Hello list,

May I add my little (french) voice ?

For me (former unsecure phd candidate, artist, and now assistant professor)
the main question is 'Why do they want to make or get a pdh' ?

1/ For the diplom, to get recognition ? (from who ?)
(in France, nobodies thinks that good artists may have a phd and teach  
at university. only bad ones !)
To get a better job ?  ... is it the case abroad ?
Do you have any survey on artists teaching in universities with a phd  
or another one on all these artists-phd without a position 'precarious  
intellectuals' ?
If they want to get a job at the university afterwards, does politic  
(who to be supervised by) play an important role ? (main role in France)

2 / to access wonderfull devices ? to get a grant etc...
to meet different types of people etc.

3/ to understand better their own practice ?
Main point for me because the process of doing a phd, the effort of  
reading, analysing, summarezing, writing etc. will change the  
candidate a lot, and the research itself will be transformed. which is  
great !
Furthermore people can discover while doing the phd that it is really  
fascinating, captivating.

To break the biais on what an academic research (in the art field) is  
(or is not) is the first major step.

Anne-Sarah Le Meur
Université Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne
htp://aslemeur.free.fr

> dear friends,
>
> over the last weeks i've had two requests for advice from artists  
> who are working with digital technologies and who feel that  
> career-wise it might be good to do a PhD, even though they are both  
> not the "i want to sit down, study a theoretical topic related to my  
> practice, and work on a philological book for 3 years" types.
>
> rather, they are artist-engineers who build things and invent new  
> usages of old and new technologies, their's is an artistic practice  
> that is closely related to the construction and moulding of ideas in  
> technical hardware.
>
> what i am wondering is whether for artists like this, rather than  
> going into heady art&research PhD programs, it would not be better  
> to try and find a *technical* department that understands the  
> cultural significance of their work. if they have to submit a  
> phd-thesis about their work as techno-cultural-artistic devices,  
> incl. technical and artistic explanations and contextualisation,  
> that might be more realistic - and possibly more appropriate - to  
> achieve?
>
> do people have experiences with such "engineering PhDs for artists"?  
> and can you name schools that are open to such research, possibly in  
> cooperation with a partner art school?
>
> best regards from a steaming hot berlin,
>
> -a