ABSTRACT

This chapter describes aspects of the IDEAbase project, a novel hypertext environment intended to assist researchers and students of art and design. For this group, the significant mode of knowledge is tacit rather than theoretical, deriving more from the ‘task-centred’ or applied mindset of the medieval craft guilds tradition than from the ‘epistemology-centred’ or scholastic mindset of the monastic disciplines. Nonetheless, studio-based artists and designers increasingly need to inform their responsible practices with scholastic knowledge, normally available in the form of serial text.