Research Catalogue

In our exploration of the spatiality of language and, specifically, the activation of the site where writing "makes" rather than takes place, we propose a multilayered experience of the book as an object, as well as a geometrical, topological, and especially performative space, which we understand as an "ecology of the book". Extending this practice beyond the book's margins, yet simultaneously embedding it within the material and technical affordances of the book’s medial articulations, we evoke a "new" ecology—one unfolding alongside the interaction-landscape and its actual and invented inhabitants, as well as the techniques of its production. Texts, drawings, figures, figurations, methods, and both human and non-human authors weave together the heterogeneous texture of the book’s "new" ecology. In our monographs, "Fauna. Language Arts and the New Order of Imaginary Animals" (2018), "Flora. Language Arts in the Age of Information" (2020), and "Fiction Fiction. Language Arts and the Practice of Spatial Storytelling" (2023, De Gruyter/Edition Angewandte), we explore and map the territory of language arts. This approach manifests, on the one hand, through the transgression of traditional scientific methodologies and a shift in models—from thinking-of-the-other toward thinking-with-the-other, and on the other hand, through the agency of our eponymous characters, Fauna and Flora, who not only title our books but also act as conceptual operators—figures that navigate, perform, and activate the very spaces our texts explore. Applying Michel Serres' methodology of thinking by inventing personae, these characters move within and percolate through the margins of text (written, figural) and space (concrete, fictional), reconfiguring the notion of authorship and placing literary texts and digital drawings within the frame(less) collective of more-than-human and more-than-organic actants.

This conference will explore how emerging technologies—especially generative AI and blockchain—reimagine the current notions of creative agency. Conveners: Adam Łukawski, Martin Zeilinger Artificial intelligence (AI), with its learning algorithms operating at scale, can mimic human creative agency, and blockchain technologies, through smart contracts, can augment works of art with more or less autonomous behaviours that correspond to the agency of human participants in socio-economic interactions. While such developments can destabilise traditional notions of ownership, provenance, and agency in musical practices, they can also empower artists. Those working creatively with sound and music are today increasingly becoming system-builders and curators of musical ecosystems, turning their focus from the creation of singular, standalone musical works (in any traditional sense of the term) to the design of systems capable of generating artworks. This suggests an evolving role of music-producing systems today: from fixed intellectual constructs and creative expressions to dynamic, more-than-human technological networks that not only actively participate in the production of artworks with increasing levels of agency, but which can themselves be considered as artworks that constitute generative, expressive assemblages. This shift is further emphasised in distributed contexts, where varying levels of automation blur the boundaries between human and non-human contributions, creating environments where agency is negotiated and shared across diverse actants.

Olskroksmotet Blues är den avslutande delen i mitt autoetnografiska projekt som i olika former pågick mellan 2014-2021, och där jag bland annat publicerat två artiklar (Kroon 2015 och 2016). RC expositionen består av tre delarbeten - arkivblad, arkivmönster och göteborg grid – jämte bakgrund och teori & metod. Utifrån min historia som fosterbarn söker jag fånga såväl mina egna erfarenheter och uttryck, som att sätta dessa i ljuset av större samhälleliga skeenden. Olskroksmotet Blues var också del av Mikrohistoriers fysiska grupputställning på Konstfack, Stockholm i september 2021.

Desire Machine is an artistic research project that examines collaborative creation through the conceptual framework of Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of assemblage and desiring machines. Developed as part of the Atlas of Smooth Spaces research initiative, the project explores how movement, sound, and algorithmic systems can function as heterogeneous components within a non-hierarchical and non-representational assemblage. Real-time body data, generative soundscapes, and responsive lighting are integrated via a recursive feedback structure, allowing for emergent behaviours and dynamic modulation across media. Rather than focusing on disciplinary integration, Desire Machine proposes a co-functional space defined by distributed agency, where artistic production unfolds through competencies and material relations. The project offers a methodological proposition for rethinking compositional practice as a site of continuous negotiation, transformation, and becoming.

RESPONSIVE SPACE – SOUNDING INTO MATERIALITY (2014–2020) is an in-depth research project into the interrelationship between us and our surroundings. The artworks can be described as large sculptural sound installations which blur the lines between visual art, performing arts and sound art. The works explore space, material, sound, body and time as equal parts in a composition. The main artworks of the research INTERFERENCE, RESONANCE, SEDIMENT, PLACE 1 and PLACE 2 are in a variety of ways inquiries towards an expanded experience of the dialogue between presence and materiality. The artworks are composed environments which respond and take shape and form from their surroundings, seeking to touch proximity zones where we as humans can sense aspects of being closely intertwined with our surroundings. The act of listening is of central importance in the artistic survey. Olaussen stages space utilising the mediums of sound, minimalistic sculpture and dramaturgical structures. This exposition is part of Gunhild Mathea Husvik-Olaussen’s artistic research project Responsive Space – Sounding into Materiality (2014–2020) at the Norwegian Theatre Academy, Østfold University College. The project complies with the guidelines for the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme from 2019. Artistic practice and reflection are at the heart of the research programme. Originally published in Norwegian in 2019, this work has now been translated into English by Peter Cripps, with the support of the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills.

In this exposition, I explore my artistic practice based on collaborations between female folk singers in Finland and Bulgaria from 2018 to 2022. The artistic material of the exposition consists of a music video trilogy (2019, 2020 and 2022) based on my compositions and arrangements in the solo album Nani (2020), produced in cooperation with the younger generation of the Bulgarian women's choir, Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares. In addition to the collaborative artistic practice, I interviewed six of the Bulgarian singers. Insights from the data gathered in these ethnographic interviews are intertwined with the analysis of the artistic practice. Throughout the artistic and ethnographic research processes, I applied a feminist intersectional pedagogical approach by focusing particularly on the power relations and the question of female agency in the arts and wider society. In this exposition, I argue that the incorporation of intersectional feminist perspectives in transnational artistic work can contribute to both artistic practice and transnational interactions in ways that may strengthen women's agency in the folk music field of their respective cultural and social environments. Feminist folk music composition was applied at all stages of the artistic and research work. By highlighting the stories, voices, and bodies of women of different ages and cultural locations, the artistic practice represented the construction of counter-myths and transgenerationality. In addition, an intersectional feminist approach helped to identify the power relations involved in transnational collaboration, particularly regarding economic inequality and the roles and different opportunities of women musicians in Finland and Bulgaria. Download Accessible PDF