Research Catalogue

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?

Towards a (per)sonal topography of grand piano and electronics How can I develop a grand piano with live electronics through iterated development loops in the cognitive technological environment of instrument, music, performance and my poetics? The instrument I am developing, a grand piano with electronic augmentations, is adapted to cater my poetics. This adaptation of the instrument will change the way I compose. The change of composition will change the music. The change of music will change my performances. The change in performative needs will change the instrument, because it needs to do different things. This change in the instrument will show me other poetics and change my ideas. The change of ideas demands another music and another instrument, because the instrument should cater to my poetics. And so it goes… These are the development loops I am talking about. I have made an augmented grand piano using various music technologies. I call the instrument the HyPer(sonal) Piano, a name derived from the suspected interagency between the extended instrument (HyPer), the personal (my poetics) and the sonal result (music and sound). I use old analogue guitar pedals and my own computer programming side by side, processing the original piano sound. I also take out control signals from the piano keys to drive different sound processes. The sound output of the instrument is deciding colors, patterns and density on a 1x3 meter LED light carpet attached to the grand piano. I sing, yet the sound of my voice is heavily processed, a processing decided by what I am playing on the keys. All sound sources and control signal sources are interconnected, allowing for complex and sometimes incomprehensible situations in the instrument´s mechanisms. Credits: First supervisor: Henrik Hellstenius Second Supervisors: Øyvind Brandtsegg and Eivind Buene Cover photo by Jørn Stenersen, www.anamorphiclofi.com All other photo, audio and video recording/editing by Morten Qvenild, unless stated.

Illustration as research from within the field is of relatively new practice. The illustrators discourse on representation (Yannicopoulou & Alaca 2018 ), theory (Doyle, Grove and Sherman 2018, Male 2019, Gannon and Fauchon 2021), and critical writing on illustration practice was hardly found before The Journal of Illustration was first issued in 2014, followed by artistic research through illustration (Black, 2014; Rysjedal, 2019; Spicer, 2019). This research project developed as response to a rise in hate crime towards refugees and the targeting of European Jews in recent decade. A pilot project (This Is a Human Being 2016-2019) treated how narratives of the Holocaust may avoid contributing to overwriting of history or cultural appropriation. Asking how illustration in an expanded approach may communicate profound human issues typically considered unrepresentable, this new project hopes to explore representation and the narratives of “us” and “the others” in the contemporary world through illustration as starting-point for cross-disciplinary projects. The participants from different disciplines, have interacted democratically on common humanist themes to explore the transformative role of illustration in contemporary communication. our projects should afford contemplation of illustration as an enhanced, decelerated way of looking; and drawing as a process for understanding - a way of engaging in understanding the other, as much as expressing one’s own needs (McCartney, 2016). This AR project consisted of three symposia and three work packages, and the artistic research unfolded in the symbiosis of these elements. Our investigation of illustration across media and materials continues as dissemination and exhibitions even after the conclusion of the work packages in 2024.

Even at one of the world's oldest and largest music universities, the mdw - University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, the siloing of fields is the norm. Thanks to budgetary and organizational structures, it is rare that artistic practice and traditional musicology teaching are actively combined; what conservatory students learn in music history seminars and what they learn from their performance teachers exist largely separately from each other. This exposition documents an ongoing, pragmatic attempt to interweave traditional music research with artistic practice and interventions, thereby introducing students to Artistic Research at bachelor's and master's levels. The CCC (Content-Concept-Context) module was initiated by Judith Kopecky at the Antonio Salieri Department of Vocal Studies and Vocal Research in Music Education and has enjoyed cooperation with the Institute for Musicology and Performance Studies (IMI) for the past three years. Here she, Stephen Delaney and Chanda VanderHart reflect on the promises, surprises, limits, and potential for intertwining scholarship and artistic practice in an institutional setting.

PhD Artistic Research project environment embodiment - towards poetic narratives (2020-2024) by Fernanda Branco at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. This artistic research explores experiential agency in encounters between body and environment. It draws from uncanny, embodied and poetic perspectives, unfolding as a constellation of sympoietic practices. Webdesign by Ellen Palmeira Illustrations by Aza

Abstract This artistic research project focuses on narrative accounts of Norwegians who self-identify with a ‘multicultural and/or immigration background(s)’, to explore how their (hi)stories can be woven into the tapestry of the contemporary Norwegian public memory and story. I set out to interview and collect their narrative accounts, which must also be understood as oral (topical) histories, focusing on (hi)stories of their lived experiences, with a special interest in an event that happened in a public space and has been experienced as a meaningful or life-changing moment. Through a collaborative process, the oral (hi)stories were transformed and used to produce interactive monuments installed on the sites where the narrated events took place. One of the key artistic challenges in the project was to grapple with the question of how not only the collaborators but also the public can be empowered to actively shape and engage with artistic works, becoming co-collaborators themselves. This artistic inquiry led to the development of monu(mo)ments, an artistic concept and initiative that is dedicated to turning stories of Norway’s diversity into interactive, performative works of public art. The monu(mo)ments are not just symbols of collective memory but embody that very concept in how they themselves function. Through an interactive/participatory design, the public is invited to contribute their own narratives, perspectives, and experiences, shaping the monu(mo)ment's meaning and relevance. They invite the public to become co-creators of the narratives embedded within their communal spaces, fostering a sense of ownership and agency, and blurring the boundaries between artist(s) and public, the past and the present. The project strives to illuminate the untold oral (hi)stories of these narrators by allowing them to take over public spaces and infuse them with gripping personal narratives to shift how we read those places and (re)negotiate their past/meaning. This is to create an ‘alternative history’, dedicated to writing and inscribing these voices into public spaces and our broader collective imagination. Other artistic results include a live-action role-playing game (LARP). Furthermore, the larp was modified to serve as a resource for educators, enabling them to address interconnected themes within their classrooms through immersive gameplay. It has been performed in schools, festivals, and conferences in Norway, Austria, and Denmark. Overall, by creating artistic works that (re)imagining public memory as a dynamic and interactive process, this artistic research project foregrounds and contributes to the ongoing efforts to capture and reflect Norway’s multicultural reality and identity.