2.2. Artistic research and development methods
Following the outcomes of the previous section, this section investigates electronic art methods and their related methods with a more detailed analysis of the backgrounds of different disciplines. Firstly, the literature on related approaches from other disciplines is investigated, with a special focus on the relevance of electronic art research and development in technology, in 2.2.1.1.. After this, the recently compiled aRt&D book, which complements the existing literature, is brought in. This chapter continues with a proposal for four different categories of aRt&D methods: the undefined method, the reductive method, the self-sufficient method, and the processpatching method. Each method will be analysed in relation to methods from the art context, the interdisciplinary context and science, technical and design contexts. The undefined method represents a large group of artists who prefer not to work according to a clearly outspoken approach. This category falls outside the realm of this research and will therefore not be discussed in detail. The following two methods bear clear references to existing methods in other disciplines. The processpatching method, however, reflects a typically artistic approach.
In section 2.2.2., 2.2.3, 2.2.4., 2.2.5. of this literature study, I discuss different categories of electronic art research approaches, which are used as guidelines for defining artistic methods. Here I propose a nuanced view on artistic research and development approaches, taking into account the intrinsic qualities of artistic research as added features for interdisciplinary collaboration. These categories are based on field studies and literature from other disciplines or filtered from literature where available from the previous section. I focus on the three main artistic approaches and link to each of these the matching methods from related or involved disciplines. And from this, the typical electronic art methodological elements are derived.
In 2.2.6 the electronic art methods conclude with the missing categories of artistic research and development which in theory will inform us about the specifics of the intrinsic electronic art approach. In 2.2.7. the most relevant and frequently occurring research and development themes in interdisciplinary collaboration are investigated. In the conclusion, an overview of the proposed artistic methods, and each of their characteristics, is drawn up.
