the development of software implementations.

Application-specific algorithms and

computer programs, developed for an innovative result, represent a significant tool
for the implementation and development of new content. The spectrum begins with
programs for editing, manipulation and content transformation (audio, video...). This
can mean pure sonic/visual manipulation, but also the complete reinterpretation
and rearrangement of data under data science. Extraction of features, creation
of VR interactions or production of artificial intelligence are just a few examples
among many. At this point, it should be stressed that it is precisely here that the
dissemination, recycling and transfer of research results is a very obvious parallel
to classical scientific research.
The third category, “research for art”, is, however, less obvious and is therefore
particularly controversial. Frayling attempts to outline it as follows:

Research where the end product is an artifact - where the thinking is, so to speak,
embodied in the artifact, where the goal is not primarily communicable knowledge
in the sense of verbal communication, but in the sense of visual or iconic or
imagistic communication.147

This category is the most difficult to grasp – but also a genuine opportunity to
gain knowledge through art. In this category, knowledge can be conveyed which
is less clearly verbalizable or materially definable. This form of research is closely
linked to the question of the knowledge to be generated or the knowledge type (as
described in Chapter 3.1.2).

Before attempting to compare this categorization with my own artistic practice, I

would like to discuss the continuation of this division by Henk Borgdorff. In his
essay The Debate on "Research in the Arts" 148 , Borgdorff continues Frayling's
thoughts and clarifies them further.
Borgdorff's definition of “research in the arts” is virtually congruent with Frayling's
definition of “research into art”, describing analogously the process of theoretically
analysing an artistic practice from a distance, to draw robust conclusions. In
this case, there is an explicit distance between the object to be investigated and
the subject under investigation. This approach can be found, for example, in the
disciplines of musicology, literary and theatre studies.
"Research for the arts" follows Frayling's term “research through art” in his
classification, although Borgdorff's formulation seems more intuitive to me. In ad-
dition to the above examples, Borgdorff cites for example the development of
extended techniques for an electronically modified cello. This category, which he
also calls “instrumental perspective”, thus describes a variant of research that
generates tools and knowledge necessary in the creative process or the resulting
product.
147 Frayling, Christopher: ‘Research in Art and Design’,
in: Royal College of Art Research Papers 1 / 4 (1993), p.5.
148 Borgdorff, Henk: ‘The Debate on Research in the Arts’, 2006.
online: https://konst.gu.se/digitalAssets/1322/1322713_the_debate_on_research_in_the_arts.pdf
(Retrieved: 20.1.2020)

64
 With “research in the arts”, Borgdorff continues the category “research for art”,
choosing a more intuitively fitting term here as well. Donald Schön speaks of
“reflection in action” 149 in this context, and Borgdorff continues the concept as
“immanent” and as a “performative perspective”. Still significant is the lack of
separation between object and subject – and thus the lack of distance between the
researcher and the observed object. According to Frayling, there is no fundamental
distinction here between theory and practice in art. Borgdorff summarizes this
pursuit in the context of research in the arts as follows:

Research in the arts hence seeks to articulate some of this embodied

knowledge throughout the creative process and in the art object.150

3.1.4 Production Aesthetics

In the artistic research context, not only is the form of the knowledge produced
sometimes defined differently to the traditional notion of science but the object of
observation also varies to some extent: not only the completed work of art but also
the path leading to it, with its various facets and implications, can be regarded
as an essential component and not just as an accessory or aid. In a particularly
exploratory, experimental and intuitive approach, the process can be a relevant
form of expression and a carrier of knowledge.
The work is at the centre of artistic production in classical aesthetic discourse.
This is the actual result, the actual object of the creative process. Although the
working process may involve a research process, or research may be carried out
on the work afterwards, in this traditional view, the focus is primarily on the created
work. Dieter Mersch presents the work aesthetic as follows:

So it also won't be possible to “find out” or show something through a work, but
instead, to make a statement or show something that is self-contained and can
stand for itself.151

In the course of the twentieth century, the pure work aesthetic has been
increasingly questioned or successively expanded. Dieter Mersch describes
the change from a work aesthetic via an aesthetic of reception to production

149 Schön, Donald: The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action.
New York: Basic Books, 1982, pp.49ff.
150 Borgdorff, Henk: ‘The Debate on Research in the Arts’, 2006.
online: https://konst.gu.se/digitalAssets/1322/1322713_the_debate_on_research_in_the_arts.pdf.
(Retrieved: 20.1.2020), p.7.
151 “Es geht also auch nicht, durch ein Werk etwas „herauszufinden“ oder vorzuführen, sondern eine Aussage
zu machen oder etwas zu zeigen, das in sich abgeschlossen ist und für sich selbst stehen kann.”
Mersch, Dieter: ‘Rezeptionsästhetik/Produktionsästhetik/Ereignisästhetik’, in: Künstlerische Forschung.
Ein Handbuch, [‘Aesthetics of Reception/Production Aesthetics/Event Aesthetics’, in: Artistic Research. A Manual],
Jens Badura; Selma Dubach; Anke Haarmann; Dieter Mersch; Anton Rey; Christoph Schenker and
Germán Toro Pérez, Zürich, Berlin: Diaphanes, 2015, p.49.

65
aesthetic (and event aesthetics).152 In reception aesthetics, the viewer's perception
and relationship to the work of art are now incorporated into theoretical reflection,
becoming an essential component of artistic creation. Production aesthetics goes
one step further, including the production process of an artwork as an essential
(exploratory) component:

Production aesthetics describes and reflects ... the causes, rules and functions of
human production, within a field of reference that may encompass the art product
..., its (pluri)media forms of representation and the elimination of boundaries ... in
the fields of technology, crafts and services. Since antiquity, successful production
has resulted as a complex process, out of the interaction between the factors of
knowledge and craftsmanship, each of which has to be determined, as well as
their communicative initiation of action under the auspices of an active, author-
emphasised effect.153

This involves not only the purely technical part of the creation process but in fact
a very multilayered and more complex, searching activity; meaning, above all, that
also the process is planned and considered as a tool and expression form, not
merely as a tool to be used on the pathway to the end result.
This conversion is to be found within the context of a change in practice in the
humanities and social sciences, in which, according to Henk Borgdorff, comparable
developments can be observed:

Occasionally it even represents a shift from text-centred to performance-centred

research, whereby the practices and products themselves become material:
symbolic forms of expression, as opposed to the numerical and verbal forms used
by quantitative and qualitative research. Artistic research fits into this frame of
reference too, since artistic practices form the core of research in a methodological
sense and are also part of the material result of research.154

152 Mersch, Dieter: ‘Rezeptionsästhetik/Produktionsästhetik/Ereignisästhetik’, in: Künstlerische Forschung.

Ein Handbuch [‘Aesthetics of Reception/Production Aesthetics/Event Aesthetics’, in: Artistic Research. A Manual ],
Jens Badura; Selma Dubach; Anke Haarmann; Dieter Mersch; Anton Rey; Christoph Schenker and
Germán Toro Pérez, Zürich, Berlin: Diaphanes, 2015, pp.49-57.
153 “Produktionsästhetik beschreibt und reflektiert […] die Ursachen, Regeln und Funktionen menschlicher
Herstellungen in einem Bezugsfeld, das das Kunstprodukt […], seine (pluri)medialen Darstellungsformen und
Entgrenzungen […] in den Bereichen von Technik, Handwerk und Dienstleistung umfassen kann. Die gelungene
Produktion resultiert dabei seit der Antike als ein komplexer Prozess aus dem Zusammenwirken der jeweils zu
bestimmenden Faktoren von Wissen und Kunstfertigkeit sowie deren kommunikativer Handlungseinlassung im
Zeichen eines aktiven, autorbetonten Wirkens.”
Semsch, Klaus: ‘Produktionsästhetik’, in:Historisches Wörterbuch der Rhetorik, [ ‘Aesthetics of Production’,
in:Historical Dictionary of Rhetoric], Gert Ueding, Nr. 7, Tübingen: de Gruyter Mouton, 2007, pp.140–154.
154 “Mitunter repräsentiert sie sogar einen Wechsel von text- zu Performanz-zentrierter Forschung, wodurch die
Praktiken und Produkte selbst die materiellen-symbolischen Ausdrucksformen werden, im Gegensatz zu den von
der quantitativen und qualitativen Forschung benutzten numerischen und verbalen Formen. Auch künstlerische
Forschung passt in dieses Bezugssystem, da künstlerische Praktiken den Kern der Forschung im methodologischen
Sinne bilden und außerdem Teil des materiellen Ergebnisses der Forschung sind.”
Borgdorff, Henk: ‘Forschungstypen im Vergleich’, in: Künstlerische Forschung. Ein Handbuch
[‘Types of research in comparison’, in:Artistic research. A Manual], Jens Badura; Selma Dubach; Anke Haarmann;
Dieter Mersch; Anton Rey; Christoph Schenker and Germán Toro Pérez, Zürich, Berlin: Diaphanes, 2015, p.72

66