Research Catalogue

This exposition is a guide for students and teachers alike on the methodical approach of the subject Aural Skills and Improvisation.

Is there a method to die?

 In the spring of 2009, I attended a course in aesthetic-based qualitative research at Stockholm University. My mother was becoming very weak at the time. As I set out to write on method and methodology within the course, she had to go to hospital for some days during which I kept her company as much as I could. Tests didn't prove anything wrong with her though, and she was sent back home. When she was lifted from the stretcher and gently put her back in her own bed by the transport team, she looked around her and smiled. From the well-known paintings on her walls and the books in her bookshelves, she turned her attention to at me. Still smiling, she looked into my eyes, saying: "And now begins a new and exciting phase in our lives."

Less than a month later, she deceased. 

 The day after her death, I took one of her carpets on the back of my bike and went to the shore of a lake to clean it, the way she used to do it when I was a child. Out of this situation, the question emerged. Absurd though it seemed, it echoed through my further reading, listening and thinking.

This study sets out from an artistic workshop designed to investigate light, colour and spatiality. During the original event, a number of participants joined to collaborate by means of painting, dialogue and movement. From a presentation of the workshop (as determined in time and space), the text argues that the character of an artwork is essentially unfinished; an ongoing ”truth process”. Adopting lines of reasoning from philosophers Vilém Flusser and Theodor Adorno, I gain a first understanding of how the artwork could be reconstituted within the limits of a scientific essay. Once more turning to the workshop's course of events, I find experiences within the actual situation relating to abstract concepts such as ”spirit”, ”quality” and ”freedom”. Next, the text pays heed to Ludwig Wittgenstein's observation that human knowledge is gained and mediated by language-games of various kinds. The selected concepts are consequently tried out in expanded ”studio talks”, involving artists from different fields such as painter Matts Leiderstam, writer Robert Pirsig and sculptor Joseph Beuys. The operation allows me to single out some specific conditions pertaining to artistic dialogue, from which I seek transitions to philosophical discourse. The text briefly reviews three contemporary, art-based projects offering such discursive exchange: haptiska blickar, Thinking Through Painting and Freikörperkultur. Against this backdrop, I seek to articulate an understanding of knowledge-making which embraces artistically as well as philosophically grounded practises. I find support from philosophers John Dewey and Hans Larsson – Dewey characterizing the esthetic and intellectual faculties as complementary movements within the human mind, and Larsson propounding intuition as the unifying and superior form of thinking. Assenting to their views, I conclusively suggest methodical introspection as another field for discursive interchange between art and science.

This paper introduces the method of intuition as it is presented by French philosopher Henri Bergson in the book An Introduction to Metaphysics (Bergson 1912). Its usefulness as a tool to observe relevant information in artistic practice in sound is further discussed in relation to a series of works by the author. Exploring this complex field the author makes a preliminary conclusion that sound is not a thing, and it is not limited to what we listen to. It is a system of interrelated threads, the meaning of which is much larger than the actual sound itself.

The pursuit of perfection and the pressure to continually progress often overshadow the intrinsic joy and freedom that initially drew musicians to their profession. After a negative experience within my studies, I wanted to rediscover the essence of music-making through the lens of a specific tool: free improvisation. The research is driven by an autoethnographic approach where I focus on a specific angle within the broader topic of free improvisation: exploring how incorporating this tool affects the different parts of flute playing by putting the focus on how it can make us connect with our instrument, be more aware of our playing, of our body and to expand our creativity and imagination. Adopting a qualitative methodology, this research includes an exhaustive literature review, a journal on my reflections in collaborative sessions with a professional on the field and a data analysis of the survey answers by both professionals and students connected with this tool. Through immersive sessions conducted by Anne La Berge, I was guided across the possibilities of this tool. These are captured in a field journal where I reflect on topics as body awareness, skill development, creativity and motivational shifts triggered by the improvisational process in my own experience. Additionally, the insights collected from the questionnaires bring different points of view in the matter, offering diverse experiences and valuable perspectives. In summary, this study highlights the potential of free improvisation as a tool for reconnection, self-discovery and artistic growth as a flute player.

Psychoanalysis was meant to be a revolution in the centuries after B. de Spinoza’s work. What is interesting in his view for the psychoanalytic theory is how the human experience of the unusual feeling and joy could be approached. The irruption of these feelings is closely connected to symptomatics in psychoanalysis. Symptomatics of the unusual in language and discursive representation in the analytic experience of, say, Sigmund Freud’s couch was a mode of materialization of the feeling. Imagined from the outside world, the characteristic of repression is always an effect of finding an expression.