Different approaches to artistic research in music

Coessens, Crispin and Douglas (2009), Borgdorff (2012) and López-Cano and San Cristóbal (2014)

Abstract

This paper presents the characteristic subjects and epistemological aspects of artistic research in music from the books The Artistic Turn: A Manifesto (2009), by Kathleen Coessens, Darla Crispin and Anne Douglas; The Conflict of the Faculties: Perspectives on Artistic Research and Academia (2012), by Henk Borgdorff, and Investigación artística en música: problemas, métodos, experiencias y modelos (2014), by Rubén López-Cano and Úrsula San Cristóbal Opazo. The authors present and complement the particularities of investigations involving artistic practice: knowledge area, epistemological concepts, state-of-the-art, the relationship between the researcher and the research object, the relationship with methodologies arising from the practice, results and products. Research in the arts still seeks greater academic acceptance due to particularities related to the artistic universe rather than to traditional sciences. By exploring these particularities, it is concluded that artistic research (here, in music) can offer new perspectives to the scientific community based on subjects such as non-conceptualism, contingency and a tendency towards variability in acts of representation.