Research Catalogue

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.

An eco-feminist perspective on photography Our vision has untapped, forgotten or perhaps undervalued potentials. These potentials lie within what I would like to coin “the peripheral gaze”. It is at the outskirts and at those distant horizons that I believe great insights lie. It is the gaze of interconnected matter. At the level of matter we are all equal: everyone and everything consists of matter. Looking with a “peripheral gaze” means seeing which materials are co-performing the image and seeing the ecological interconnections.

Presence in Embodied/Encoded is concerned with the physical and embodied dimensions of musicking in relation to digital-informational representations of such phenomena. I explore presence through practices of recording, creative coding, audio production, and spatial electronic music composition. Of particular interest is the link between presence and the sensual/corporeal aspects of sound production and listening. Research in embodied music cognition and extended reality provide a foundation for this type of meaning formation. In the context of immersive electronic music, I suggest that physical presence – a sense of ‘being somewhere’—emerges not just from images/representations of place, but from peripheral aspects of the (embodied) acoustic experience such as spatial proximity and distance, diffuseness, resonance and reverberation, noise floor, etc. Consequently, musical meaning in “Embodied/Encoded” moves away from the symbolic dimension of electronic sounds toward meaning as an outcome of embodied interaction with the environment. The concept of presence can also apply to ‘mixed’ music, or combinations of acoustic and electronic sources, in which virtual presence is complicated by real bodies and spaces. Digital technology renders sound a flexible, malleable entity—a ‘flickering’ signifier to borrow from Hayles—capable of reconfiguring presence in creative ways. The dance between encoded and embodied dimensions inspires and informs this artistic research. Through a body of immersive music and multimedia documentation, I unpack connections between presence and its digital abstractions.

My performance art practice as an artist and researcher has become crucial to test ideas that theoretically catch my interest. For example, years ago I was convinced that performance art compositions were a miracle because of the Chaos theory in physics, where organized chaos was so complex that it was too difficult to perceive the origin, development and end of each action in time-space here and now. Within the context of an event of actions and the probabilities, time stretches out in many directions, making the observable constellation of actions more than chaotic, but four-dimensional almost, in a way that the past, present and future of the actions become one: Anticipation. Therefore, Anticipation in actions becomes crucial to understanding that action could fail even in a prediction, as an action goal is scored to be done, performers in present time-space, live simultaneously in the past present and future of the action, the tension between the action-goal is the vibration, but the anticipation is all the probabilities merge with the past and future of this action. Multidimensional perception requires a performer to perform within an action to improve training and work out through several performance preparations. An example is how to cross at constant speed a mass of crowded people and not change direction. Anticipation switches your present to be merged with your past and future. Such a concept is how I improve daily in my performance lab with the participants of my performance laboratory.

The purpose of this project is to explore how we can minimize the climate impact through the way we plan, produce, and support performing arts productions. The overarching research question was: How can we continue to create relevant and innovative performing arts with a smaller climate impact? The faculty in performing arts at Stockholm University of the Arts worked with Harry Martinson's Aniara from their various disciplines.