What is research-creation?

What is research-creation?

A link between artistic practice and social, human & natural sciences

Research-Creation is a developing research trend in Canada’s academic milieu, linking the interpretive disciplines (humanities and social sciences) with creative ones (art and design). This involves the creation of knowledge in and through creative material and performative practice.

Definition from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

An approach to research that combines creative and academic research practices, and supports the development of knowledge and innovation through artistic expression, scholarly investigation, and experimentation. The creation process is situated within the research activity and produces critically informed work in a variety of media (art forms). Research-creation cannot be limited to the interpretation or analysis of a creator’s work, conventional works of technological development, or work that focuses on the creation of curricula. The research-creation process and the resulting artistic work are judged according to SSHRC’s established merit review criteria.

Fields that may involve research-creation may include, but are not limited to: architecture, design, creative writing, visual arts (e.g., painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, textiles), performing arts (e.g., dance, music, theatre), film, video, performance art, interdisciplinary arts, media and electronic arts, and new artistic practices.

Source : Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

Research-creation by the FRQSC

Research/creation is the research processes or approaches that foster creation as a continuous process. Depending on the practices and temporalities specific to each project, these may combine design, experimentation, production, and/or critical and theoretical analysis of the creative process. As there can be no research-creation without give and take between the work of art and the creation process by which it exists, a problematization of the artistic practice with the aim of producing new esthetic, theoretical, methodological, epistemological or technical knowledge.

A research-creation approach is based on:

  • a sustained artistic or creative practice;
  • the development of a narrative within the production of new or unpublished artworks or the implementation of new creation processes;
  • the transmission, presentation and dissemination of these works or creation processes to students, peers and the general public.

A research-creation approach must contribute to the development of the field in question through the renewal of knowledge or practices, or through innovation of some kind.

Source : Fond de recherche québécois en Société et Culture (FRQSC)


Research-creation as a methodology

Hexagram network and the concept of research/creation

La recherche-création :
Territoire d’innovation méthodologique

This colloquium aims to take stock of different methodological approaches in research-creation.

RC_inc
Incubateur d’idées sur la recherche-création.

Louis-Claude Paquin, l’initiateur du projet se joint à son complice Jean Décarie pour proposer une nouvelle saison d’activités dont le but consiste à initier une cartographie de la diversité des conceptions et des pratiques de la recherche création.

Après avoir consenti beaucoup d’efforts pour définir et légitimer la recherche-création en positionnant cette pratique par rapport à celle de la recherche en sciences, pures, appliquées, sociales et humaines, il nous apparaît opportun maintenant d’en examiner plus en détail les particularités des différentes pratiques. Ainsi, tout au long de l’année, des chercheurs-créateurs seront invités à venir présenter leurs travaux de recherche-création. Il s’agit de mettre en lumière, les différentes formes, domaines, milieux, processus et résultats que prennent les composantes recherches et création, selon les contextes, les situations, les postures, les disciplines, etc.