ABSTRACT
This is a slightly revised version of a paper that was first published in 2002, 1 with the addition of an epilogue. In the chapter proper, I acknowledge the turn of the academic artworld toward research, understood as an investigation undertaken to acquire new knowledge, and also its desire to place making and the products of making at the heart of the enterprise, i.e., practice-based research. I make my position on the subject clear but assert that the proper goal of visual arts research is visual art. I then go on to explore the question of whether artworks can be understood as conveyors of knowledge, i.e., true, justified, belief. Although I do not exclude the possibility that artworks convey knowledge, I discuss a number of reasons why it is not straightforward to make them do so, including whether such “artworks” would be considered as art. Hence, not only do I doubt that artworks can convey knowledge, I also doubt the value of those that can be understood to do so, because I value them as thought provoking rather thought appeasing artefacts. Hence, I conclude by defining arts research as original creation undertaken in order to generate novel apprehension, i.e., the unfamiliar, the unknown, or a state of affairs that confounds one’s current knowledge. In the epilogue to the chapter proper, I reflect on its origins and ambition after the passage of 19 years.
