2: Artist

What I'm really interested in as an artist is not visualising scientific data or using technologies per se, but thinking about what are the other possibilities of making knowledge. What other types of knowledge are possible?

- Wendi Yan, Artist

This chapter examines how artists working at the intersection 𝖎 of art and advanced technologies (AxAT) conduct Creative R&D activities that extend beyond traditional artistic outputs such as art objects and experiences, despite a general lack of formal ways of recognising and supporting these contributions. We identify three primary modes through which AxAT practitioners partake in the Creative R&D ecosystem: offering a forum for public interest by involving and convening publics in and around technological phenomena; setting new strategic visions by expanding collective imagination through alternative technological futures; and, engaging in different forms of systemic intervention by building tools, infrastructure, and operational entities. Importantly, AxAT practices encompass all of these dimensions, though individual practices typically emphasise some over others. These functions are also performed by actors adjacent to the AxAT field: e.g., science communicators and technology journalists who translate complex technologies for public consumption; futurists and science fiction authors who create speculative narratives around emerging technologies; and design researchers, creative technologists, and social entrepreneurs who develop new tools and communities. AxAT artists are frequently engaged in these different capacities in addition to their artistic work, serving as consultants, technologists, or creative directors in industry, academic, and public sector initiatives.

By mapping these aspects of AxAT practices onto established frameworks of Creative R&D as summarised in the preceding chapter, we demonstrate how artists enhance 𝖛 broader innovation ecosystems. The chapter then considers the different barriers that AxAT practices currently face in fulfilling the potential of Creative R&D as an important contribution to innovation ecosystems. The final chapter will address these in the form of proposals. We also present in-depth case studies of three AxAT practitioners that further illustrate how Creative R&D functions and the value that it creates across different scales.

Some of our artworks are about technology and they use technology. Other artworks use technology, but they're not about technology. Other artworks could be about technology and don't use technology.

- Operator, Artist Studio

Rather than defining the artist in metaphysical or essentialist terms, we adopt a systems approach to understanding the artist's role as a key agent of Creative R&D activity. This functional perspective views the artist as operating within an ecosystem of technological, social, and cultural forces. From this vantage point, AxAT Creative R&D encompasses artistic work that operates across three interconnected capabilities: convening fora for public interest, setting new strategic visions, constructing innovative tools and infrastructures.

The real work actually happens in the gallery space with the audience.

- Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Artist

AxAT practices serve as vital translators and communicators of advanced technological developments. Artists working in this space render complex technological concepts accessible to broader audiences, transforming abstract or technical innovations into experiences that can be perceived, felt, and understood. This process extends beyond notions of 'public engagement', which often positions art in service of scientific or technological knowledge communication. Instead, AxAT practitioners create public experiments, forging new relations between knowledge, objects, locations, and communities that did not previously exist.¹

The audience is an integral part of the investigation - they play a key and active role. In being invited to play this role they become implicated and provide the context for learning, discussion and critique. You take from the world, you construct, and then you put that back in the world in front of an audience.

- dmstfctn, Artists

AxAT creates the conditions for varying degrees of 'publicness' to form.² When Lauren Lee McCarthy develops autonomous systems through iterative test rides with participants, a new public is formed through artistic and technological development. Similarly, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley's approach positions audiences as active collaborators rather than passive viewers. Art in the Cage Collective's intervention with OpenAI's Sora model exemplifies how artists can transform proprietary technologies into subjects of public discourse, revealing the extractive dynamics that might otherwise remain hidden.³

I think for me it's really about taking an emergent research strain or possible future technology that's still in that gooey R&D phase but has interesting implications, and then translating this open-ended system into a public discourse.

- Alice Bucknell, Artist

What distinguishes AxAT work is its simultaneously exploratory and critical approach. AxAT practitioners create connections between disparate domains - science, culture, philosophy, politics - revealing the multidimensional nature of technological systems. They often draw people into the 'magic' 𝖊 of technology, illuminating its wondrous capabilities and transformative potential through experiences that generate affective responses and curiosity.

Technologies like AI or drones are before-culture technologies. They have arrived earlier than our cultural capacity to understand what they might mean. Therefore the role of artistic R&D is less about imagining what might come next and more about imagining how we might respond to the things that have already been created. This is critical because it is a way of trying to get ahead of the technology before it's too late.

- Liam Young, Artist

Crucially, these same practices also reveal the 'shadow aspects' of technology - the hidden biases, negative externalities, unintended consequences, and power dynamics embedded within technical systems 𝖗. By making these shadow elements visible and tangible, AxAT artists foster a more nuanced public consciousness that resists both techno-utopianism and dystopian fatalism. This dual capacity to enchant and disenchant creates space for public engagement that is neither uncritically celebratory nor reflexively dismissive.

Through this multifaceted translational work, artists help shape how technologies are perceived, discussed, and ultimately integrated into society, cultivating technological literacy that encompasses both practical understanding and critical reflection beyond specialist communities 𝖛. AxAT practitioners don't simply present existing technological realities but actively construct new public formations around them - creating conditions for non-specialist communities to participate in decisions about technological development that typically remains inaccessible to public influence.

Can we have some alternative tech narratives and alternative visions for a future that can actually become real?

- Lauren Lee McCarthy, Artist

AxAT practices play a crucial role in expanding our collective imagination through speculative narration - creating narratives that both anticipate potential consequences and conjure alternative technological futures. These narratives engage the social, ethical, and cultural implications of technological developments before they fully materialise. Unlike predictive forecasting that seeks to diminish risk by narrowing possibilities, AxAT practitioners deliberately maintain multiple potential futures simultaneously. This multiplicity resists the tendency toward technological determinism that often characterises industry-led innovation narratives

Through artistic worlding practices, AxAT practitioners construct scenarios that reveal hidden assumptions embedded within technological innovation while simultaneously proposing alternative paradigms.⁴ By creating conceptual and experiential frameworks that allow us to inhabit and evaluate potential technological worlds before they materialise, artists transform technological futures from predetermined outcomes into spaces for deliberation, contestation, and possibility.

This speculative dimension ultimately expands the range of futures we collectively consider possible, opening new pathways for technological development that might otherwise remain unexplored.

Whilst public engagement and the expanding of our imaginative capacities may be their most widely understood and recognised functions, AxAT practices are within a lineage of artistic practice where artists are also builders and can develop tools and infrastructures that have different forms of systemic impact. These interventions may influence basic research and upstream technology development by introducing novel perspectives or methodologies. They might result in the creation of new tools, platforms, or communities that transform how technologies are designed and used. Additionally, AxAT work can catalyse the formation of new organisations, networks, or institutional arrangements 𝖎 that reconfigure relationships between art, technology, and society. These interventions have had a significant impact on the cultural sector and creative industries but also catalyse spillovers across the wider innovation ecosystem 𝖒.

For example, Lauren Lee McCarthy's work on p5.js stands as a landmark example of an artist developing a tool that extends beyond their individual practice to empower broader communities. P5.js is an open-source JavaScript library specifically designed to make coding accessible to artists, designers, educators, and coding beginners. By prioritising accessibility and community development, p5.js has created infrastructure that enables its 4 million users worldwide to engage with creative computing.⁵

Artist duo Operator (Ania Catherine and Dejha Ti) developed a novel method for storing choreographic data on a blockchain by creating a custom pipeline converting motion capture files into compressed formats.⁶ This technical innovation has created a new market, generating over $2million in sales for choreographic works, attracting new collectors and audiences for performance works.⁷

My goal is proposing a new alternative world, a new way of thinking.

- Sputniko! (Hiromi Ozaki), Artist & Cradle CEO

Transformative interventions also occur when artists establish commercial entities that become vehicles for realising systemic impact beyond what is currently possible in the cultural sector 𝖒. In her work Menstrualverse (2022), artist Sputniko! - the moniker of Hiromi Ozaki - explored how gender is represented in virtual worlds and highlighted the rejection of menstruation representations in metaverse platforms. Building on this foundation of speculative design work, in 2022 she launched Cradle, a business-to-business company addressing workplace diversity and inclusion in Japan. Cradle's focus on women's health and workplace support directly extends Ozaki's artistic investigations into practical solutions with tangible outcomes for Japanese corporate culture. By transitioning from art and speculative design to operating a business, Ozaki demonstrates how artists can translate critical perspectives gained through AxAT work into larger socio-economic change.

Art is a process of inventing Point B, not of going from A to B, but inventing Point B - moving forward when there's not a template.¹²

- Amy Whitaker, Artist & Researcher

AxAT practices deliver dynamic and transformative Creative R&D; however within the cultural sector the term 'R&D' is often used inconsistently or avoided entirely.¹³ Simultaneously, the broader innovation ecosystem frequently fails to recognise artists' contributions as legitimate R&D work, leading to systemic undervaluation of artistic research and missed opportunities for cross-pollination 𝖎 between sectors. This terminological hesitancy masks Creative R&D and overlooks how closely AxAT practice aligns with established definitions of R&D. R&D encompasses activities that are novel, creative, uncertain, systematic, and transferable/reproducible, criteria that we argue apply to core elements of AxAT practice, whether framed as basic research, applied research or experimental development.

AxAT practices consistently produce novel insights and knowledge through their creative engagement with emerging technologies, not just through downstream artistic applications and reflections, but by engaging with cutting-edge challenges in technology development. For example, Ian Cheng's research and experimentation with neuro-symbolic systems and continuous learning in open-ended environments dovetails with advancing continuous learning in non-deterministic environments, and combining symbolic reasoning with neural networks, amongst other emerging research areas.

The uncertainty criterion - where outcomes cannot be predetermined - is deeply embedded in AxAT practice. Artists embrace uncertainty as a methodological principle. While artistic practice is often perceived as intuitive rather than systematic, professional AxAT practitioners typically employ structured methodologies, iterative prototyping, and systematic testing of hypotheses. For example, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley iterates on her participatory video game projects through design and development 'sprints' in response to user feedback, generated through playtesting or focus groups, or via public exhibition.

While the knowledge produced through AxAT practices has the capacity to be transferable and reproducible, that capacity is currently constrained by the dissemination channels that artists have at their disposal. Nevertheless, the technical skills developed through artistic practice frequently translate into engineering capabilities that offer distinctive approaches to material and conceptual problems. These technical contributions often emerge from the necessity to develop custom solutions when existing technologies prove inadequate for artistic purposes. Kyle McDonald's open-source contributions to computer vision libraries have been adopted in commercial and research applications, while Mary Franck's architectural-scale projection mapping systems developed for her art installations have subsequently been implemented in commercial contexts. Similarly, Casey Reas, beyond co-creating Processing, has developed computational techniques for generative design that have influenced software engineering approaches to visual systems. Alexander Whitley Dance Studio's development of Otmo - a software platform for movement creation - emerged from years of experimentation with motion capture and machine learning in dance productions, subsequently finding applications in movement analysis and choreographic research beyond 𝖒 ts original artistic context.

AxAT artists will often pursue knowledge without immediate practical applications, asking fundamental questions such as 'what is the nature of machine cognition?'; 'how do computational systems construct and represent knowledge?'; or, 'what are the ontological implications of virtual environments as spaces of being?'. Their investigations frequently precede commercial R&D by years or even decades, exploring territory considered too speculative or philosophically complex for market-driven research. A striking example is the work of Rebecca Allen, who pioneered 3D computer graphics and motion capture technologies in the 1980s and 90s. She was part of the teams that developed the Aspen Movie Map (an early precursor to Google Street View) and created the first 3D human figure and facial movement simulations. Her work at organisations including the MIT Architecture Machine Group (predecessor to the Media Lab) and the New York Institute of Technology (which laid the groundwork for Pixar) developed important precursors for virtual reality, 3D game engines and digital avatars decades before they became commercially viable.

Similarly, Auriea Harvey's practice spans decades of digital innovation, from her pioneering net.art work with Entropy8Zuper! in the 1990s to her experiments in virtual worlds and game spaces. Her explorations of 3D scanning, digital sculpture, and the relationship between physical and virtual materiality have anticipated numerous developments in AR/VR and digital fabrication that would later be adopted by industries ranging from game development to digital heritage preservation. In a similar vein, artist Myron Krueger also developed interactive responsive environments in the 1970s with his Videoplace installations, establishing foundational concepts for what would later become augmented reality, gesture recognition interfaces, and embodied computing - technologies that only became commercially viable decades later.

The methods used by AxAT artists transcend disciplinary boundaries, combining visual and material experimentation with technical research, critical theory, and ethnographic approaches. This methodological hybridity allows them to navigate complex technological subjects from multiple perspectives simultaneously, yielding insights inaccessible by more siloed approaches. For example, artist Alice Bucknell spends the first three to four months of her project development on intensive research, combining diverse strains of knowledge that don't operate under traditional categories. Her work with environmental simulation integrates climate science, architecture, fiction, and AI to examine how computational models shape our understanding of ecological futures. Similarly, Wendi Yan approaches knowledge-making from a perspective that questions established epistemological practices, drawing on her background in the history of science to explore alternative narratives around technology. Her work investigates how cultural frameworks shape technological development while simultaneously being transformed by it.

What's important is that artists are engaging in the conversation from a critical standpoint, not just being consumers, not just using their tools, not just working within the constraints of the tools that they're telling us are useful for artists. Artists who deeply understand and engage with this technology and who are thinking beyond the surface.

- Jake Elwes, Artist

Many artists immerse themselves in learning new techniques not necessarily for direct application but to comprehend underlying systems and their impact. Jake Elwes emphasises working with technology 'at every level as medium', developing a technical fluency that allows for both creative expression and critical intervention.¹⁴ This deep engagement reveals aspects of technological systems invisible to those who approach them as tools rather than interrogating them as cultural artefacts.

The insights generated through this basic research inform artists' own projects, open new avenues for investigation, and create valuable knowledge circulation that extends beyond traditional R&D channels. Crucially, this work often creates conceptual frameworks and critical vocabularies that later become essential to wider technological discourse, laying foundations that benefit researchers, developers, and policymakers long after the initial artistic investigation.

Artists frequently engage in applied research - acquiring new knowledge directed toward specific practical aims and applications. Artistic applied research pursues practical solutions to creatively framed problems, yielding distinctive tools, methodologies, and applications that might otherwise remain undiscovered.

The development of new tools represents a significant category of artistic applied research. For example, by reimagining Processing for the web with accessibility and inclusivity as core design principles, Lauren Lee McCarthy's p5.js exemplifies how artists identify and address needs overlooked by mainstream technology development. Meanwhile, Operator's generative choreography method results in both new performative possibilities and transferable methodologies for human-machine collaboration in movement design. Heather Dewey-Hagborg's work with forensic DNA phenotyping has developed practical techniques for extracting and analysing genetic material from environmental samples, creating both artistic outputs and methodologies with applications in privacy advocacy and bioethics research.

Some artists strategically deploy exhibition contexts as alternative testing environments for applied research, employing methodologies that parallel clinical trials or user experience studies. Artist duo dmstfctn transforms exhibition spaces into participatory research environments where audience members play active roles in testing systems and providing data for analysis and refinement. Their Godmode series creates controlled experimental settings where participants' interactions with surveillance technologies generate empirical insights into human-machine perception mechanics. Similarly, Natsai Audrey Chieza's exhibitions function as living laboratories for applied research: 'You're experimenting with language, you're experimenting with framings, you're experimenting with modes of representation'.¹⁵

The trajectory from speculative questioning to practical implementation is exemplified by Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg's Pollinator Pathmaker project. Beginning with fundamental research questions such as 'what is an artwork from the perspective of insects?', Ginsberg progressively developed a tangible applied outcome: an 'altruistic algorithm' for designing gardens optimised for pollinator species rather than human aesthetic preferences. This project now generates real-world ecological interventions through a public-facing tool that enables anyone to implement the research findings. Pollinator Pathmaker is now also the subject of continuing research funded by UK Research and Innovation\’s (UKRI) cross research council responsive mode pilot scheme.¹⁶

Similar research pathways are evident in Refik Anadol's work with machine learning systems applied to architectural visualisation. His investigations into how neural networks process spatial data have yielded practical techniques for integrating AI-generated imagery into built environments, creating new possibilities for responsive architecture and data-driven spatial design.

By pursuing questions framed through artistic sensibilities, artists identify practical applications that emerge laterally rather than through linear development processes, resulting in innovations that might otherwise remain undiscovered.

In experimental development, artists apply existing knowledge to produce new or improved outputs, addressing the pragmatic question: how can we make this work in practice? This phase transforms theoretical understanding and prototypes into operational systems that function reliably at scale, often requiring significant organisational innovation alongside technical implementation.

The emergence of the 'Art Stack' represents a significant trend in experimental development, referring to artist-led organisations that integrate functions typically distributed across the art ecosystem into single, vertically integrated entities.¹⁷ These operations are characterised by being integrated studios of unprecedented scale that bring technical expertise in-house, engage in direct revenue generation and distribution, and rely on mass-market direct-to-consumer models. teamLab exemplifies the Art Stack model, having evolved from a small collective into an organisation of over a hundred specialists spanning art, programming, engineering, mathematics, and architecture. Their development of proprietary real-time rendering systems and interactive technologies has culminated in permanent spaces including teamLab Borderless, which attracted over 2.3 million visitors in its first year - more than any single-artist museum worldwide.

Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst Studio demonstrates experimental development in the sonic arts, having progressed from academic research into machine learning for vocal synthesis to the creation of Holly+, a decentralised organisation governed by a DAO that manages their AI voice instrument. This project transforms speculative artistic research into an organisational model for managing artificial voices with clear governance mechanisms and economic frameworks.

Experimental development in AxAT practice is particularly valuable because it demonstrates how artistic concepts can manifest as viable organisational forms and operational systems, refuting the notion that artistic enquiry is necessarily divorced from practical implementation. This work creates important reference points for how technologies can be developed and deployed with a more diverse set of values.

AxAT practitioners frequently extend their methodologies and skill-sets beyond 𝖒 traditional cultural contexts, assuming specialised roles that directly feed valuable expertise into broader innovation ecosystems. These cross-sector engagements 𝖎 represent significant but often unrecognised channels through which artistic research directly impacts technological development.

Many AxAT practitioners successfully operate with dual identities as both artists and industry technologists. Sougwen Chung has worked as an artist and as a researcher at organisations such as Bell Labs and MIT Media Lab, bringing her artistic investigations of human-machine collaboration directly into research contexts. Rebecca Allen moved between her artistic practice, pioneering work at companies including the New York Institute of Technology, MIT Media Lab Europe and Nokia Research Hollywood Lab and creating motion capture and 3D graphics systems for the film and video game industries. Artist and technologist Memo Akten has developed machine learning tools while maintaining his artistic practice and contributing to the development of creative coding frameworks used in commercial settings. Similarly, Anna Ridler's work with GANs and datasets has informed machine learning applications beyond the art context 𝖒.

Artists serve as critical bridges between disparate 𝖎 domains of knowledge, identifying unexpected connections and advising on novel approaches to complex challenges 𝖗. Caroline Sinders, a machine learning design researcher and artist who founded Convocation Design + Research, has worked with organisations including Mozilla, Meta and Amnesty International on AI ethics and algorithmic auditing frameworks. ¹⁸

Artists function as sophisticated edge-case users, pushing technologies beyond intended parameters to reveal new applications and limitations. Companies such as Adobe regularly engage artists as beta testers for emerging tools, recognising that artistic experimentation uncovers both bugs and unexpected opportunities that conventional testing protocols would miss. This advanced usage provides invaluable feedback for refining technologies before broader deployment.

The London-based Marshmallow Laser Feast has consistently pushed the boundaries of motion capture and immersive technologies, identifying limitations and new use cases that were later adopted by commercial developers.

The critical perspective cultivated in AxAT practice positions artists to conduct effective adversarial testing of emerging technologies. Trevor Paglen's collaboration with Kate Crawford on 'Training Humans' revealed fundamental biases in facial recognition systems.¹⁹ These interventions identify vulnerabilities, unintended consequences, and ethical oversights before technologies reach problematic scale.

AxAT practitioners have contributed to technology education through innovative pedagogical approaches that combine technical instruction with critical inquiry across multiple disciplines, bringing their expertise to subjects well beyond traditional art departments. In higher education, the Creative Computing Institute at UAL, with faculty including Rebecca Fiebrink and Phoenix Perry, has developed distinctive approaches integrating artistic and technical learning. The new BA Art and Technology at the Slade School of Art exemplifies how artistic frameworks provide unique entry points to technical knowledge. Meanwhile, alternative educational models, for example, the School for Poetic Computation in New York experiment with hybrid approaches combining art school, research lab, and hackerspace structures.

Despite the evidence showing that Creative R&D is intrinsic to AxAT practices, the latter face significant systemic barriers that prevent them from achieving their full potential as vital components of broader innovation ecosystems. These barriers stem from structural issues within cultural, economic, and institutional frameworks that systematically undervalue artistic research contributions 𝖗.

What are the stakes of calling oneself an artist? On the one hand, it's treated as a protected group, giving you access to funding and to certain spaces. But sometimes it comes back to bite people where they're not taken seriously in a technological space.

- Sylvan Rackham, Co-Founder, Restless Egg

The dominant economic structures surrounding artistic practice fundamentally misalign with the needs of research-driven work. The art market remains largely centered around promoting artists as individual actors - a paradigm ill-suited for practitioners working in more collaborative, organisationally-intensive and process-oriented ways to gain recognition and institutional support. When artistic work is primarily valued through public exhibition and commercial success, the space for exploration becomes constrained to what an artist can personally sustain as hidden labour within their practice.

I find it strange thinking of my art practice as R&D, but I am a researcher. I left academia to focus on practice as I felt the value of practice-based research was changing in art schools and wider academia. The artwork holds a set of research questions, but the experience of engaging with it as art is one of the senses, and not one of research and development. I want people to have an emotional experience, to feel something with their body or with their mind, but more with their body, with their senses.

- Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, Artist

While artists may be conducting advanced research, they must often disguise this within frameworks that emphasise gallery experience rather than knowledge production in order to secure support and recognition. With the non-profit art sector significantly underfunded and highly dependent on integrating with the art market, there are very few incentives for artists to lobby for the recognition of the Creative R&D elements of their practices. This is compounded by increasingly precarious work in academia - once a key host for interdisciplinary AxAT practice.

In the 2010s, as I became more recognised through social media, I felt growing pressure to cater to the attention economy - as if I had to keep posting selfies on Instagram just to stay visible and maintain influence. It felt superficial and ultimately unsustainable. That's when I began seriously considering launching my own company - to create a system that could have a more direct and meaningful impact on society.

- Sputniko!, Artist

Many AxAT practitioners, dissatisfied with the limitations of traditional art economies, turn to venture capital, startup, and commercial product development models. While these commercial pathways provide viable alternatives for some practitioners, they present their own constraints. These models often channel artistic research toward product-oriented timelines and market-driven metrics that don't accommodate all forms of Creative R&D, particularly in respect to creating a forum for public interest, the more speculative end of strategic visioning and non-commercial development.

This dual pressure - from both the art market's focus on exhibition-ready objects and tech industry's emphasis on commercial products - creates a structural gap where many forms of artistic Creative R&D struggle to find appropriate support mechanisms that acknowledge their distinctive value proposition 𝖛 as neither purely art nor pure commercial development, but rather as vital research that contributes to innovation ecosystems in ways that transcend and add to both domains.

For artistic R&D to truly thrive, institutions need to embed it within their structures, giving artists the space, time, and resources to explore without the pressure of immediate outcomes.

- Anicka Yi, Artist

Maybe part of advocacy for R&D is in revealing its labour [...] thoughtful transparency on our end about our own processes [...], revealing the back end a little bit and inviting people into the production space, into the mess a little bit.

- Jazia Hammoudi, Programme Director, Onassis ONX

Within the cultural sector, most organisations lack formal frameworks for acknowledging and supporting Creative R&D activities. While exhibitions, public programmes, and collecting have established operational categories with dedicated budgets, staffing, and organisational visibility, Creative R&D work often remains uncategorised - taking place informally in the margins of recognised activities or embedded invisibly within exhibition and public programmes development. This structural invisibility limits resource allocation, institutional learning, and the ability to build cumulative research capacity. While this landscape has begun to shift in recent years with some cultural organisations establishing dedicated R&D departments or innovation labs, these remain the exception rather than the norm. The need for more formalised recognition and support of Creative R&D within cultural institutions is further explored in the following chapter.

There is a fundamental difference between pure creative R&D - which allows unknown or unexpected outcomes - and R&D which needs to be demonstrated, or put in front of an audience. The latter means at some point R&D stops and preparation for presentation begins. If the time and resources for both parts of the R&D are not available, it can put artists in a vulnerable position - with a dichotomy on how to present their exploratory work.

- Nell Whitley, Executive Producer, Marshmallow Laser Feast

Meanwhile, research institutions and technology organisations often categorise artistic collaborations primarily as 'public engagement' activities rather than as legitimate research partnerships. This classification creates structural barriers to meaningful collaboration - limiting artists' access to research resources, restricting information sharing, and positioning artistic work as primarily concerned with communication rather than knowledge production. The experiences of practitioners vary widely depending on institutional cultures, with some organisations providing robust support and direct access to their R&D environments and others maintaining stricter boundaries that inhibit true collaborative research.

How do we measure success in these collaborative technology projects? From a cultural institutional perspective, success often means building new audiences - and these projects frequently achieve that objective, particularly attracting younger demographics. Meanwhile, technology companies benefit substantially by developing new hardware and systems they can later distribute internationally for commercial gain. But, I question whether these projects truly succeed for the artistic teams involved.

- Jo Paton Htay, Creative Producer and Project Director

Artists also face substantial difficulties in reaping sustained benefits from technological collaborations. While they may work extensively with scientists and technology developers, artists and cultural organisations lack the financial resources, equipment access, or sustained support needed to independently build upon collaborative discoveries. For companies, however, these partnerships can feed directly into their R&D, marketing and user testing.

The problem of value recognition extends critically to intellectual property frameworks. Artists who share and develop their R&D processes publicly - whether from a commitment to knowledge-sharing or due to gallery expectations for public engagement and audience metrics - risk losing the value of their intellectual property 𝖛.

If you cannibalise the whole thing, I wouldn't be upset. If someone looks at it and takes it and uses it, then it's functional.

- Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Artist

A fundamental tension exists between open-source culture, which has deep roots in many AxAT communities, and the need for artists to 𝖛 capture value from their innovations. This tension is exacerbated by widespread confusion about what open source actually entails, with many practitioners incorrectly assuming that open sharing necessarily means surrendering all economic rights. The lack of accessible legal guidance and practical models for strategic IP management leaves many artists caught between the desire to participate in open knowledge exchange and the need to secure sustainable livelihoods from their research contributions. Without adequate support in navigating these complex IP decisions, artists often default to either overly restrictive protections that limit the impact and reach of their work, or complete openness that leaves them vulnerable to exploitation without compensation.

There are currently limited mechanisms to track value creation, demonstrate impact, or accurately assess the contributions of AxAT practices to wider innovation ecosystems 𝖛. This is further compounded by artist labour being framed as a market failure - something publicly valuable but not commercially viable. Since the economic impact that labour provides often emerges through spillovers and multipliers 𝖒 that lie outside its immediate product, its true value remains illegible to policymakers, funders, and investors.²⁰

What is tough is finding investors who are more strategic and know that you have to fund the thing that has the potential to generate value down the line.

- Natsai Audrey Chieza, Artist & Founder

This absence of comprehensive data tracking hampers the ability to secure financing, demonstrate value, or accurately assess the true risk profile of investments in Creative R&D at different scales 𝖛. Without these foundational elements, even seemingly high profile AxAT initiatives struggle to achieve their full potential.

The aim of this chapter has been to demonstrate that artistic engagements with advanced technologies constitute legitimate and valuable Creative R&D activities within established definitions, manifesting across basic research, applied research, and experimental development contexts. We have identified how AxAT practitioners contribute to innovation ecosystems through multiple roles beyond their primary artistic practice, providing unique value through their distinctive methodological approaches and cross-disciplinary perspectives. However, significant barriers - including misaligned economic structures, intellectual property challenges, and institutional misclassification - currently prevent this work from achieving its full potential impact.

We believe that with the right setting of institutional priorities, policy frameworks, and funding structures, these barriers can be effectively addressed to create a more supportive ecosystem for Creative R&D. Chapter 3 outlines concrete proposals for various stakeholders to build this enabling environment and unlock the full innovative potential of artistic research practices.