“What Happens When...?”: A Meditation on Experimentation and Communication in Practices of Artistic Research

Natalia Esling’s introductory article to this special issue of CTR offers a snapshot of views and experiences of an international colleague (Falk Hübner) as a point of comparison for her own experiences using practice-based research (PBR) methodologies to examine the impact of sensory manipulation in contemporary performance. Discussing in brief her own research methods and experiment design, she considers several fundamental criteria associated with Artistic Research (AR)—process orientation, knowledge generation, and utility/transferability—arguing that the significance of discoveries made and knowledges gained through practices of AR lies in the capacity to communicate those discoveries and knowledges across multi- and interdisciplinary boundaries. The article further articulates the benefit of hands-on processes that lead to more incisive and precise questions related to discrete aspects of the dynamics of performance; it considers a way of thinking about AR in relation to performances/productions that does not necessarily privilege a performance/production as a final “outcome,” but rather that positions it as one aspect within the broader process of addressing a particular question through AR.