Research Catalogue

People interested in artificial intelligence usually ask whether computers could become as intelligent and creative as humans. I decided to think about it the other way around: I'm interested in the extent to which the creative process of artists is algorithmic. It's not difficult to create something that will look like art; you just need to imitate an already existing genre or style. The challenge is to create something that will be able to trigger an art experience. In this visual essay, I'm studying where, in a spectrum of different kinds of experiences (jokes, magic tricks, pleasure from solving a mathematical or scientific problem), there are thrills triggered by art. All of these experiences depend on a sufficient amount of novelty. Therefore, the creators of experience triggers face the same problem: the impact of a joke, a magic trick, or an artwork tends to diminish when heard/seen repeatedly. The human brain has evolved in a way that it is able to distinguish repeating patterns, formulas, schemes, algorithms. Uncovering an algorithm causes pleasure. But once an algorithm is uncovered, it does not cause pleasure any more. To trigger an experience of the same intensity, we need a new trigger. In this work, I also address the question of why certain types of triggers wear off more slowly than others. The outcomes of this project are a book—a visual essay in which drawings and texts form one line of an argument—and a series of lecture-like events, in which I combine sincerity and directness of lectures, panel discussions, and guided tours with richer ways of expression typical for object theatre, performances, and magic shows.

Jenny Sunesson (b. 1973) is a Swedish artist predominantly working with sound. Her practice ranges from field recording and live collages to conceptual sound art and video. Sunesson uses her own life as a stage for her dark, tragic and sometimes comical re-contextualised work where real and invented characters and derogated stereotypes, collaborate in the alternate story of hierarchies and normative power structures in society.

PERFORMING PROCESS is a research group within the Artistic Research Centre at Nottingham Trent University, co-led by Emma Cocker and Danica Maier, both Associate Professors in Fine Art. We ask: what is at stake in focusing on the process of practice — the embodied, experiential, relational and material dimensions of artistic making, thinking and knowing. What is the critical role of uncertainty, disorientation, not knowing and open-ended activity within artistic research? How might a process-focused exploration intervene in and offer new perspectives on artistic practice and research, perhaps even on the uncertain conditions of contemporary life? PERFORMING PROCESS has origins in a number of critical precedents: Summer and Winter Lodges originating within the fine art area (practice-research residencies or laboratories dedicated to providing space-time for making-thinking and for exploring the process of practice), collaborative artistic research projects such as No Telos, for exploring the critical role of uncertainty, disorientation, not knowing and open-ended activity; the DREAM seminar series with PhD researchers which focuses specifically on the ‘how-ness’ of practice research by asking - How do we do what we do?

The project presents a distinctive mythopoeic audiovisual language created to express the experience of aging in a female body in the period between the twenties and thirties. Within the context of life in a late capitalist patriarchal society, and both individual and global events, it reflects on the age-old questions of the passage of time and the search for the meaning of life. At the same time, it examines the feelings of pressure, heaviness, and disposability that are part of the shared common experience of women. Through written word, cinematic language, and original author-composed music, it interweaves symbols and situations in which mud and natural metaphors play a significant role.

This exposition is part of The Sonic Atelier – Conversations with Contemporary Composers and Producers, a series dedicated to examining the evolving role of the composer in the twenty-first century. Through a Q&A format, the project investigates how contemporary creators navigate hybrid identities across composition, performance, production, and technological craft. This interview features Arnold Kasar, German composer, pianist, producer, and mastering engineer, whose work spans improvisation, ambient sound worlds, classical heritage, and studio-based experimentation. Moving fluidly between the piano, prepared piano techniques, and digital production environments, Kasar constructs musical landscapes where acoustic gesture, electronic texture, and spatial depth coexist as a single expressive field. In the conversation, Kasar reflects on improvisation as the generative core of his practice, on the piano as both an instrument and a source of raw sonic material, and on the studio as an expanded compositional space. He discusses the continuum between writing, producing, and mixing; the role of technology as a creative partner; and the influence of spatial audio, room acoustics, and Dolby Atmos on his musical language. The interview also touches on collaborations, the aesthetics of ambient music, the cultural impact of streaming platforms, and the challenges and possibilities posed by artificial intelligence. Kasar’s reflections reveal a vision of music grounded in human presence and intuitive creation, yet deeply attuned to technological and spatial possibilities—where composition, sound design, and performance converge into a fluid, embodied process of listening, resonance, and transformation.

This publication presents the outcomes of the Connective Symposium, which took place at Fontys Academy of the Arts in Tilburg, in November 2022. The symposium was the first time that the professorship and research group Artistic Connective Practices, initiated in 2021, opened its work to the international field: We invited practitioners from all over the world to share their work and exchange about the concept of "artistic connectivity". "Artistic Connectivity Unfolding" is an attempt to share the experiences during the symposium with the broader artistic research audience, and to contribute to the body of artistic research work that is socially engaged. The exposition is potentially many things: In part, it is a piece of documentation of the symposium, in part reflections on and proceedings of it. It is also an explorative contribution to our emerging and unfolding discourse of artistic connectivity, — unfinished, fluid and moving — and thus a springboard for our future work on artistic connectivity.