On the Integration of Academic and Artistic Methodologies

The paper reflects upon the integration of academic-scientific methods and artistic strategies for art and technology projects that address user participation in a socially defined domain. The paper begins by describing its field of inquiry as an extended art field in which artistic enterprises form projects that, on the one hand, cannot respect the purposeless autonomy of art and, on the other hand, attempt to deploy artistic strategies that are the result of the cultural autonomy of art. The paper proposes Luhmann’s relative difference between
medium (loosely coupled elements) and form (tightly coupled constituents) as a theoretical and heuristic tool for productive interferences between artistic and scientific methods. Art and technology projects operate within a field of existing forms (social patterns, urban spaces, etc.), which must be de-coupled prior to decisions related to new forms. Novel recoupling is often seen as the artistic impetus per se, but recoupling is intrinsically bound to the decoupling process. The decoupling-recoupling process necessitates a project dependent
combination of various scientific and artistic methods due to the complexity and aim of these projects. The paper elaborates upon and exemplifies the proposed heuristic through various art and technology projects.