Deadline for papers is April 30, 2006

SIG Chairs: Lezlie Kinyon & Bela A. Banathy
isss06lezlie@yahoo.com
babanathy@sbcglobal.net

Arts-informed inquiry is interdisciplinary and integrative. It incorporates the questions of validity, legitimacy, and significance of traditional approaches as well as the questions of meaning and function that an artist asks in approaching work. As Max van Manen (1990) suggested, a researcher must, at times, discover or invent a methodological approach sufficient to the subject under research in order to create an energetic response. Coupled with a systems approach, arts-informed inquiry has the potential to create a rich corollary to the Aristotelian episteme in science research. Arts-informed inquiry allows researchers to tackle elusive subjects such as the search for wisdom or our roles as thinking and aware beings within nature's complex web. It allows for the disciplined process of inquiry to be foremost in subjects of a personal nature such as gender identity or dreams and consciousness. The group will explore, through traditional academic papers and the approaches found in the arts, two parallel and equal "tracks" of inquiry: art-as-inquiry and arts-informed inquiry that utilizes the tools of the arts in science research.

Abstracts will be necessary for each type of presentation, just as for papers for the conference. Presentations may take many forms, from musical composition, performance work, visual art, and story-making, to academic papers of the more traditional variety. The chairs encourage an integrated approach involving both. All papers and performances must adhere to the spirit of inquiry in the systems sciences.

For 2006, this group will meet in the Conference Gallery and an announcement will follow from the planning committee regarding showing your work.

For further information and published references please contact Bela A. Banathy, Ph.D. and Lezlie Kinyon, Ph.D.

To be held at the:

Sonoma 2006: The 50th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences
Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California, USA
July 9th - 14th 2006
http://isss.org/conferences/sonoma2006/