Situated at the boundary between Liberal Arts and diverse scientific approaches, artistic research has been developed within the last few years in terms of admitting various forms of knowledge acquisition. My presentation will deal with a film project which is actually not meant to be artistic research: In „Through the Eyes of Others“ Heike Schuppelius (2001) sent out four performers equipped with video-glasses (a small, not visible camera, built into ordinary spectacles) on foot through a certain area. The resulting filmed sequences are determined by the field of vision and by the head movements of the participants. The scenes are therefore supposed to present an approximation of the authentic view-point of the performer. They follow up the subjective awareness of a path determined by the actions and reactions, personal customs and interests of each of the acting persons. Also unplanned events, chance encounters and the urban environment are written into the film. I argue that this kind of data can be interpreted in terms of and as an answer to methodological and methodical challenges the Children´s Studies have faced since they arose about 30 years ago.        

Children´s Studies faces the lack of an autonomous and sovereign epistemic subject and is confronted with a high degree of dependencies of children. Its results are in short that children seemingly interpret reality by applying inadequate, more or less idiosyncratic categories, at the same time striving for meeting the expectations of the adults. In terms of the quality of data it is e.g. stated that it is often difficult for an (integer) adult researcher to gain the confidence of children. The chances of understanding children are mostly seen as dependent on their age and individuality. Besides that, researchers complain that children do not articulate themselves honestly and consistently in every situation in terms of following up the demands of the adults. Besides that, younger children are supposed to mix up facts and fantasy, past and present, persons and places etc. (Cp. Hülst 2000)

Nevertheless, practical pedagogy is full of examples of successfully taking the views of children into account. Thus, by developing pedagogically inclined approaches the blind alley within Children´s Studies might be overcome. Among these approaches are (semi-) didactic tools enabling children to interpret their world and serving the researcher as instruments for data collection. The "Seeing Glasses" will be presented as an example for this "solution".