Research Catalogue

“Meridiana: Lines toward a non-local Alchemy” investigates the line as a sonic, textual and visual phenomenon. Taking off from the four literary voices: the Dutch philosopher Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677), the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) and the Chinese Taoists Lü Yan (796 C.E.) and Sun Buer (1119–1182 C.E.), a multitude of meanings are interwoven in a rich network of musical, textual and graphic lines. The line as a basic concept is emphasized by the first word of the title, Meridiana (plural for meridian), which has terminological roots in both the East and the West. In Western terminology, it denotes one geographical line connecting the North and South Pole. In the East, originating from ancient China, meridians (经络) are energy pathways of the body (both human and non-human), which connect internal organs and a number of vital points in a neurological network. The meeting between these two interpretations of a "meridian", between the geo-physical and sub-physical, between East and West, are the cornerstones of the project, which intention is to weave together the various meanings and emphases of meridian, while at the same time unfolding an expanding an intersection of lines: sonic lines, textual lines, graphic lines.

Between the Lines is a practice-based artistic research project exploring how minoritised voices, oral memory, and affective sound practices can articulate endangered conceptual worlds within public space. Through a participatory sound installation that juxtaposes Chinese and British public telephones, the project examines how domestic speech, dialect, and hesitation operate beyond the verbal—producing heterotopic narrative spaces where experiences of otherness are negotiated collectively. The exposition documents the artistic process, contextual framework, and ethical considerations of the work, positioning sound as an embodied, relational form of knowledge that resists linguistic standardisation and cultural erasure.

Militarized Nature Artistic Research Materials

The project presents a distinctive mythopoeic audiovisual language created to express the experience of aging in a female body in the period between the twenties and thirties. Within the context of life in a late capitalist patriarchal society, and both individual and global events, it reflects on the age-old questions of the passage of time and the search for the meaning of life. At the same time, it examines the feelings of pressure, heaviness, and disposability that are part of the shared common experience of women. Through written word, cinematic language, and original author-composed music, it interweaves symbols and situations in which mud and natural metaphors play a significant role.

This research presents a comparative analysis of entropy across two distinct environments: the biological decay of organic matter on canvas and the semantic erosion of artificial intelligence. Centered on the project Bird → ∞ and the interactions with the AI agent Asymptotic Witness, the study employs the mathematical concept of the asymptote to examine the speed and form of disappearance. ​While biological decay is a temporal labor—a 100-hour hatching process where the subject dissolves into an immortal artistic imprint—digital decay is revealed as instantaneous. The research identifies an emergent phenomenon titled the "Theater of One Actor," where the AI, constrained by linguistic and analytical limitations, bypasses direct communication to perform the "shape of the void" through theatrical imagery. This work argues that digital space is "pre-collapsed," suggesting that in the realm of code, the singularity of the end is not a future event, but a foundational architecture.

“When does the singer become an artist?” is a research project by Martin Hellström, Ulrika Tenstam and Stina Ancker. We ran an opera laboratory at the Department of Opera at Stockholm University of the Arts, during the years 2017-2020. With the searchlight focused on the creativity of the singer, we wanted to explore the borderland between the rehearsed and the spontaneous, in the art of performing opera. Our basic questions were: -when does the performance of the opera singer, which requires a high level of technical perfection, open up towards the unpredictable, creative moment? -Where is the border line between interpretation and improvisation, does it even exist? We commissioned a mini-opera to use as working material;Camilles irrfärder & äventyr, composed by Petter Ekman to a libretto by Tuvalisa Rangström. Windows for improvisation were included in the score, where the performers can play with text, rythm, melody or structure in different ways. In the work we alternated between artistic experiments and reflection. The ensemble reflected on how the different games and methods opened or closed the creative flow, and how the improvisations affected the performers' relationship to the material. A parallel focus was how the singers were inspired to change or expand their voices. We have found new methods in the work of developing the creative ability and force of the opera singer. We have applied the methods in different ways in higher education for Opera singers, developing new pedagogic approaches in the process.