Integration Research (IR) is a cultural and technological incubator in the form of art collective, publisher and software developer. IR is interested in exploring new ways of approaching the economics of cultural production and consumption, cultivating organic, technologically-enhanced networks of artists and art patrons. IR is committed to pursuing paradigms for the dissemination and distribution of artistic work that benefit both artists and art consumers. IR also intends to engage the public in educational contexts regarding the underlying paradigms that inform its activities.
IR is designing and developing tools to encourage the production and distribution of creative work through new, non-traditional, technologically-augmented channels.
The software development initiatives undertaken by IR address the needs of cultural creatives under-serviced by mainstream offerings geared toward home and business users, and they support the specific purposes of creating alternative publishing, marketing and distribution techniques as well as providing a networking structure for artistic producers and consumers.
IR intends to publish artistic work in physical (print, film, audio recordings) and virtual (various digital file formats) modes in an effort to contribute to the models that its vision and tools help gestate. IR’s publishing efforts privilege artists by focusing on their sustainability rather than the intermediary’s profitability. By focusing on artists’ needs and genuine creativity instead of solely on market forces that determine financial gain, IR is freed to enter into agreements that radically favor artists and focus on their practical ability to continue in their authentic work.
IR seeks to create virtual and physical spaces that catalyze and encourage artistic work, networking and display. To this end IR will actively seek out opportunities to gather communities of artists over varying periods of time to work, interact, display and publish together. Through the technological initiatives of IR, frameworks will be created that allow artistic communities to actualize these networks themselves. This effort will help to build synergistic grassroots communities of artistic creation and patronage.
IR’s educational effort will focus primarily on consumers and culture-industry professionals, promoting the ideas that shape the types of artistic creator-patron relationships that IR intends to facilitate.