foundationsconstrued in a particular way. and if one’s understanding of these concepts depends
upon construing existing terms – such as ‘research’ – in particular and perhaps novel
ways, then foundational inquiry will help to make explicit the understanding of these
terms. on the other hand, one might think that this new field of research in the arts
produces completely new outcomes and provides a new context for both study and
practice. if arts research is something completely novel, then there will need to be
new structures within which the professional practice of arts research can operate and
within which individuals can be trained and find careers.
a potential benefit of arts-based research is that it might reveal new ways of
researching and provide insights and understandings beyond the arts themselves. This
would occur if arts-based research offered something new to the academy in terms of
its methods and outcomes rather than simply its interest in art. The ‘something new’
that it might offer is a change to the dominant knowledge model. The academy has
been dominated until very recent times by a largely scientific concept of knowledge
building. This kind of knowledge is somewhat impersonal and does not reflect the
subjective interest of any one individual; it is supposed to tell us something objective
about the world and that is why it is contrasted to ‘opinion’. if the term knowledge
can be applied to the arts, then it seems unlikely that knowledge will be of this kind.
artistic knowledge seems to have more potential in relation to the human individual,
their experience, their emotions and their embodied relationship with the world rather
than something as abstract as the scientific concept of knowledge.
a further aspect that a foundational inquiry can clarify is whether it is significant that
arts-based research generates artefacts such as musical compositions, performances,
paintings, etc. Clearly this is a very striking difference of output compared to research in
other subjects. indeed, most universities have had to modify their regulations regarding
what kind of submission doctoral candidates can make in order to accommodate this
difference. Traditionally the expectation has been for an extensive written report (a
thesis) that contains critical analysis and makes an explicit claim regarding the original
contribution that the study makes to the field. although in some subjects it may be
the case that experiments have been undertaken, it is the critical reflection upon,
and analysis of, the significance of these experiments and their results that forms the
content of the doctoral submission. however, the newly incorporated arts faculties
have often demanded that they be allowed to additionally or alternatively submit non-
textual material in the form of artefacts and artistic productions.
some artistic researchers claim that the artefacts themselves embody knowledge or
in some way play an instrumental role in the research or its communication, and that is
why they must be allowed as part of the submission. This claim is apparently reinforced
at institutions in which the size of the textual document is reduced in proportion to the
scale of the artefact-based submission thereby implying that one substitutes the other.
The potential for artefacts to embody or communicate knowledge is a bold claim that
should have impact far beyond the arts. This will be achieved when the nature of this
embodied knowledge is clarified and when there is an agreement about its relationship
to concepts such as skill, know-how and experience.