The Research Catalogue (RC) is a non-commercial, collaboration and publishing platform for artistic research provided by the
Society for Artistic Research. The RC is free to use for artists and
researchers. It
serves also as a backbone for teaching purposes, student assessment, peer review workflows and research funding administration. It strives to be
an open space for experimentation and exchange.
recent activities
Bird → ∞
(2025)
Kirill Arkadiev
I work at the boundary where a finite biological object asymptotically approaches zero and, through this disappearance, gives birth to an infinite aesthetic event — a singularity.
The series “Singularity of Beauty” is an ongoing investigation into the moment when decay, entropy, and controlled human intervention collide to rupture the visible world and generate a new, non-representational order.
Method: Asymptotic Ritual
A chosen organic system (bird, bouquet, insect colony, fungal network) is placed on a prepared surface and deliberately abandoned to natural forces — heat, humidity, insects, gravity, time.
During a fixed ritual period (7 days in the current cycle), the object decays following an exponential law analogous to f(t) = a·e⁻ᵏᵗ. The artist is absent; only documentation occurs.
At t → ∞ (practically: when the biological object approaches zero), the artist re-enters as a second asymptotic operator. Selective pigment application, removal of material, and layering transform the residue into a visual limit — a singularity point where the initial object has vanished, yet infinite meaning emerges.
The final state is neither representation nor abstraction; it is the frozen event of the limit itself.
Core Principles
Decay is not a theme; it is the first author.
Time is treated as a physical material with measurable half-life.
Human intervention functions as a controlled perturbation that forces the system past its natural equilibrium into aesthetic infinity.
The resulting image is a palimpsest of two incompatible temporalities: biological time (unstoppable) and artistic time (intermittent, intentional).
The “demon” is not a depicted figure but the mathematical event of the singularity: the instant when order, passing through zero, becomes infinite and alien.
Iceland University of the Arts - Welcome to RC
(2025)
Sigmundur Pall Freysteinsson
This exposition gathers all the essential information needed to get started with the Research Catalogue (RC) platform at the Iceland University of the Arts (IUA). It offers a clear overview of how to create a profile, start an exposition, and navigate the basic functions of the platform. The goal is to provide staff with a central reference point for working with RC in the context of artistic research and institutional use.
recent publications
Sett fra et sted, utviklet fra et punkt
(2025)
Annika Borg
A dice roll is the very image of randomness. Every day since September 1, 1994, I have rolled a set of six dice, written down the number combinations and collected the numerical material in an ever-growing physical archive. The project is entitled "one and one hundred dice rolls a day". I use this numerical material as a starting point for transformations by translating each number, 1 to 6, into one sign, shape, sound or word, and by creating rules for how these translations will be used further. This method shapes the concrete outcomes and results in series or other forms of progressions and connections. What unites the different sub-projects that stem from the dice roll project is an exploration of the inherent nature of this special material and its potential for form, expression, and visibility, as well as a fascination with the diversity and variations generated, and with results I cannot fully predict. In this exposition, I will describe, make visible, and reflect on the working method, process, and the development of the formal language and expressions that have emerged from this ongoing, and in many ways interconnected, artistic project. The project is seen from a place (that of me, the artist's perspective) and is developed from a point (the dice rolls with dots representing numbers).
When the Sea Invades the House
(2025)
Giselle Hinterholz
When the Sea Invades the House displaces a real octopus from the ocean into bedrooms, windows, cars and ruins. Its tentacular body embodies ecological grief, dragging the sea into spaces where human life unfolds. Each photograph is an archival fragment of mourning, recording the dissonance between a body that belongs to the depths and the surfaces where it is forced to appear. The final image, marked by a black tear, crystallises this grief as wound and testimony. It is the ocean itself that mourns, silently infiltrating the everyday.