Mick Winter Practicing Media Research Professor Tara Brabazon Master of Arts, Creative Media January 2010 The intertwining of researcher, practice and artifact in practice-based research Background For centuries, doctoral research demanded a written document, and only a written document. Its purpose was to record for posterity the discovery or formulation of original knowledge that could contribute to the vast body of knowledge acquired by academia since knowledge first began to be recorded in such a manner. But in recent years some in the health and education professions wanted to conduct doctoral projects that contained more than just research, because their professional activities required more than just research. They deal with real life and real people in the real world putting their knowledge into practice. In short, they wanted to create a practice-based research methodology. There were some in academia who saw the possibilities in a new approach. And so, some schools in a few countries started accepting what is now known as Practice-based Research as an appropriate—and approved—form of research that could lead to solid scholarship and original knowledge. Artists saw the (relative) success of their (perhaps more academic) colleagues, and decided it was their turn. They felt that their art—their dance, their painting, their sculpture, their novels, their music, their poetry—were all created through a process of research through practice. And that that art deserved to be accepted as worthy doctoral research in itself. Orthodox dissertation committees insisted that while art was very nice, it was necessary to have a written document to explain it all. The artists responded as dancer Isadora Duncan once famously did: “If I could tell you what it meant, there would be no point in dancing it.” A compromise was reached. The artist would produce an artifact; the committee would receive a written dissertation. This way they would have an object to put on their school's library shelves. The comprehensiveness and length of that dissertation will vary, depending on the academic institution. In content it can be entirely stand-alone, in that no artifact is needed to convey, or help convey, the information n the document. In this case, the artifact is more of an appendage, an interesting example of the conclusions reached in the written document. It can also be partially stand-alone, in that the artifact makes it much easier for the reader of the document to understand information in the document that can be fully understood only through some sort of experience other than text on a dissertation page. And, it can be totally dependent on the artifact, in which case the artifact not only illuminates, but completely and solely expresses the research and its 1