4.1.2: “Arts-Based Research"

This dissertation and the platform upon which it is published were produced as parts of a mixture of arts-based and design-based methods. I use these terms specifically to point to trends in separate, but intertwined, discourses in arts production and the digital humanities (DH). More broadly this whole project is concieved as a practice-based research project, which refers to the use of both of these knowledge forms.¹ This section outlines what I mean by arts-based research, with some discussion about how design-based research overlaps with these ideas. I will be avoiding some of the arguments made by critical DH, which can be found in the next chapter (5.x.x).

As I was working on this dissertation and the art projects described in this chapter, I found myself thinking most of Holly Willis’ notion of the “scholar/practitioner”, a set of creative professionals “who. through their practice, are able to contribute new concepts, methods and models in order to participate in the production of original knoweldge.”² Willis, whose work at USC and interest in avant-garde and experimental media, witnessed and documented a shift in cinematic practice as it happened in the Los Angeles area. Her book, Fast Forward: The Future(s) of the Cinematic Arts is a taster course in the varied practices which emerged in the city in the late aughts and early teens, and the scholar/practitioner—an interdisciplinary, communal producer of knowledge between new technologies and existing epistemic structures—was a canny means to describe what she witnessed.

I was, and still am, drawn to Willis’ term because it helps do away with some of the print biases in the academy, as fields interested in creative forms have long articulated the theory building in some aesthetic texts, objects, and ideas. These admissions are generally at odds with the kinds of academic work upon which discourses and careers are forwarded. In DH, the past two decades have been replete with apologist essays decrying the traditional tenure process, articulating a similar goal: the production of digital tools, archives, databases, and code are a kind of theory building, and a kind of critical intervention into the established discourse.³ These critiques are further entangled and empowered by many DH scholars throughout its big tent,⁴ arguing against traditional publishing standards, noting how the unethical and exploitational practices of online publishing houses limit audiences and potential scholarly impact.⁵ The notion of design-based research comes out of these discussions precisely because they 1) speak to how differing kinds of academic labor extend and deepen scholarship in the humanities and elsewhere,⁶ and 2) they help humanists imagine different ways of engaging with their research.⁷

Encased in Willis’ notion of the artist-practitioner, and the DH’s design-based turn, however are issues of privilege. Fast Forward was written looking at a specific geographical and historical moment (Los Angeles around 2010), one that was possible only because of the deep economic connections of the region to established media production and big tech. Many of the case studies which populate the monograph were produced as part of massive capital projects, be they the production of film or television, the development of digital art, or the creation of novel techniques to produce visual material. Omitted in her notion of theorist/practitioner is an idea that this is only seemingly done at with the help of substantial financial investment, access to the newest technological doodads, or connections to schools which are willing to invest in these media forms.

Likewise, recent scholarship in DH has challenged issues of scale, access, and computing power for the field. Rather than imagining dream supercomputers and panoptic visual interfaces of cultural analyitics,⁸ the minimal computing turn “is less a singular methodology — or even a coherent set of methodologies — than it is a mode of thinking about digital humanities praxis that resists the idea that ‘innovation’ is defined by newness, scale, or scope. Broadly speaking, minimal computing connotes digital humanities work undertaken in the context of some set of constraints. This could include lack of access to hardware or software, network capacity, technical education, or even a reliable power grid.”⁹ Borrowing from the minimal computing turn, my interest in arts-based research is to articulate a specific mode by which I work, one which is benefitted by my inclusion in a R1 institution,¹⁰ but in which I can at best be considered an emerging artist or scholar, whose value is tenuous at best in the broader discourses in which I work. If Willis’ scholar/practitioner model is to be a tenable model, then it has to be able to exist outside the contexts of her narrow series of case studies.

In this vein, I want to borrow from Robin Nelson’s articulation of arts-based research, which he dubs “practice as research”. A scholar and performer located in the UK, Nelson’s approach gives a good conceptual and practical framework for arts-based research approaches, arguing for artists to think in constricted terms, maintain notes as to their creative activity, and speak specifically to academic discourses.¹¹ This chapter borrows in part from this process, drawing on old documents, using these materials to both look backwards and forwards, and having investments in fields separate from those particularly invested in aesthetics. My reticence in following Nelson too far, however, is in the notion that these practices will somehow improve arts practices, and improve knowledge making. A theme that this chapter wrestles with at length (4.1.4; 4.5.1; 4.5.2), I am unconvinced as to the benefits of the arts if they are ingested directly into the hierarchical knowledge systems: better arguments, truer claims, more important artworks, establish the arts as a superior research process to others.¹²

My hope then, with this chapter, is to provide a needle to subtly deflate these claims.¹³ The kind of iterative, growing practice relates quite closely to Nelson’s notion of praxis—“an iterative process of ‘ doing-reflecting-reading-articulating-doing’”¹⁴—but it is charged with a shrugging nonchalance. I do arts-based research because it is a way for me to better understand my scholarly material, because it is a way for me to game academic systems to continue thinking of the materials in which I am invested, because it helps me connect disparate ideas without the necessity of a lit review. I want the artist/scholars that follow me to be free to adopt these modes without the false pretenses of a superior epistemics.