Research Catalogue

This project aims to develop transcultural approaches of inspiration (which we regard as mutually appreciated intentional and reciprocal artistic influence based on solidarity) by combining approaches from contemporary music composition and improvisation with ethnomusicological and sociological research. We encourage creative (mis)understandings emerging from the interaction between research and artistic practice, and between European art music, folk and non-western styles, in particular from indigenous minorities in Taiwan. Both comprehension and incomprehension yield serendipity and inspiration for new research questions, innovative artistic creation, and applied follow-ups among non-western communities. The project departs from two premises: first, that contemporary western art music as a practice often tends to resort to certain degrees of elitism; and second, that non-western musical knowledge is often either ignored or merely exploited when it comes to compositional inspiration. We do not regard inspiration as unidirectional, an “input” like recording or downloading material for artistic use. Instead, we foster artistic interaction by promoting dialogical and distributed knowledge production in musical encounters. Developing inter­disciplinary and transcultural methodologies of musical creation will contribute on the one hand towards opening up the—rightly or wrongly supposed—“ivory tower of contemporary composition”, and on the other hand will contribute towards the recognition of the artistic value of non-western musical practices. By highlighting the reciprocal nature of inspiration, creative (mis)understandings will result in socially relevant and innovative methodologies for creating and disseminating music with meaning. The methods applied in the proposed project will start out from ethnographic evidence that people living in non-western or traditional societies often use methods of knowledge production within the sonic domain which are commonly unaddressed or even unknown among western contemporary music composers (aside from exotist or orientalistic appropriations of “the other”). The project is designed in four stages: field research and interaction with indigenous communities in Taiwan with a focus on the Tao people on Lanyu Island, collaborative workshops in Vienna, an artistic research and training phase with invited indigenous Taiwanese coaches in Vienna, and feeding back to the field in Taiwan. During all these stages, exchange and coordination between composers, music makers, scholars and source community experts will be essential in order to reflect not only on the creative process, but also to analyse and support strong interaction between creation and society. Re-interaction with source communities as well as audience participation in the widest sense will help to increase the social relevance of the artistic results. The University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (MDW) will host the project. The contributors are Johannes Kretz (project leader) and Wei-Ya Lin (project co-leader, senior investigator) with their team of seven composers, ten artistic research partners from Taiwan and six artistic and academic consultants with extensive experience in the relevant fields.

Arts-based-philosophy is an emerging research concept at the cutting edge of the arts, philosophy and the Sciences in which cross-disciplinary research collectives align their research practices to finally stage their investigations in field-performances, shared with the public. Our research explores the significance of the HEART in artistic research and performance philosophy from a cross-cultural perspective, partially based on the concepts of the HEART in the works of two artist-philosophers, in which philosophy already became arts-based-philosophy: Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Aurobindo’s poetic opus magnum Savitri. We generally assume that the works of artist-philosophers are not only engaged in “creating concepts” (Deleuze), but their concepts are also meant to be staged artistically to let them bodily matter in fact. The role of the HEART in respect to this process of “bodily mattering” is the core objective under investigation: Firstly, because we hold that atmospheres trigger the HEART of a lived-body to taste the flavor of things it is environmentally engaged with basically in an aesthetic manner (Nietzsche). In this respect the analysis of the classical notion for the aesthete in Indian philosophy and aesthetics, sahṛdaya––which literally means, “somebody, with a HEART”––becomes crucial. Secondly, because the HEART is said to be not just reducible to one’s manifest Nature, but has access to one’s virtual Nature as well. The creation hymn in the oldest of all Vedas (Rgveda) for instance informs us that a HEART is capable of crossing being (sat) & non-being (asat), which makes it fluctuate among these two realms and even allows its aspirations to let virtual possibilities matter. Such concepts show striking similarities with contemporary concepts in philosophy-physics, e.g. the concepts of “virtual particles” and “quantum vacuum fluctuations” (Barad).

short bio and cv

Digital Demons deals with themes of religion, shamanism and spirituality. These are some traces of media matter that surfaced during the two year masters program The Art of Impact at Stockholm University of the Arts. Among them are videographic essays, video sketches and a recorded performance that all have worked as research tools for finding an aesthetic language and narration structure that can be used in documentary and hybrid filmmaking.

Although I love attending traditional classical music concerts, I have long felt that they missed certain aspects that would make them more relatable to the inner world of the audience. In this research exposition, I argue that this missing aspect is a social element and I guide the reader through a possible application of social themes to a classical music concert. On a formal level, I use the techniques of psychodrama – a form of group therapy – as a tool from which I borrow some fundamental concepts, along with the conception of characters, to understand how social themes can be addressed in a context in which multiple people connect to the same object. In this case, the object of common interest is the representation on stage. On a substantial level, I draw upon material I collected in my interviews with Clara Scarafia to study a social theme she has been directly involved with: suicide. The two levels are brought together in my pilot session, where I experiment through a sample of the complete performance I am designing and an audience questionnaire how psychodrama and the interview interact and influence one another. The goal is to show that the classical repertoire, with its complex emotional kaleidoscope and non-verbal language, can easily bear a social theme and enhance the collective reflection of relevant themes in our times.

GAMPSISS was a comprehensive, 4-year collaborative, transdisciplinary project executed by Erasmus University (EUR), University for Techonolgy Delft (TUD), Willem de Kooning Art Academy Rotterdam, and the conservatoire of Rotterdam: Codarts. 
In Year 1 we each conducted research in our own discipline, namely: on listening (Codarts), on persuasive games (TUD) and aligned these with the cultural sociological perspective (EUR) on concert audiences and concert experience. In Year 2, based on the knowledge gained, we jointly built a prototype of a game called 'Listening Space'. A game for the smartphone, to be played prior to a (classical music) concert to train listening skills, through awareness and playful practice of different listening modes. In Year 3, again with the entire team, we designed an interdisciplinary gamified performance called “Listening Mutant 2021” during which the audience worked through a wide range of listening games and training. This time the games were not only about music listening but also about social listening (listening to other people). The performance was played for a specially recruited diverse audience, and included orchestral music, theatrical scenes, audience participation, a quiz, a debate, a (new) smartphone game, an audio (headphones) story, all integrated into a total experience with a festival atmosphere. Due to COVID-19, it was not produced (in a modified version) until Year 4, and for a smaller audience than we originally envisioned. Year 4 we then finished analyzing, writing and reflecting. 'Listening Space' produced modest positive effects, and 'Listening Mutant' a major positive effect. At the Willem de Kooning Academy in Years 2 and 3, we set up a GAMPSISS course in which all researchers taught. Students were asked to design listening games. Some of these served as inspiration for the games in “Listening Mutant 2021. Two sub-studies were also conducted under the accolade of GAMPSISS, namely a study on what happens when people listen to a piece of music repeatedly (listening diaries, EUR, yet to be published) and a combination of empirical research and extensive desk research (Codarts) on listening from a predominantly philosophical perspective, resulting in a paper titled 'A concise theory of listening' that can be used in conservatories and music practices. The PHD candidate also conducted several more studies on other persuasive games (yet to be published).