About Course
Introduction to Artistic Research explores how creative practice can function as a method of inquiry, experimentation, and discovery. Designed for artists, designers, makers, and other creative practitioners, the course introduces practical approaches for developing a curiosity into a focused research project.
Students learn how to formulate productive research questions, gather and evaluate primary and secondary sources, work with archives and objects, conduct field observations, design artistic experiments, and document their processes. Particular attention is given to the relationship between research and making: how materials, images, environments, technologies, and creative processes can reveal information that cannot always be discovered through reading alone.
Throughout the course, students develop a small artistic research investigation of their own. Rather than beginning with a predetermined final artwork, they learn to allow observation, experimentation, failure, and unexpected findings to influence the direction and form of their work.
By the end of the course, students will have developed a practical framework for moving from curiosity to question, question to investigation, investigation to experimentation, and research to creative work.
No previous experience with academic or artistic research is required.