Research Catalogue

2024-2025 Manuel Rodriguez

Mesa de trabalho com inúmeros ícones identificáveis.

The EcoSomatics Conversations Series invites sharing of engagement, practices and thinking around environmental awareness through embodiment activities, dance and art. It posits a definition of EcoSomatics as of the body-mind-ecology and takes the form of open public dialogues between two (or more) people: independent artists, practitioners, and academics.

This is a exposition-version of a Keynote speech, held at SIMM-posium, Copenhagen, November 2024 Drawing on findings and experience from the Artistic Research project "Echoes from the torn down fourth wall", this keynote will explore key perspectives on building bridges between “art music” (whatever that means) and community singing. The research project began with an inquiry into audience participation within improvised concerts and has reinterpreted familiar Danish song material in an art music setting where the audience sings along in songs they know. Topics will include proposals for understanding the social dynamics of participation and listening through the framework of 4e cognition; in this case, thinking of listening as embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended. The role of the spectator across different performance art domains will be examined, focusing on how the project has challenged notions and ideals of the spectator’s separation (or lack thereof) from the musical event. Additionally, genre theory will be employed to rethink the distinctions and overlaps between “cultural” and “art” perspectives in the interpretation of inherited musical traditions. Approaches to possible renegotiations of musical traditions – whether through confirmation or destabilization – will also be discussed, partly in the Danish context of the project, but also extended more generally beyond this specific starting point.

This artistic PhD project is based on the author’s practice as a recorder player and chamber musician in contemporary Western art music. Through an initial study of the embodied and tacit knowledge of chamber musicians and how it is articulated through gestural interaction during performance, the perspective of the thesis widens to explore how such qualities can be used as a creative resource in interdisciplinary collaboration. At its core, the PhD work has explored long-term collaborative processes in projects where a series of chamber music works have been brought to a staged context, but always keeping the qualities of chamber music at its centre. The research questions that emerge from these conceptual and artistic aims are: – How can I understand and transfer the communicative and embodied qualities inherent in chamber music playing to staged interdisciplinary contexts? – How can the concept of the gestural-sonic object, and the multimodal understanding of human perception which it implies, constitute both an analytical tool and a source for artistic experimentation? – How can musical interpretation be applied in the creation of staged interdisciplinary performances? The method and design of the project builds on collaborations with artists from the fields of composition, choreography, dance, theatre and visual arts. In the projects, the participating artists have aimed to explore and develop collaborative methods and staged formats where the artforms at the same time have been considered as autonomous and as part of a compound whole. The results of the artistic work are published online in the Research Catalogue. The project findings suggest that interdisciplinary approaches, such as experimental music theatre, composed theatre and choreomusical practices, may enable the liberation from traditional roles, hierarchies and predetermined formats and can lead to what can be described as a radical interpretation of the original score. Through a study of musical gesture – building on a theoretical framework grounded in embodied cognition and phenomenology – the thesis presents examples, both artistic and theoretical, of processes through which boundaries between artistic disciplines have been consciously blurred, thereby providing novel creative opportunities for the classical music performer.

This research aims to combine my two artistic identities as a Chinese zither (古筝) player and as a classical singer. After researching, interpreting and analyzing two art song cycles from the 20th century, 5 Poems of Ancient China and Japan by Charles Griffes and Songs of Autumn (秋之歌) by Zhongrong Luo (罗忠镕), I integrate Chinese traditional music forms, ornamentation and instrumentation into my vocal performance. The methodology includes literature review, expert interview, internet media review, score analysis, language analysis and experimental music practice. The outcomes highlight my approach of incorporating inspiration from zither music and folk singing styles into the art song cycles, while also addressing the ethical considerations encountered throughout the research process.