Unstated contrbutions - How artistic inquiry can inform interdisciplinary research

Since 1990 many of the creative disciplines, such as art, design and performance, have become more engaged with research in the academy. This development has been accompanied by a good deal of interest in ways to employ the professional and creative practices of these disciplines as instruments of inquiry, just as other disciplines before have developed research methods that employ their specialist skills and knowledge. This gives rise to questions about the kinds of contribution to knowledge and understanding that research in the creative disciplines might provide. Research and practice in these fields may deal with matter which can change its meaning very quickly with time or context and practitioners, especially in art, may resist the idea that they should make concrete statements about what they have achieved, expecting their audiences to complete the meaning of their work for themselves. This paper offers an oversight of these issues and sets out some examples from the wider community that illustrate how incomplete or tacit contributions to inquiry can be a valuable and sometimes necessary part of the enterprise of creating knowledge and relevant in many kinds of research, especially where disciplines collaborate. It goes on to set out tentative principles for such contributions.