Fourteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Which conception of research can we employ that is not derived from a comparison between art and science? Science is our paradigmatic cognitive endeavor. But this does not have to mean that art is deficient in this respect. And it certainly does not mean that science has exclusive authority over the meaning and use of the term “research”. In this article I will try to defend, first, that there is a sense in which research is not only possible but desirable in art, second, that this desirability is not limited to bureaucratic demands, third, that artistic research is a tool for empowering the artist if it is done within a set of parameters that gives it some epistemic value, and, lastly, the epistemic value of the results is derived from the concept of exemplify ability as a retriever of value in a dense universe of artistic possibilities.