how may an arts practice be considered a research methodology? this thesis examines two arts integrating methodologies, arts based research and a/r/tography, to uncover their epistemological constructs and philosophical positions. the inquiry begins with inquiry, a re/cursive/search for an appropriate methodology to allow both critical and creative windows from which to gaze. using a unique, hybridized design involving educational criticism (eisner), the creative process of poetic inquiry (hawkins, prendergast), and heuristic inquiry (moustakas), this thesis demonstrates that both arts based research and a/r/tography resist positivism – but for different reasons and to different effect. arts based research is a methodology that looks structurally and constructively at the nondiscursive symbolic system of art, and offers tools for understanding the uncertain meaning in art. a/r/tography is a methodology that sees knowledge as rupture: it refuses to engage with positivist structures, actively disrupts them, and finds knowledge through disruption. both methodologies prompt as many questions as answers in regards to how art is a way of knowing.