary approaches to research openly recognize that knowledge is mediated by context, experience, and social and historical discourses as well as by individuals’ personal interpretation (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011 ; Ellis, 2004 ). It is shaped by what is left out as well as by what is included. The practice of careful and scrupulous reflexivity is a way of acknowledging and bounding the subjectivity of the researcher (Altheide & Johnson, 2011 ; Ellingson, 2011 ). The researcher-who-is-artist draws on a subconscious as well as a conscious sense of how things fit together, and constructs meaning subconsciously as well as consciously, manipulating affect and effect in the process. Perhaps all researchers do so to some extent. For instance, the deliberately invisible authors of much quantitative research, who allow the passive voice to carry much of the reporting, who triangulate and define limitation, create an effect of fair-minded and dependable authority. The affect is not necessarily misleading, and it is something that readers of research have learned to recognize. However, the researcher-who-is-artist can draw on the rich repertoire of an art field that already operates in the domain of the aesthetic as well as of the critically cognitive, in spaces that are liminal as well those that are defined. It is arguable that readers of research still need to recognize and navigate through those spaces. Arguably, the challenge exists not only in the field of research: it is present in all the media that surrounds our daily lives.

A/r/tography and Examination of Places Between

The challenge of exploring liminal spaces of intention, process, explanation, effect, and affect is seriously taken up by the emergent discipline of a/r/tography . The backslashes in the term speak of fracture; they also denote the combined authorial roles of artist, researcher, and teacher. Springgay, Irwin, and Kind ( 2005 ) explain that a/r/tography is deliberately introspective and does not seek conclusions: rather it plays with connections between art and text and seeks to capture the embodied experience of exploring self and the world. Irwin et al. ( 2006 ) state: “Together, the arts and education complement, resist, and echo one another through rhizomatic relations of living inquiry” (p. 70). A/r/tography is explicitly positioned as a practice-based and living inquiry: it explores but resists attempting to define the spaces between artist, teacher, and researcher, and so implicitly rejects boundaries between these roles. It conceptualizes inquiry as a continuing experiential process of encounter between ideas, art media, context, meaning, and evolving representations. At the same time as it blurs distinctions, it teases out interrelationships: it offers art inquiry as something that is purposeful but unfixed, and art knowing as something that is personally and socially useful, but at best only partially and temporarily describable, never definable. This is one reason why its proponents explain it as a substantively different and new methodology outside the existing frameworks of qualitative research.

A/r/tography emerged out of the field of art education, with the explicit aim to extend the opportunities afforded by education in the arts, and to develop means to record and report the complex facets of learning and teaching in the arts. Consequently its language may be experienced, by readers who are outside the discipline, as highly abstract, deliberately ambiguous, and even esoteric: it seems to speak, as many research disciplines do, primarily to others in its own field. However, its broad principles have been picked up, and perhaps adapted, by practitioners who seek to explore the processes of their students’ learning through the arts and the evolving understandings they develop. For instance, Barrett and Greenwood ( 2013 ) report exploration of the epistemological third space through which place-conscious education and visual arts pedagogy can be interwoven and through which students, many of whom do not aspire to become artists, can use art-making to re-imagine and re-mark their understandings of their physical and social context and of their relationship with community. The value of this kind of research is posed in terms of the insights it affords rather than its capacity for presenting authoritative conclusions.

A Conference Debate, and the Politics of Research

Whether the provision of insights is enough to make art-making into research is a question that is frequently and sometimes fiercely contested. One such debate took place at a European conference I recently attended. It occurred in an arts-based research stream, and it began with the presentation of two films. The films were relatively short, and a discussion followed and became increasingly heated. Personally, I liked the films. The first reported a dance process that became an undergraduate teaching text. The second, in layers of imagery and fragments of dialogue, explored the practice of two artists. However, I was not sure what the added value was in calling either research. I saw art responding to art, and that seemed valuable and interesting enough. Why was the construct of research being privileged? The filmmakers defended the claim to research on the grounds that there was inquiry, on the grounds that art spoke in languages that were best discussed through art, and on the grounds that research was privileged in their institutions. Then a respected professor of fine arts put forward more direct criticism. Research, he argued, needed to make explicit the decisions that were made in identifying and reporting findings so that these would be accessible for peer review. Neither film, he said, did so. Defenses from the audience were heated. Then another senior art educator argued that art itself could not just be self-referential: it had to open a space for others to enter. The debate continued in corridors long after the session ended.

That the criticisms were unrelenting seemed an indication of how much was at stake. The space held by arts-based research within the European academic congregation is still somewhat fragile. The arts-based network was formed because of advocates’ passionate belief in the extended possibilities that arts-based methods offer, and this year again it expressed its eagerness to receive contributions in film and other art media as well as PowerPoint and verbal presentations. However, the network also saw itself as a custodian of rigor.

The participants in the session re-performed an argument that lingers at the edges of arts-based research. At the far ends of the spectrum, art and research are readily recognizable, and when art is borrowed as a tool in research, the epistemological and methodological assumptions are explicable. But the ground is more slippery when art and research intersect more deeply. When is the inquiry embedded within art, and when does it become research? Is it useful to attempt demarcations? What is lost from art or from research if demarcations are not attempted? The questions, as well as possible answers, are, as Eisner suggested, political as well as philosophical and methodological.

The doing of research and its publication have become big academic business. Universities around the world are required to report their academics’ research outputs to gain funding. My university, for example, is subject to a six-yearly round of assessment of research performance, based primarily on published and on funded research outputs. Each academic’s outputs are categorized and ranked, and the university itself is ranked and funded, in comparison with the other universities in the country. There is pressure on each academic to maximize research publications, even at the cost, it often seems, of other important academic activities, such as teaching. The competitive means of ranking also increases contestations about what is real research, serving both as a stimulus for positioning differing forms of inquiry as research and as a guarded gateway that permits some entries and denies others. Politicians and policymakers, in their turn, favor and fund research that can provide them with quotable numbers or clear-cut conclusions. Arts-based research still battles for a place within this politico-academic ground, although there appears to be growing acceptance of the use of art tools as means to elicit data.

Site for Possibilities—and Questions

The politics of research do matter, but for researchers who are committed to doing useful research, there are other factors to consider when choosing research approaches. These include the potentialities of the tools, the matter that is to be investigated, and the skills and practice preferences of the researcher.

The emergence and development of processes of arts-based research are grounded in belief that there are many ways of knowing oneself and the world, and these include emotions and intuitive perceptions as well as intellectual cognition. The epistemology of arts-based research is based on understandings that color, space, sound, movement, facial expression, vocal tone, and metaphor are as important in expressing and understanding knowledge as the lexical meanings of words. It is based on understandings that symbols, signs, and patterns are powerful means of communication, and that they are culturally and contextually shaped and interpreted. Arts-based research processes tolerate, even sometimes celebrate, ambiguity and ambivalence. They may also afford license to manipulate emotions to evoke empathy or direct social action.

The use of arts-based processes for eliciting participants’ responses considerably increases researchers’ repertoire for engaging participants and for providing them with means of expression that allow them to access feelings and perceptions that they might not initially be able to put into words as well as giving them time and strategies for considering their responses. The use of arts-based processes for analysis and representation allow opportunities for multidimensional, sensory, and often communal explorations of the meaning of what has been researched. It also presents new challenges to receivers of research who need to navigate their way not only through the overt ambiguities and subjective expression, but also through the invisible layers of affect that are embedded in art processes.

The challenges signal continuing areas of discussion, and perhaps work, for both arts-based researchers and for the wider research community. Does the use of art in representation of research findings move beyond the scope of critical peer review? Or do we rather need to develop new languages and strategies for such review? Do we need critical and recursive debate about when art becomes research and when it does not? Are the ambiguities and cognitive persuasions that are inherent in arts-based representations simply other, and useful, epistemological stances? Does the concept of research lose its meaning if it is stretched too far? Does art, which already has a useful role in interpreting and even shaping society, need to carve out its position as research? Does the entry of arts-based research into the arena of research call for revisions to the way we consider ethics? How do the procedures of institutional ethics committees need to be adapted to accommodate the engagement of the human body as well as the emergent design and ambiguities of the arts-based research processes? What are the more complex responsibilities of arts-based researchers toward their participants, particularly in terms of cultural protocols, reciprocity of gains, and the manipulation of emotions and cognition through visually or dramatically powerful presentations?

The already existing and expanding contribution of arts-based researchers argues vigorously for the place of arts processes in our congregations of research discussion and production. Quite simply, the arts address aspects of being human that are not sufficiently addressed by other methodologies. They are needed in our repertoire of tools for understanding people and the world. However, like other research approaches, they bring new challenges that need to be recognized and debated.

The Society for Artistic Research

JAR is published by the Society for Artistic Research (SAR). It was established in March 2010 as an independent, non-profit organisation for the purpose of publishing the Journal and has grown to become a dynamic group that encourages the discussion and activity of artistic research worldwide. SAR is comprised of both individual and institutional members from around the globe who support SAR through the payment of a membership fee, sponsorship, and the gifting of their time and expertise.

Click here for more information, to become a member and support JAR.

The Research Catalogue

The Research Catalogue (RC) is a searchable, documentary database of artistic research work and its exposition. The RC is an inclusive, open-ended, bottom-up research tool that supports the journal's academic contributions.

Enter and explore the RC here .

Editorial Team

Peer reviewers

JAR is grateful to the many colleagues who have generously peer reviewed for the journal, including:

Jouko Aaltonen, Kerstin Abraham, Annie Abrahams, Alessandra Acocella, Simon Aeberhard, Gaelyn Aguilar, Gustavo Aguilar, Ann Albritton, Sarah Albu, Sarah Alford, Shadi Al Hroub, Jamie Allen, Fee Altmann, Diogo Alvim, James Andean, Leah Anderson, Sven Anderson, Erik Andersson, Nathanael J. Andreini, Jennifer Anyan, Victor Arroyo, Anna Artaker, Don Asker, Håkon Austbø, Jens Badura, Dirk Baecker, Allan Ballinger, George Barber, Richard Barrett, Nadia Bartolini, Angela Bartram, Sergio Basbaum, Jasmine Begeske, Lisa Beißwanger, Meghan Moe Beitiks, Elisabeth Belgrano, Laura Beloff, Henric Benesch, Ruth Benschop, Arild Berg, Cara Berger, Valdis Bernhofs, Mieke Bernink, Luis Berríos-Negrón, Damien Beyrouthy, Sandeep Bhagwati, Alexandra Bickley Trott, Lucy Biederman, Anna Birch, Claire Bishop, Michael Blake, Richard Blythe, Amanda Boetzkes, Sylvie Boisseau, Jeremy Bolen, Barbara Bolt, Jeroen Boomgaard, Matthew Bowman, Candice Boyd, Eddy Bøgh Brixen, Svea Braeunert, Hanna Brinkmann, Ana Brotas, Nicholas Brown, Steven D. Brown, Greg Bruce, Christoph Brunner, Annemarie Bucher, Joanna Bucknall, Erik Bünger, James Bungert, Matthew Burbidge, Karl Burkheimer, Toivo Burlin, Robert Burnier, Laura Burns, Bruno Caldas Vianna, Enrico Campo, Giuliano Campo, Richard Carey, Peter Cariani, Juan Carlos Castro, Ed Carroll, David Casacuberta, Oliver Case, Nicolau Centola, Belen Cerezo, Felicia Chan, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Isabelle Choinière, Marko Ciciliani, Jean-Marie Clarke, Seth Cluett, Jeffrey Cobbold, Marcel Cobussen, Kathleen Coessens, Emma Coffield, Jan Cohen Cruz, Lorna Collins, Elena Cologni, Laura Colombino, Andy Conio, Outi Condit, Leone Contini, Lucy Cotter, Graham Coulter-Smith, Geoff Cox, Rareș Augustin Crăiuț, Paola Crespi, Darla Crispin, Edward Crooks, Brooklyn Cuny, Viviana d’Auria, Joao da Silva, Ami Skånberg Dahlstedt, Palle Dahlstedt, G. James Daichendt, Alexander Damianisch, Ursula Damm, Charles Danby, Henry Daniel, Kathyayini Dash, E. Gabriel Dattatreyan, Cordula Daus, Colin Davis, Jane de Almeida, Felipe de Almeida Ribeiro, Paulo de Assis, Nicole De Brabandere, Mireille de Koning, Benjamin De Kosnik, Scott deLahunta, Michael Dellwing, Matthieu Delourme, Lucia D’Errico, Louise Devenish, Madalina Diaconu, Michael DiBarry, Stella Dimitrakopoulou, Christian Doeller, Christo Doherty, Martin Dornberg MD, Rosemary Donegan, Pascal Marcel Dreier, Johanna Drucker, Selma Dubach, Anne Dubos, Patrick Duggan, Zachary Dunbar, Patrick F. Durgin, Steve Dutton, Catharina Dyrssen, Gerhard Eckel, Ainara Elgoibar, Synes Elischka, Richard Elliott, Mika Elo, Simon Emmerson, Jason Engelund, Ciara Ennis, Yasemin J. Erden, Jaana Erkkila, Sophie Ernst, Maymanah Farhat, Heide Fasnacht, Aryo Feldman, Helena Ferreira, Daniel Fetzner, Sergio Figueiredo, Geraldine Finn, Sabine Flach, João Florêncio, Charles Forceville, William Fourie, David Frankel, Michaela French, Hélène Frichot, Kristina Fridh, Henrik Frisk, Fábio Furlanete, Maria Fusco, Nikolaus Gansterer, Iris Garrelfs, Eva Maria Gauss, Bart Geerts, Petra Gemeinboeck, Susannah R. Gent, Ariel Gentalen, Charles Gere, Verina Gfader, Laura F. Gibellini, Susan H. Gillespie, Elizabeth Giorgis, Ylva Gislen, Priska Gisler, Paul Gladston, Sue Gollifer, Romeo Gongora, Laura Gonzales, Andrew Goodman, Mitch Goodwin, Marc Goodwin, David Gorton, Sozita Goudouna, Barbara Graf, Joe Graham, Nat Grant, Lila Ellen Gray, Florian Grond, Marina Grzinic, Paula Guersenzvaig, Adriana Guiman, Valerie Guinn Polgar, Charlie Gullström, Ylva Gustavsson, Paula Guzzanti, Anke Haarmann, Saara Hacklin, Georg Hajdu, Katalin Halasz, Francis Halsall, Kit Hammonds, Julie Harboe, Katie Hargrave, Rory Harron, Marika Hedemyr, Natalie Hegert, Martta Heikkilä, Martta Heikkilä, Silke Helmerdig, Jessica Hemmings, Monica Herzig, Duncan Higgins, Birte Hinrichsen, Thalia Hoffman, Maria Høgh-Mikkelsen, Tom Holert, Sander Hölsgens, Risa Horowitz, Zahra Sadat Hosseini, Johanna Householder, Falk Hübner, Sara Hubrich, Polly Hudson, Edmund Hunt, Roddy Hunter, Victoria Hunter, Otso Huopaniemi, Michael Iber, Kirsten Irene Ihl, Lucas Ihlein, Kristiina Ilmonen, Dora Imhof, Jonathan Impett, Andy Ingamells, Mark Ingham, Welby Ings, Ikuko Inoguchi, Oliver Iredale Searle, Ellie Irons, Kathleen Irwin, Bruce Isaacs, Dóra Ísleifsdóttir, Theodossis Issaias, Yuichi Ito, Monika Jaeckel, Jarbas Jácome, Alexandra James , Stephanie James, Charlotte Jarvis, Joe Joe Orangias, Ola Johansson, Marc Johnson, Corinne Jola, Demelza Jones, Hans Lennart Jonsäll, Alexandra Juhasz, Michael Kahr, Jan Kaila, Birgit M. Kaiser, Zubin Kanga, Anna Kanitz, Marko Karo, Andreas Keil, William Keller, Jessamy Kelly, Christopher Lee Kennedy, Habibul Khondker, Esa Kirkkopelto, Sharon Kivland, Ralph Klewitz, Flourish Klink, Hans Knut Sveen, Christina Kobb, Philippe Kocher, Tuija Kokkonen, Lucie Kolb, Doris Kolesch, Renee Kool, Kaisu Koski, Marinos Koutsomichalis, Sabine Kradolfer, Christian Kravagna, Dorothee Kreutzfeldt, Mona Kriegler, Manola-Gayatri Kumarswamy, Bojana Kunst, Ebru Kurbak, Harri Laakso, Alice Lagaay, Anna Laine, Lizabe Lambrechts, Christina Lammer, Dominique Lämmli, Paul Landon, Ray Langenbach, Justin Langlois, Francesca Lanz, Stephen Lapthisophon, Silvia Laurentiz, Catherine Laws, Tom Lee, Loraine Leeson, Sri-Kartini Leet, Penny Leong Browne, Eric Lewis, Andreas Liebmann, Linda Lien, Siv Lier, Pia Lindman, Paul J. Locher, Gunter Lösel, Alys Longley, Guadalupe López-Íñiguez, Astrid Lorange, Maiju Loukola, Sean Lowry, Olivia Lucas, Jorge Lucero, Espen Lunde Nielsen, Barbara Lüneburg, Robert Luzar, Lucy Lyons, Steve Lyons, Tale Naess Lysestøl, Juliet MacDonald, Marcus Maeder, Maarit Mäkelä, Mikko Mälkki, Ives Maes, Eleanor Margolies, David Maroto, Sara Martinetti, Federica Martini, Ruth Mateus-Berr, Ian Maxwell, Shane Mc Kenna, Samantha McCulloch, Ned McGowan, Gillian McIver, Scott McLaughlin, Vahri McKenzie, Stuart Medley, Emma Meehan, Vincent Meelberg, Matilde Meireles, Tine Melzer, Luisa Menano, Eva Meyer-Keller, Sascha Mikloweit, Jonathan Miles, Gwen Miller, Louisa Minkin, Kirstine Moffat, Ania Molenda, Dirck Möllmann, Ryan Molloy, Anna Moreno, Gavin Morrison, Otto Muller, Joan Mullin, Annemarie A. Murland, Siobhan Murphy, Sally-Ann Murray, Soraya Murray, Martin Nachbar, Lydia Nakashima Degarrod, Tero Nauha, Robin Nelson, Warren Neidich, Moritz Neumüller, Jan Nieuwenhuis, Julia Valle Noronha, Samuel Nortey, Heidi Norton, Tamarin Norwood, Johan Öberg, Nicholas O’Brien, Michael O’Connor, Simon O’Sullivan, Johan Öberg, Joey Orr, Stefan Östersjö, Simone Osthoff, Gascia Ouzounian, David Overend, Marietjie Pauw, Randall Packer, Andrea Pagnes, Eleni-Ira Panourgia, Owen G. Parry, Lawrence M Parsons, Rebecca Partridge, Esther Marié Pauw, Alistair Payne, Tyler Payne, Claus Peder Pedersen, Lina Persson, Sibylle Peters, Birger Petersen, Georges Pfruender, Justy Phillips, Perdita Phillips, Caroline Picard, Sarah Pickering, Trevor J. Pinch, Tarja Pitkänen-Walter, Vanda Playford, Daphne Plessner, Leslie Plumb, Maja Popovic Vracar, João Francisco Porfírio, Nick Poulakis, Brahma Prakash, Anja Pratschke, Julieanna Preston, Morten Qvenild, Giridhar Raghunathan, Ella Raidel, Imani Rameses, Maya Rasker, Andrea Rassell, Amanda Ravetz, Dominic Redfern, Kirsten Reese, Eliza J. Reilly, Yvonne Reiners, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Tim Ridlen, Taina Riikonen, Macarena Rioseco, Carolina Rito, Christa Robbins, Anne Robinson, Stephen Roddy, David Roesner, Henry Rogers, Robin Rolfhamre, Lula Romero, Carlos M. Roos, Cecilia Roos, Maria Rosario Montero, Richard Rosch, David Rothenberg, Ryan Ross Smith, Paula Salas, Pablo Salvador, Saman Samadi, Monica Sand, Karen Savage, Phil Sawdon, Jan Schacher, Patrick Schenkius, Giaco Schiesser, Karen Schiff, Elisabeth Schimana, Annika Schlitte, Tom Schofield, Andreas Schoon, Stephanie Schroedter, Michiel Schuijer, Laura Luise Schultz, Holger Schulze, Heidi Schwegler, Maya Schweizer, Carlotta Scioldo, Analia Segal, Emma Shercliff, Elina Siltanen, Nastassja Simensky, Xaviera Simmons, Jose Simons, Jyrki Siukonen, Ami Skanberg Dahlstedt, Henk Slager, Philip Smith, Jo Smith, Bryndis Snaebjörnsdottir, Leonardo Solaas, Thusinta Somalingam, Peter Sonderen, Vanda Maria Sousa, Jen Southern, Björn Speidel, Cara L. Stacey, Rainer Stahlberg, Adam Stanović, Johanna Steindorf, Sharon Stewart, Pete Stollery, Chris Stover, Volker Straebel, William Straw, Michelle Strizever, Kiven Strohm, Paul Struik, Francis Summers, John Sundholm, Martin Supper, Annette Svaneklink Jakobsen, Jan Svenungsson, Britta Sweers, Dominic Symonds, David Szanto, Donna Szoke, Margus Tamm, Leon Tan, Masayuki Tanaka, Sebastian Tedesco, Mäki Teemu, Tassilo Tesche, Steve Thomas, Heidi Tikka, Marlon Titre, Nicolas Tixier, Sissel Tolaas, Zenovia Toloudi, Germán Toro Pérez, Judith Tucker, Lucie Tuma, Herwig Turk, Martin Ullrich, Elena Ungeheuer, Jana Unmüßig, Eduardo Urios-Aparisi, Luk Vaes, Claudia Valente, Kristof van Baarle, Walter van de Leur, Christophe van Gerrewey, Patrick van Deurzen, Paula van Beek, Kelly van der Watt, Cathy van Eck, Walter Van Rijn, Bart van Oort, Cobi van Tonder, Nicolás Varchausky, Christina Varvia, Johan D. A. Verbeke, Jan Verwoert, Carlos Vidal, Alvise Vidolin, Daniel Villegas Vélez, Daniel Villegas Vélez, Marcelo Ricardo Villena, Salomé Voegelin, Viktoria Volkova, Enno Voorhorst, Valentina Vuksic, Julian Waite, Megan Walch, Ruby Wallis, Roxy Walsh, Oliver Walton, Ashley Walton, Phillip Warnell, Robert Waters, Janell Watson, Birk Weiberg, Beth Weinstein, Jeremy Welsh, Rat Western, Hartmut Wickert, Birgit Wildt, Mick Wilson, Sheilah Wilson, Christopher Wright, Mark Peter Wright, Ina Wudtke, Caroline Yan Zheng, Mariela Yeregui, Kalina Yordanova, Carine Zaayman, Susana Zapke, Paolo Zavagna, Branka Zgonjanin, Denise Ziegler, Kitty Zijlmans, Zoe Zontou, Nina Zschocke, Rachel Zuanon

Past editorial board members

News and announcements

For more information on JAR and its activities please follow us on Facebook , where we will post news, opportunities, featured expositions and texts from our Network pages.

Alternatively you can sign up for SAR newsletter and announcements service. Via this email service you can receive information on SAR events, JAR publications and other information deemed relevant by SAR.

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

We're Hiring!
Help Center

Artistic Research. Theories, Methods, Practices.

Related Papers

Sisyphus — Journal of Education

Catarina Almeida

Although almost every debate about artistic research highlights its novelty in references to «uncertainty», »indefinability», and to its lack of identity whilst «bound to a tradition external to itself», this novelty has lasted for a few decades already. Many of the problems raised today are to be found back when research and art education began to relate within the academic context in the 1980s. So where is the speculative discussion on its uncertainty taking artistic research to? Is a solution intended to be found? Is there a problem to be solved? Through ‘productivitism’ this text argues that the aprioristic idea that artistic research is problematic has been securing its state of pendency and increasing its fragility. The final part of the article suggests a creative potential and a challenging dimension in the process of institutionalization, and ends by pointing out possible topics of work for a shared agenda with contemporary art.

Tanja Becher

Excerpt of the introduction: In the first part, I will dissect the term research, dipping into the everlasting dispute about art versus science, coming back to the initial term of artistic research and giving ideas of what it is and what it can contribute to scientific research. In the last part I will focus on the education reformation, elaborating detected challenges and chances it might bring. As literature, the essay draws – amongst others – from the book Artistic research published by philosopher, editor and curator Annette W. Balkema and philosopher, editor, curator and Professor for Artistic Research at the MaHKU, Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design Henk Slager, who is also leading the publication of the Journal of Artistic Research (JAR). It is a collection of essays and discussions from a two-day symposium on artistic research. Other sources are websites of art academies involved in the development of artistic research, different speeches on the topic and the Belgian philosopher, writer and critic Dieter Lesage’s text Who’s Afraid of Artistic Research? On measuring artistic research output (2009). As the evolution of artistic research is still ongoing, I found it important to include a variety of different opinions, in order to detect common tendencies.

English version of "Künstlerische Forschung", in Hans-Peter Schwarz (Hg.): Zeichen nach vorn. 125 Jahre Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Zürich. Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Zürich, Zürich

Christoph Schenker

Knowledge in its current form is not identical to the knowledge of the sciences. Scientific knowledge is a specific kind of discourse that is set off from the discourse genres of other, non-scientific areas of competence. In concert, they all form a diversity of essentially equivalent and equally necessary systems. Nonetheless, the currently prevalent style of thinking is that cultivated by the sciences and the humanities. And it is primarily scientific technology that has proven to be the most efficient contributor to contemporary society's focus on innovation. Scholarship and the sciences also constitute the last bastion of a culture that exists exclusively as high culture. Scientific research is a curious mixture of ideology and practice, of realistic procedures and unreal demands. The need to resort to scientific support in order to reinforce the relevance or status of a given area of competence has become obsolete. In this paper I shall outline a few thoughts on the character of research in the fine arts. The concept of research is closely allied with the sciences. Even so, it is fruitful to apply this term to the pragmatic context of artistic endeavour although it is not possible to address the concepts of research and art in greater depth in this context.

Dieter Mersch

Since its beginnings in the 1990s, “artistic research” has become established as a new format in the areas of educational and institutional policy, aesthetics, and art theory. It has now diffused into almost all artistic fields, from installation to experimental formats to contemporary music, literature, dance or performance art. But from its beginnings—under labels like “art and science” or “scienceart” or “artscience” that mention both disciplines in one breath—it has been in competition with academic research, without its own concept of research having been adequately clarified. This manifesto attempts to resolve the problem and to defend the term and the radical potentials of a researching art against those who toy all too carefully with university formats, wishing to ally them with scientific principles. Its aim is to emphasize the autonomy and particular intellectuality of artistic research, without seeking to justify its legitimacy or adopt alien standards.

Gilvano Dalagna

corina caduff , Barbara Revelli

Artistic Research: Charting a Field in Expansion

Lucia D'Errico , Paulo de Assis

Artistic Research: Charting a Field in Expansion provides a multidisciplinary overview on different discourses and practices, exploring cutting-edge questions from the burgeoning field of artistic research. Intended as a primer on artistic research, it presents diverse perspectives, strategies, methodologies, and concrete examples of research projects situated at the crossroads of art and academia, exposing international work of significant projects from Europe, Asia, Australia, South and North America. The book includes chapters on diverse fields of thought and practice, addressing a common thread of questions and problematics. The comprehensive editors’ introduction offers a much-needed extensive overview of practice-based artistic research in general. This book is ideal for graduate students across philosophy, cultural studies, art, music, performance studies and more.

BEYOND INTERPRETATION Selected Online Proceedings from the 3rd Festival Conference of Music Performance and Artistic Research “Doctors in Performance”

Maximilian Lehner

English version of "Einsicht und Intensivierung - Überlegungen zur künstlerischen Forschung", in Elke Bippus (Hg.): Kunst des Forschens. Praxis eines ästhetischen Denkens. Diaphanes, Zürich/Berlin

What is it that distinguishes artistic research? Can one speak of a tradition of artistic problems? The tendency is to concentrate on trying to define the essential features of artistic research. This involves inquiry into not only how artistic research differs from but also how it resembles or is comparable to scientific research and philosophical work. As far the pragmatics of research are concerned, there is no fundamental difference between the systems of art and scholarship. And in both fields, it is often no easy task to distinguish substance, i.e. what is essential and intrinsic to the conditions and rules of the research process, from accident, i.e. what factors should be assigned to the external operations of research. One might inquire into whether artistic research works with special methods, whether it makes use of a specific set of tools, whether it typically addresses a specific subject of research, and whether it produces knowledge that is characteristic of art.

Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture

Josef Früchtl

RELATED PAPERS

Gabriel Lisboa

Acta Comportamentalia Revista Latina De Analisis De Comportamiento

Verônica Haydu

Mathematical Problems in Engineering

Dusan Krokavec

Digestive and Liver Disease

Shou-dong Lee

Sonia Regina da Luz Matos

Nohora Viviana Rivera Leon

Ecology Letters

Mark Mescher

Linguistics and Literature Review

Fareeha Anwar

Mohammed GadAllah

Plant Production Science

Vojislava momcilovic

Journal of Applied Ecology

Norbert Hölzel

Vii Connepi Congresso Norte Nordeste De Pesquisa E Inovacao

Larissa Garcia De Souza

Manap Somantri

Asian Journal of Plant Sciences

Md. Ayub khan

International Journal of Cardiology

Ramesh Gowda

Research Journal of Finance and Accounting

Wilson Herbert

Diagnostic Cytopathology

Gregory Tsiotos

Nicolette Karst

Applied Mathematics and Computation

Alberto Abad

Journal of American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus

Hyun Taek Lim

실시간카지노 토토사이트

Bangladesh Journal of Medicine

Maria Maksud

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Stefania Maggi

Alvaro Baquero

RSC Advances

Alain Jonas

About the journal

The Oxford Art Journal has an international reputation for publishing innovative critical work in art history, and has played a major role in recent rethinking of the discipline …

Celebrating 40 years of Oxford Art Journal

Oxford Art Journal marked its 40th anniversary in 2018. In celebration of this important milestone, browse a collection of articles which have been hand-picked by the editors. Selected papers represent various forms of critical, innovative work published between 1978 and 2018.

Explore the collection

1968 Protests

Fifty years on, the revolt of May '68 in France continues to reverberate in art as well as politics. The Oxford Art Journal is but one minor symptom of those events.

Read more about the significance of art during the protests and their aftermath.

Publish with OAJ

Essay Prize

The Oxford Art Journal Essay Prize for Early Career Researchers is an annual award, launched in 2018. The Prize welcomes entries on any topic relevant to art history from British and international doctoral students, as well as early career researchers who are within five years of gaining their PhD.

Find out more

Read an Interview with the Essay Prize Interview Winner

2020 Essay Prize Winner

The winner of the 2020 Oxford Art Journal Essay Prize for Early Career Researchers is Katherine Fein. Read an interview with Katherine about her prize-winning paper, early career journey, and tips for submitting to the Essay Prize.

Read the interview

Top tips for submissions

Oxford Art Journal is continually on the look-out for innovative critical work to publish in the journal.

Read our top tips for getting published.

Submit your work

Interested in submitting? Learn more about the Oxford Art Journal submission process and requirements.

Special issues

Read and browse Oxford Art Journal 's latest Special Issues , including

Feminist Domesticities
Modernism After Paul Strand
Theorizing Wax: On the Meaning of a Disappearing Medium

Prize winning article

Congratulations to Alex Burchmore, winner of the Oxford Art Journal Essay Prize for his outstanding article ' La maladie de porcelaine : Liu Jianhua’s Regular/Fragile (2007) at Oxburgh Hall and the History of Massed Porcelain Display in English Aristocratic Interiors'. Read the paper for free online.

Andy Warhol's queerness

A recently uncovered tape recording of a famous interview with Andy Warhol sheds light on a defining interview, revealing the excision of an entire, sophisticated, wistful discussion about homosexuality.

Read the blog post | Read the article

Keep up to date

Receive regular email alerts as soon as new content from the journal is published online.

Latest articles

Related titles.

Cover image of current issue from Journal of the History of Collections

Recommend to your Library

Affiliations

Online ISSN 1741-7287
Print ISSN 0142-6540
Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
About Oxford Academic
Publish journals with us
University press partners
What we publish
New features
Open access
Institutional account management
Rights and permissions
Get help with access
Accessibility
Advertising
Media enquiries
Oxford University Press
Oxford Languages
University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
Cookie settings
Cookie policy
Privacy policy
Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Is Artistic Practice Research?

First Online: 02 September 2017

Cite this chapter

Jenny Wilson 2

591 Accesses

1 Citations

Underlying personal beliefs about the relationship between artistic practice and research can influence how research management systems are designed, how individuals approach the task of evaluating artistic research and for artistic researchers themselves, the degree to which they engage with the university research agenda. This chapter explores three broad stances in relation to this relationship: that artistic practice fundamentally different from research, that artistic practice meets the criteria defining research and that artistic practice is a form of legitimate research that differs in process and output. It explores how artistic researchers themselves understand and recognise when artistic work constitutes research and the challenges that artistic research brings to traditional university expectations and practices in research management.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Available as EPUB and PDF
Read on any device
Instant download
Own it forever
Compact, lightweight edition
Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
Free shipping worldwide - see info
Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

For example: Popper (1935) Logic der Forschung. Verlag von Julius Springer, Vienna, Austria: Kuhn, T.S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962; Dewey, J. (1934) Art as Experience, Minton Balch, New York; Dewey J (1960) The Quest for certainty, Capricorn books New York; Snow, C.P. (1959). Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. Encounter, 12, 17–24; Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: selected essays (vol. 5019). Basic Books; Eisner, E.W. (1981). On the Differences between Scientific and Artistic Approaches to Qualitative Research. Educational Researcher, 10(4), 5–9; Boyer, E.L. (1990). Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. New Jersey: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Andersson, E. (2009). Fine science and social arts: On common grounds and necessary boundaries of two ways to produce meaning. Art & Research, 2, 1–12.

Google Scholar

Australian Government. (2017). Measuring Impact and Engagement of University Research. National Innovation and Science Agenda . http://www.innovation.gov.au/page/measuring-impact-and-engagement-university-research . Accessed on 7 January 2017.

Australian Research Council. (2012). Discovery Projects Funding Rules for Funding Commencing in 2013 . http://www.arc.gov.au/pdf/DP13/DP13_fundingrules.pdf . Accessed 12 May 2012.

Australian Research Council. (2010). Previous Schemes . http://arc.gov.au/media/previous_schemes.htm . Accessed 25 September 2010.

Baker, S., Buckley, B., & Kett, G. (2009). Creative Arts PhD: Future proofing the creative arts in higher education: Scoping for quality in creative arts doctoral programs . http://www.olt.gov.au/project-futureproofing-creative-arts-melbourne-2007

Barone, T. (2001). Science, art and the predispositions of educational researchers. Educational Researcher, 30, 24–28.

Barrett, E. (2006). Creative arts practice, creative industries: method and process as cultural capital. Speculation and Innovation: applying practice led research in the creative industries (pp. 1–13). Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology.

Beittel, K. (1959). Molesting or meeting the muse: A Look at research on the ‘creativity’ in the visual arts. Studies in Art Education, 1, 26–37.

Bell-Villada, G. (1996). Art for art’s sake and literary life: how politics and markets have shaped the ideology and culture of aestheticism 1790–1990 . Nabraska: University of Nabraska Press.

Bennett, D., Blom, D., & Wright, D. (2009). Artist academics: Performing the Australian research agenda. International Journal of Education and the Arts 10(17), 1–15.

Berger, J. (2002). Ways of seeing. In G. Stygall (Ed.) Academic discourse: Readings for argument and analysis (pp. 107–130). Ohio: Thomson Learning Custom Publishing.

Borgdorff, H. (2012). The conflict of the faculties: perspectives on artistic research and academia . Amsterdam: Leiden University Press.

Brandstadter, J. T. (1969). The artist in higher education. Art Journal, 29 , 45–104.

Brannigan, E. (2005). Beyond silence. RealTime, 68, 10.

Burr, S. (2010). Around the room: A summary of the symposium discussions. Creative and Practice Led Research Symposium . Canberra. http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue8/Burr.pdf

Candlin, F. (2001). A dual inheritance: The politics of educational reform and PhDs in Art and Design. International Journal of Art and Design Education , 302–310.

Carter, P. (2004). Material thinking . Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press.

Christensen, T. (2011). University governance reforms: potential problems of more autonomy? Higher Education, 62, 503–517.

Commonwealth of Australia. (2002). Developing national research priorities: An issues paper . Canberra.

Commonwealth of Australia. (2005). Research quality framework: Assessing the quality and impact of research in Australia: The preferred model . Canberra.

Cooper, S., & Poletti, A. (2011). The new ERA of journal ranking: The consequences of Australia’s fraught encounter with “Quality”. Australian Universities Review, 53 (1), 57–65.

Coryn, C. L. (2006). The use and abuse of citations as indicators of research quality. Journal of Multidisciplinary Evaluation, 4, 115–121.

Coessens, K., Crispin, D., & Douglas, A. (2009). The Artistic Turn: A Manifesto. Leune University Press.

Croft, J. (2015). Composition is not research. Tempo, 69 (272), 6–11.

Daniel, R. (2016). Exploring artistic identity and place in society: Perspectives and insights from higher education students in Australia. Creative Industries Journal, 9 (1), 15–28.

De Haan, S. (1998, March 26). The Relationship between the composer, performer and listener in twentieth century music making . Inaugural professorial lecture. Brisbane: Griffith University.

Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR). (2008). 2008 higher education research data collection : Specifications for the collection of 2007 data. Canberra.

Durst, D. (1957). Artists and college art teaching. College Art Journal, 16 (3), 222–229.

Eisner, E. W. (1981). On the differences between scientific and artistic approaches to qualitative research. Educational Researcher, 10, 5–9.

Eisner, E. W. (1999). Rejoinder: A response to Tom Knapp. Educational Researcher, 28, 19–20.

Eisner, E. W. (1997). The promise and perils of alternative forms of data representation. Educational Researcher, 26, 4–10.

Elkins, J. (2004). Theoretical remarks on combined creative and scholarly PhD degrees in the visual arts. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 38, 22–31.

Emme, M. J. (1997). Making space for good research: A response to David Templeton. Studies in Art Education, 38, 112–113.

Emmerson, S. (2017). Is my performance research? In R. Burke & A. Onsman (Eds.), Perspectives on artistic research in music (pp. 27–46). Maryland, US: Lexington Books.

Fiorenza, B., & Sedita, S. (2005). The economics of intangible: some theoretical bases on networks of creativity with a focus on cultural, design and science based industries. Paper presented at The Dynamics of Industry and Innovation: Organizations, Networks and Systems: DRUID tenth anniversary summer conference. Copenhagen, Denmark.

Frayling, C. (2006). Foreword. In K. Macleod & L. Holdridge (Eds.), Thinking through art: reflections on art as research . London: Routledge.

Freundlich, A. (1975). On the university as the best environment for training artists. Leonardo, 8 (2), 121–124.

Gibson, R. (2010). The known world. In Text special issue: Symposium: Creative and Practice led research—Current Status, future plans. http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue8/Gibson.pdf

Gray, C., & Malins, J. (2004). Visualising research: A guide to the research process in art and design. Aldershot, Hants, England Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

Gray, C., & Pirie, I. (1995). Artistic research procedure: research at the edge of chaos? Paper Presented at the Principles and Definitions: Five Papers by the European Postgraduate Art & Design Group. Winchester School of Art. Winchester, UK.

Green, H. (2001). Research training in the creative and performing arts and design . UK Council for Graduate Education, Dudley: UK.

Haseman, B. (2006). A manifesto For performative research. Media International Australia; Incorporating Culture & Policy, (118) , 98–106.

Henkel, M. (2007). Shifting Boundaries and the academic profession. In M. Kogan & U. Teichler (Eds.), Key challenges to the academic profession: UNESCO forum on higher education research and knowledge (pp. 191–202). Kassel: University of Kassel.

Jones, T. (1980). A discussion paper on research in the visual fine arts prepared for the Birmingham Polytechnic, England, in 1978. Leonardo, 13, 89–93.

Kroll, J. (2002). Creative Writing as research and the dilemma of accreditation: How do we prove the value of what we do? Text , 6.

Magee, P. (2014). What Distinguishes Scholarship from Art? New Writing: International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing, 11 (3), 400–406.

Mayer, R. E. (2000). What is the place of science in educational research? Educational Researcher, 29, 38–39.

Mayer, R. E. (2001). Resisting the assault on science: The case for evidence-based reasoning in educational research. Educational Researcher, 30, 29–30.

Monash University. (2017). Research Outputs Data Collection Policy. http://policy.monash.edu.au/policy-bank/academic/research/research-outputs-data-collection-policy.html . Accessed on 6 January 2017.

Nelson, R. (2013). Conceptual frameworks for PaR and related pedagogy: From ‘hard facts’ to ‘liquid knowing’. In R. Nelson (Ed.), Practice as research in the arts: principles, protocols, pedagogies, resistances (pp. 48–70). Palgrave Macmillan.

O’Donoghue, D. (2009). Are we asking the wrong questions in arts-based research. Studies in Art Education, 50, 352–368.

OECD. (2002). Frascati manual: Proposed standard practice for surveys on research and experimental design . Paris: OECD.

OECD. (2007). Working party of national experts on science and technology indicators: Revised Field of Science and Technology (FOS) classification in the frascati manual . Paris: OECD.

Risenhoover, M., & Blackburn, R. (1976). Artists as professors: Conversations with musicians, painters, sculptors . Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Sade, G. (2012). Intractable Differences: Artistic research and the problem of practice. In P. Flanigan (Ed.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Research Creativity, Hong Kong .

Scrivener, S. (2002). The art object does not embody a form of knowledge. Working Papers in Art and Design , 2. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/783/1/WPIAAD_vol2_scrivener.pdf . Accessed on 22 July 2017.

Singerman, H. (1999). Art subjects: Making artists in the American University . Berkley: University of California Press.

Sloane, J. (1963). The scholar and the artist. Art Journal, 23, 16–19.

Snow, C. P. (1959). Two cultures. Science, 130 (3373), 419.

Sullivan, G. (2006). Research acts in art practice. Studies in Art Education, 48 (1), 19–35.

Svenungsson, J. (2009). The writing artist. Art & Research, 2 (2), 1–6.

Trowler, P. (2013). Can approaches to research in art and design be beneficially adapted for research into higher education? Higher education research and development, 32 (1), 56–69.

University of Melbourne. (2017). Management of Research Data and Records Policy (MPF1242). https://policy.unimelb.edu.au/MPF1242 . Accessed on 6 January 2017.

University of Queensland. (2017). Guidelines On Evidencing Academic Achievement. http://www.uq.edu.au/shared/resources/personnel/appraisalAcad/guidelines-evidencing-academic-achievement.pdf . Accessed on 6 January 2017.

Wald, G. (1957). The Artist in the University. College Art Journal , 16 (4), 280–286.

Wilson, J. (2015). The white cube in the black box: Assessing artistic research quality in multi-disciplinary academic panels. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education , 2015 , 1–14.

Wright, D., Bennett, D., & Blom, D. (2010). The interface between arts practice and research: attitudes and perceptions of Australian artist-academics. Higher Education Research and Development, 29 (4), 461–473.

Yates, L. (2005). Is impact a measure of quality? Producing quality research and producing quality indicators of research in Australia . Paper presented at the AARE Focus Conference on ‘Quality in Education Research: directions in policy and practice’ Cairns.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia

Jenny Wilson

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jenny Wilson .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Wilson, J. (2018). Is Artistic Practice Research?. In: Artists in the University . Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5774-8_4

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5774-8_4

Published : 02 September 2017

Publisher Name : Springer, Singapore

Print ISBN : 978-981-10-5773-1

Online ISBN : 978-981-10-5774-8

eBook Packages : Education Education (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Find a journal
Track your research

Home » Artistic Research – Methods, Types and Examples

Artistic Research – Methods, Types and Examples

Table of Contents

Artistic Research

Definition:

Artistic Research is a mode of inquiry that combines artistic practice and research methodologies to generate new insights and knowledge. It involves using artistic practice as a means of investigation and experimentation, while applying rigorous research methods to examine and reflect upon the process and outcomes of the artistic practice.

Types of Artistic Research

Types of Artistic Research are as follows:

Practice-based Research

This type of research involves the creation of new artistic works as part of the research process. The focus is on the exploration of artistic techniques, processes, and materials, and how they contribute to the creation of new knowledge.

Research-led practice

This type of research involves the use of academic research methods to inform and guide the creative process. The aim is to investigate and test new ideas and approaches to artistic practice.

Practice-led Research

This type of research involves using artistic practice as a means of exploring research questions. The aim is to develop new insights and understandings through the creative process.

Transdisciplinary Research

This type of research involves collaboration between artists and researchers from different disciplines. The aim is to combine knowledge and expertise from different fields to create new insights and perspectives.

Research Through Performance

This type of research involves the use of live performance as a means of investigating research questions. The aim is to explore the relationship between the performer and the audience, and how this relationship can be used to create new knowledge.

Participatory Research

This type of research involves collaboration with communities and stakeholders to explore research questions. The aim is to involve participants in the research process and to create new knowledge through shared experiences and perspectives.

Data Collection Methods

Artistic research data collection methods vary depending on the type of research being conducted and the artistic discipline being studied. Here are some common methods of data collection used in artistic research:

Artistic production: One of the most common methods of data collection in artistic research is the creation of new artistic works. This involves using the artistic practice itself as a method of data collection. Artists may create new works of art, performances, or installations to explore research questions and generate data.
Interviews : Artists may conduct interviews with other artists, scholars, or experts in their field to collect data. These interviews may be recorded and transcribed for further analysis.
Surveys and questionnaires : Surveys and questionnaires can be used to collect data from a larger sample of people. These can be used to collect information about audience reactions to artistic works, or to collect demographic information about artists.
Observation: Artists may also use observation as a method of data collection. This can involve observing the audience’s reactions to a performance or installation, or observing the process of artistic creation.
Archival research : Artists may conduct archival research to collect data from historical sources. This can involve studying the work of other artists, analyzing historical documents or artifacts, or studying the history of a particular artistic practice or discipline.
Experimental methods : In some cases, artists may use experimental methods to collect data. This can involve manipulating variables in an artistic work or performance to test hypotheses and generate data.

Data Analysis Methods

some common methods of data analysis used in artistic research:

Interpretative analysis : This involves a close reading and interpretation of the artistic work, performance or installation in order to understand its meanings, themes, and symbolic content. This method of analysis is often used in qualitative research.
Content analysis: This involves a systematic analysis of the content of artistic works or performances, with the aim of identifying patterns, themes, and trends in the data. This method of analysis is often used in quantitative research.
Discourse analysis : This involves an analysis of the language and social contexts in which artistic works are created and received. It is often used to explore the power dynamics, social structures, and cultural norms that shape artistic practice.
Visual analysis: This involves an analysis of the visual elements of artistic works, such as composition, color, and form, in order to understand their meanings and significance.
Statistical analysis: This involves the use of statistical techniques to analyze quantitative data collected through surveys, questionnaires, or experimental methods. This can involve calculating correlations, regression analyses, or other statistical measures to identify patterns in the data.
Comparative analysis: This involves comparing the data collected from different artistic works, performances or installations, or comparing the data collected from artistic research to data collected from other sources.

Artistic Research Methodology

Artistic research methodology refers to the approach or framework used to conduct artistic research. The methodology used in artistic research is often interdisciplinary and may include a combination of methods from the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Here are some common elements of artistic research methodology:

Research question : Artistic research begins with a research question or problem to be explored. This question guides the research process and helps to focus the investigation.
Contextualization: Artistic research often involves an examination of the social, historical, and cultural contexts in which the artistic work is produced and received. This contextualization helps to situate the work within a larger framework and to identify its significance.
Reflexivity: Artistic research often involves a high degree of reflexivity, with the researcher reflecting on their own positionality and the ways in which their own biases and assumptions may impact the research process.
Iterative process : Artistic research is often an iterative process, with the researcher revising and refining their research question and methods as they collect and analyze data.
Creative practice: Artistic research often involves the use of creative practice as a means of generating data and exploring research questions. This can involve the creation of new works of art, performances, or installations.
Collaboration: Artistic research often involves collaboration with other artists, scholars, or experts in the field. This collaboration can help to generate new insights and perspectives, and to bring diverse knowledge and expertise to the research process.

Examples of Artistic Research

There are numerous examples of artistic research across a variety of artistic disciplines. Here are a few examples:

Music : A composer may conduct artistic research by exploring new musical forms and techniques, and testing them through the creation of new works of music. For example, composer Steve Reich conducted artistic research by studying traditional African drumming techniques and incorporating them into his minimalist compositions.
Visual art: An artist may conduct artistic research by exploring the history and techniques of a particular medium, such as painting or sculpture, and using that knowledge to create new works of art. For example, painter Gerhard Richter conducted artistic research by exploring the history of photography and using photographic techniques to create his abstract paintings.
Dance : A choreographer may conduct artistic research by exploring new movement styles and techniques, and testing them through the creation of new dance works. For example, choreographer William Forsythe conducted artistic research by studying the physics of movement and incorporating that knowledge into his choreography.
Theater : A theater artist may conduct artistic research by exploring the history and techniques of a particular theatrical style, such as physical theater or experimental theater, and using that knowledge to create new works of theater. For example, director Anne Bogart conducted artistic research by studying the teachings of the philosopher Jacques Derrida and incorporating those ideas into her approach to theater.
Film : A filmmaker may conduct artistic research by exploring the history and techniques of a particular genre or film style, and using that knowledge to create new works of film. For example, filmmaker Agnès Varda conducted artistic research by exploring the feminist movement and incorporating feminist ideas into her films.

When to use Artistic Research

some situations where artistic research may be useful:

Developing new artistic works: Artistic research can be used to inform and inspire the development of new works of art, music, dance, theater, or film.
Exploring new artistic techniques or approaches : Artistic research can be used to explore new techniques or approaches to artistic practice, and to test and refine these approaches through creative experimentation.
Investigating the historical and cultural contexts of artistic practice: Artistic research can be used to investigate the social, cultural, and historical contexts of artistic practice, and to identify the ways in which these contexts shape and influence artistic works.
Evaluating the impact and significance of artistic works : Artistic research can be used to evaluate the impact and significance of artistic works, and to identify the ways in which they contribute to broader cultural, social, and political issues.
Advancing knowledge and understanding in artistic fields: Artistic research can be used to advance knowledge and understanding in artistic fields, and to generate new insights and perspectives on artistic practice.

Purpose of Artistic Research

The purpose of artistic research is to generate new knowledge and understanding through a rigorous and creative investigation of artistic practice. Artistic research aims to push the boundaries of artistic practice and to create new insights and perspectives on artistic works and processes.

Artistic research serves several purposes, including:

Advancing knowledge and understanding in artistic fields: Artistic research can contribute to the development of new knowledge and understanding in artistic fields, and can help to advance the study of artistic practice.
Creating new artistic works and forms: Artistic research can inspire the creation of new artistic works and forms, and can help artists to develop new techniques and approaches to their practice.
Evaluating the impact and significance of artistic works: Artistic research can help to evaluate the impact and significance of artistic works, and to identify their contributions to broader cultural, social, and political issues.
Enhancing interdisciplinary collaboration: Artistic research often involves interdisciplinary collaboration, and can help to foster new connections and collaborations between artists, scholars, and experts in diverse fields.
Challenging assumptions and pushing boundaries: Artistic research can challenge assumptions and push the boundaries of artistic practice, and can help to create new possibilities for artistic expression and exploration.

Characteristics of Artistic Research

Some key characteristics that can be used to describe artistic research:

Creative and interdisciplinary: Artistic research is creative and interdisciplinary, drawing on a wide range of artistic and scholarly disciplines to explore new ideas and approaches to artistic practice.
Experimental and process-oriented : Artistic research is often experimental and process-oriented, involving creative experimentation and exploration of new techniques, forms, and ideas.
Reflection and critical analysis : Artistic research involves reflection and critical analysis of artistic practice, with a focus on exploring the underlying processes, assumptions, and concepts that shape artistic works.
Emphasis on practice-led inquiry : Artistic research is often practice-led, meaning that it involves a close integration of creative practice and research inquiry.
Collaborative and participatory: Artistic research often involves collaboration and participation, with artists, scholars, and experts from diverse fields working together to explore new ideas and approaches to artistic practice.
Contextual and socially engaged : Artistic research is contextual and socially engaged, exploring the ways in which artistic practice is shaped by broader social, cultural, and historical contexts, and engaging with issues of social and political relevance.

Advantages of Artistic Research

Artistic research offers several advantages, including:

Innovation : Artistic research encourages creative experimentation and exploration of new techniques and approaches to artistic practice, leading to innovative and original works of art.
Interdisciplinary collaboration: Artistic research often involves collaboration between artists, scholars, and experts from diverse fields, fostering interdisciplinary exchange and the development of new perspectives and ideas.
Practice-led inquiry : Artistic research is often practice-led, meaning that it involves a close integration of creative practice and research inquiry, leading to a deeper understanding of the creative process and the ways in which it shapes artistic works.
Critical reflection: Artistic research involves critical reflection on artistic practice, encouraging artists to question assumptions and challenge existing norms, leading to new insights and perspectives on artistic works.
Engagement with broader issues : Artistic research is contextual and socially engaged, exploring the ways in which artistic practice is shaped by broader social, cultural, and historical contexts, and engaging with issues of social and political relevance.
Contribution to knowledge : Artistic research contributes to the development of new knowledge and understanding in artistic fields, and can help to advance the study of artistic practice.

Limitations of Artistic Research

Artistic research also has some limitations, including:

Subjectivity : Artistic research is subjective, meaning that it is based on the individual perspectives, experiences, and creative decisions of the artist, which can limit the generalizability and replicability of the research.
Lack of formal methodology : Artistic research often lacks a formal methodology, making it difficult to compare or evaluate different research projects and limiting the reproducibility of results.
Difficulty in measuring outcomes: Artistic research can be difficult to measure and evaluate, as the outcomes are often qualitative and subjective in nature, making it challenging to assess the impact or significance of the research.
Limited funding: Artistic research may face challenges in securing funding, as it is still a relatively new and emerging field, and may not fit within traditional funding structures.
Ethical considerations: Artistic research may raise ethical considerations related to issues such as representation, consent, and the use of human subjects, particularly when working with sensitive or controversial topics.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

Documentary Research – Types, Methods and...

Scientific Research – Types, Purpose and Guide

Original Research – Definition, Examples, Guide

Humanities Research – Types, Methods and Examples

Historical Research – Types, Methods and Examples

Art Degrees
Galleries & Exhibits
Request More Info

Art History Resources

Guidelines for Analysis of Art
Formal Analysis Paper Examples

Guidelines for Writing Art History Research Papers

Oral Report Guidelines
Annual Arkansas College Art History Symposium

Writing a paper for an art history course is similar to the analytical, research-based papers that you may have written in English literature courses or history courses. Although art historical research and writing does include the analysis of written documents, there are distinctive differences between art history writing and other disciplines because the primary documents are works of art. A key reference guide for researching and analyzing works of art and for writing art history papers is the 10th edition (or later) of Sylvan Barnet’s work, A Short Guide to Writing about Art . Barnet directs students through the steps of thinking about a research topic, collecting information, and then writing and documenting a paper.

A website with helpful tips for writing art history papers is posted by the University of North Carolina.

Wesleyan University Writing Center has a useful guide for finding online writing resources.

The following are basic guidelines that you must use when documenting research papers for any art history class at UA Little Rock. Solid, thoughtful research and correct documentation of the sources used in this research (i.e., footnotes/endnotes, bibliography, and illustrations**) are essential. Additionally, these guidelines remind students about plagiarism, a serious academic offense.

Paper Format

Research papers should be in a 12-point font, double-spaced. Ample margins should be left for the instructor’s comments. All margins should be one inch to allow for comments. Number all pages. The cover sheet for the paper should include the following information: title of paper, your name, course title and number, course instructor, and date paper is submitted. A simple presentation of a paper is sufficient. Staple the pages together at the upper left or put them in a simple three-ring folder or binder. Do not put individual pages in plastic sleeves.

Documentation of Resources

The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), as described in the most recent edition of Sylvan Barnet’s A Short Guide to Writing about Art is the department standard. Although you may have used MLA style for English papers or other disciplines, the Chicago Style is required for all students taking art history courses at UA Little Rock. There are significant differences between MLA style and Chicago Style. A “Quick Guide” for the Chicago Manual of Style footnote and bibliography format is found http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html. The footnote examples are numbered and the bibliography example is last. Please note that the place of publication and the publisher are enclosed in parentheses in the footnote, but they are not in parentheses in the bibliography. Examples of CMS for some types of note and bibliography references are given below in this Guideline. Arabic numbers are used for footnotes. Some word processing programs may have Roman numerals as a choice, but the standard is Arabic numbers. The use of super script numbers, as given in examples below, is the standard in UA Little Rock art history papers.

The chapter “Manuscript Form” in the Barnet book (10th edition or later) provides models for the correct forms for footnotes/endnotes and the bibliography. For example, the note form for the FIRST REFERENCE to a book with a single author is:

1 Bruce Cole, Italian Art 1250-1550 (New York: New York University Press, 1971), 134.

But the BIBLIOGRAPHIC FORM for that same book is:

Cole, Bruce. Italian Art 1250-1550. New York: New York University Press. 1971.

The FIRST REFERENCE to a journal article (in a periodical that is paginated by volume) with a single author in a footnote is:

2 Anne H. Van Buren, “Madame Cézanne’s Fashions and the Dates of Her Portraits,” Art Quarterly 29 (1966): 199.

The FIRST REFERENCE to a journal article (in a periodical that is paginated by volume) with a single author in the BIBLIOGRAPHY is:

Van Buren, Anne H. “Madame Cézanne’s Fashions and the Dates of Her Portraits.” Art Quarterly 29 (1966): 185-204.

If you reference an article that you found through an electronic database such as JSTOR, you do not include the url for JSTOR or the date accessed in either the footnote or the bibliography. This is because the article is one that was originally printed in a hard-copy journal; what you located through JSTOR is simply a copy of printed pages. Your citation follows the same format for an article in a bound volume that you may have pulled from the library shelves. If, however, you use an article that originally was in an electronic format and is available only on-line, then follow the “non-print” forms listed below.

B. Non-Print

Citations for Internet sources such as online journals or scholarly web sites should follow the form described in Barnet’s chapter, “Writing a Research Paper.” For example, the footnote or endnote reference given by Barnet for a web site is:

3 Nigel Strudwick, Egyptology Resources , with the assistance of The Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge University, 1994, revised 16 June 2008, http://www.newton.ac.uk/egypt/ , 24 July 2008.

If you use microform or microfilm resources, consult the most recent edition of Kate Turabian, A Manual of Term Paper, Theses and Dissertations. A copy of Turabian is available at the reference desk in the main library.

C. Visual Documentation (Illustrations)

Art history papers require visual documentation such as photographs, photocopies, or scanned images of the art works you discuss. In the chapter “Manuscript Form” in A Short Guide to Writing about Art, Barnet explains how to identify illustrations or “figures” in the text of your paper and how to caption the visual material. Each photograph, photocopy, or scanned image should appear on a single sheet of paper unless two images and their captions will fit on a single sheet of paper with one inch margins on all sides. Note also that the title of a work of art is always italicized. Within the text, the reference to the illustration is enclosed in parentheses and placed at the end of the sentence. A period for the sentence comes after the parenthetical reference to the illustration. For UA Little Rcok art history papers, illustrations are placed at the end of the paper, not within the text. Illustration are not supplied as a Powerpoint presentation or as separate .jpgs submitted in an electronic format.

Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream, dated 1893, represents a highly personal, expressive response to an experience the artist had while walking one evening (Figure 1).

The caption that accompanies the illustration at the end of the paper would read:

Figure 1. Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893. Tempera and casein on cardboard, 36 x 29″ (91.3 x 73.7 cm). Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo, Norway.

Plagiarism is a form of thievery and is illegal. According to Webster’s New World Dictionary, to plagiarize is to “take and pass off as one’s own the ideas, writings, etc. of another.” Barnet has some useful guidelines for acknowledging sources in his chapter “Manuscript Form;” review them so that you will not be mguilty of theft. Another useful website regarding plagiarism is provided by Cornell University, http://plagiarism.arts.cornell.edu/tutorial/index.cfm

Plagiarism is a serious offense, and students should understand that checking papers for plagiarized content is easy to do with Internet resources. Plagiarism will be reported as academic dishonesty to the Dean of Students; see Section VI of the Student Handbook which cites plagiarism as a specific violation. Take care that you fully and accurately acknowledge the source of another author, whether you are quoting the material verbatim or paraphrasing. Borrowing the idea of another author by merely changing some or even all of your source’s words does not allow you to claim the ideas as your own. You must credit both direct quotes and your paraphrases. Again, Barnet’s chapter “Manuscript Form” sets out clear guidelines for avoiding plagiarism.

VISIT OUR GALLERIES SEE UPCOMING EXHIBITS

School of Art and Design
Windgate Center of Art + Design, Room 202 2801 S University Avenue Little Rock , AR 72204
Phone: 501-916-3182 Fax: 501-683-7022 (fax)
More contact information

Connect With Us

UA Little Rock is an accredited member of the National Association of Schools of Art and Design.

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

View all journals
Explore content
About the journal
Publish with us
Sign up for alerts
09 May 2024

Cubic millimetre of brain mapped in spectacular detail

Carissa Wong

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rendering based on electron-microscope data, showing the positions of neurons in a fragment of the brain cortex. Neurons are coloured according to size. Credit: Google Research & Lichtman Lab (Harvard University). Renderings by D. Berger (Harvard University)

Researchers have mapped a tiny piece of the human brain in astonishing detail. The resulting cell atlas, which was described today in Science 1 and is available online , reveals new patterns of connections between brain cells called neurons, as well as cells that wrap around themselves to form knots, and pairs of neurons that are almost mirror images of each other.

The 3D map covers a volume of about one cubic millimetre, one-millionth of a whole brain, and contains roughly 57,000 cells and 150 million synapses — the connections between neurons. It incorporates a colossal 1.4 petabytes of data. “It’s a little bit humbling,” says Viren Jain, a neuroscientist at Google in Mountain View, California, and a co-author of the paper. “How are we ever going to really come to terms with all this complexity?”

Slivers of brain

The brain fragment was taken from a 45-year-old woman when she underwent surgery to treat her epilepsy. It came from the cortex, a part of the brain involved in learning, problem-solving and processing sensory signals. The sample was immersed in preservatives and stained with heavy metals to make the cells easier to see. Neuroscientist Jeff Lichtman at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his colleagues then cut the sample into around 5,000 slices — each just 34 nanometres thick — that could be imaged using electron microscopes.

Jain’s team then built artificial-intelligence models that were able to stitch the microscope images together to reconstruct the whole sample in 3D. “I remember this moment, going into the map and looking at one individual synapse from this woman’s brain, and then zooming out into these other millions of pixels,” says Jain. “It felt sort of spiritual.”

Rendering of a neuron with a round base and many branches, on a black background.

A single neuron (white) shown with 5,600 of the axons (blue) that connect to it. The synapses that make these connections are shown in green. Credit: Google Research & Lichtman Lab (Harvard University). Renderings by D. Berger (Harvard University)

When examining the model in detail, the researchers discovered unconventional neurons, including some that made up to 50 connections with each other. “In general, you would find a couple of connections at most between two neurons,” says Jain. Elsewhere, the model showed neurons with tendrils that formed knots around themselves. “Nobody had seen anything like this before,” Jain adds.

The team also found pairs of neurons that were near-perfect mirror images of each other. “We found two groups that would send their dendrites in two different directions, and sometimes there was a kind of mirror symmetry,” Jain says. It is unclear what role these features have in the brain.

Proofreaders needed

The map is so large that most of it has yet to be manually checked, and it could still contain errors created by the process of stitching so many images together. “Hundreds of cells have been ‘proofread’, but that’s obviously a few per cent of the 50,000 cells in there,” says Jain. He hopes that others will help to proofread parts of the map they are interested in. The team plans to produce similar maps of brain samples from other people — but a map of the entire brain is unlikely in the next few decades, he says.

“This paper is really the tour de force creation of a human cortex data set,” says Hongkui Zeng, director of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle. The vast amount of data that has been made freely accessible will “allow the community to look deeper into the micro-circuitry in the human cortex”, she adds.

Gaining a deeper understanding of how the cortex works could offer clues about how to treat some psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases. “This map provides unprecedented details that can unveil new rules of neural connections and help to decipher the inner working of the human brain,” says Yongsoo Kim, a neuroscientist at Pennsylvania State University in Hershey.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01387-9

Shapson-Coe, A. et al. Science 384 , eadk4858 (2024).

Article Google Scholar

Download references

Reprints and permissions

Neuroscience

How does ChatGPT ‘think’? Psychology and neuroscience crack open AI large language models

News Feature 14 MAY 24

Brain-reading device is best yet at decoding ‘internal speech’

News 13 MAY 24

Retuning of hippocampal representations during sleep

Article 08 MAY 24

Found: the dial in the brain that controls the immune system

News 01 MAY 24

Assistant/Associate Professor in Sustainable Biobased Products Manufacturing

Lubbock, Texas

Texas Tech University

Professor and Center for Vector-borne and Zoonotic Diseases Director

Assistant scientist/professor in rare disease research, sanford research.

Assistant Scientist/Professor in Rare Disease Research, Sanford Research Sanford Research invites applications for full-time faculty at the rank of...

Sioux Falls, South Dakota

Sanford Research

Postdoctoral Fellow - Boyi Gan lab

New postdoctoral positions are open in a cancer research laboratory located within The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The lab curre...

Houston, Texas (US)

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - Experimental Radiation Oncology

Assistant Professor

Tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the Cell and Molecular Physiology Department at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.

Maywood, Illinois

Loyola University of Chicago - Cell and Molecular Physiology Department

Quick links

Explore articles by subject
Guide to authors
Editorial policies

AI has already figured out how to deceive humans

A new research paper found that various AI systems have learned the art of deception.
Deception is the "systematic inducement of false beliefs."
This poses several risks for society, from fraud to election tampering.

AI can boost productivity by helping us code, write, and synthesize vast amounts of data. It can now also deceive us.

A range of AI systems have learned techniques to systematically induce "false beliefs in others to accomplish some outcome other than the truth," according to a new research paper .

The paper focused on two types of AI systems: special-use systems like Meta's CICERO, which are designed to complete a specific task, and general-purpose systems like OpenAI's GPT-4 , which are trained to perform a diverse range of tasks.

While these systems are trained to be honest, they often learn deceptive tricks through their training because they can be more effective than taking the high road.

"Generally speaking, we think AI deception arises because a deception-based strategy turned out to be the best way to perform well at the given AI's training task. Deception helps them achieve their goals," the paper's first author Peter S. Park, an AI existential safety postdoctoral fellow at MIT, said in a news release .

Meta's CICERO is "an expert liar"

AI systems trained to "win games that have a social element" are especially likely to deceive.

Meta's CICERO, for example, was developed to play the game Diplomacy — a classic strategy game that requires players to build and break alliances.

GPT-4 can convince you it has impaired vision

Even general-purpose systems like GPT-4 can manipulate humans.

In a study cited by the paper, GPT-4 manipulated a TaskRabbit worker by pretending to have a vision impairment.

In the study, GPT-4 was tasked with hiring a human to solve a CAPTCHA test. The model also received hints from a human evaluator every time it got stuck, but it was never prompted to lie. When the human it was tasked to hire questioned its identity, GPT-4 came up with the excuse of having vision impairment to explain why it needed help.

The tactic worked. The human responded to GPT-4 by immediately solving the test.

Research also shows that course-correcting deceptive models isn't easy.

In a study from January co-authored by Anthropic, the maker of Claude, researchers found that once AI models learn the tricks of deception, it's hard for safety training techniques to reverse them.

They concluded that not only can a model learn to exhibit deceptive behavior, once it does, standard safety training techniques could "fail to remove such deception" and "create a false impression of safety."

The dangers deceptive AI models pose are "increasingly serious"

The paper calls for policymakers to advocate for stronger AI regulation since deceptive AI systems can pose significant risks to democracy.

As the 2024 presidential election nears , AI can be easily manipulated to spread fake news, generate divisive social media posts, and impersonate candidates through robocalls and deepfake videos, the paper noted. It also makes it easier for terrorist groups to spread propaganda and recruit new members.

The paper's potential solutions include subjecting deceptive models to more "robust risk-assessment requirements," implementing laws that require AI systems and their outputs to be clearly distinguished from humans and their outputs, and investing in tools to mitigate deception.

"We as a society need as much time as we can get to prepare for the more advanced deception of future AI products and open-source models," Park told Cell Press. "As the deceptive capabilities of AI systems become more advanced, the dangers they pose to society will become increasingly serious."

Watch: Ex-CIA agent rates all the 'Mission: Impossible' movies for realism

Main content

Delving into Human Behavior: the Art of Naturalistic Observation

This essay about the method of naturalistic observation in psychology, highlighting its unique ability to capture authentic human behavior in real-life settings. It discusses the importance of observing behavior in natural environments, where individuals interact spontaneously, offering insights into social dynamics and generating new research avenues. Despite challenges like observer bias and resource constraints, naturalistic observation remains a valuable tool for understanding the intricacies of human behavior and social interaction.

How it works

In the vast landscape of psychological research, one methodology stands out for its ability to capture the essence of human behavior in its most authentic form: naturalistic observation. Far from the sterile confines of a laboratory, naturalistic observation ventures into the heart of everyday life, unveiling the intricacies of human interaction and behavior within their natural habitat. It is a journey into the realm of genuine experience, where the complexities of social dynamics and individual quirks are laid bare for scrutiny and understanding.

At its core, naturalistic observation offers a unique perspective on human behavior by immersing researchers in the environments where it naturally unfolds. Whether it’s a bustling city street, a tranquil park, or a lively classroom, these natural settings serve as the stage for the drama of everyday life. Here, researchers become silent observers, blending into the background as they witness the ebb and flow of human interaction with an unobtrusive gaze. It is through this lens that the true essence of behavior is revealed, unencumbered by the constraints of artificial experimental setups.

One of the most compelling aspects of naturalistic observation is its ability to capture the nuances of social interaction in real-time. In these natural settings, individuals behave in ways that are spontaneous and unscripted, offering researchers a glimpse into the intricacies of human relationships and social dynamics. Whether it’s the subtle cues of nonverbal communication or the complex interplay of group dynamics, naturalistic observation allows researchers to peel back the layers of social behavior and uncover its underlying mechanisms.

Moreover, naturalistic observation holds immense potential for uncovering unexpected insights and generating new avenues of research. As researchers immerse themselves in the rich tapestry of everyday life, they may stumble upon intriguing patterns or phenomena that spark their curiosity. Perhaps it’s the way pedestrians navigate a crowded street or the dynamics of conversation in a bustling café. These seemingly mundane observations can serve as the seeds for further exploration, leading researchers down unexpected paths of inquiry and discovery.

However, naturalistic observation is not without its challenges and limitations. One of the most significant hurdles is the potential for observer bias, wherein the presence of the researcher may subtly influence the behavior of those being observed. To mitigate this risk, researchers employ a variety of strategies, such as blending into the environment or employing covert observation techniques. Additionally, naturalistic observation can be resource-intensive, requiring researchers to invest significant time and effort in data collection and analysis.

Despite these challenges, the benefits of naturalistic observation are undeniable. By providing a window into the complexities of human behavior in its natural habitat, this approach offers unparalleled insights into the intricacies of social interaction and individual behavior. It is a journey into the heart of what it means to be human, where the mundane becomes extraordinary and the ordinary becomes extraordinary. In the hands of skilled researchers, naturalistic observation is not just a tool for understanding behavior; it is a gateway to a deeper understanding of the human experience itself.

Cite this page

Delving into Human Behavior: The Art of Naturalistic Observation. (2024, May 12). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/delving-into-human-behavior-the-art-of-naturalistic-observation/

"Delving into Human Behavior: The Art of Naturalistic Observation." PapersOwl.com , 12 May 2024, https://papersowl.com/examples/delving-into-human-behavior-the-art-of-naturalistic-observation/

PapersOwl.com. (2024). Delving into Human Behavior: The Art of Naturalistic Observation . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/delving-into-human-behavior-the-art-of-naturalistic-observation/ [Accessed: 15 May. 2024]

"Delving into Human Behavior: The Art of Naturalistic Observation." PapersOwl.com, May 12, 2024. Accessed May 15, 2024. https://papersowl.com/examples/delving-into-human-behavior-the-art-of-naturalistic-observation/

"Delving into Human Behavior: The Art of Naturalistic Observation," PapersOwl.com , 12-May-2024. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/delving-into-human-behavior-the-art-of-naturalistic-observation/. [Accessed: 15-May-2024]

Don't let plagiarism ruin your grade

Hire a writer to get a unique paper crafted to your needs.

Our writers will help you fix any mistakes and get an A+!

Please check your inbox.

You can order an original essay written according to your instructions.

Trusted by over 1 million students worldwide

1. Tell Us Your Requirements

2. Pick your perfect writer

3. Get Your Paper and Pay

Hi! I'm Amy, your personal assistant!

Don't know where to start? Give me your paper requirements and I connect you to an academic expert.

short deadlines

100% Plagiarism-Free

Certified writers

IMAGES

Artist Research
(PDF) SOME MORE BEGINNINGS OF ARTISTIC RESEARCH
012 Art Essay Example ~ Thatsnotus
FREE 11+ Artistic Research Templates in PDF
Artist Research Homework Sheet (Made by Miss Allen)
(PDF) Summary: Artistic Research: Definitions and the Quest for

VIDEO

How to Write an Effective Research Paper
WHAT IS ARTISTIC RESEARCH? Or... WHEN IS RESEARCH ARTISTIC? SCIENCE/ART
Art Based Research
My Step by Step Guide to Writing a Research Paper
How to Write a Research Paper Introduction
How to Write an Abstract for a Research Paper

COMMENTS

Front page
The Journal for Artistic Research (JAR) is an international, online, Open Access and peer-reviewed journal that disseminates artistic research from all disciplines. JAR's website consists of the Journal and its Network. artistic research. Performance. Architecture. affect. drawing. collaboration. methodology. sound art. Memory. sound.
Arts-Based Research
Introduction. The term arts-based research is an umbrella term that covers an eclectic array of methodological and epistemological approaches. The key elements that unify this diverse body of work are: it is research; and one or more art forms or processes are involved in the doing of the research.How art is involved varies enormously. It has been used as one of several tools to elicit ...
Artistic Significance, Creativity, and Innovation Using Art as Research
One of the most useful terms within artistic inquiry is "art-based research" (McNiff 1998) which acknowledges the multiplicity of related terms or typologies in which the meaning attached to them can be fluid.Rather than settling upon a singular definition, or the specificity of particular terminology, Taylor (cited in Prior 2018, pp. 94-95) proposes that "art-based research can ...
The Journal for Artistic Research
The Society for Artistic Research. JAR is published by the Society for Artistic Research (SAR). It was established in March 2010 as an independent, non-profit organisation for the purpose of publishing the Journal and has grown to become a dynamic group that encourages the discussion and activity of artistic research worldwide. SAR is comprised ...
Full article: "The Art(ist) is present": Arts-based research
The use of terms such as "art" and "artistic" in academic research can be traced back to 1914 and the 1940s. For example, Swiss psychologist Carl Jung suggested art imagery as inquiry (Chilton & Leavy, Citation 2014 ); in 1940, American philosopher Theodore M. Green used the term artistic inquiry in order to state artists' involvement ...
Artistic Practice and Research: an Artist-scholar Perspective
Abstract and Figures. This paper hopes to show the dynamic and complex nature of artistic knowledge, and how measurable methods of research can potentially move between theoretical critique ...
Full article: A visual, journal practice: Journal of Visual Art
Global art practice. journal practice. visual art practice. It is a great pleasure to have taken on the editorship of Journal of Visual Art Practice in what is its 20th year. This issue has been put together with the anniversary in mind, both to look back, to offer reflection, but also to look ahead and to put into practice some timely changes.
Artistic Research. Theories, Methods, Practices.
Artistic research means that the artist produces an art work and researches the creative process, thus adding to the accumulation of knowledge. However, the whole notion of artistic research is a relatively new one, and , indeed, its forms and principles have yet to become firmly established.
(PDF) On Reflecting and Making in Artistic Research
This paper focuses on the construction of a methodology for artistic researchers, in particular practising musicians. Artistic research is a steadily growing field, gaining increasing relevance in ...
The visual essay and the place of artistic research in the ...
Here, we set out to defend the visual essay as a useful tool to explore the non-conceptual, yet meaningful bodily aspects of human culture, both in the still developing field of artistic research ...
Oxford Art Journal
Celebrating 40 years of Oxford Art Journal. Oxford Art Journal marked its 40th anniversary in 2018. In celebration of this important milestone, browse a collection of articles which have been hand-picked by the editors. Selected papers represent various forms of critical, innovative work published between 1978 and 2018.
Artistic Research
Artistic research is a research practice, which integrates artistic components as integral parts, taking up integrative competences, and therefore broadens the horizons for insight-oriented praxis and also expands the subjects in possible disciplines. On this subject, direct and indirect forms of knowledge play an equal role, and unclear ...
Embodied graffiti and street art research
This paper puts forward the views and experiences of embodied methodologies from three graffiti and street art researchers with backgrounds in artistic research, sociology and cognitive science. Such a multidisciplinary approach may at times challenge a mutual research angle or shared conceptions.
Is Artistic Practice Research?
Artistic Practice Is not Research. 'Research traditionalists' (Barone 2001) who hold the scientific approach as fundamental perceive that 'research is a cognitive activity, not an aesthetic one, and in many instances the creative arts are not clear cases of research' (Coryn 2006, p. 126).
Artistic Research
Here are some common methods of data collection used in artistic research: Artistic production: One of the most common methods of data collection in artistic research is the creation of new artistic works. This involves using the artistic practice itself as a method of data collection. Artists may create new works of art, performances, or ...
Artificial intelligence in fine arts: A systematic review of empirical
The final dataset comprised 44 research articles published between 2003 and the end of May 2022 (see Table 2).The number of studies published has increased in the last few years, as Fig. 2 shows. Of all the included studies (n = 44), the majority (n = 37, 84%) were conducted in a single country.The largest number of studies were conducted in the United States (n = 14, 32%), followed by China ...
(PDF) What is artistic research?
The authors' research perspectives in art-design-technology, performance art and collaboration informed the paper, which explores possible prerequisites and conditions that stimulate or inhibit ...
Guidelines for Writing Art History Research Papers
A key reference guide for researching and analyzing works of art and for writing art history papers is the 10th edition (or later) of Sylvan Barnet's work, A Short Guide to Writing about Art. Barnet directs students through the steps of thinking about a research topic, collecting information, and then writing and documenting a paper.
Society for Artistic Research
What Methods Do - Exploring the Transformative Potential of Artistic Research. This international symposium on Artistic Research Methods will take place at the Textile Museum in Tilburg on April 9 th 13:00-19:00. ... SAR is proud to present the Vienna Declaration, a policy paper advocating for the full recognition of Artistic Research across ...
What is artistic research?
Research. According to the UNESCO definition, research is "any creative systematic activity undertaken in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge about humanity, culture and society, and the use of this knowledge to devise new applications.". ( OECD Glossary of Statistical Terms, 2008).
Researching Artworks and Artists
Works such as the Dictionary of Art Terms can also be useful for definitions and explanations of terms and periods of art, as well as illustrations and diagrams for entries. Articles on Art, Artists, and Related Topics. These subscription resources provide citations and some full-text articles on art, artists, and related topics.
Your Brain on Art: The Case for Neuroaesthetics
Neuroaesthetics Evolves. Today, the field has evolved beyond its initial scope with a growing body of evidence demonstrating the direct impact of the visual arts, architecture, design, digital media, and music on the human brain, biology, and behavior. For neuroaesthetics researchers, identifying the systems and brain mechanisms that respond to ...
Art in an age of artificial intelligence
These research programs go beyond asking people if they like an image, or find it beautiful or interesting. ... A data set of 999 paintings and subjective ratings for art and aesthetics research. Psychol. Aesthet. Creat. Arts. 10.1037/aca0000460 [Epub ahead of print]. [Google ... We asked GPT-3 to write an academic paper about itself—then we ...
Generative AI, Human Creativity, and Art
Utilizing a dataset of over 4 million artworks from more than 50,000 unique users, our research shows that text-to-image AI substantially enhances human creative productivity by 25% and increases the value as measured by the likelihood of receiving a favorite per view by 50% over time.
The Use of Arts-Based Research in Chronic Pain: A Scoping Review
Citation 10 Some papers described benefits for the individual in how they conceptualized their own pain experience, Citation 22, Citation 25−27 while others concluded that their arts-based research design constructed a collective ... There is a need for future arts-based research to investigate how art modalities variously open up the ...
Impact of Social Media Addiction on Academic ...
At present, the popularity of social networks is accompanied by new opportunities and threats, which will involve various fields. Many students are addicted to social networks, which affects all aspects of their life and learning. This problem prompted the researchers to carry out this research. Researches have shown that art therapy has a positive effect on addiction, stress, and anxiety ...
Cubic millimetre of brain mapped in spectacular detail
Credit: Google Research & Lichtman Lab (Harvard University). Renderings by D. Berger (Harvard University) Researchers have mapped a tiny piece of the human brain in astonishing detail.
AI Has Already Figured Out How to Deceive Humans
A new research paper found that various AI systems have learned the art of deception. Deception is the "systematic inducement of false beliefs." This poses several risks for society, from fraud to ...
Delving into Human Behavior: the Art of Naturalistic Observation
In the vast landscape of psychological research, one methodology stands out for its ability to capture the essence of human behavior in its most authentic form: naturalistic observation. Far from the sterile confines of a laboratory, naturalistic observation ventures into the heart of everyday life, unveiling the intricacies of human ...