Is research as practices in the humanities compatible with artistic creation? This question is important as more and more humanities researchers are disseminating their research through creative works (as opposed to publications) and more and more artists are conducting serious research in creation. The line between fine art and art history has been bypassed as we have artists working with engineers on new materials. See Arts and Humanities Research Board – Homepage.
Here is my take on how to judge a work as research creation (to use SSHRC’s phrase).
Research/Creation in the Arts and Humanities
Here are the two primary criteria I can think of for recognizing research/creation
- There is a creative output which would be of a quality to be exhibited, displayed, published, or performed in a venue traditionally considered a competetitive arts venue. Thus the application is designed to lead to a creative work that would be judged acceptable for public exhibition by the arts community. While we recognize that it is hard to describe a creative work before its creation, the applicant should describe the creative practice that they will follow and the type of creative work they intend to create in a fashion that inspires the adjudication committee.
- There is ALSO a research component that would gather or analyze knowledge for the purpose of creation. The knowledge researched need not be new knowledge, but it should be new for the purpose of creation. One indication of an appropriate research component, though not a necessary one, would be a viable plan to disseminate the knowledge through appropriate peer reviewed venues be they conference presentations or publications. Applications should be clear about the research challenge, method or question that they propose to undertake and how that will lead to creative work.
These two components are both necessary for a project to be research/creation.
I’ve been reading The Cathedral and the Bazaar and so far has been an inspiration to continue working on projects that, while at first don’t have a purpose for solving large computing problems, but rather start as personal projects that generally come out of messing around and having fun with computers. I find that all to often my encounters with IT people are often far too serious – not that there isn’t a good reason to be serious now and then – and that play and experimentation is just an unecessary deviation from how one should view computer programming.
On a more philosophical side, what do you think about cases such as the recent prosecution of Adrian Lamo by the N.Y. Times [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.04/hacker.html]? I believe there is need — especially in the media as they started this trend — to clarify the difference between what a hacker and cracker truly is, but I think that more importantly we need to re-assess the value of security risks such as those exposed by Lamo. Our increasing dependence on computer reliability and functionality demands that security be as tight as possible, and if we want to survive with technology we need to understand the risks we put ourselves at when using it. I realize that what Lamo had done to the Times may have been unethical but shouldn’t they be thanking him instead of going to court with a person that revealed a serious security flaw? I think this issue goes beyond the inherit security risks of the Internet and goes to suggest that we still take computers and the Internet for granted and that our attitudes towards these needs to change.
I wonder if the distinction that Raymod puts forward is really that clear to the rest of us. Raymond’s hacker seems more like a talented and creative programmer than someone who specializes in taking things apart and manipulating them to new (and sometimes nefarious) purposes. Lamo is a case in point – it is unclear from the Wired article if he was acting for honourable motives or just showing off and playing. Further, we always have a problem if we distinguish types based on motive as motive is an internal state that is hard to judge. Perhaps we need a code of ethics for hacking in the sense of breaking into things you are not supposed to. (Probably exists already.)