In the previous section, it was argued that through its very constitution, artistic research cannot simply add knowledge to academia without at the same time engaging with the mode in which that knowledge appears and with the contradictions that exist between the different faculties that make up our intellectual lives. While it is possible to claim that artistic research does not lend itself to academic publishing and that it should instead focus on artistic formats such as exhibition or performance, one could ask if it would not be possible for artistic research, supported by advanced rich-media publishing technology, to engage with one of the most valued formats for academic publishing, the peer-reviewed journal article.

This second section zooms in on the research that was carried out between 2010 and 2012 as part of the Artistic Research Catalogue (ARC) project, which was closely related to the Journal for Artistic Research (JAR) and its online software framework, the Research Catalogue (RC), whose foundations were laid during ARC. Initiatives like these that aim to facilitate the publishing of artistic research in academia need to take into consideration the academic realities that exist for artistic researchers and the technologies that can be utilised to support expositions of artistic practice as research. The contributions in this section address such considerations.

In their chapter, The Meaningful Exposition, Michael Biggs and Daniela Buchler discuss the wide range of research-output formats in the UK Research Assessment Exercise 2008, with a focus on what formats, significant for the artistic research community, communicate content best. Although the transformation of traditional output categories by artistic researchers – the authors name the experimental journal, the book-as-artefact and the tailored conference exchange – has little impact on how academia at large defines these categories, the use of these experimental forms do, Biggs and Buchler suggest, underscore the value of meaningful experiences for the artistic research community.

In Expositions in the Research Catalogue, Michael Schwab describes the conceptual and technical framework of the RC that was developed in response to the needs of the artists and researchers in the ARC project. He describes the kind of technology that may be necessary to give ownership of both the content and the form of a publication to an artist without compromising sustainability, for example.