Practice-led Research: Research as Learning Process

Abstract

Practice-led Research becomes a new method of academic research in the field of art. It presents "artists’ practice" and the "artwork" itself as essential resources for the process of conducting and developing the research. It focuses on the actual learning experience of each artist, including how they are inspired, receive information, read or look at other material, develop concept and technique, and analyze everything into the work, in order to generate unique and useful academic knowledge that can be beneficial to people both in the art world and in the greater society. Practice-led Research is often interdisciplinary. It responds to situations, issues, or inspirations happening in the contemporary moment. Therefore, the researchers in this kind of method can never clearly predict what the result would be until it reviews itself during the process of research. The research methodology then needs to be designed in a very flexible way and can be changed according to the research outcome of each step during the longer process of study. Although the methodology of Practice-led Research is often very open to suit varied possibilities of concepts, ideas, and artistic technique, eventually the "knowledge" that is the outcome of the research must be presented under certain forms and standards in order to fulfill the conditions as an academic research. Both the artwork and associate thesis text have to provide reliable references. Most importance is that, in order to contribute academic knowledge, they must also be ready for the process of re-examining and re-analyzing over and over again by others in the future.