Sensuous Knowledge 3: “Developing a Discourse” 8 – 10 November 2006.
Here we have collected the Programme, Call for Presentations and Call for Participation in PDF format.
Developing a Discourse
«A high-powered conversation or ideas exchange» – this is the description one of the 70 participants – artists, designers, and academic staff in higher art and design education – gave of last year’s Sensuous Knowledge conference. And now the Bergen National Academy of the Arts (Kunsthøgskolen i Bergen, KHiB) is once again preparing its annual
international conference at Solstrand, close to Bergen, Norway. Also this time it will be a conference with a few agenda setting key note speeches, but first of all with ample time for discussing examples of artistic research and development presented by the participantsin the working groups.
The first Sensuous Knowledge conference was held in October 2004. Its subtitle, «Creatinga Tradition», pointed to the double aim of the whole series: to develop ways of talking about, analyzing and evaluating various kinds of artistic R&D, and to consider the special character of cognition related to artistic creativity.
The 2005 conference, subtitled «Aesthetic Practice and Aesthetic Insight», focused on the latter aim. Presentations and discussions centered around the question whether artistic R&D should take the natural sciences as a model, try to develop strict methods and hope for new, factual and generalizable knowledge, or whether it should rather gather inspirationfrom the humanities, develop hermeneutic methods and try to provide some kind of broader insight.
Klaus Jung in discussions after his key note speech at SK3. Photo: Peter Klasson
With the subtitle «Developing a Discourse» we want this year’s Sensuous Knowledge conference to focus on – and maybe experiment with – various ways of presenting, arguingabout,and reflecting on examples of artistic R&D. And while the 2005 conference was concerned with the boundary between artistic R&D and traditional research, the
2006 one will treat the relationship of artistic R&D to art and design as such. We expect presenters to address the question what makes their work an example of R&D and not (only) a work of art or a design product. And we expect the discussions in the groups to start from here. Maybe the difference is not so much between the actual products,
but rather lies in the way we talk about them? Maybe the difference is a question of discourse?
