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Short abstract:

The paper explores the information sharing of artist-researchers as a component of the conditions of possibility for artistic research and academic work. I describe ongoing doctoral work bringing together Information Science and research-creation and suggest that this is a generative connection.

Long abstract:

In the Canadian context research-creation (RC), is an emergent and contested category that joins creative and academic research procedures and processes. Artist-researchers create knowledge through unpredictable, dynamic, experimental practice [1]. Though RC approach is far from new (there is much overlap with practice-led or processed-based research) it is fairly recent under this term and in these institutional contexts. As such, the literature is also developing and shifting.

Information Science (IS) examines information-related artifacts, agents, contexts, and practices. IS scholars have questioned academic norms and sociomaterial concerns about the nature of information and information phenomena, including information sharing. Information sharing is used as an umbrella concept that covers a wide range of collaborative behaviors—from sharing, to accidentally encountering information, to collaborative query formulation and retrieval [2]. This field offers insight to the hidden labour of collaborative academic work, communities of practice, and expertise.

By drawing attention to the process of research, RC has the potential to reveal aspects of research that may otherwise be obfuscated, e.g., process, non-textual scholarship, and relationality. Examining information sharing of artist-researchers provides an opportunity to probe the knotted process of “legitimizing” institutional recognition of methods, approaches, and practices in academic settings. In turn, drawing on RC could inform IS to explore embodiment and non-linear documentation.

References

1 Loveless, N. (Ed.). (2020). Knowings and knots: Methodologies and ecologies in research-creation (First edition). University of Alberta Press.

2 Talja, S. (2002). Information sharing in academic communities. New Review of Information Behavior Research, 3, 143-59.