Research and development are processes that search for new knowledge, and, according to OECD Frascati Manual, R&D activities must be “novel, creative, uncertain, systematic, transferable and/or reproducible” (OECD 2015, 28). These criteria are to ensure that R&D efforts can lead to new insights and that the process of exploration is presented in such a way that it can be reproduced and understood by others.

According to H.A. Borgdorff “research takes place when a person intends to carry out an original study to enhance knowledge and understanding. It begins with questions or issues that are relevant in the research context, and it employs methods that are appropriate to the research and which ensure the validity and reliability of the research findings. An additional requirement is that the research process and findings be documented and disseminated in appropriate ways”(Borgdorff 2012, 54).

These criteria are the results of a Western epistemological tradition that has evolved for hundreds of years and that is based on the belief that new knowledge can be created by following methods that are ‘appropriate and systematic‘ according to this tradition.

Powered by the work of organizations like ELIA, artistic research is now gaining recognition in Europe as knowledge-producing (ELIA, ‘Artistic Research’ 2020). As works of art are per definition original and not reproductions, making the insights gained through the artistic research process transferrable becomes especially important.

Borgdorff describes the process of artistic research as focusing more on questioning and processing than on final results:

“Artistic research seeks not so much to make explicit the knowledge that art is said to produce, but rather to provide a specific articulation of the pre-reflective, non-conceptual content of the art. It thereby invites unfinished thinking. Hence, it is not formal knowledge that is the subject matter of artistic research, but thinking in, through, and with art” (Borgdorff 2012, 143).

This departure from a focus on results to a focus on method is particularly visible in the Norwegian Ministry of Higher Education’s description of the requirements for doctoral work in artistic research:

"The artistic practice is at the core of the doctoral result. But the artistic practice is to be accompanied by an explicit reflection in such a way that when the project is presented, it is possible for others to engage with working methods and insights generated by the research." (Norwegian Ministry of Higher Education 2018)

This exposition consists of material developed to be in accordance with these criteria for a doctorate in Artistic Research and is therefore shaped to meet the demands of the Western tradition. But as this research project discusses objectification and how language and knowledge contain the dominance of the defining subjects, it is also important for me to note that the Western, Platonic epistemological tradition is considered to be dominating and silencing of other knowledge traditions (Yadav 2018).

Read more about this aspect of epistemology in the text “Unwriting objectification” in the Library.

Identifying the appropriate

The definition of artistic research creates a large degree of freedom for the artistic researcher who doesn’t have to follow any strict qualitative or quantitative methods (Hannula, Suoranta, and Vadén 2014). However, this freedom introduces a new challenge. The artistic researcher cannot legitimize their processes by using pre-existing and scientifically recognized methodology. Instead, the artistic researcher needs to identify and describe their unique methodology and to be able to create a “specific articulation of the pre-reflective, non-conceptual content of the art”, to repeat Borgdorff’s description.

Michael A. R. Biggs adds that experientially-led research questions are context-dependent, which affects both the framing of such questions and the methods for their investigation: ”It is concluded that the appropriateness of methods is to be judged in terms of satisfying the audience for whom the questions have value” (Biggs 2004, 6).

As an artistic researcher, I find this methodological challenge  multi-faceted. I need to identify my own, unique methods in the context of this project, to evaluate what is appropriate to include in this exposition, and finally to find a way of communicating the outcome of this project that I think will give the most relevant insights.

Although daunting at first, this challenge to reflect on my methods has proved very rewarding, changing and maturing my view on who I am as an artist. It has also given me a deeper understanding of how my background and cultural context shape the way I understand and process. I therefore present my exploration of methods as a personal journey.

Read more about my background and positioning in the text “My interactive journey” in the Office.

Judging one’s soul

It has been surprisingly challenging to have to identify and understand 'what it is that I do when I do what I do', as my colleague Frederick Howard phrased it once. In order to answer this question, I had to turn my gaze inwards to study where my creativity comes from and how I have managed to create ideas that have since evolved into widely distributed audio-visual and interactive productions.

This process was in many ways painful. I think I have actually been avoiding looking – treating this creative space within me as a black box that would release insights if I didn’t look at it too closely, being a chaotic vortex of inspiration and self-doubt. I kept thinking about Henrik Ibsen’s poem “Ett vers” from “Digte” (Norwegian original text on the left):

This verse has always spoken to me – describing the self-doubt I feel when trying to create something new from nothing. Is my idea ridiculous or a stroke of genius? Laughable or laudable? I am my own judge and jury.

Personally, I feel as if I have a myriad of ideas, skipping around like Mexican jumping beans in my head. They fight for my attention. I also know that these ideas are just quick sparks of possibilities and that the process from an idea to a finished production is a long journey of questioning, doubting, testing and exploring. In a way, these ideas are my wealth but are also worth nothing. The long development process that hones and refines produces the main value, in my view. As when writing a poem, it’s not the initial idea or first draft that defines the result, but the final wording which is the result of painful refinement and word choice.

Shaping concepts

I guess at this point I should describe how I work. I call myself a creative producer. I design and produce digital, interactive experiences and I mainly focus on communicating about non-fiction topics that I think are important to create understanding and compassion between humans. Working digitally means having what feels like limitless freedom to design new formats and genres, combining form and content in new ways. I search for the core of my topic and attempt to let it permeate all aspects of the experience. As a poet might use alliteration and metaphors to create the sounds, the pictures, and the associations that intensify the actual meaning of the words, I can design interactions, challenges, and rewards that echo and strengthen the core emotion and message I wish to convey.

To take a concrete example, when creating the mobile game “My Child Lebensborn”, it became increasingly clear to me that the main topic of the game wasn’t hatred or bullying, but caring – both the lack of it and the CBOW’s intense need for it. This realization made me add and refine gameplay elements that allowed the player to practice caring, while removing elements that were less in line with this core. For me, identifying the emotional core is what can help me shape an experience that communicates the topic more clearly to the participant.

This creative work is about combining and weighing structures and topics. It’s not visual. I often end up using whiteboards and mind maps trying to define and draw the different elements of a topic and how they might be connected. Sometimes grabbing a handful of whiteboard markers and starting to draw is a good way to empty my mind of my 'jumping ideas', pouring them onto a surface where they become immobile and easier to study.

As my creative process can be said to start when I try to grab my ideas and begin the journey of judging and processing, this is also the point at which my self-doubt might interfere, stomping out fragile inspirations before they have been explored. Sometimes drawing with markers seems frighteningly definite, and that my ideas can’t be grasped that clearly.

Instead I need to find a personal sense of calmness in order to capture and understand my ideas. This is where flow-writing has emerged as become my most important creative method. Flow-writing can be described as the process of simply writing without having any pre-formed idea of what to write. It is about starting a flow of words without judgement, so that thoughts can flow out without being hindered by constant self-criticism. The writing can be about anything. For me, I often start by describing the day and situation I am in, sometimes simply putting words to why I find it hard to work. In a way that is still wonderous to me, this normally leads to me putting words to whatever it is that I find difficult in my creative process. Describing the challenges calms down the judgemental processes and frees up constructive thinking, and I experience how the writing results in new insights and ideas being unlocked from my mind. Contexts and associations that I was not consciously aware of flow through my fingers and onto the keyboard, and I often end up surprising myself. It can feel as if I am unlocking creative thoughts from a hidden part of my thinking brain by allowing them to be shaped into strings of words. I also feel as if the slowing down of thoughts that occurs in the physical act of writing allows for the brain to shape more well-founded conclusions.

Without this calm flow, it sometimes feels as if my noisy, jumping inspirations block my ability to study my thoughts calmly.

When I am engulfed by the calmness that flow-writing can give me, hours might pass. I end up with material that I can then process in my mind-maps, where I can see whether the ideas are coherent and can be developed in more detail. I sift through the texts, identifying and extracting the main thoughts and topics that have appeared in the stream.

Consciously evolving my methods

Being challenged to study this vulnerable creative process has strengthened me as an artist. Realizing how important flow-writing is has made me utilize it in a much more systematic way. It is now my go-to method when I need to explore creative development challenges. Instead of experiencing flow-writing as an escape when I was stuck, I now start my working sessions with active writing sprints. I try to think about how I can approach challenges through flow-writing.

As an example, I was struggling to imagine the personality of a character for a concept. I then chose to write a letter to a character in order to get closer to the character and explore how they might think. When struggling to understand how a VR piece might be experienced differently by users with different backgrounds, I started to write a conversation with them as if we were all sitting in the same room. The 'answers' they gave me made me change my mind.

Flow-writing is also fruitful when I read and process literature or try interactive experiences as part of my research. The method of writing lets me discuss ideas with myself, capturing the various ideas in my text so that they are easier to observe and compare.

A kaleidoscope of inspirations

Artistic research might be more about a personal questioning and not about scientifically established methods, but it is still a process of knowledge production that happens in a context. My work is based on who I am but also on what I know and have experienced. My insights about digital experiences, whether interactive or linear, shape the context informing my explorations, and are developed and amended by a continuous search for inspiration and research in order to develop the way I understand the different aspects of my project.

This material comes from many different fields. I am inspired by epistemology, neuroscience, cognitive science, social sciences, game studies, journalism, narrative theory and more. I include and combine ideas from all these fields in my search to create the understanding I feel that I need in order to come closer to the core of the artistic research questions I explore in this project: 'how is it that an adult can look at a child and see an enemy?' and 'how can I communicate this in an interactive experience'?

See the material in the Library to study the context I work with and within.

My reflections demonstrate how I approach these topics and how ideas from different fields and sources inform my views and my artistic practice. There is a certain element of serendipity in this process. I am inspired by the ideas I come across during my artistic process, but I am also aware that my work is limited by the ideas and material I have not studied or been confronted with. The ideas and reflections in this exposition should therefore not be seen as an exhaustive discussion of the topics, but should rather be considered an opportunity to study my thought processes and the reflection that has informed my artistic practice and my concluding insights.

I should also mention that this artistic research project has focused on the development of a series of concept sketches and has not resulted in a finished interactive experience.[1] The work presented in this exposition is thus mainly the result of my personal project development work, with little iterative creative work with a larger development team.[2] Normally, the concept development phase would be followed by a longer phase of iterative development work with a team of artists skilled in programming, animation, game design, sound design and more. In these processes, the artistic input from the other artists become a huge inspiration that enriches and challenges my own ideas. I am quite agnostic when it comes to the specific artistic audio-visual expression that the team creates, leaving a lot of room for the other artists and their own expressions. In this part of the process, my focus is more on defending the integrity and clarity of the core concept or adjusting it as the project evolves.

I enter into these processes with my concept sketches and use my mind-maps and whiteboards as communication tools to introduce my vision to the team. As the different parts of the digital production evolve, I might use flow-writing or mind-mapping to process the inspiration and input in order to adjust my overall sketch and idea for the production.  

Choosing my medium

Finally, I wish to address my choice of working with digital, interactive formats as part of my methodology. A main motivation for my work is to create experiences that can and will create change by motivating others to think differently. This means that reaching out to as many people as possible is important to me. I am also very interested in the unexplored potential for storytelling that exists in digital media. As digital media is also the media format that has the largest distribution potential, any form for digital, audio-visual and preferably interactive content is my preferred format.

This preference for digital media has also influenced the choice of platform for this doctoral outcome. Although the Research Catalogue offers limited functionality for interactivity, which is an important feature of my artistic work, I feel that the visibility and potentially wide digital distribution it offers make up for that dearth.

This exposition contains all the material belonging to the artistic research project “NUMB - exploring emotionally charged interactions to motivate reflection on non-fiction topics”, presenting both the artistic practice and the accompanying explicit reflection.

The framing of this project is also intended to demonstrate some of my methods while describing them and the process, and in this way to provide a “specific articulation of the pre-reflective, non-conceptual content” of my work that is central to artistic research (Borgdorff 2012, 143).

Read more about the outcome of this artistic research project in the text “These rooms for thoughts” in the Living room.