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. 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. The profile picture is myself at nineteen years old.

This report on research was supported by the Lectorate of Music, Education, and Society at the Royal Conservatoire, The Hague. The following work explores the endeavor to integrate creative concepts and artistic exploration into the Bachelor's curriculum at conservatoires, with the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague serving as a case study. It presents the researcher's ideas for innovative content and structures related to creative practices and interdisciplinary collaboration, compiled in a playful structure known as the ‘Category Game’. This article provides a comprehensive list of tools designed to facilitate these creative collaborative processes, which were either developed during my work with students or gathered from relevant literature, colleagues' contributions, or other academic programs. During the course of this research project, I engaged in discussions about interdepartmental and creative activities in higher music education with both teachers and students, conducted projects and case studies with various student groups, and ultimately designed a toolbox in the form of a game. Background: In recent years, my educational interests have centered on fostering creative interdepartmental collaboration among music students. The initial phase, exemplified by the research project ‘Learning Pods,’ involved practical case studies where specific forms of creative interdepartmental work were experimented with and analyzed. These 'learning pods' paired students from different departments for semi-structured creative sessions, demonstrating significant positive impacts on learning, autonomy, motivation, confidence, self-efficacy, and performance experience. Subsequently, during the 'Crossing Borders' initiative, a series of case studies with diverse formats was conducted, involving musicians from various institutions and collaborations with fellow educators. The complexity of creative cross-genre projects became apparent, influenced by students' personalities, musical backgrounds, genres, and departmental affiliations. While students displayed varying levels of confidence in exploring new artistic territories and collaborating across departments, a collective desire for increased interdepartmental exchange emerged. As my focus expanded to encompass 'the creative act in higher music education' more broadly, a central question arose: What tools and structures could be easily applied to facilitate a creative process for an interdepartmental group of music students in an easy and playful manner, regardless of their prior experience in creating or improvising? This inquiry necessitated an examination of the existing study offerings and their structure within the institution. Do these activities significantly contribute to interdepartmental collaborations? What modifications or additions might be beneficial? Further inquiries addressed the role of improvisation, the management of definitions, and the potential contribution of jazz—a genre and attitude toward improvisation and creation that appears underexplored in the institution's discussions.

From One Space to Another is a sound essay in video format of the ongoing research of understanding the world, phenomenons and situations through sound and listening. The ambition is that through the act of listening use the detail as a means of highlighting a phenomenon where sound serves as a deeper means of registering and understanding the environment. By zooming in we can accumulate knowledge, broaden and expand our perception and comprehension and create greater understanding of the bigger context. This way it might be possible to raise awareness and bring to consciousness the things we might not be aware of and that we sometimes fail to notice. In this practice-led sound essay you take part of sound art pieces that are intertwined by thoughts and reflections throughout the journey. From One Space to Another presents recordings and compositions of smaller components such as the acoustics of fibers in the trees and the needled thread of embroideries as well as the structural repetitiveness of machinery in the textile industry. At the same time it shows how the recorded material inspires and encourages various kinds of expressions. This sound and video essay is an independent project within the Master Program Experimental Composition and Creation at the Academy of Music and Drama in Göteborg, Sweden.

Thomas Ballhausen's (author and philosopher) and Elena Peytchinska's (Institute of Fine Arts & Media Art – Stage and Film Design) contribution "Herbarium of Words: Literary Style at the Scale of a Street" artistically explores the interrelations of space, language, and literature and takes us on a walk through Vienna’s streets. The herbarium serves as a point of departure for historical observations, which is seen as a form of subjective and personal archiving of urban experiences by means of linguization. Their performative approach combines film stills, poetry, and theoretical backgrounds to transform the boundaries of text and bibliographic formats.

Research Document of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023. BA Photography. The research paper serves as a base for understanding the memories on a case of a person with dementia and their connections to the medium of photography. Photography is used as an attempt to retrieve my grandmother’s autobiographical memories which are often hard to retrieve. It is based on the assumption that every memory, no matter how vague, is still accessible by restoring to a proper process, similar to the latent image on the photographic film that becomes visible only after appropriate processing. Based on existing experimental memory research I constructed a method of finding a cue that can trigger specific memories in a conversation. Photographic images from the past were used as a base of the conversation. In most cases, they didn’t directly trigger involuntary memory, but they served as a starting point for a conversation, allowing my grandmother to start actively thinking about a period of her life. Due to dementia, the responses within one conversation were often repeated, yet after some time, the chain reaction of retrieving memories allowed her to remember some specific details. Her understanding of the fragility of memories was constantly present. On multiple occasions, she expressed that an artificial device, such as photography or writing, should be used to preserve them. The research doesn’t give a complete understanding of how memories and their retrieval work in general, but it gives a better understanding of how it can efficiently be done with my grandmother. The process I developed can be applied to other people if properly adjusted to them. I believe that essentially what counts is not what kind of cue we choose, but that we patiently take time to listen and guide conversations with some previous knowledge about their past.

Over the past few years, fires are everywhere. The summer of 2023, the biggest wildfire recorded in Europe torched large swaths of Northern Greece; fire destroyed ecosystems and devastated local communities. This research paper is divided into two parts; the first part is based on fieldwork conducted in the fire-altered landscape in Evros, after spending time in Kirki village, hearing the stories of locals, having conversations with experts, and documenting my experiences living in the post-disaster land. It is a travelogue to a ground considered “ruined”, in a village slowly disappearing. The second part zooms in on Kirki’s cemetery, approaching it as the sole spiritual place for post-disaster relief in an effort to understand its importance for the community as well as the opportunities that arise in this burial ground. My travel was approached with a commitment to flexibility and was shaped by serendipity. In this multilayered condition of Northern Greece, it is an effort to consider the question of what’s left in the post-fire land of Kirki and what emerges in its damaged cemetery.