foundationsknowledge gained from research and/or practical experience, which is directed
to producing new materials, products or devices, to installing new processes,
systems and services, or to improving substantially those already produced
or installed. R&d covers both formal R&d in R&d units and informal or
occasional R&d in other units.
(oeCd 2002: 30)maybe the wording of these definitions is not as clear as one might wish,^11 but that
is not the issue here – and the Manual actually uses 15 pages to discuss the distinctions
between the three activities in detail, admitting that ‘Breakdown by type ... is usually
more easily applied to R&d in the natural sciences and engineering (nse) than in the
social sciences and humanities (ssh)’ (oeCd 2002: 77), plus no less than 20 pages
to discuss borderline cases. What is important, however, is that even the oeCd is
not caught up in the false view of research that it is just one thing, with just one aim,
method, etc. or maybe one should not say ‘even the oeCd’, but rather suggest that
once you are forced to take a bottom- up approach, looking at what is actually going
on out there where people do research (so that you – as the case is here – can get it
into your statistics), you have to realise the plurality of the field, for instance in such
a way that the simple statement about experimental development that it is ‘the use of
this stock of knowledge to devise new applications’ grows to several lines as we just saw
above.
it should not be hard to make different kinds of artistic research find their
places amongst the three categories (with subcategories), at least if we stretch the
formulations a bit in the way the Frascati authors have done themselves with the ones
for ‘experimental development’. Quite a few artistic research projects are examples of
development (if not necessarily experimental development) in the sense that they use
already existing knowledge to devise ‘new applications’ in the form of works of art (to
a large extent like the one by Trond lossius), while others are a kind of basic research,
at least in the sense that they are not intended to solve any practical problems, at least
not right away – like the one by Jo- anne duggan, although she does also formulate an
objective:
Through examining these museums with their multiple histories and contents
i hope to argue for a slower, more considered engagement with art, that
encourages the viewer to experience the sensual as well as the intellectual
aspects that this opulent environment offers.
(duggan 2003: viii)artistic research, however, is not mentioned in the Frascati Manual. or, to be precise,
it is mentioned, but at one place only, and a rather strange place at that, namely as an
insertion, looking like an afterthought, in a passage in Table 3.2. ‘Fields of science and
technology’ as part of the enumeration of the humanities (after history and linguistics
with subcategories):
other humanities [philosophy (including the history of science and technology),
arts, history of art, art criticism, painting, sculpture, musicology, dramatic art