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 worklog exemplifying my practice of making situated interventions through narrative storyworlds and animated worldbuilding. My art often brings some conditions attached that aim at transforming the mindset and routines of the environments I enter, as a way to ”world” them. Constructing alternative inner story worlds has always been the basic mode for me to perceive the world, process the world, and to find ways to act in the world. worldbuilding as an artform also serves my interest in systems and “the whole”. an interest that brings about the desire for sustainability, for things to be fair, balanced, for “the whole” to sustain and thrive. My artworks often materialize as a response to something in my environment, a response that carefully takes form within the fictive storyworld. Examples of responses are a proposal to update the permanent exhibition on mining at Tekniska Museet, staging a shutdown of the university or introducing climate budgeting into film courses. This method of careful responses aligns with the concept of “worlding”, a term from material feminist thought about making “cuts” in the world, enacting interventions that produce the world I inhabit. “Worlding” is acknowledging the relations, how I am entangled in the world, while acting. Being embedded in a “storyworld” gives me the critical distance that enables me to respond more creatively, ”as if” things could be a whole lot different. Due to my interests in the full range of things, from material to structural to epistemological and ontological, I prefer to make interactions on all levels simultaneously in order to trace their effects, how they are connected, how they interact and affect one another. In order to reach initiated understanding into all parts of “the wholes” *I often engage in transdiciplinary collaborations with researchers from many different disciplines.

ARTikulationen 2024 is an artistic research event conceived and organised by the Doctoral School for Artistic Research (KWDS) | Center for Artistic Research of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG). It takes place at Theater im Palais and AULA KUG, Graz, between 02–05 October 2024. ARTikulationen interweaves in-depth artistic research presentations, a festival character (intermezzi-performances), and a mini-symposium on the topic of research journeys between artistic and scholarly or scientific practices. Topics range from current acoustic, electroacoustic, and computer composition, historically informed and contemporary performance, to improvisation and theatre.

Abstract The E(c)lect(r)ic Guitar in The Mechanical Forest is my investigation into how to expand my improvisational palette as an electric guitarist, by working with compositional techniques and concepts used in composed contemporary western art music. In my work, I have focused on incorporating movement, microtonality, as well as multimedia composition techniques and application of technology, both in the performance as well as in the creative process. A key focus of my artistic practice has been exploration of the transcorporeal nature of my relationship with the guitar. This has resulted in creative work which has grown from a deep focus on the materiality of the guitar and the visual, tactile (touch) and kinetic (movement) aspects of sound production. Research Questions 1 How can I use compositional techniques and concepts from contemporary composed western art music to expand my palette as an improvising guitarist? 2 How can I transfer musical techniques and concepts, which often are used in a strictly predetermined environment, to a musical situation where improvisation is an important element in the performance. 3 How can I reconfigure/extend the electric guitar, and how can the reconfigured/extended guitar reshape the way I create and perform music?

Digital dokumentasjon av utstillingen Minnekommisjonen

The Bachelors’s Programme in Dance Pedagogy at Stockholm University of the Arts, Sweden, have gone through a major restructuring leading to an updated program, on demand by students and staff. This exposition gives you an overview of the process of changing the program during the years 2020 - 2023. It guides you through the phases of the change project, highlights documents governing and forming the changes made, and links to research that were conducted during the project period and that deepened the knowledge created through the change process. Our first step was to listen into the field’s concerns and ideas about dance education today. We scanned the field for signals of change and created a collaborative map of dance pedagogical practices in contemporary times. From this map we derived design principles and scenarios for a new BA in Dance Pedagogy. After a workshop series with students of the department, it was decided that the new program should be based on the hybrid research methodology A/R/Tography. A new educational plan and course plans were created for the new BA. Courses corresponding to the positions as artist, researcher, and teacher of A/R/Tography were developed for the program, and dance genre specific courses were also created. All new courses of the program combines theory and practice, and students are prepared for a changing and complex work life combining artistic, teaching and researching practice. This exposition is part of the peer-reviewed article: Østern, T. P., Reppen, C., O’Connell, S., & Daneberg, M. (2025). Choreographer/researcher/teacher: Developing a/r/tography as an approach to dance pedagogy at Stockholm University of the Arts in a professional learning community of teachers. Nordic Journal of Art & Research, 14(2). https://doi.org/10.7577/ar.5460