Academic Research and Artistic Practice in Chain Reaction : Methodology on Two Levels

This article describes the ways in which an academic method of research was combined with an artistic method in the production of Chain Reaction, a creative project developed by the author as part of her PhD program, using the methodology of practice-based research. The article describes the research design, and displays the negotiation between two different questions throughout the project—artistic and academic—by analysing two significant moments: devising artistic work with collaborators and working with theory. It is then argued that the cooperation between artistic practice and academic research enriches each field while simultaneously creating a strong form of cultural practice with both aesthetic and epistemological elements.


Introduction
This article begins with the question: Is it possible to combine academic research and artistic practice in practice-based research?If so, how can these two different methodologies and their corresponding methods be blended successfully in practice-based investigation?In this article, I discuss the complexity of artistic and academic research methods in collaboration using the case study of Chain Reaction (Pérez, 2009;2011), a performance piece I created as part of a PhD project, using the methodology of practice-based research.
In the humanities and the arts, terms such as practice-as-research (Allegue, 2009), practice-led research (Dean & Smith, 2009), and performance as research (Riley & Hunter, 2009) are used to describe a growing diversity of approaches.Practice-based research consists of developing practical or artistic work combined with a phenomenological interpretation of certain elements of the process through documented experience and generated material.With this method, research 'is done through practice, using methods intrinsic to the practice (such as investigations by form and conventions), as well as through a detached and reflexive approach, utilizing methods more extrinsic to practice (such as digital documentation, interviews and notes)' (Rasmussen, 2014, p. 22).
British drama scholar John Freeman (2010) has argued for the method of research through practice in performance, a sub-variant of practice-based research.He has argued for the plausibility of the approach within the institutional confines of the university by proposing the generation of two different products: the artistic work in the form of performance and academic research in the form of a written dissertation.He has acknowledged how both processes are intrinsically different, since they are evaluated according to different parameters and they need to fulfil different criteria for quality.In his view of research through practice in performance, academic research and artistic practice in collaboration push each other into creating better artistic practice and better academic research.The resulting products are then evaluated according to a different set of criteria that are used for obtaining a doctoral degree.
Freeman's research through practice in performance model is the one that is closest to the methodology I used when creating Chain Reaction.I am a researcher-a (practising) academic -at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, where I am writing a dissertation on the impact of digital media in performance.I am a trained academic doing art inside the institution of the university; I am not a trained artist doing research within the institutional confines of an art school.
Initially, this research focused on an experimental approach to consider the different possibilities of using ubiquitous media in contemporary performance and to address the ways in which those uses encourage creative expression.The following research questions were being tested through performance: How can the use of media serve artistic practice and/or benefit aesthetic expression?And conversely, are there instances where the use of media restricts artistic practice, and/or disrupts aesthetic expression?
In this article, I use the performance experiment of Chain Reaction to investigate the intersection between theoretical analysis and artistic practice.Chain Reaction is part of a theoretical project that tests its research questions through artistic practice, and then reaches conclusions through theoretical reflection.In this context, artistic 'practice' is understood as the creative process by which a work of art comes into existence, from the brainstorming phase to the materialized idea; thus, it does not only refer to practice as 'rehearsal'.In this article, I document the intricacies of academic and artistic research methods in collaboration, and I argue that this collaboration enriches each field while simultaneously creating a strong form of cultural practice with both aesthetic and epistemological elements.
I shall first describe the research design from which the performance experiment departs.I will then present the two questions that have driven the Chain Reaction project-the artistic question and the academic question-and I will discuss how I have negotiated between these two separate questions throughout the project.To do this, I will analyse two significant moments that illustrate this interplay: devising artistic work with collaborators and working with theory.

Research Design: Two Sets of Questions and Two Methodologies
Conducting research through practice is a rewarding but challenging task.Even though I tried to plan the performance experiment in the most organized way, once the studio work started, the research plan became blurred.
Those who are used to working in the studio know that in order for experimentation to take place one needs to be able to tolerate a certain level of chaos, since it is part of the creative process.This characteristic of studio work seems to be at odds with academic research, which is based more on deliberate investigation of questions.
As I faced the tension between these two very different working modes, the artistic and the academic, I found it productive to adopt a reflective position and to force myself to identify and classify our practice under the label of 'artistic work' or 'academic work'.To be able to do this in the most open and least limiting way, I adopted a method by which I posed open questions to myself and to my collaborators, and I tried to identify those questions as belonging to either the artistic mode or the academic mode.In order to differentiate the two sets of questions and show how they respond to different aims and intentions, I have called them 'academic' and 'artistic' questions.When I use the phrase 'academic' questions, I mean the questions that follow academic criteria and standards of quality that are commonly used within the university, which have to do with research being systematic, informed and verifiable.When I say 'artistic' questions, I mean the questions that follow another set of criteria and other standards of quality that are commonly used within art schools, which have to do with how the practice conforms and/or subverts artistic conventions of form (aesthetic, social and political).This does not mean that the artistic questions are not reflexive or analytical; they are, but they are based on different standards and criteria (Freeman, 2010, 77-82).
The first questions were the academic questions that initiated the experiment and they coincided with (some of) the research questions of my PhD project: How can the use of media serve artistic practice and/or benefit aesthetic expression?And conversely, are there instances where the use of media restricts artistic practice, and/or disrupts aesthetic expression?
Initiating an artistic project with an analytical question might seem unusual, but it is fundamental in practice-based investigation.According to Freeman, 'research questions as a starting point for formal inquiry are deemed necessary if the findings are to have any widely acceptable worth ' (2010, p. 66).Furthermore, he argued that 'locating and addressing a question or questions is fundamental before identifying appropriate practice-based means of addressing them' (p.66).
The initial artistic question was: How do I structure the form of the event?Other sub-questions were: What procedures will be used?How will selections be made?To what cultural form am I subscribing?What is the artistic intention of the piece?
To answer the academic question: How can the use of media serve artistic practice and/or benefit the aesthetic expression?I have used standard procedures of humanistic reflection, such as hermeneutic and phenomenological interpretive analysis, to support my reflection process (Gadamer, 1988;Ricoeur, 1973;Fischer-Lichte, 1992;Martin & Sauter, 1995).The methods that I used can be recognized throughout the project in the moments when I have asked others to explicitly reflect on the project, when I have reflected on this question during the creation process of Chain Reaction, or when I have engaged with related theory in articles or conference papers.
Thus, I have used three methods: First, conducting informal interviews with collaborators (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009).This has been done in plenum, in meetings where we were simultaneously planning the practice and also reflecting on it.It has also been done individually, when I met the collaborators for coffee and conducted informal interviews with them.Second, I have made changes to the practical project as a result of reflection in action as in 'action research' (Schön, 1984).This method advocates reflection in the action-present (a conscious activity) rather than using a trial-anderror method, so that the researcher is able to find viable solutions when a surprise appears in the process of accomplishing a task.In other words, the 'reflective practitioner' is able to solve to problems that appear during practice through a reflection of the whole rather than through solving a specific problem (Schön, 1984).Third, my own analysis of the related literature was conducted partly between the orchestrations in Berkeley and Trondheim, but it was more rigorously done once the artistic practice was completed after Trondheim.Thus, this combination of methods was used to support the hermeneutic process (Gadamer, 1988) in which I reflected upon the research question.
In answering the artistic question: How do I structure the form of the event?I have used the artistic methodology of devising a performance that makes use of many methods, some of which I attempt to identify below.Inspired by the emergent form of pervasive games and the work of experimental theatre groups, such as the German Rimini Protokoll and the British Blast Theory, I developed my very own performance system, combining game design with theatre dramaturgy and ubiquitous media, and I used this system as the core structure of the performance.To balance the combination of these three elements, I organized 'play-test' sessions in which we selected or rejected elements according to feedback from the participants and the collaborators.The overall process was a collaborative effort in which experts from all disciplines contributed their own methods and procedures to create specific stages of the event.The artistic collaborators, for instance, were asked to create the tasks to be performed at the checkpoints.The game designer's task was to ensure gameplay quality and, in cooperation with the author, to adjust it to the dramaturgy of the piece.Even though we divided the work according to roles, the collaborators stepped out of their roles at times and contributed to the overall event.

Performance system
Chain Reaction is a hybrid form of pervasive game and interactive theatre, the goal of which is to encourage participants to engage artistically with public spaces and, ultimately, create and perform a short performance piece as a result of their interactions within the urban environment.It seeks to engage participants in collaborative events through a combination of gameplay, media and performance in public space.
The piece has a set performance system-or a game model-that structures the performance, as shown in the diagram below.While this core structure remains the same in each of the iterations, other elements must be adapted to each new cultural context, such as the fictional story, the tasks to be performed and the locations.Volume 3, Nr 1 (2014) The performance goes as follows: Players meet in a specific place in the open, a park or a plaza, or inside a venue like a theatre, where a narrative is delivered by actors who then explain the game rules and hand out maps and mobile phones to the players, as shown in Figure 2. The story settings are important in that they motivate the players while simultaneously helping them understand their roles in the event.For example, the story setting of the Berkeley orchestration on 17 October 2009 had a satirical, futuristic narrative that connected with actual, serious political and social struggles related to the recent budget cuts and tuition fee increases at the University of California.This turmoil had caused demonstrations and protests among students and faculty members.According to the game's story, by 2020 Berkeley had been successfully privatized down to the very last brick.The University only accepted students that were guaranteed to contribute directly to the global economy-that is, students in the fields of business, economics, engineering and law.Degrees, such as History, Literature and Journalism, had disappeared.The University had become a corporation.The players' role was to help the corporation reach its goal of total privatization by going around the city and conducting research on the things, peoples or activities that could still be co-opted.The players were hired by UCB-University Corporation Berkeley-to present a report in the form of a performance, with the findings of their research and a recommendation to the corporation on how to proceed.In the Trondheim orchestrations (twice on 27-28 May 2011), the story setting had a humorous, science-fiction narrative set in present time, where the players-characterized as aliens disguised as humans-were preparing for an invasion.In this expedition, the players were sent out into the city to gather data that would help aliens successfully invade Earth, finding out what was essentially human so that it could be co-opted for alien purposes.Their findings would also be presented to the other participants in the form of a performance, where they would have to use the materials they had collected through the city.
Once the narrative was delivered, the players had to go in groups (two to four) and visit all the checkpoints marked on the map they had been given.At each checkpoint, an actor delivered a task that the players had to complete.The tasks were completed by the players, thereby generating and accumulating a different piece of artistic material at each checkpoint-a piece of text, a pattern of sound, a theatre sculpture and a sequence of movement, as shown in Figure 3.At the last checkpoint, the players had to create a short performance piece out of the materials they collected.Each group performed its piece for the rest of the participants-other players and the actors-and there a final and informal vote was taken to decide on the 'best' show, whereby the 'winners' earned a symbolic trophy and the others received a badge as a keepsake of the event.After the event was over, the players were encouraged to document their experiences through text, pictures and videos posted on social media sites such as Facebook and/or SFZero.2

Devising artistic work with collaborators
Chain Reaction is an experiment resting at the convergence of ubiquitous media, performance and experimental game design.Although I have some knowledge of each of these three disciplines, I felt I needed help from experts in all of these fields.Understanding the use of experts as a post-dramatic artistic device in which a multidisciplinary team collaborates in the making of an artistic work (Lehmann, 2006), I decided to make an open call for collaborators in the networks in which I was interested.This resulted in a group of colleagues that contributed to this research from game studies, theatre, dance, performance studies and music.The collaborators' biographies range from academics in the arts who are engaging in practical-artistic projects such as this one, theatre students and game scholars. 3his next section of this article will describe three specific stages in the development of Chain Reaction-initial brainstorming, posterior play-testing and the game being played-to show how I, together with my collaborators, reflected on two different sets of questions and addressed two different purposes when creating Chain Reaction.

Brainstorming
During the first brainstorming session with the team of collaborators, I challenged them to answer different artistic questions that stemmed from the initial artistic questions, which included: How do I structure the form of the event?
As we decided we wanted to create a participatory event where participants would be facilitated into connecting to their creative sides, one of the questions I asked was: How can we facilitate our audience engaging with artistic activities and exploring their creative sides through media?
The team members were asked to devise artistic tasks to be performed at the checkpoints.To do this, I divided the team according to their knowledge and the four disciplines that I wanted to address-literature, dance, music and theatre-and I asked them to create tasks in which media were used in 'meaningful' ways.That is to say, the use of media in the exercise had to follow a specific need, and the exercise could not be completed without media.
To better explain what I meant by 'meaningful' use of media, I urged asked the collaborators to examine their proposals by asking them to consider the following analytical question: What would this exercise lose if media were removed from it?I framed this question as a sub-question to the initial academic question: How can the use of media serve artistic practice and/or benefit aesthetic expression?
After reflecting on this question, the collaborators devised several artistic tasks and we discussed them in plenum, selecting one or two exercises for each discipline.In this brainstorming stage, we oscillated between addressing the artistic and academic questions, in an attempt to address both.We agreed that in order for a task to pass on to the next stage, that of play-testing, it would have to meet the selection criteria and address both the academic and artistic questions, and not just the artistic ones.The academic and artistic methods were linked at this stage, or perhaps embedded in each other, awaiting validation or rejection from the fieldwork in the next play-testing stage.

Play-testing stage
After the meetings in which we reflected on our activities, two play-tests were organized to see how the tasks engaged the players.A play-test is a common design strategy within game design where a game (or a part of the game) is orchestrated to test the game mechanics, tasks, sites, etc. in order to make selections, changes and adjustments according to the participants' feedback and the creators' observations before the public performance (Fullerton, Swain, & Hoffman, 2004).
The selections made during the play-tests took the tasks away from the academic mode of thinking and put a more exclusive focus on the artistic mode.As we found ourselves on the actual playground working with real participants, a variety of issues arose that we needed to address, which were independent of the initial academic question.For example, we found we needed to engage players by making the tasks more 'fun' than we had initially designed.As a way to solve this, we added social improvisation tasks that invited the site's inhabitants into the game, after the play-testers suggested it.Choosing to modify the tasks after receiving feedback meant that the artistic methods were prioritized over the academic questions, as the play-testers were not reflecting on the academic questions and they provided feedback according to their own experience of the event.Volume 3, Nr 1 ( 2014) Another example is that we realised that relying on smartphones as fundamental tools to complete all the tasks could be detrimental to the event because, first, technology failed for unexpected reasons in 30 per cent of the cases and, second, some of the players reported smartphone saturation and they argued that they spent too much time and energy looking and dealing with their smartphones rather than focusing on the exercise.As a result of this feedback, we decided to alternate tasks that used smartphones heavily with tasks that used media in a more loose way and could be completed without smartphones.Consequently, we again prioritized the artistic mode over the research mode, reducing media implementation.

The performance event
If we look at the tasks that made it into the final performance, it is possible to illustrate the compromises that were required.For example, if we consider something we called the 'mirror task,' we see an example of a task that satisfactorily addressed both the artistic and the academic questions.In this task, we decided to have the players use smartphones and a headset, so that they would listen simultaneously to a music track and mirror each other's movements.Two players were situated on opposite sides of a public square, fifty meters from each other.They were asked to gradually move towards each other, mirroring each other in slow motion until they physically touched each other, as shown in Figure 5.During the play-tests and the public performances, we found that when listening to a common track, the participants were better able to connect with each other and block outside noise while simultaneously performing the movements in a public space.The 'literature or sound tasks' were modified to the point of ignoring the initial academic question altogether.In those tasks, the players were asked to engage in conversation with strangers on the street and to get them to say the word 'corporation' (Berkeley orchestration) or 'fantasy' (Norway orchestrations) in a sentence, or get them to sing their favourite song (in the Berkeley orchestration only).The players had to write down the sentence and the song in order to memorize it, or record it on their smartphones, since it would later be used as the main text and soundtrack for the final performance.This exercise evolved from the initial proposal of asking the players to individually make a composition inspired in the environment into asking them to interact with passers-by to get the compositions from them.The artistic method was the use of social improvisation to get random people on the street involved in the creative process.In this way, the piece of text and the sound would stem from the interactions between the participants and strangers on the street, connecting Chain Reaction with the emergent tradition of social works that emerge out of the interactions among participants by using people as relevant elements of the artwork (Jackson, 2011).Adjusting the task pushed players into social action rather than relying on a more introspective mode of observation, which facilitated them staying engaged in playing the game at the beginning when this task was first encountered.This is an example of how the artistic methods adjusted the task to the benefit of the overall event at the expense of the academic question that was initially posed.
Through these three moments, we see the interplay between the artistic methods and the academic methods.Even though both types of questions are linked throughout the process, they can be understood as two sides of the same project; the academic questions were in focus during the early planning stages and the artistic framework somehow pushed itself to the forefront during the task selection and public event stages.

Working with Theory
In this section, I will refer to the times when I have analysed the practice with related art, game and media theory.
As part of his practice-based investigations, game designer and scholar Douglas Wilson (2012) has proposed the methodology of research after design as a way to embrace a purposeful distance between academia and game design practice.In Wilson's view, these two practices operate in two different social and cultural worlds, a distance that should be embraced, as it is fruitful for generating new ideas (2012, pp. 32-38).As he has argued, 'The lesson is that sometimes, it is more productive to embrace the tension between those two worlds, rather than struggling to reconcile them cleanly' (p.38).
Wilson's remarks echo my experience of creating and reflecting on Chain Reaction in that 'most' of my research outcomes have also happened after practice; I also found the interplay between the two worlds beneficial to the way I was able to reflect on the project.However, my experiences with Chain Reaction can offer a better understanding of 'the tension between the two worlds' and the ways in which this tension can actually be fruitful.I carried out written theoretical analyses 'after' each orchestration of Chain Reaction.As it was orchestrated three times, once in 2009 and twice in 2011, the theoretical reflection that happened in between orchestrations affected the subsequent practice.The aspects I reflected upon in the papers I presented at these conferences were not the role that media play in creative expression in Chain Reaction -the question that initiated the practical project-but rather, I focused on the other research questions that arose from practice and execution.
In research through practice, this shifting of foci can be understood as being part of the process where new stimuli arise from practice and are incorporated into the reflexive documentation process.In the practice-based investigation 'Returning to Haifa', a project that researches the use of dramatic texts in education, Owens and Al-Yamani (2010) argued positively that as practice progresses, new research questions are embedded in and arise from that practice.they argued that in order to accommodate these shifting imperatives and motivations, practice must be restructured.
Analysing Chain Reaction as a case study, we also find that new research questions arose from the issues that were revealed in practice, and a shift in the practice occurred to accommodate those new motivations.However, in response to the shift demanded by practical considerations, the second and third performances in Trondheim became an attempt to re-direct the focus towards one of the initial main research questions in my PhD project: How can the use of media serve artistic practice and/or benefit aesthetic expression?Engaging with related theory upon detached reflection after the Trondheim performances resulted in the writing of an article, entitled 'Fostering Participation through Ubiquitous Media in Pervasive Performance', which addresses this question and which is included in my thesis (Pérez, 2014b, 115-143).Out of that thinking process came the understanding that the most radical use of media in Chain Reaction was something that I, as the author, had disregarded as being too strenuous and uninteresting as a gameplay element, namely: the participants' documenting their own activities with their own mobile phones while playing Chain Reaction.During the Berkeley performance, the players took it upon themselves to document their experiences with a few pictures and videos taken with their personal mobile phones.They used this documentation to craft multimedia stories in a web interface where they explained their experiences.These accounts turned out to be well-composed and highly elaborated narratives that match the aesthetic standards of the large game collaborative platform, SFZero (Playtime, 2006).
The possibility of documenting Chain Reaction was provided to the players in the Berkeley event because such a platform (SFZero) existed and thrived in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the platform had agreed to accommodate the event as part of its large online community.The lack of such an online game community in Norway meant that this aspect of the work was missing in the performances in Trondheim.Even though SFZero is an online platform, and geography supposedly should not matter, the platform would have to be introduced to participants, which would mean extra work and effort for them, which made us decide against its use in Norway.
Through the reflective process of writing the above-mentioned article, I came to understand that the value of this documentation emerged from how it was executed entirely by the players.In this particular case, documentation was facilitated by the players' having been recruited from the SFZero community.Thus, they knew the platform beforehand and they were familiar with the documentation criteria that were used to score points in SFZero.In this sense, their documentation of Chain Reaction served two purposes: to fulfil the requirements to play Chain Reaction and to gain points in SFZero.In this case, the answer to the research question-How can the use of media serve the artistic practice and/or benefit the aesthetic expression?-was: the media functioned to foster the players' creative expression through documentation and to also facilitate the transformation of the players into creative documentalists.
Realising the relevance and importance of this issue to my research interests, I decided to keep exploring it through related theories on art and archives.I started writing another article, entitled 'Experiential Documentation in Pervasive Performance: The Democratization of the Archive' (Pérez, 2014a).In that article, using the case study of Chain Reaction, I discuss alternative possibilities for documenting participatory events where designers and participants collaborate not only on the making of events but also on the making of their archives.
In retrospect, I realise that I could have done things differently by addressing the initial research question-How can the use of media serve the artistic practice and/or benefit the aesthetic expression?-through theoretical analysis after the first performance of Chain Reaction, and not only after all the orchestrations had been completed.The practical consequence of doing this 'incorrectly' was that I was not able to implement the findings on the possibilities for the development of player-led documentation in the second orchestrations of Chain Reaction; thus, I missed the opportunity to take this part of the research further by making documentation the main object of study in the performance events in Trondheim.However, I also acknowledge the fact that if I had done things differently, I would perhaps still be unaware of one fundamental methodological insight that I obtained by doing things 'wrong', which is that the initial research questions need to be addressed regularly throughout the project in dialogue with theoretical analysis, and not only 'after' practice.Applied in this way, theory 'can be used to open the ground for new practice' (Freeman, 2010, p. 265).

Conclusion
In this article, I have attempted to shed light on the complexity of the collaboration between academic research and artistic practice, between theory and practice.I argued that I found it productive to identify and verbalize two sets of questions that drove the project: the academic questions and the artistic questions.In this way, I was able to discern when we were working with either artistic issues or academic issues; thus, I achieved a reflective distance to make sense of the creative process, which is often very difficult to articulate and make sense of, as it is chaotic and driven by so many divergent forces.
I have discussed two aspects of the project where the tension between theory and practice was brought forward.First, I discussed the working routines with the collaborators in which we constantly oscillated between the two different frameworks of the research questions-the academic and the artistic.The gameplay tasks that were created show how the artistic question was transformed through practice and how the academic question-as a point of departure from the artistic question-was (at times) purposely ignored.This dynamic illuminates the struggle of the shifting priorities that drive an investigation through practice.Second, I described how theoretical analysis after practice made explicit the aspects of the artistic work that would have otherwise remained hidden.In the same way that 'reflection in action' is fundamental in practice-based investigations, so too is theoretical analysis and interpretation.
My conclusion is that academic and artistic methods in collaboration can benefit both fields.On the one hand, the collaboration grounds research in current real world issues, shortening the gap between theory and practice.On the other hand, the collaboration may enhance artistic practice.This is because the individual and collective moments of reflection in action (during the creation and performance orchestration), together with interpretation through theory a posteriori, help the event become more robust and thought through and, in this way, it can blossom into a reflective cultural production.The academic and artistic research in collaboration creates a hybrid form that has value of its own while simultaneously reflecting back into both fields.

On the contributor
Elena Pérez is a researcher, theatre practitioner and experimental game designer.She is pursuing a PhD (2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014) in the Department of Art and Media Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), where she is looking at how digital media impacts contemporary performance, more specifically, how digital media challenge theatrical conventions in multimedia theatre, telematic and pervasive performance.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Structural model of Chain Reaction.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Two players perform a movement sequence inspired in the environment during a play-test in Chain Reaction, Berkeley.Photography: Anders S. Løvlie.

Figure 4 .
Figure 4.The winners of Chain Reaction in Trondheim right after their performance.Photography: Elena Pérez.

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Chain Reaction, 2011.A group of players complete the mirror task at Trondheim's main square during the playtest.Photography: Ingvild Aarseth.
After the first orchestration of Chain Reaction in Berkeley in 2009, I presented two conference papers: one at the Games: Design and Research Conference at Volda University College, Norway, 3-4 June 2010, and another at the 16 th Performance Studies International Conference (PSI) in Toronto, 9-13 June 2010.