It's an interesting point Paul. In the UK we have funded arts research through the AHRC.
I don't believe that academic research does greatly compromise creativity or art making. Certainly not in my experience and I've received a couple of AHRC grants. In fact this money has enabled me to pursue projects that would have been impossible to fund and produce from other sources. The money is significantly more than you'd normally receive from the UK Arts Council for example (who have their own agendas that you have to meet). To me it's not possible to talk of an unbridled creativity as separate from the social and economic forces that surround it. Economic forces distort practice whether it's market mechanisms or government funding. When I was a painter in the late 80s and early 90s my gallery used to lean on me to produce certain kinds of work that they knew they could sell. Research council funding in the UK (IMHO) has produced a huge boost in the amount of work being made, formal events (conferences etc.) and the quality of discourse around contemporary art. For me that's a huge plus. Sure there are research agendas built into these grants - many of them urgent - like climate change that need addressing. Any artist worth their salt should be able to work with, against, around and through these. best wishes Tom Corby Pall Thayer wrote: >> unlikely outcomes of uncertain value. It is just that the way academic >> research is funded there is this pressure to prove the economic and social >> value of the probable outcomes well in advance of them coming into being. >> > > This is exactly the problem I have with the "art practice as formal > research" trend. It's great that this has opened new avenues for art > funding but at what price? I fear that this is going to produce a lot > of boring art that probably sounded interesting on paper but is > missing the spontaneity that makes some artwork really leap out and > grab you. Too precisely calculated. Art should, at the very least, > have strong elements of spur-of-the-moment whim to highlight that > violent tumultuousness that is unbridled "Creativity" (with a capital > C). The "academic research" approach is always going to involve major > compromises. The magic happens when just dive in. You'll have plenty > of time to ask questions and fine tune concepts later. Hmm... how > about a research project that examines the effects of academic > institutionalisation on creativity? > > best r. > Pall > > >> These pressures function to pervert what research is all about >> (finding/creating things you didn't know you might find/create). How can you >> know the value of something that doesn't exist yet? Why does everything have >> to have a value? Many artists and scientists prefer not to be concerned with >> these things. Such considerations are imposed upon them. >> >> Regards >> >> Simon >> >> Simon Biggs >> Research Professor >> edinburgh college of art >> s.bi...@eca.ac.uk >> www.eca.ac.uk >> www.eca.ac.uk/circle/ >> >> si...@littlepig.org.uk >> www.littlepig.org.uk >> AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk >> >> >> ________________________________ >> From: james morris <ja...@jwm-art.net> >> Reply-To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity >> <netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org> >> Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2009 23:26:29 +0100 (BST) >> To: <netbehaviour@netbehaviour.org> >> Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Internet of >> Things....ResearchOpportunitiesonEPSRC funded Project] >> >> >> On 25/6/2009, "Simon Biggs" <s.bi...@eca.ac.uk> wrote: >> >> >>> recorded and all original material retained for peer assessment. This is >>> not >>> foolproof (there are plenty of examples of poor science around) but nobody >>> has proposed a better system yet. It is unusual for artistic work to be >>> undertaken in this context but not novel. Otherâ*˙s have done it. It often >>> leads to surprising outcomes, especially for the scientists. >>> >> >> I'm interested to know what the nature of the surprising outcomes are >> for scientists? (Are the artists less surprised by the outcomes?) >> >> >> >> http://www.principlesofnature.net/gallery_of_selected_art_works/the_discreteness_of_infinity_art_science_parallels.htm >> >> http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2008/sep/02/darwinscanopy >> >> _______________________________________________ >> NetBehaviour mailing list >> NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org >> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour >> >> Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number >> SC009201 >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> NetBehaviour mailing list >> NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org >> http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour >> >> > > > > _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
