ABSTRACT
Stephen Scrivener configures artistic research as 'transformational practice', or 'art that changes art'. His account focuses on the idea that artistic research should consist in the interpretational and material practices that enable artistic novelty and renewal to be achieved. This chapter considers various responses to the question 'what is artistic research?', and suggests that many converge on the notion of art's cognitive significance lying in its capacity to challenge categorization or other forms of knowledge production. It analyses the concept of research in general terms to assess its proximity to art or, given that the concept is problematic, some of the qualities that are commonly associated it. While the 'concept' is commonly associated with intellectual ideas and words, largely because of the predominance of idealism and rationalism within the history of epistemology, Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy challenges this association and repositions the concept as an element that plays a much more 'concrete' role in experience.
