1.1 Categorizing Research-Creation
Research v. Creation
Henk Borgdorff’s book The Conflict of the Faculties,1 begins by describing Immanuel Kant’s 1789 pamphlet of the same name,2 in which the German philosopher argued against the tiered system of scholarly disciplines. In Kant’s time, those studying at the “lower faculties,” the natural sciences, humanities, and philosophy, could only be awarded master’s degrees. Those studying at the “higher faculties,” theology, law, and medicine, could be awarded doctorate degrees. Today, over two hundred years later, Kant’s argument against a hierarchical system of research is being echoed in the debate around research-creation. Borgdorff is one of many authors who suggest that we are in need of a similar paradigmatic shift to elevate the contemporary lowest faculty – research-creation – to a level commensurate with other forms of research.3 While there have been many positive developments in this regard, research-creation still has its detractors.
The resistance to research-creation comes from two camps: artists in and outside universities who believe that art suffers when it is subjected to the metrics of research, and academics who believe that creative practice cannot contribute to knowledge in a manner comparable to conventional research. This debate is summarized in John Croft’s Composition is not Research4 and Ian Pace’s rebuttal, Composition And Performance Can Be, And Often Have Been, Research.5 Croft suggests that carrying out musical composition as research is a category error and therefore not suitable as a form of scholarly investigation. Moreover, he believes that the notion of composition as research is “inimical to genuine musical originality,”6 in other words, that artistic practice cannot flourish within the scholarly confines of research questions and findings. Ian Pace, among others,7 counters Croft’s statements by arguing that composers and performers often ask a great deal of questions in the process of their creative practices, even when working alone, and that they apply answers to these questions in their creative output. Rather than stifling creative practice, discursive research can highlight artistic significance by “verbally articulat[ing] the questions, issues, aims and objectives, and stages of compositional [or performance] activity, to open a window onto the process and offer the potential of use to others.”8
In concluding his article, Pace contests that the real issue is not whether creative practice counts as research, but rather how to ensure that the methods and results of research-creation contribute in an equivalent manner to other forms of scholarly investigation.9 Doubting the scholarly equivalency of research-creation is the line of reasoning among the second camp of detractors.10 To address this issue, many scholars have indicated the need to include research-creation in its own category of knowledge generation, in addition to the humanities and sciences, so that it may be more easily accepted as a body of research onto itself. From this perspective, research-creation does not need to contribute in equal ways to conventional research, but rather produce distinct and complementary knowledge.
A Third Pillar of Research
To address the argument of scholarly equivalency for research-creation, composer and scholar Sandeep Bhagwati defines the three major forms of scholarly knowledge generation as follows:
a) Research that formulates and further develops conceptual models of the world, based on data and the histories of ideas. This research paradigm drives the natural sciences as well as large parts of the humanities (philosophy, history, sociology, linguistics, economics, etc.)
b) Research that studies the interaction of such models with the “real world,” based on application and demonstration. This research paradigm drives research in medicine, pharmacology, engineering, education, music therapy, business management, etc.
Artistic Research [research-creation], then, obviously is neither of those – rather, it reveals itself as a third stream of knowledge production:
c) Artistic Research [research-creation] researches the ways and means by which we build (and can build) models of the world. 11
Defining a third category of knowledge has also been suggested by Borgdorff. According to him, such a distinction ensures that research-creation “embodies the promise of a distinctive path in a methodological sense that differentiates artistic research from the more mainstream academic research.”12 Considering research-creation as a discrete mode of investigation has its uses but it also must be defined beyond this. Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council defines research-creation as: “an approach to research that combines creative and academic research practices, and supports the development of knowledge and innovation through artistic expression, scholarly investigation, and experimentation. The creation process is situated within the research activity and produces critically informed work in a variety of media (art forms).”13 Borgdorff provides a more detailed definition:
(1) The investigation should be intended as research. Inadvertent (fortuitous) contributions to knowledge and understanding cannot be regarded as research results…(2) Research involves original contributions – that is, the work should not previously have been carried out by other people, and it should add new insights or knowledge to the existing corpus...(3) The aim is to enhance knowledge and understanding. Works of art contribute as a rule to the artistic universe. That universe encompasses not only the traditional aesthetic sectors; today it also includes areas in which our social, psychological, and moral life is set in motion in other ways – other performative, evocative, and non-discursive ways. We can hence speak of research in the arts only when the practice of art delivers an intended, original contribution to what we know and understand.14
Common threads among these definitions include new ways of engagement, innovation, experimentation, as well as contributions to knowledge and understanding. Borgdorff’s mention of intention is notable when comparing his definition to other institutions’. Neither SSHRC nor the Association Européenne des Conservatoires (AEC), one of Europe’s leading research-creation institutions, mention intent.15 Despite this, Borgdorff is not alone, as Lyle Skains has also identified the need for intention in carrying out this style of research. Her article “Creative Practice as Research: Discourse on Methodology” is a straightforward resource on this topic. For her, the intention to carry out creative practice as research comes in the form of a clearly defined research question that “helps to determine the scope of the creative practice” and “provides a framework for examining the creative activity.”16