Paradigmatic considerations for creative practice in Creative Industries research: the case of Australia's Indie 100

Phil Graham
2016 Creative Industries Journal  
+614 78 684 625 CI Paradigms Paradigmatic claims for creative practice in research Haseman (2006) epitomises claims for the paradigmatic novelty of practice-led research. Using Austin's (1962) conception of 'performativity' as the theoretical basis for his claims he argues that we stand at a pivotal moment in the development of research. Established qualitative and quantitative research methodologies frame what is legitimate and acceptable. However, these approved approaches fail to meet the
more » ... ds of an increasing number of practice-led researchers, especially in the arts, media and design. (p. 98) He proposes, therefore, that 'a new paradigm for research is coming into being, a third paradigm best understood as performative research ' (2006, p. 98). The argument is framed within a divisive view of quantitative and qualitative research with 'ruthless' quantitative deduction on one side and an entirely text-based approach to qualitative research on the other. Further claims that 'a third methodological distinction is emerging' are found in the way that performative research 'chooses to express its findings': artistic symbols minus words, unless of course it is the 'practice-led novelist' who 'asserts the primacy of the novel' as means of communication. There have been numerous critiques of the proposed performativity paradigm since its first appearance (e.g. Petelin, 2007; McNamara, 2012) . Haseman himself admits that the 'performative turn' is in fact part of qualitative enquiry. But, he says, [t]he host of new practice-led research strategies, methods of data collection and forms of reporting developed over the past decade and incorporated under the qualitative banner has over-stretched the limits of the 'qualitative research' category to the extent that it now seems a portmanteau title capturing anything which isn't quantitative research and reported as numeric data. (Haseman, 2006) This is somewhat to confound issues of method and methodology with paradigmatic aspects. It also ignores the hermeneutic and explanatory aspects of quantitative research and the decades-long rise of 'mixed methods' approaches combining the two (Gelo, Braakmann, and Benetka, 2008) . Haseman cites the following features of creative practice as being definitive of the new performative paradigm: 1. It does not begin with a question or problem; rather an 'enthusiasm of practice'; 2. Researchers construct experiential starting points from which practice follows; CI Paradigms 4 3. 'what emerges is individualistic and idiosyncratic'; 4. researchers 'eschew the constraints of narrow problem setting and rigid methodological requirements at the outset of a project'; 5. 'research outputs and claims to knowing must be made through the symbolic language and forms of their practice' (Haseman, 2006); The performative paradigm in summary: no question, no theory, no methodology, no generalisability, and no explanation of the research findings other than the artistic work itself. We leave unelaborated the obvious damage such a positioning can have on the role and reputation of creative practice in research over the longer term. Leaving that aside, one has only to look at the very beginnings of scientific method to note the role of artistic practice in multiple aspects of research -whether in communication of findings, conceptual elaborations, thought experiments, or illustrations of data. Johannes Kepler beautifully illustrated his "harmony of the spheres"; Da Vinci's biological, mechanical, and artistic experiments remain models of both artistic and scientific excellence; and Alhazen, recognised by many as the 'father of scientific method', used beautifully illustrated detail of the human optical system to elaborate and communicate his findings (Eastwood, 1986) . From its beginnings science has always been, and will always continues to be, 'multimodal', which is to say that it necessarily includes 'words, symbols, images, and actions', both in its doing and in its communication (Lemke, 1998) . The most strenuous objections we raise to the performativity paradigm is that detaching artistic practice from the general movement of research proper creates unnecessarily restricted access to available principles and methods that can help integrate knowledge about social and cultural phenomena. It does so by taking artistic practice and setting it up as a separate or special case that requires specialised treatment as if it were somehow separate from other human phenomena. It also devalues the role of art in research by providing it with a kind of theoretical and methodological vaccuum in which to work under its own terms by being cut off from "serious" or "traditional" research practices and requiring essentially no intellectual discipline other than that of creative practice itself. Finally, such an approach ignores the creative, symbolic, rhetorical, and dialectical aspects of research and research communication in general By the final year, and despite involving more people than ever, the whole thing went perfectly smoothly. The last three people in the studios were the producers of the final three sessions. Everyone else had left. It was almost boring. We had more engagement on social media, more streams, more people, and more immediate sales. Data collection went almost without a hitch except for the usual IT glitches. The recordings went without a hitch and the quality of the music was by far the best ever, both by our own estimation, by that of our industry assessors, and by the fact that people for the first time had started to buy the entire 100 songs as an album download. (field notes 2015)
doi:10.1080/17510694.2016.1154655 fatcat:a32qvg2glvgsxcnbfadwcwyg2e