Not rocket science

Imagine that music had foreseen its future in the 1990s. Suppose it could have anticipated the advantages, readying itself for the iPod and the Arctic Monkeys, High Definition (HD) remote performance, the O2 Arena and soaring live audiences. Imagine that it could have prepared for the calamities – file-sharing, downloading and the demise of the CD. Instead of following, could it have led the reshaping of society by new technologies? Could it have facilitated an explosion of artistic potential, deploying the creative imagination of the industry’s workforce to open the way to hitherto unimaginable new audiences, new modes of participation in the arts, and new art forms?  

ENGAGE AND EXPLOIT
In ‘Not Rocket Science’, we say yes to all these questions. We argue that arts organisations should actively and systematically invest in Research and Development (R&D), until now seen as the preserve of the sciences. They should use the knowledge generated to stay ahead of the technological curve, to lead artistic and even social change. Take the example of the NESTA study on the National Theatre’s NT Live! HD broadcasts of live theatre to digital cinemas (AP211). Collecting systematic information about who is drawn in, whether existing audiences are extended or cannibalised, and what motivates the new participants can help engage and exploit new technologies and generate new art forms or genres, new forms of engagement and new audiences.
Remote HD presentation of live arts performances may not be a new technology, but R&D can assess on a calculated basis in advance what the effects and potential might be, and harness them in developing new ways to exploit the technology, for the producers as well as the patrons of the arts. And even more is at stake. Fusions of artistic experimentation and scientific study can enable arts organisations to combine the unique and innovative talents of their artists and their directors with methods that the social sciences have developed not only to study audience reaction, behaviour, and engagement, but also to explore the social and economic consequences of their actions.

EXPERIMENT AND RISK
R&D by arts organisations can, and will, we argue, place an emergent mix of capabilities at the disposal of those at the ‘curtainface’ to lower the risks associated with innovation, freeing artists to experiment while limiting the financial cost of failure. More fundamentally, they can anticipate the social changes that their innovation might lead to, engaging with policy and helping both the arts and society to envisage and extend their interface. In encouraging such experimentation, they can combine intrinsic and instrumental objectives: they can develop their art, and at the same time fulfil the wider social and economic uses for it.
R&D in science requires public support, and so it does in the arts. However, arts organisations are excluded from existing channels of R&D funding which are dominated at the international level by a narrow definition of research as a science activity. Thus, HM Revenue and Customs in the UK provides tax relief for R&D, for example, only if “an R&D project seeks to achieve an advance in overall knowledge or capability in a field of science or technology… [which] … does not include work in the arts, humanities and social sciences (including economics)”. Such rules need revision. Arts organisations and funders need to reconceptualise their remit so as to include R&D. Both require a broad discussion between arts organisations, arts funders, and policymakers.

REVISE AND CONQUER
Cultural institutions already engage in aspects of R&D. Museums and galleries conduct basic research, and performing and visual arts organisations justly pride themselves on their capacity for innovation. But these capacities are not connected. Innovation is not informed by research, and research is not disseminated in a systematic way to increase innovation elsewhere. Vital opportunities to obtain knowledge are not exploited. Social and technological change need systematic study. In music, consumers made a choice between CDs or downloading. In contrast, the National Theatre, secure in the knowledge that its live broadcasts are not cannibalising existing audiences, now stands ready to recruit new ones.
Combining experimentation with cutting-edge research methods in R&D can place arts and cultural organisations at the forefront of a knowledge economy dominated by the aesthetic and intangible, extending their reach far into the material world of, say, urban design and architecture, or the Internet. Such new interfaces between arts, the economy and society promise to add higher-value human and creative content to social production in a greener ‘post-material’ economy, and potentially democratise such production and consumption. To realise its full potential, it can, and should, combine imagination with foresight – by means of Research and Development.