Journal of Artistic Research (from now on referred to as JAR) is an international online, open access, and peer-reviewed journal encouraging scholars from different languages and specialties to carry out practical exploration and academic discussion around "Artistic Research." The publication launched ten years ago, published a review on October 27, 2020.
The object of the book review is Manifesto of Artistic Research, A Defense Against Its Advocates. This book discusses what artistic research is or can be and how it can be presented, promoted, and implemented. Branka Zgonjanin, the author of the book review, combed the actual contents of the declaration and affirmed some of the conceptual work done by the statement (which will be described in more detail later in this article). However, several issues were also pointed out, such as the repeated emphasis in the declaration on breaking the rules of academic terminology, which sometimes provided the possibility of providing a common language for discussion. Finally, Branka Zgonjanin points out that the key to Artistic Research is how we can more thoroughly open up a dialogue between art and academia, practice and theory.
Most of the time, "Artistic Research" is translated as "art research" in Chinese, such as in The Thinker Weekly 2020 issue 25, "can you correctly misunderstand me?" It is mentioned in the reflection on "Research curatorial" that "Art Research" (artistic research) regards creative action and the production of works of art as an indispensable part of the research process and as a way of presenting research results and knowledge. But JAR published an article called What is artistic research in response to this question (Julian Klein,2017). Klein points out that if art is a perceptual model, then artistic research must also be a model of the process. There is no clear distinction between the study of "science" and the study of "art." In other words, art is more similar to the study method than the subject.
The core question of "artistic research" is when and at what stage the study is regarded as art. Klein gives some examples, such as research methods (such as search, archiving, collection, interpretation, modeling, and testing), basic motivation, inspiration, reflection, related discussion, the formulation, concept, and composition of research issues, the implementation of research processes, the publication, and evaluation of research results, which can all be included in the scope of thinking of using artistic methods to do research.
According to the definition of UNESCO, Klein points out that research is "any systematic creative activity to increase the stock of knowledge, including human, cultural and social knowledge, and to use it to design new applications" (OECD Glossary of Statistical Terms, 2008), thereby emphasizing that "research" refers to an unknown state and a desire for knowledge, rather than a term that belongs solely to scientists. The object and content of artistic research include artistic action, the production of artistic works, research results, and the presentation of knowledge.
Manifesto of Artistic Research: A Defense Against Its Advocates, which plays a programmatic role in art research, points out some critical problems in using artistic methods to research and clarifies some common misunderstandings. Artistic research mustn't be the research of art. Research is a form of discovery, and there are always accidental factors. Therefore, chaos and complexity are allowed to exist in the use of art for research. The potential to do research artistically is to allow uncertainty to exist while looking for clarity.
There is a relationship between artistic research and artistic practice, but not the same relationship. The manifesto describes this as a "relative" relationship, and the connection between the two lies in "aesthetics" rather than "art." Using artistic methods to do research is based on aesthetics ("Artistic research presupposes an aesthetic"). "aesthetic" (Aesthetics) legislates for perception, that is, Kant's aesthetic judgments (Manifesto, P61), which is about perception, feeling and perceived behavior, as well as the knowledge of these three.
Klein ends What is artistic research with an emphasis on "A felt knowledge" as the knowledge one strives to acquire. Perceptible knowledge is characterized by personification, emphasizing a perception that, although it can not be expressed in words, affects how we feel and behave. As a result, many related projects explore how to translate science into visual images or other perceptions, freeing established concepts from fixed experiences. The action and process of this liberation is the knowledge production of artistic research.
(The 15th issue of JAR is devoted to exploring the medium and non-language expression of art research)
About the knowledge production of "doing research with the method of art": if the research with the art method still only revolves around the artistic practice to produce knowledge, it also obscures its characteristics. Because artistic research can study artistic activities or can not, the key is to use artistic methods to explore nature, society, objectivity, and so on.
Science and art are both the nature of creative cognitive activities. In the beginning, the manifesto points out that one of the four misunderstandings about artistic research is to label "art" as a label and make it a secondary attribute of technology, such as adding legitimacy to works of art or becoming data visualization. The practical experience of "doing research with artistic methods" includes not only the feelings of researchers but also the ability of practical matter itself and how point conveys experience. The key is to participate in research and practice artistic thinking.
Artistic research pays attention to applicability and foundation and emphasizes the great abyss between theory and practice. Manifesto points out some difficulties and problems in using artistic methods to do research. For example, it is noted that fashionable theories can not be used as the shelter of the article, and it is pointed out that the qualitative and quantitative research of scientific terms and social sciences without thinking is an attempt to objective the fuzziness of artistic research through a large number of data. But theory and practice are indispensable. The rough theory hinders the development of artistic research. In theory, the manifesto believes that it is crucial to understand the aesthetic context behind citation. There is no single practice or theory. Both are embedded in context and closely related to reality, which requires reflection and reflexivity.
The most significant characteristic of artistic research is interdisciplinary. Interdisciplinary means that what Art Studies focuses on and tries to do is how to combine science, aesthetics, politics, and social activities. Interdisciplinary research is not only to reveal the research object from multiple angles but to make the fusion of art through different forms of data display, such as sound and sound and image generation process, thus resulting in a new epistemology and then creating a new aesthetic dimension.
At present, JAR has published 20 issues of publications on topics such as digital technology, animal research, sensory experience, and art curators. In addition, as an online platform, JAR has an extensive collection of online exhibition-related materials.
Other related resources
For an article on how technology and art interact and build social relations, see the latest talk at MIT. In the 1950s, during the Cold War, the boundary between technology and art began to be broken. In Making Art Work, W.Patrick McCray shows how cold war artists actively worked with engineers and scientists to explore new technologies and create visually and audiologically convincing multimedia works. The production of works of art reveals how artists and technicians continue to build new communities in which they use their imagination, display creative expertise, and pursue business innovation.
An online journal Art & Research
An art research platform launched by the University of Gothenburg PARSE .
2.1.1 Creations in the Library of History of Science, Innovations You can find helpful resources in Discoveries. In particular, the Art and Science OB and Science and Contemporary Art OB units.
