THE ART OF RESEARCH IV
Making, Reflecting and Understanding

28-29 November 2012 at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture Helsinki, Finland

While the power of artistic imagination is widely recognized, the exploration of artistic and designerly methods of knowledge acquisition underway in academia has only just become accepted by other professional communities of researchers and practitioners inhabiting the academy. Building on contemporary discourse regarding notions of practice-led research, the Art of Research Conference 2012 aims to explore the relations that can be constructed between making and critical reflection, and how these enable artistic and designerly practices to be characterized as art and design, or artistic or designerly research. Given how different fields of creative practice may be constructing these relations in different ways - e.g, in methods, tools and skills - the main aim of the event is to explore how these fields might relate to and influence each other. This aim is guided by following questions:

  		•  How do different art and design practices utilize artistic and designerly methods in practice-led research?
  		• How do artistic and designerly approaches to knowledge production enrich or impoverish the professional art and design-related practices of those who engage in them?
  		• How are artistic and designerly processes of critical reflection and intervention be productively synthesized in practice-led research?
  		• How can different forms of art, craft and design contribute new knowledge and understanding and how do they function in the distribution of knowledge?
  		• How can critical reflection be interpreted and understood as embodied in practice-led research?

    This is the fourth in the Art of Research event series, the first of which took place in Helsinki 2005, and the first to be hosted by EMPIRICA, a research group based in the Department of Design, Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, working in co-operation with the university’s Department of Film, Television and Scenography.