Artist Anna Dumitriu founded the Institute of Unnecessary Research in 2005 as a hub for researchers and artists who do experimental work and are committed to making their work accessible. Research outpouts include the development of “performative and experiential methods”, participatory workshops, symposiums and performances that aim to “engage the public in our research and meta-research.”
Innovation and its relationship with experimentation and artists are particular interests.
Their website states
Artists are innovators, if a new piece of technology or a new medium, becomes available; artists want to try it, to experiment with it, to push the boundaries. Some artists take on the role of a scientist in almost a performative way and some scientists equally take on the role of artist. Attitudes to science, medicine and art have changed over the last five hundred years, in that whilst Science has become more formalized, Art has become increasingly less so. By stepping outside the testable hypothesis artists are free to go off at tangents, to get bogged down in aesthetics and be mavericks.