A/r/cography Art, Research and Communication Pedro Alves da Veiga CIAC – Research Centre for Arts and Communication, Aberta University Lisbon, Portugal me@pedroveiga.com ABSTRACT Tis article aims at establishing the foundations for a/r/cography as an “art and communication”-based research methodology, inspired by a/r/tography yet more encompassing, and particularly suitable for the digital art world. As part of the larger family of practice-based research methodologies, a/r/tography presents various ways through which it can be explored, but since it is aimed at the arts and education, its scope is forcibly hampered by the fact that not all researchers and art- practitioners are necessarily teachers. However, since most of its underlying principles can be extended for non-teachers, thus arose the idea to propose a methodology that would retain ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions, but would expand beyond the limitations imposed by the role of the teacher. Tis extension is called a/r/cography and is structured upon the interchangeable roles of artist, researcher and communicator, as being intrinsic to the underlying living inquiry processes. Furthermore, this proposal is supported by the author’s own experience from a/r/cographic processes in the creation, exhibition and communication of digital artworks. CCS CONCEPTS • Applied computing • Arts and humanities • Media arts KEYWORDS Digital Media Art, Methodology, Research, Communication, A/r/tography. ACM Reference format: P. A. Veiga. 2019. A/r/cography: Art, Research and Communication. In Proceedings of ARTECH 2019, October 23–25, 2019, Braga, Portugal , 9 pages. DOI: 10.1145/3359852.3359859 1 Introduction It is possible to retain what one might call the freedom of artistic creation and to use it to the full, not just as a road of escape but as a necessary means for discovering and perhaps even changing the features of the world we live in [1]. The artist/researcher is systematically faced with the need to choose a paradigm – a belief system based on ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions – within which their work can develop and prosper. Among the many qualitative paradigms that have emerged since the 1990’s, including blurred genre, arts based inquiry, scholARTistry and arts-based research, the latter (ABR) is mainly characterised by ontological relativism, transactional and subjectivist epistemologies, and hermeneutical and phenomenological methodologies [2]. A/r/tography is firmly rooted in the ABR paradigm, and is being increasingly adopted worldwide [3]. In a/r/tography knowledge emerges from the engagement of art making and teaching/learning, through living inquiry and reflective writing. This form of inquiry differs from the type of research that posits questions in order to define boundaries and describe what previously is known to exist. A/r/tography systematically questions on-going creative and artistic practices in order to create knowledge, rather than discover pre-existing realities. New understandings – not findings – are shared upon reflection on said practice [4]. Springgay, Irwin and Kind make a strong point in defending a/r/tography as a methodology by stating: Our arguments stem from a belief that if forms of arts- based research are to be taken seriously as emerging fields within educational research, then perhaps they need to be understood as methodologies in their own right, not as extensions of qualitative research […] toward an understanding of interdisciplinarity not as a patchwork of different disciplines and methodologies but as a loss, a shif, or a rupture where in absence, new courses of action unfold. [5] Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the owner/author. Artech 2019, Braga, Portugal. © 2019 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-7250-3/19/10...$15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3359852.3359859