The academisation of creativity and the morphogenesis of the practice-based researcher

This chapter explores the origins of creative practice-based research, its roots in the Art College system, and its struggle to emerge imago 1 like in the University system. It reflects on the ‘academisation’ of art and design and the slow and relentless ‘metricisation’ of culture and creativity, both within the context of research and the broader cultural landscape. As such, some of these characteristics have a strong UK focus, but the reader may recognise similar tropes in their recent cultural history. There is hope in the emergence of a new creature born in vitro to embrace the challenges of this new context, as an interdisciplinary practitioner with a transdisciplinary agenda. Much of this refers to the kinds of interdisciplinary work that emerged through a history of 20th-century artists engaging with digital technologies and subsequent entanglement with the broader science communities. As such, there is a focus on examples drawn from the work of Roy Ascott and the Planetary Collegium, a nomadic practice-based PhD programme with its origins in 1960s networked enlightenment. There is consideration of the ingredients necessary to support interdisciplinary practice-based research for the creative practitioner, in terms of the necessary international networks, the kinds of event/space that provide a provocative environment to nurture such work, and a couple of examples of the instruments and artefacts that open up new creative relationships.