Media arts practice often includes activities that may be at odds with the goals of empirically-oriented research, such as experimenting with representation, challenging cultural assumptions, and questioning the meaning and impacts of technology and innovation. This dissertation investigates the following question: what methodologies effectively enable media artists to operate both pragmatically and creatively within interdisciplinary research projects? To answer this question, I propose framing media arts activities in terms of the following methodological themes: generation, augmentation, provocation, and mediation. I present a series of collaborative art works and research projects---including Data Flow, Fluid Automata, Information Poems, Annular Genealogy, Natural Material Browser, among others---as case studies that elucidate these overlapping themes. I contend that they more accurately describe the creative activities of media artists, and moreover that they provide an effective way for explaining the emerging roles of the media artist when integrating creative arts practices into interdisciplinary research projects.