Research Catalogue

"New ideas might be conceived and developed more rapidly in disciplines that are more abstract. The inductive methods of experimental innovators in painting makes their enterprise resemble the more empirical disciplines considered by psychologists, while the deductive approach of the conceptual innovators makes theirs resemble the more abstract disciplines." David W. Galenson, "The Life Cycles of Modern Artists", NBER Working Paper Series, 2003. Artists and architects have been at times captivated by visionary ideological viewpoints, which they used as inspiration and to make suggestions for applications with their artworks and designs. My use of the diagram and the image aims to convey the simple message that art strives for evolution; meaning to strengthen the mind, to research capabilities, to communicate a disinterested, though not necessarily apolitical, view of social changes, to overcome banality and offer an alternative way of looking at the world. For many artists, this motivation has traditionally often gone hand in hand with political goals and motivations. The decline of the commercial art market in the 1980s gave rise to artists working mainly, but not solely, with ephemeral installations, including the ubiquitous video art, performance, and the broader range of conceptual art. Painting remained as an established fine art practice, with a renewed interest to conceptualism. YBA (Young British Artists) was a seminal artistic group in Britain of the 1990s, who challenged conventional modes of that period of making and exhibiting art. They had their first group exhibition in 1988. The portrait is of the artist, myself, at a young age, dated 1993, when I was a student at the NTUA. Betty Nigianni is my name known as (aka), which I also used as my artistic pseudonym.

Work-in-progress for the development of a sensorial piece, first explored during the workshop Augmented Attention Lab.

Calling Songs is a research into the possibilities of using the sounds created by insect and frog choirs in a musical composition/soundscape. An 8-channel speaker system was developed for this purpose, able to stand outside conditions and fitting into a natural environment. The voices of crickets and frogs have characteristics that make them sound almost electronic and therefore blend surprisingly well with the sounds that the muiscians of Zwerm can produce using effectpedals, loop-feedback, modular synthesizers and occasionally a guitar. The listener is invited to question the idea of culture versus nature. For the performers, the central question is how to give non-human life a voice in our artistic practice. Calling Songs is a collaboration between Johannes Westendorp, Zwerm and Pieter Verhees

This essay postulates a novel notion of the sound image that – rather than conceiving it as an artefact, a visual surrogate or an exclusively mental entity – defines it as an instance of a process or an operation, unfolding within material circuits, technical infrastructures, and collective protocols. Based upon the image theory developed by Gilbert Simondon in his book Imagination and Invention, this notion enables an account of the variable nature of the audible in a post-anthropocentric context as intrinsic to the forms in which sensorial engagement takes places in singular material constellations.

This video essay discusses how contemporary artists might directly address some of the philosophical and political challenges of a material approach to instrumentality through creative practice. I present and discuss the practical approaches taken by musicians who create and collaborate with instruments as a central part of their work: Khabat Abas and Sam Underwood. In examining their creative practice both creating and working with musical instruments, I examine how these artists navigate the agential and material aspects of the instruments and systems they create, in parallel with the conceptual ideas that they bring to and derive from such systems.

Andy Birtwistle’s introduction to this special issue addresses the question "what is sonic materiality?" by examining how both "new" and "old" materialisms offer productive frameworks for conceptualizing sound's material dimensions. Drawing on work by Cox, Voegelin, and Cobussen, alongside critiques from Goh, Thompson, and Campbell, the article proposes understanding sound's materiality through texture, temporal flow, and spatiality. By engaging with Structural/Materialist film theory and creative sonic practices, Birtwistle discusses how materiality intersects with aesthetics, agency, and ethics in sound. The introduction argues that exploring sonic materiality opens new avenues for understanding sound across environmental soundscapes, artistic practices, and cultural contexts.