Dear Martin,
Thanks for this set of questions. As you so often do, you have identified key issues that “carve at the joint” of these questions.
It may be that I haven’t expressed myself clearly enough — as a result, I seem to contradict myself. I don’t think I do, and I must better express the differences between “practice-based research,” and “research-creation.”
Responding to your post is going to take a few days — I will work on this over the weekend and respond next week.
Let me offer a short response today. There are many legitimate ways to create new knowledge and insight. Not all kinds of knowledge are the same, and not all legitimate methods for creating knowledge and insight constitute research.
A few years back, I read Eric Siblin’s (2009) beautiful book on Bach’s cello suites and Pablo Casals’s life-long work of interpreting the cello suites with increasing depth and artistry. What Casals did with these works clearly created knowledge and insight, both his own, and some form of knowledge or insight on the part of those who were privileged to hear him play the work. But this knowledge was not the same kind of knowledge that would constitute research, despite the depth, value, and meaning of Casals’s achievement.
To offer another example, consider the work of the distinguished sociologist Richard Sennett who has written on craft (Sennett 2009, 2013). In earlier work, Sennett (1999, 2007) wrote highly influential works on key problems in contemporary society. One of his most interesting works was a novel — An Evening of Brahms — in which he put described the fictional life of a young cello prodigy (Sennett 1984). All of these works create knowledge and insight, but they do so in different ways. Sennett’s 1984 novel offers deep insight into the meaning of his later works on character, on capitalism, and on craft and craftsmanship. Reading these books sheds light on the novel even though he never discusses the novel in his later works of social science.
Many kinds of work generate knowledge and insight without being research of the kind we can describe as “systematic investigation that aims to produce generalizable knowledge.”
With respect to my comments on Picasso, I do not describe all artists as magicians, nor do I describe art as a form of magic. I describe Picasso as a magician. Picasso was an artist of talent and applied genius who honed his skills relentlessly during a long life of professional practice. He was also a man of deep, and sometimes contradictory beliefs, many of them superstitious. Picasso saw himself as a towering genius whose artistry could not be defined by skill or practice alone. I have only ever described one artist as a magician: Picasso is that one. In saying “Others seek, I find,” Picasso was saying that he could achieve what others could not. In his own view, this was due to an innate quality of his person. If you don’t like to think of Picasso as a magician or sorcerer — a brujo, to use a word he would have understood — then you need some word to distinguish what he was. Many artists are good and some even great. Picasso was beyond the ordinary definition of “greatness” for an artist. In my view, Picasso was one of the few artists who was as great as he believed himself to be. One cannot say the same about his character or qualities as a human being, but his art remains magnificent.
On several occasions over the years, I have heard people suggest that Picasso would have deserved a PhD in art for his work as a painter. If one can earn a PhD in art, the argument goes, then one of the greatest artists of the 20th century would surely have been able to earn a PhD in art. Since the PhD is a research degree, those who make this claim are making an argument for Picasso as a researcher doing “research-creation.” Picasso would not have made this claim, nor would he have wanted a PhD.
Picasso would have laughed at the idea of “research-creation.” He once said, “Academic training in beauty is a sham. We have been deceived, but so well deceived that we can scarcely get back even a shadow of the truth.” While Picasso was describing the system and methods of the old art academies, I imagine he would have been even more sharply critical of today’s university-based art schools. Of course, there is no way to know — he died in 1973, well before any university awarded the PhD degree in art.
Even so, I have heard people make the claim that Picasso’s artistic experimentation was a form of research. What makes the claim wrong, of course, is that Picasso undertook no “systematic investigation that aims to produce generalizable knowledge.” He was in many ways systematic in his artistic experimentation, but he had no desire to produce generalizable knowledge. Rather, he wanted to know something that he — and he alone — could instantiate in his work. One way to summarise Picasso's claim for his own unique status is, “Others seek. I find.”
Some people believe that one should earn a PhD for demonstrating mastery as an artist. Those who do would argue for Picasso as a “researcher-creator.”
I believe that there are many kinds of knowledge and insight. Not all involve research. Some are purely subjective, others interpretive, still others unfold at the boundary of a hermeneutical horizon where meanings change for each person who engages in the search for understanding. These kinds of knowledge and insight cannot be generalised in the same way that we seek to do when we engage in research.
For the other issues in your note, I will return next week.
Warm wishes,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Elsevier in Cooperation with Tongji University Press | Launching in 2015
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia
Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
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References
Sennett, Richard. 1984. An Evening of Brahms. New York: Knopf.
Sennett, Richard. 1999. The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. New York: W. W. Norton.
Sennett, Richard. 2007. The Culture of the New Capitalism. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.
Sennett, Richard. 2009. The Craftsman. London: Penguin.
Sennett, Richard. 2013. Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation. London: Penguin.
Siblin, Eric. 2009. The Cello Suites: J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece. New York: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press.
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Martin Salisbury wrote:
—snip—
I am somewhat perplexed by your comment that "David's post reflects my views", in response to David Durling's helpful forwarding of sections of the recent report of the Research Excellence Framework panel here in the UK. The sections of the report quoted give a clear indication of the well established presence and acceptance of practice based research in Art & Design (Unit 34 in the Research Excellence Framework- Art & Design: history, practice and theory).
On the face of it, this fact would seem not to reflect your views but rather to clearly contradict them as stated in your previous post which I must confess I saw as heralding the predictable onslaught of conservative dogma that usually follows when anyone mentions creative/ practice-led/ 'artistic' research on this list. Such views may be well received in this context as I suspect that most of those list members from the boundaries of design and the expressive arts have long since been driven away or are cowed into hiding by the attacks that resurface whenever this subject returns to the agenda.
I hope you will forgive me for asking a few questions in relation to your post of 4th March:
You say:
"Many “research-creation” projects lack a question. Pablo Picasso once said, “Others seek. I find.” He was a magician and an artist, not a researcher."
Is it the case that the emergence of new knowledge and insight can only begin with a question?
I am not aware that anyone is suggesting that Picasso was a researcher. The idea that great artists are or were ‘magicians’ whose mysterious processes and methods are conjured from thin air is a conveniently tenacious but tired, and misguided one. Nevertheless it is useful in highlighting the residual misunderstandings of ‘artistic research’.
"Most of what people do as “research-creation” has little impact"
I may be missing something but this comment doesn't seem on the face of it to be reflecting the views of the REF panel? Is it not the case that this sweeping, anecdotal generalisation could equally be applied to a great deal of research in general? Or do you have more tangible evidence support such an assertion in relation to "research-creation"? Having been the subject of an ‘impact case study’ myself in the recent Research Excellence Framework, I have looked a little at the concept of ‘impact’.
"What most folks seem to want is to represent that they are doing research by creating something — it doesn’t matter to them that no one uses it or builds on it."
Here we have what appears to be another generalised, unsubstantiated assertion. Do you have anything to back up your assertion as to what ‘most folks’ want? The Research Excellence Framework panel would appear to have arrived at a different conclusion to the issue of what most folks want. (I must confess to feeling slightly insulted by this particular comment!).
And finally-
"Research shows us the “how” of how to do it."
Some research does, yes. But perhaps this is less relevant in artistic research? It aims to deliver knew knowledge and insight in ways that may be less 'scientific' but no less important.
I would be most grateful for any clarification/ explanation of these apparent contradictions or of how the REF panel's findings reflect your views.
—snip—
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