work at Emily Carr. On one side of the spectrum,
Lantin discussed instances when she is called
on to provide her highly specialized skills and
knowledge to help the artists or team of artists
realize their creative vision—computer coder

as hired gun. On the other end of the spectrum,
she mentioned the work she is doing with Lela
Sujir, Concordia Professor and video artist, with
whom Lantin has developed a more fluid or
dialogic form of collaboration in which the two
work together to articulate and realize a shared
creative vision. In discussing these different
approaches and possibilities, Lantin is clear that
both are crucial and suggest a wider conception
of cross-disciplinary collaboration and to her
ongoing growth as a researcher.

“You are not in a discipline; you

are disciplined.” .
P At the heart of our conversation

is the question of changing academic practice,
both from within the Art and Design university
and across the larger inter-institutional contexts
our academic training allows or expects us to
traverse. While interdisciplinarity—likewise
trans or cross disciplinarity—is seen a key
element of contemporary academic development
and has been an administrative buzz word

for many years, the practice tends to be
misunderstood or, worse, oversimplified. There
are many reasons for this, but two key aspects of
the problem can be linked to the public nature
of creative enterprises—the fact that artists

and designers work very much in the world.
Notwithstanding the rarified nature of the art
gallery system or exclusive nature of significant
areas of design, artists and designers are used
to articulating their goals and intentions for
nonacademic end users, often lay people. That
is in contrast to other specialized scholars
whose primary audience is their peers or at least
other specialists in a given field, specialists who
will be conversant with the terms and stakes of
a shared discourse.

Another key issue or related difference has to
do with time it takes to develop and disseminate
art and design work relative to conventional
scholarship. Lantin and I discussed research
methods, critical precision, and the importance
of disciplinary training as a means of engaging
“in-depth curiosity.” We discussed a recent
debate among members of the Modern
Language Association (MLA), an international
organization that represents scholars from
across the Arts and Humanities, around long

dissertation completion times and the fact that
many of the current crop of PhDs were working
or expecting to work in outmoded forms of

print culture. It was pointed out that many had
entered the field before the advent of social
media. It seems that artists and designers might
have significant methods they can share here.
The need to broach difficult ideas and subject
matter and to present their research to diverse
audiences or stakeholders drives creative practice
and as such, has allowed professional artists and
designer to develop vital skills and approaches
that they might share with other academics.

All too often however the focus of disciplinary
inquiry and training makes this cross-
fertilization difficult, and as Lantin suggests,
Computer Scientists do not necessarily recognize
the contribution of artists.

“There's a lot of joy in making something
happen for someone else. An idea that had
been brewing in an artist mind could be
realized by the skills that | have.”
Challenging the
desire to speed up the research process and the
push to bring ideas to light quicker—in the blink
of a tweet—Lantin mused on the importance
of slowing down, of carefully crafting thoughts
and articulation and situating them within the
broader field. With the realm of visualization
and computer driven media innovations that
are integral to Lantin’s multifaceted practice,
the attention to scholarship and to time-tested
scholarly processes provide an important counter
point to the rush to public that is underwriting
academic endeavour across the disciplines.
While it might be useful for Humanists to speed
things up and to engage in a more open, less
obfuscating process of publication, this need
not necessarily be the case for areas of study
that have developed their research agendas in
the midst of rapid technological change—data
visualization and new media, being
obvious examples.

The careful, critical approach Lantin brings to
her collaborations underwrites the powerful
potential of Emily Carr’s new research agenda
and the influence of IDS and 83D. Her
commitment to working among artists to hone
her own visual methods, while remaining
conversant with the training, interests and
expectation of computer scientists, is a testament
to the transformation of 21st century universities
and the influence of hybrid researchers.

“For Lantin, the Emily Carr art and design research context is a space of possibility.”