Research Catalogue

In this exposition I’m showing you my journey for these past two years of investigating my artistic practice through the meeting of identity and aesthetics. Due to my Iranian background, I have felt a need and curiosity to bring together my Iranian and European identities. This project is a dialogue between myself and music, encompassing sounds, arrangements, physical presence, materiality, technology, context, and politics. By politics I mean; history, cultural appropriation, diversity, colonisation, beliefs, and the current needs of the western culture. A project involving confrontations with habits, default parameters, and elements within digital audio workspaces, thereby incorporating scales.

Digital overview of artistic works by musician Jordan Sand

In this autoethnographic arts-based research, I return to the gift of music in my life and use it as the ultimate form of expression. I explore the process of navigating my own transgenerational trauma through composing and working with musicians from different musical and cultural backgrounds. Something like home explores the effect of finding common ground of love and compassion between my family members, especially those who have been navigating the traumas of war. I collected stories, memories, and impressions from my family’s childhood, and composed music that is inspired by them. In the first sections I discuss some concepts related to the transmittion of war trauma , and Bowen’s family system theory. Moreover, I relate to reasearches and projects that have been concerned with trauma art therapy and dealing with cultural trauma through music. As well as showing examples of composers who have been working with similar processes. In this project, I unfold my compositional process, and I present some possibilities of dealing with harmonizing traditional Arabic music, using partials from the harmonic series. I also share my process of collaborating with a lyric writer and a videographer who have helped me to bring the stories to life. Throughout the process I discovered that engaging with the stories unlocked new artistic outcomes and some unexpected artistic practices, expressions and results. Another important outcome of this project was the need for coming up with approaches that were used for transcultural music making and engaging the musicians with the stories but making sure to leave space for their own artistic identities to come across and shine. In the near future, I am hoping to use this project as a basis of my doctoral research project which will focus on memory expression through music by working with the diverse citizines of the finnish community.

This exposition is part of the series The Sonic Atelier – Conversations with Contemporary Composers and Producers, dedicated to exploring the evolving role of the composer in the twenty-first century. Through a Q&A format, the project investigates how contemporary creators inhabit hybrid identities at the intersection of composition, production, performance, and technology. This interview features Federico Albanese, who reflects on his formation, his approach to integrating sound design and production into the act of writing, and his perspective on the transformations of today’s recording industry and streaming platforms. His insights shed light on central issues such as hybridity, authorship, and the value of craftsmanship in contemporary music-making.

This practice-driven PhD developed a body of art in response to the question, ‘what is it like to be a bird?’ The motivation was towards ethical action in an ecologically damaged world. Following Tim Ingold, the study sees the environment as a meshwork of multiple lines of becoming (or flight), along which the lives of creatures unfold and interconnect. In my detailed bird studies, my question acted as a lure towards a tantalising, but ultimately unreachable goal. In this way line of flights developed between me and birds, stimulating the creation of artworks. These aimed to enchant viewers and encourage a rethinking of the human/bird relationship. I used multiple media and methods informing each other synergistically. Ultraviolet photography revealed a hidden world, visible to birds, hence questioning the hegemony of the human view. Attaching a video camera to my dog disclosed, not just a stream of images from a new perspective, but the life of a being inhabiting the world bodily, full of energy, desires, fears, and movement. In the spirit of Donna Haraway’s speculative fabulations, I constructed a Birdsong-to-English translator. This produced intriguing phrases such as ‘future earth scream now!’, challenging the reductionist ‘fighting or flirting’ understanding of birdsong and reimagining the nature of human and animal language. Building on extensive observations, field notes and recordings, I developed a range of creative writing, resulting in a radio play, a gallery installation, and a poetry pamphlet. In the culminating work, Harrier Diaries, I combined text, photography and drawings, juxtaposing subjective and objective views to highlight lines of flight between birds, their environment and the observer. Despite aiming to know a bird’s view, I concluded that what matters is not knowing, but instead an intense wonder at the unknowable. I argue that this disposition is a vital prerequisites for ethical action.

This research investigates the active role of light as a core compositional element in contemporary music performance by exploring the integration of light, sound, and movement in real-time environments. Traditionally, light has been treated as a secondary aspect of performance, primarily serving as a means of illumination or visual enhancement. However, this study examines how light can function beyond this conventional role, actively shaping musical structure and influencing perception. Through the analysis of live performances and hands-on experimentation with analogue oscillators, photoresistors, and DMX systems, this research explores how these elements function as both medium and material within a piece. My compositions, alongside works by composers such as Viola Yip and Hugo Morales Murguía, serve as case studies, illustrating light’s transformation in performance from a passive visual aid to a structural force. These works highlight how light, when treated as a compositional element, reconfigures performer agency and audience perception. By challenging conventional notions of light in music, this research contributes to ongoing discussions on multimedia composition and performance aesthetics. It proposes an alternative perspective in which light is not merely an accessory to sound but an integral component of musical structure, expanding the possibilities for interdisciplinary performance practice.