A obra sobre investigação artística em relação à qual produzimos este comentário, filia-se substancialmente no campo que lhe é próprio, ou seja, trata-se de uma investigação que emana da experimentação efectiva com processos artísticos. A razão pela qual iniciamos a apreciação global com uma referência à natureza do texto em análise (que se encontra liberto de fundamentações extra-artísticas e que se demarca intencionalmente de compromissos com a filosofia da arte, da estética, ou da teoria da arte), justifica-se pelo excesso de dependência para com estas formas de reflexão que observamos em muitos textos sobre investigação artística.

O fenômeno cultural—da indústria da metainterface—da computação em nuvem nos obriga pensar as tecnologias através de uma abordagem crítica. O livro de Andersen e Pold discorre sobre o uso estético e político da cultura da nova tendência da nuvem através de um viés crítico trazendo referências seminais do campo das artes da Net e do Software. A nuvem—cerne da metainterface—sob os conceitos de computação móvel, computação ubíqua e Internet das Coisas não é apenas um novo serviço na internet.

In Logic of Experimentation, Paulo de Assis’s purpose is to consider music performance as artistic research, but in the pursuit of this goal he achieves much more than that, articulating an approach to music and the arts that situates them within an ontological and epistemological framework of far-reaching consequence. Replete with discussions of a wide range of theoretical issues, this outstanding study deserves the attention of scholars in a number of disciplines.

I like to think of artistic research as the union of knowledge and subjectivity, perhaps as rebellion against the large body of so-called ‘objective’ knowledge that is produced by most other scientists and researchers. It came as no surprise to me, then, that a collection of meta-reflective essays on artistic research and literature appeared as a polyphony of individual voices, a diversity worth celebrating.

The title of the publication is on point; especially if the term “drawing” is not only perceived as a verb but also as a noun. Artist researcher Gemma Anderson interrogates drawing as representation, as process, and as communication. She emphasizes that, on one hand, knowledge as well as insights become manifest in the outcome of drawing as a graphic representation, but on the other hand they also unfold during the process of drawing. In the introduction, the author underlines the value of drawing as a research tool by providing an overview of historical and current positions in exhibitions, projects, and books.

What I have learned from reading—or, working my way through—the book reviewed in this piece, is that a) the concept of transposition is multiple and needs a polythetic definition [like the strands/fibres of a rope] to be readable across the contributions in the volume; b) it gives no place for a reader-over-and-above the text-materials gathered in the anthology [cf. Donna Haraway’s god-trick], but she must invent herself as a reader in each contribution.

Discourses and discussions of artistic research are often characterised by their rhetorics of positivity and potentiality. Such discourses are usually premised on an optimistic celebration of the potentials of artistic research as an emerging space for academic production. Either as a conventional protocol or a more cynical attempt to manage the field, this core positivity continues to inform claims about what artistic research can or cannot do.

TransCoding – From ‘Highbrow Art’ to Participatory Culture is a study of the interrelation between artistic practices and social media strategies, considering in particular the interrelations between social media strategies and the arts, as well as the role of authorship and aesthetics within the realm of participatory art and digital culture.