The feeling of what happens: A reciprocal investigation of inductive and deductive processes in an art experiment

This article investigates opportunities and challenges for art-based research through an observed art-making experience. The ‘participant observation’ methodology is adopted, reflecting everyday arts and psychotherapy practice. Simple mark-making experiences were orchestrated, experienced and observed, and attempts made to categorize them. The difficulty of instantly moving between cognitive modes, and the complexity and inseparability of the sensual and associative experiences induced, made it clear that isolating variables cannot describe the behaviour of complex systems, including art and consciousness, but does interfere with them. A reductive, isolationist method catalysed compensatory perceptions of relatedness, connection and complexity. Systemic concepts such as the ‘emergent properties’ of self-organizing systems offer more congruent tools to investigate art and psychological experience.