ARTICLE 3. TAKING ART SEIOUSLY: UNDERSTANDING STUDIO RESEARCH.

BERNARD HOFFERT (Monash University, Australia)

Importance of the Visual

The degree to which art is integral to our way of life is scarcely worth noting. Most of us accept without question that access to art, both historic and contemporary, is part of any community and the diversity of contemporary art practice touches almost every aspect of our lives-public, commercial, creative and social. Experimental and media Arts reflect, enhance and influence culture and enrich our daily experience, while individual art choices provide a source of personal fulfillment and satisfaction. At a broader level it is the products of visual culture—the art, design and architecture—which direct our travels; it is the museums, galleries, buildings and spaces of past as well as present visual culture, which shape much of our holiday itinerary and our purpose in traveling. At a panoramic level it is not too extravagant to claim that it is the visual which shapes our experience of the world; every building we enter, every object we use and every image we enjoy is the product of a creative visual impulse, every city is the outcome of conscious aesthetic decisions, some good some bad, some motivated by function not excellence, but all in part visual.

The visual environment is so fundamental that we do not think about it. We accept the outcomes of art, design, architecture and the proliferation of visual forms, but we fail to acknowledge their status. We appreciate and enjoy the individual example, but as a category of learning with its own academic integrity, we do not accord it an equivalent recognition to the sciences, humanities or technologies.

As this paper explains, it is time we took art seriously, accepted it as a domain of knowledge and integrated it and its associated visual forms into the broader context of our knowledge culture.

Art and the Knowledge Environment

Research has become an increasingly important concept in the visual arts. Encouraged by government policy, universities place increased emphasis on research output. Artists and art educators describe art making in terms of research and academic art staff apply for grants as a source of research income. Disciplines known for their creativity are now equally acknowledged for their research. ‘Practice-led’ or ‘practice based’ research is becoming an aspect of research discussion, in part to establish the prestige of academic institutions, but also to link with the push for innovation and new outcomes from research knowledge, as government policies attempt to justify expenditure on research.

The UK tertiary sector has undergone a series of Research Assessment Exercises which evaluated the research outputs nationally. These mechanisms for quality assurance required the demonstration of research outcomes and accountability for research. An academic hierarchy of institutions has resulted from these Exercises along with a system of institutional funding based on research excellence. New Zealand has performed a similar exercise, Australia is about to do the same and other nations may well follow. Integral to this research data gathering is the inclusion of research in visual culture, not research about the visual, undertaken through the humanities, but research in the visual-Art as Research. This discussion contends that research in art and the visual contributes to knowledge in the same way as all disciplines do – research results in new knowledge and the final test of new knowledge is what it contributes to the human condition.

Research and Culture

Consider the relationship between the development of knowledge and its contribution to culture in the following disciplines:

New knowledge in science contributes to new technological development

Benjamin Franklin is well known for his experiments with electricity. In 1746, while watching a summer storm, it occurred to him that lightening looked like an electrical phenomenon, resembling the spark generated from an electrified body in his experiments. His research showed that a pointed object, like a finger or an electrified body attracted electrical discharges. Applying this discovery in nature, he found that lightning was attracted to such objects, confirming his suspicion it was electrical. He then invented the lightning rod – a simple, but effective device to dispel the destructive energy of these electrical impulses. He wrote: “may not the knowledge of this power of points be of use to mankind, in preserving houses, churches, ships and cont, from the stroke of lighting, by directing us to fix on the highest parts of those edifices, upright rods of iron made sharp as a needle…”. The lightning conductor is now integral to technologies associated with building, navigation and the environment (Koestler, 1970).

New knowledge in medicine results in improved health care

In 1879, Louis Pasteur was working on a cure for chicken cholera, a devastating poultry disease that was the nineteenth century version of bird flu. He was injecting healthy chickens with laboratory cultures of the disease and then attempting to treat the infected birds. During the summer his work was delayed for several months, and when he returned to his experiments, he found that chickens injected with the culture which had stood in his laboratory unused through the hot summer months, did not develop all the symptoms of the cholera, but contracted what appeared to be a very mild dose of the disease. Further testing confirmed that the weak culture had vaccinated the chickens against the cholera. Extrapolating from this example, Pasteur initiated a system of preventative medicine which has been integral to healthcare ever since (Koestler, 1970).

New knowledge in microbiology results in improved medical treatment

In 1922 Alexander Fleming was working at St Mary’s hospital in London when by chance he discovered that an active ingredient in nasal mucus, what he identified as lysozyme, had the ability to destroy bacteria. Although it was not a powerful germ killer, it pointed the way for his future research until seven years later he discovered penicillin. This laid the foundations of microbiology and the revolutionary impact antibiotics have had on improved health care ever since (Koestler, 1970).

New knowledge in engineering contributes to better structures and machines

In December 1903 Orville and Wilbur Wright mounted an engine onto a glider they had built and flew for 59 seconds, covering a distance of about 260 metres they effectively launched the aeronautical industry. What was revolutionary about the Wright brothers’ work was neither the glider nor the engine, although each was a significant development on existing technology; it was the shaping and structure of the wing which allowed a pilot to manipulate the aerodynamic impact on the structure while in flight; it was an issue of structural design. The whole aircraft industry reflects the innovations which flowed from their research. (Mc Farland, 1953).

Each of the above developments contributed to the betterment of the human condition; they also contribute within their disciplinary domain to culture. As a result culture improves in intellectual and material terms and we have an enhanced quality of life. Similarly, art produces new knowledge by a parallel contribution to culture, in which new art directly adds to the quality of cultural experience.

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