Research Catalogue

Trabalho coletivo, realizado durante o YES Project

Bachelor of Choreography 4th Year Exposition

PERFORMING PROCESS is a research group within the Artistic Research Centre at Nottingham Trent University, co-led by Emma Cocker and Danica Maier, both Associate Professors in Fine Art. We ask: what is at stake in focusing on the process of practice — the embodied, experiential, relational and material dimensions of artistic making, thinking and knowing. What is the critical role of uncertainty, disorientation, not knowing and open-ended activity within artistic research? How might a process-focused exploration intervene in and offer new perspectives on artistic practice and research, perhaps even on the uncertain conditions of contemporary life? PERFORMING PROCESS has origins in a number of critical precedents: Summer and Winter Lodges originating within the fine art area (practice-research residencies or laboratories dedicated to providing space-time for making-thinking and for exploring the process of practice), collaborative artistic research projects such as No Telos, for exploring the critical role of uncertainty, disorientation, not knowing and open-ended activity; the DREAM seminar series with PhD researchers which focuses specifically on the ‘how-ness’ of practice research by asking - How do we do what we do?

The video is part of artistic research that explores a dialogue between human, non-human, and forces of the land in Utsjoki, Finland. In this artistic research, walking is used as a method to connect with the environment. During the walks, small amounts of soil – sand, stones, and clay – is gathered and processed further in a studio. Some soil is transformed to slips and used when painting hand-built vases made from the gathered clay. The fired vases are placed temporarily in local rivers. The result is a series of three vase experiments done in a dialogue between human, soil, water, and the forces of the land. The video presents the third vase experiment, where the vase is built from the local clay. The motifs of the painting are the nationally endangered animals: arctic fox, fell owl and glacial salmon. In the River Teno catchment, small juvenile salmon often spend some of their first years of life in tiny tributaries, which they enter from their birth place, the spawning areas in the main stem of the river. One of these nursery streams being Geassemahjohka. The vase is positioned in Geassemahjohka, which is running to the main stem of the River Teno some 70 km upstream from the estuary. Via the experiment we speculate: can act of crafting vase be conceived as act of caring, the vase being thus a symbolic shelter for the salmon?

Despite knowing that music and emotions have a lot to do with each other, sometimes it is hard to articulate which relationship they have. Since the emotional impact seems to be one of the biggest appeals for an audience, do we, the musicians (specifically the performers), pay and draw enough attention to it? After reviewing the relevant literature about the processing of emotions, I came across the philosophical approaches of emotions in and through music by Peter Kivy, Jerrold Levinson, and Stephen Davies, proposals that could serve as inspirations for an audience and for performers. Then, I decided to carry out a series of experimental sessions to test the impact of these three approaches, as well as the performer's role, and components that could also affect a performance, such as set-ups, musical manipulations, or what I have called 'extramusical' items or elements. In addition to my research question “How can a performer affect or manipulate the emotional engagement of an audience?”, I sought to explore another inquiry. Is engaging more with the public nowadays strictly a musical matter?

There are good reasons to consider point of audition (POA) as a problematic term when writing about sound. This essay addresses the different challenges one meets when using the term and discusses different alternatives for future use of this terminology within the field of television sound. The motivation for rethinking the term is the analytical and descriptive problems raised when writing about recent trends in television sound in drama, sports, news, documentaries and other television genres. The argumentation refers to the flexible and creative uses of television sound today and discusses how various production examples can be better accounted for by refining the term point of audition. All in all, four categories of point of audition are suggested for analysis: observational, active, individual and personal POAs.