AUTHOR: JUAN URREA
MASTER OF ARTS | CALDAS UNIVERSITY
Is it worth investigating in art and with art? In today's society where the artist and art are not very well accepted, we could not expect something different in terms of research related to art, or artistic research, or research-creation. Let's not lie to ourselves, living from art is something that has become almost utopian. The role of research in monetization issues could also be an opportunity, in terms of its contributions or its dissemination. Research in art is really discredited compared to scientific or academic research, which does have high recognition and is considered "serious" within the same scientific and academic institutional community; this could be one of the reasons why some artists despise the act of research with academic procedures. Many artists think that this detracts from the creative act and takes away the value of the work, I think that it is more about urban myths than anything else.
It is discussed in many fields, and not only in the academic field, if the creation itself is already an investigation.[1] From my perspective, the artistic creation and conceptual formulation that involves my work already requires research as such, although we could say that the current way in which I investigate is really informal and could be called, rather, a compilation of information, with a due analysis of this information and an application as a result of this analysis. Something that does not have a strict methodological structure, much less can it be reflected in subsequent doctoral studies.
Precisely the academic role of a postgraduate degree such as the master's degree in arts, provides this formalizing ingredient and allows the development of a methodology according to a outlined objective that arises from the approach of a specific problem. I think it is useless to question whether research in the arts is possible or not, at a time when there are countless researches in art that we could classify as academic, or scientific, or "serious". This position is due to political issues of certain institutions where there is a lot of friction in artistic issues and their contribution to society, rather than reflection on the production of relevant scientific methods in artistic development and its study. Let us remember that the uselessness of art has been debated for years, but its usefulness has been strengthened from its intellectual contributions, with good reason art research rescues that possible usefulness, giving a deep context to the work studied.
It is a fact that the approaches of art to science and of science to art are more and more numerous and have more and more profound scope. We know that there are mathematicians producing stochastic music or artists writing complex programming language codes as in Processing to produce their works of art, or science has investigated issues of spatial and bodily relations connecting the human body with electrodes to its computational machines. The list of examples is long, as long as the art and science researchers who work hand in hand. Here I only name a few examples to understand that, in order to give consistent results, important studies, analyses, and even research are required that contribute to technological development and the very evolution of science and art, where science dignifies art and art sensitizes science. This type of integration produces new types of advanced knowledge, it could even result in new paradigms because it is clear that we are in a time where more research artists and/or more research artists are required, since the current complex problem requires the integration of knowledge and not of self-centered quarrels to succeed in disputes over prestige. The important thing is to give results, produce and contribute; a worthy, noble and laudable task that requires ethics and multidimensional knowledge.
We already see that it is possible to investigate in art and with art. But, what to investigate with art? what to investigate in art?
With art, much research is done in applied sciences and it stands out a lot in psychology, both in the psychology of art, and in applied art in psychology in treatments with autism and other disabilities. Magnificent industries such as cinema and especially 3D cinema have been built with art, where science, art and technology shine for their greatness. With art you can do sociological studies. For example, there are paintings made by Jews in Nazi concentration camps that are of invaluable value to science that investigates how they felt and suffered in those harsh conditions. Art is the root of architecture, inspires medicine, visualizes engineering and simulates its results.
In art you can investigate its history,
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