Art matters. It affects us in our daily lives and is full of meanings that are valuable to all of us. As a catalyst for social interactions, art may either cause public conflict and create dissensions or facilitate mutual understanding and strengthen collective bonds. All of this is grounded in practices that develop and change along social interaction, cultural dynamics, as well as technological and economic lines. So how is art formed and produced? What are the relevant constraints and challenges that artists experience in the creative process? And what constitutes artistic agency? This collection of contributions from international, interdisciplinary experts explores particular case studies to deeply analyse artistic practices. Comprising eleven chapters relating to different art forms, each chapter offers an original perspective conveying a comprehensive understanding of artistic practices as arrays of specific activities in contemporary art worlds. This book will be important for both researchers and practitioners in the field. It will help artists to deepen their analytical abilities, enabling them to further their own creative practice. It will allow students and researchers to gain insights into processes of artistic creation and thus into the reproduction of art, as well as innovation in the arts.

We engage with works of art in many ways, yet almost all modern philosophers of art have focused entirely on one mode of engagement: disinterested attention. Nicholas Wolterstorff explores why this is, and offers an alternative framework according to which arts are a part of social practice, and have different meaning in different practices.

Helping artists catapult into further action, this guide is a treasury of insight and inspiration. Rather than focus on art techniques that build skills or overcome creative blocks through playful activities or writing, this guide walks the artist through exercises designed to develop the personal qualities critical to being an artist in the world, such as courage, the ability to look and see, and connection to the true creative self. This is a hands-on, experiential action book designed to get the reader creating art and exploring a variety of possibilities for being an artist. According to the teachings of this handbook, engagement with art is less about end results or products and more about the self-awareness and competence that frees the artist to seek out and create work that is vital. This is a rigorous programme that allows artists of any skill level to deepen their creative habits and be the best artists possible.

'Art Practice as Research' presents a compelling argument that the creative and cultural inquiry undertaken by artists is a form of research. The text explores themes, practice, and contexts of artistic inquiry and positions them within the discourse of research.

This volume – which has come about through a collaborative venture between Dragos Gheorghiu (archaeologist and professional visual artist) and Theodor Barth (anthropologist) – aims at expanding the field of archaeological research with an anthropological understanding of practices that include artistic methods.

This volume focuses on notions of temporality in artistic practice. It gathers texts by ten cultural scientists who, by reflecting on the work of an artist or another art- or architecture-related protagonist, examine the subject of temporality, its reference systems, its framework, and its consequential phenomena. The contributors pose questions about the specific characteristics and influences of temporalities. The various approaches brought together in the volume enable the reader to delve into particular cases in order to contextualize the question of how temporality initiates action and structures of perception, weaves itself into these structures, and thereby shapes our presence, affecting our bodies, our senses, and our communication.

Inside an art gallery, it is easy to forget that the paintings there are the end products of a process involving not only creative inspiration, but also plenty of physical and logistical details. It is these "cruder," more mundane aspects of a painter's daily routine that motivated Brooklyn artist Joe Fig to embark almost ten years ago on a highly unorthodox, multilayered exploration of the working life of the professional artist. Determined to ground his research in the physical world, Fig began constructing a series of diorama-like miniature reproductions of the studios of modern art's most legendary painters, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. A desire for firsthand references led Fig to approach contemporary artists for access to their studios. Armed with a camera and a self-made "Artist's Questionnaire," Fig began a journey through the workspaces of some of today's most exciting contemporary artists.

In Hybrid Practices, essays by established and emerging scholars investigate the rich ecology of practices that typified the era of the Cold War. The volume showcases three projects at the forefront of unprecedented collaboration between the arts and new sectors of industrial society in the 1960s and 70s—Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), the Art and Technology Project at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (A&T), and the Artist Placement Group (APG) in the UK. The subjects covered include collaborative projects between artists and scientists, commercial ventures and experiments in intermedia, multidisciplinary undertakings, effacing authorship to activate the spectator, suturing gaps between art and government, and remapping the landscape of everyday life in terms of technological mediation. Among the artists discussed in the volume and of interest to a broad public beyond the art world are Bernd and Hilla Becher, John Cage, Hans Haacke, Robert Irwin, John Latham, Fujiko Nakaya, Carolee Schneemann, James Turrell, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, and Robert Whitman. Prominent engineers and scientists appearing in the book’s pages include Elsa Garmire, Billy Klüver, Frank Malina, Stanley Milgram, and Ed Wortz. This valuable collection aims to introduce readers not only to hybrid work in and as depth, but also to work in and as breadth, across disciplinary practices where the real questions of hybridity are determined.

Wonder has an established link to the history and philosophy of science. However, there is little acknowledgement of the relationship between the visual arts and wonder. This book presents a new perspective on this overlooked connection, allowing a unique insight into the role of wonder in contemporary visual practice. Artists, curators and art theorists give accounts of their approach to wonder through the use of materials, objects and ways of exhibiting. These accounts not only raise issues of a particular relevance to the way in which we encounter our reality today but ask to what extent artists utilize the function of wonder purposely in their work.

Artistic intervention, where the world of the arts is brought into organizations, has increasingly become a research field in itself with strong links to both creativity and innovation. Opportunities for the arts to interact with public and private organizations occur worldwide, but during the last decade artistic interventions have received growing attention in both practice and research. This book is the first comprehensive attempt to map the development of the field and provides an international overview of the area of artistic interventions and their impact on organizations from different perspectives, ranging from strategic management to organizational development, innovation and organizational learning. Featuring chapters from prominent and emerging scholars, including Nancy J. Adler, Barbara Czarniawska, Lotte Darsø and Alexander Styhre, it places artistic interventions within an international context. The book also offers readers the opportunity to learn from experiences in a varied range of organisations, including newspapers, manufacturing, government, schools, and covers many art-forms, such as music, contemporary dance, painting, photography, and theatre. Using extensive empirical examples, this book is vital reading for researchers and scholars of creativity and cultural industries, as well as innovation, creative entrepreneurship, organizational studies and management.