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.

A visual map of the RC. Hover over a screenshot to see the title and author. If you click you will see a gallery with a screenshot of each of its weaves. There is a form which allows you to filter based on title, author, keywords, abstract and date. For an exposition to appear in this map, it needs to be public (share -> public or published). The map is updated once every 24 hours. There is an alternative map that allows you to browse all research by keyword.

Timelessness and temporality (Kruse, 2011) are widely studied topics in the classical music of the second half of the 20th century and the 21st century, mainly concerning the perspective of musical composition and auditory perception of music. But what is the perspective of temporal layeredness in the performer’s experience? This quote offers a starting point (Noble, 2018): “music whose temporal organisation optimises human information processing and embodiment expresses human time, and music whose temporal organisation subverts or exceeds human information processing and embodiment points outside of human time, to timelessness .” Specialized in the repertoire of Karlheinz Stockhausen, I want to investigate the role of temporality in music from the perspective of a performer. I will delve into the richness of different layers of temporal awareness in an artistic experience through experiential, embodied, and sensorial knowledge, using different temporal compositions by Stockhausen as case studies: HARMONIEN (2006) for flute solo,, Xi (1986) for flute solo and STOP (1969) for ensemble.

Άφρικα: A Certain Kind of Freedom is pivoting on artistic exploration and re-interpretation of a 'difficult' recent past. In part soundwalk, in part performance art, in part punk archaeology, in part getting lost in the dark; the work is a nocturnal rumination bringing together historical bewilderedness with first-person embodied experience of a place. The artist leads a night walk towards and inwards Agios Achillios island in Small Prespa Lake in Greece – near the borders of Albania, and North Macedonia – and back. En route, the walking audience is exposed to wildlife sounds and animal vocalisations, to orchestrated drama, and to historical records directly or indirectly concerning the broader geographical area and its significance during the Greek civil war.

In Provenir del porvenir Urbano hovers through the fields of sociology, archaeology and philosophy while reflecting on the different mediations of the work: the guided tour, the performance lecture and the video essay. The exposition is based on a speculative artistic-historiographic project where the artist, in the context and aesthetics of the Museum of History, connects her own genealogy with the North. The investigation is a response to recurrent question to people of color living in Scandinavia: “Where do you come from?” This question leads to an epistemological enquire, discussing the limits of knowledge production on a scientific basis versus knowledge production on an artistic basis.

[SCHOOL] Thesis / Research Document of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2024. [DEPARTMENT ] BA Interactive Media Design [SUMMERY] How can one unravel their relationship with a void through exploring their personal experience and knowledge of emptiness? Starting from the long lost frustration and unfulfillment for the inner void that I entail and wanting to define and understand what this void is and gain safety and peace in mind with it. By unraveling the complicated knot of the relationship between human and inner void, looking into different experiences of “missing” in my personal life and knowledge of emptiness, such as Korean cultural background, Language gap in translation, Definition of “Home”, Ambivalence in emotion, Moon jar, Clay and The connection in everything.