A move to put our mark on the Frascati Manual²

A bit over two years ago, I reported (here) on a request by the Society for Artistic Research (SAR) to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), calling for a revision of the Frascati Manual in order to add AR as a new and separate scientific category.

The motion was amplified through the European League of Institutes of the Arts (ELIA) proposal, in collaboration with SHARE, two networks that represent some 339 (art) universities and academies, arguing for an “appropriate” status of the arts and arts research. It was put forth that this status should be supported by the recognition of the Arts (and AR with it) as a field of its own: not as part of the Humanities (next to History and Archaeology, Languages and Literature, Philosophy, Ethics and Religion, and “Other” humanities), but on par with Humanities, Natural sciences, Engineering and technology, Medical and Health sciences, Agricultural sciences, and Social sciences. (See here for a letter from ELIA in response to an OECD inquiry, highlighting some of the reasoning.)

Last October, the updated manual was published (online readable and freely downloadable here; summary PPT presentation here). From p. 60 onwards, the Frascati Manual goes into the matter under “Examples of R&D, boundaries and exclusions in different areas”:

R&D and artistic creation

          2.64 Design sometimes tends to be characterised by the use of artistic 
          methods. This is another potential area of overlap. In order to address the 
          discussion of R&D and artistic creation, it can be useful to make a 
          distinction between research for the arts, research on the arts and artistic 
          expression.

Research for the arts

2.65 Research for the arts consists in developing goods and services to meet the expressive needs of artists and performers. There are enterprises in this line of business that devote a significant part of their resources to R&D in this area. For instance, they engage in experimental development to produce new electronic musical instruments to suit the needs of a group of performers. Other types of R&D organisations (mainly universities and technical institutes) also play a role in exploring new technologies for performance art (to improve audio/ video quality, for instance). The activity aimed at supporting the introduction of new organisational or marketing methods by art institutions (advertising, financial management, etc.) may qualify as R&D, but caution should be exercised in making this decision. This area of R&D performance is already covered by existing data collection.

Research on the arts (studies about the artistic expression)

2.66 Basic or applied research contributes to most of the studies of the arts (musicology, art history, theatre studies, media studies, literature, etc.). Public research institutions could have a role in selected research domains (as some relevant research infrastructures – like libraries, archives, etc. – are often attached to arts institutions, such as museums, theatres, etc.). As far as preservation and restoration activities are concerned (if not to be included in the group above), it is recommended to identify the providers of such technical services as R&D performers (employing researchers, publishing scientific works, etc.). This area of R&D performance is largely covered by existing data collection.

Artistic expression versus research

2.67 Artistic performance is normally excluded from R&D. Artistic

performances fail the novelty test of R&D as they are looking for a new expression, rather than for new knowledge. Also, the reproducibility criterion (how to transfer the additional knowledge potentially produced) is not met. As a consequence, arts colleges and university arts departments cannot be assumed to perform R&D without additional supporting evidence. The existence of artists attending courses in such institutions is not relevant to the R&D measurement. Higher education institutions have, nevertheless, to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis if they grant a doctoral degree to an artist as a result of artistic performances. The recommendation is to adopt an “institutional” approach and only to take account of artistic practice recognised as R&D by higher education institutions as potential R&D (to be further used by data collectors).

It is clear that the OECD did not follow the reasoning of ELIA, SHARE, and SAR all the way up to the desired consequences: the arts did not get the requested separate status, nor did arts research. In a way, this is not a big deal, I think: the so-called FORD categorization (the Fields Of Research and Development list as reproduced in my previous entry on the matter) serves analysts to statistically understand the dynamics in those fields. One can wonder whether the 1-digit level is crucial. Would it be more advantageous to compare the arts to natural sciences or engineering rather than to history, language, or philosophy? There is also plenty of overlap in different categories, and, most generally, any attempt at structuring such givens may well be futile. The SAR/ELIA/SHARE-move can be understood strategically, though: by considering AR to be in a league of its own, it might support the proponents in visual arts, or in music composition, who argue that the artistic practice is the research, and that the artistic output is the research output. They would certainly benefit from an internationally formalized extra epistemological category, allowing for further alienation from the established academic or academia-oriented (sub-)disciplines and their paradigms.

For the moment, however, this is not happening.

ORCiM Seminar "From Output to Impact"

Next week, the ORCiM seminar “From output to impact” will take place at the Orpheus Institute (Gent, Belgium). I am posting about this not only because I am the convener, but mostly because the topic is – I believe – of enormous potential and importance. 

Citing from the call:

"Musical training of Western canonical score-based repertoire as well as improvisation and non-Western music is traditionally built upon the master-disciple relation. Students at a conservatory are often still taught their trade by one teacher as the main influence; teachers can be put on the payroll without having to show in how far they are up to date with (and apply) the most recent findings in their field of expertise; one-to-one teaching is very much prevalent in instrumental and compositional teaching; instrument and composition teachers are not the most common contributors to the academic journals that are subscribed to by the libraries of their institutions; etc. With the recent developments in Artistic Research (AR), a type of knowledge is being explored that pertains very much to the music practitioner. While it focusses directly on the musician's practice, it applies the latter as part of the investigative method, and aims at impacting that practice, this type of knowledge has not previously been generated explicitly. Now, AR is supported and carried out with an ever-growing intensity and speed, and across educational and institutional levels: the European Association of Conservatoires considers AR as a gateway to the profession, implying that the impact of AR is to extend beyond the mere integration of AR skills in the curriculum (e.g. a Master in AR) to include the application of current AR output. As a consequence, a range of questions arises that enquires into the possible modes of integrating insights generated through AR into the instrumental practice being taught, all the while allowing for the realities of musical training being fed back into AR."

The seminar starts on November 19, at about noon, and ends the next day in the afternoon. The exact time schedule can be found here.

To frame the debate in a wide perspective, the keynote by Prof. Dr. Dirk Van Damme, head of Innovation and Measuring Progress Division in the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills, will deal with The knowledge triangle in the arts: How research, innovation and education interact.

Next to the launch of the Association of European Conservatoires and Hochschules' new handbook Perspectives on 2nd-Cycle programmes in Higher Music Education: combining a research orientation with professional relevance, and a concert showcasing artistic research output ready to be allowed its impact on instrumental training, the seminar program will run parallel sessions that include a very rich content relating to sub topics such as:

The Larger Perspective

• Drew Hammond: At the intersection between expression and investigation: a liberal arts graduate examines the conservatoire environment.
• Bernard Lanskey: Culturing fresh growth: the conservatory as incubator?
•  Paul Craenen: Zooming out on artistic research results.
•  Anthony Gritten: Musical passages between output and impact.
•  Joost Vanmaele: The informed practitioner: mediating between the information galaxy and the piano-studio.
• Michiel Schuijer: When craft becomes profession: the case of the conservatoire.

In Practice

• Magdalena Bork & Maria Gstaettner: Quo vadis, Teufelsgeiger? (Where to, Devil's Fiddler?). The impact of the artistic project findings on the curriculm development in performance studies in Vienna.
• Daniel Leech-Wilkinson: Preparing to escape Utopia.
• Jeroen Billiet: “Avis aux Amateurs”:  integrating artistic research output into elementary music education.
• Anna Scott & Alessandro Cervino: The reflective piano Class: a self-generating experiment regarding the reflexivity of artistic research and higher instrumental training.

Impact Back

• Aslaug Louise Slette & Ingunn Fanavoll Øye: Aural training knowledge in music rehearsing.
• Susan Williams: Training musicians: implementing research into practice.

  

Creativity & Feeling

•  Beate Perrey: Hard Facts, feelings and forms of persuasion.
• Johannes Boer: Playing by the rules. Creativity and research in historical performance.

Models Framed

•  Tom De Cock & Vincent Caers: Improving the efficiency of practice and performance in contemporary percussion repertoire.
• Murphy LcCaleb: Developing ensemble musicians.
• Elisabeth Belgrano: Learning and teaching through madness: using the metaphor of a 17th century operatic mad scene for supervision in higher performing arts education based on artistic research.
• Amy Blier-Carruthers: How I learned to stop worrying and love the studio: a professional and paradigmatic approach to preparing musicians for recording.

This seminar is organized in collaboration with the Centre of Excellence in Music Performance Education of the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo. The full potential of the topic will be explored in a longer-term effort, with NAM aiming to put together a follow-up seminar in Oslo in November 2015. 

Proceedings of next week’s incarnation will be produced online in the coming months.

A move to put our mark on the Frascati Manual

According to its latest newsletter, the Society for Artistic Research wrote a letter to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), on August 30, to call for a revision of the Frascati Manual in order to add AR as a new and separate scientific category. (Posted on the society’s FaceBook Timeline on October 29, 2013.)

The Frascati Manual was thought of as initiating a “Proposed Standard Practice for Surveys on Research and Experimental Development” to measure Scientific and Technological Activities. Its latest (6^th) edition dates 2002 and defines types of research and research personnel, deals with measuring expenditure and personnel resources, and also organizes the "Field Of Science" into main and sub-categories. (Buy here or download its free PDF here.) The book is highly influential: worldwide, governments and organisations adopt its definitions for discussing their scientific, technological and economical development policies, and R&D studies acknowledged its function as a standard.

The 2002 edition Field of Science classification was revised in 2006 (freely downloadable here) and is listed as follows:

1. Natural sciences

1.1 Mathematics

1.2 Computer and information sciences

1.3 Physical sciences

1.4 Chemical sciences

1.5 Earth and related Environmental sciences

1.6 Biological sciences (Medical to be 3, and Agricultural to be 4)

1.7 Other natural sciences

2. Engineering and technology

2.1 Civil engineering

2.2 Electrical engineering, Electronic engineering, Information engineering

2.3 Mechanical engineering

2.4 Chemical engineering

2.5 Materials engineering

2.6 Medical engineering

2.7 Environmental engineering

2.8 Environmental biotechnology

2.9 Industrial biotechnology

2.10 Nano-technology

2.11 Other engineering and technologies

3. Medical and Health sciences

3.1 Basic medicine

3.2 Clinical medicine

3.3 Health sciences

3.4 Medical biotechnology

3.5 Other medical sciences

4. Agricultural sciences

4.1 Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries

4.2 Animal and Dairy science

4.3 Veterinary science

4.4 Agricultural biotechnology

4.5 Other agricultural sciences

5. Social sciences

5.1 Psychology

5.2 Economics and Business

5.3 Educational sciences

5.4 Sociology

5.5 Law

5.6 Political science

5.7 Social and economic geography

5.8 Media and communications

5.9 Other social sciences

6. Humanities

6.1 History and Archaeology

6.2 Languages and Literature

6.3 Philosophy, Ethics and Religion

6.4 Arts (arts, history of arts, performing arts, music)

6.5 Other humanities

The 6.4 Arts category is specified as containing: Arts, Art history; Architectural design; Performing arts studies (Musicology, Theater science, Dramaturgy); Folklore studies; Studies on Film, Radio and Television. (The 2002 classification saw 6. Humanities as made up merely from 6.1 History, 6.2 Languages and literature, and 6.3 Other humanities.)

The noble but bold request of SAR is to add AR not only to the classification as a new category, but to do so “as a significant category on its own terms.”  The 6.4 Arts category, as “containing various fields of research on art” [my italics] is juxtaposed with the claim that “this classification does not in any satisfactory way reflect the development of artistic research” (i.e. research through art [my italics]). The letter’s phrasing – to see AR as “a field of its own on the 1-digit level” – leaves unclear whether SAR wants AR to sit at the 1-digit level (making it a 7^th high-level group) or under it (as a distinct 6.6).

Next to the notion of the unsatisfactory way that AR would compare to the subcategories under 6., the society’s letter states several other reasons for its claim, such as the Frascati manual’s “aims to reflect changes in the nature of contemporary R & D” (the 2006 revision is indeed considerable), and two recent international initiatives to suggest a similar (1-digit position) solution to the perceived problem. Of the latter, one proposal (from the Head of the Economics Statistics department, Statistics Sweden and the Swedish National Agency for Higher Education) was made in November 2010, and the other (from European League of Institutes of the Arts) in January 2012. Both initiatives were addressed to the OECD Head of Economic Analysis and Statistics.

I don’t know if the two previous attempts were left unanswered, nor can I form a good idea as to how complicated it would be to realize a revision of the classification. The international scope of AR is lauded in SAR’s letter as being well networked an widely recognized, but how much of that will (or needs to) impress whatever entity decides over this, is a mystery to me at the moment. More interesting is the question of the validity of creating a new position for AR. I am all for recognizing AR as separate from musicology and artistic practice (see here), agreeing also in full that research on an artistic practice is not necessarily the same as in-and-through it (the latter can comprise the former, but goes one step further in catering conclusions to the needs of the practice). In my personal opinion and experience, it would also be good for AR to be valued as independent in order to safeguard some of the support that an emerging discipline needs. There’s hardly any money for AR (yet), and funding entities divide their financial pie into smaller slices rather than increasing the available resources as a whole to accommodate a new type of player. That there is already little cash to go around, is further mirrored in the facts that a call for an AR position attracts a significant number of interested musicologists, music-theorists or –philosophers, or that these scholars prefer a term such as ‘artist-researcher’ rather than one that identifies a new type that they feel (unjustly, I think) excludes them from participating. For the time being, I prefer to make clear distinctions, as attempts at appropriation (“AR is musicology with a new focus”, as I have heard argue on an AEC symposium a few years ago) will only leave dire chances for the young category to grow. A spot of its own in the Frascati Manual would certainly offer some hopes, if not guarantees, of being recognized, taken seriously and supported on government levels.

But, when reading in the manual (pp. 30-45) about distinctions on the borderline of what it considers to be at the core of the manual, i.e. Research & Development, and what it states should be excluded from R&D, then the matter might not be a small task. An example: “[…]even research by students at the PhD level carried out at universities should be counted, whenever possible, as a part of R&D[…]” (p. 31) [my italics] As it happens, doctoral AR is nearly all we have to show for, really. Fortunately, I am now only concentrating on music in this post – the visual arts have more weight to put on the scales. And for music, if all goes well, output streams can and will grow stronger, broader and faster.

On a conceptual level, however, tougher questions remain. As long as doubts are expressed as to whether or not artistic practice in itself is research, and artistic output be valid as research output, and as long as institutions consider a D.M.A. format (e.g. Portugal) for the doctoral cycle, or restrict doctoral candidates’ options to musicology departments (Germany), the communal AR efforts will stay diluted, and it may be hard to convince the OECD that we don’t fall under arts. And while I go along, to at least a certain extent, with the idea that AR can involve a type of knowledge of its own, I still see quite a few AR dissertations and articles being written that do not benefit from artistic practice, do not demonstrably have an impact on it, and do not bring forth new artistic knowledge.

In any case, I warmheartedly favor SAR’s proposition, and I look forward to hearing of any development in the matter – will keep you posted here.