ON SCIENTIFIC QUALITIES OF ARTISTIC RESEARCH: AN APPRAISAL WITH SELECTED EXAMPLES

Abstract

The subject matter of this paper is artistic research. The number of international publications on artistic research has soared in especially last few years. The related literature seems to have focused on in what ways artistic research could collide with scientific approaches and methods. In this context, the main purpose of our study is to contribute ongoing discussion by determining definitions and criteria to assess artistic research in respect to scientific sufficiency. To reach this aim; firstly, definitions, methodological approaches, and discussions as to what the science is reviewed, and the necessity of avoiding restrictive definitions of science in favor of a flexible approach suitable for all categories of scientific inquiry is defended. In doing so, a discussion is also made on the basic criteria any research should meet for being qualified scientific research. And then, the literature on artistic research is dealt with to review definitions and typologies. In this section a new typology for artistic research is proposed. Thanks to the related literature, for any artistic research to be eligible for scientific research some basic qualities are assumed necessary, such as subject/problematic presentation, presentation of contribution to existing knowledge/literature, findings, and conclusion presentation. However, it is also suggested that artistic research may differ from established scientific research in terms of problematic presented, methods employed, and formal structure of the text. Afterwards, with the method of purposive sampling we analyzed three publications that we think well exemplify artistic research “in narrow sense” which is in the main of the art institutions of higher education. A qualitative content analysis is used to see if case studies have basic information categories of typical scientific research, and if they do so in what ways they do it. It is concluded that case studies meet the criteria of basic scientific information; yet, they have diverging ways in comparison to typical examples of scientific research in respect to method presentation, findings presentation, layouts, and language.