For the past two weeks I’ve been working with my group in pinning down the meaning of Pure Research. We began quite poetically with a quote, calling pure research pure vs applied research as “experiments of light ahead of experiments of fruit”, but though it seemed simple to begin with, the distinction has become more and more muddied the deeper we delved.
On top of basic distinctions- pure research as being about new ideas while applied research uses these ideas for new inventions- searching today around the web there are other factors thrown about such as an independence from any external forces, and the notion that applied research must build on pure research ”without which new knowledge would greatly atrophy“.
Our concerns were with grey areas and blurred lines, especially for example with experimental film, which may (for example) perform a feminist inquiery of the conventional norms of film through the medium of film itself (there is one in particular that I’m thinking of but I will have to slip the name in later).
But then, maybe this is putting the cart ahead of the bull, because if the question is of the practice of research, surely the form the result, whether its a webpage, book, film, or thesis is therefore irrelevant?
So, back to basics, pure research within the communications field is necessarily conceptual, new, and flows through to philosophy and theory, (examples are structuralism, semiotics). Pure Research works with conceptual frameworks and paradigms, questions/problematise in order to reframe, thus ‘creating’ new conceptual knowledge.
