Artistic Research - Friend or Foe?
A question that has become increasingly urgent in recent years, but that few have dared to even ask, let alone answer, for fear of being exposed as deplorably ignorant ruffians with no claims to a place in civilised society, concerns that elusive branch on the fruit laden tree of knowledge known as artistic research. What actually is artistic research? What is it good for? Does it involve excruciatingly painful experiments with actual artists being used as guinea pigs? Or is it in fact something altogether more sinister? Should we be scared of it? What precautions would be well advised, in order to avoid actual physical harm? The following article will endeavour to shed some degree of light, albeit faint and flickering, on the questions outlined above. First of all, let us turn our attention to one of the more common and well known forms of normal, unartistic, research, namely that of measuring . “How long is a piece of string?” is a good example of a fundamental question that ha...
