In this paper will reflect on the nature of practice based research as it relates to a fine arts practice, drawing on my own interdisciplinary arts practice. I will use this work to interrogate processes of research in relation to fine art, making and discovery about place. I will discuss the variety of sources and the methods I used, including ethnographic fieldwork. I will also reflect on a collaborative work created with the writer Elizabeth Reeder. ‘I plant a lighthouse here’ is a video/sound piece that uses the pulses of selected Scottish lighthouses and language taken from a variety of sources to explore rhythm and sound, vision, syntax and language. I will reflect on how this collaboration created new ways of understanding our source materials, and encouraged different outputs, born from synergies and tensions between our different disciplines and knowledge bases.