recent activities
Matter, Gesture and Soul
(2024)
MATTER, GESTURE AND SOUL, Eamon O`Kane, Geir Harald Samuelsen, Åsil Bøthun, Elin Tanding Sørensen, Anne-Len Thoresen, Dragos Gheorghiu, Petro Keene
A cross disciplinary artistic research project that departs from, and investigates several encounters and alignments between Contemporary Art and Archaeology. Its primary goal is to create a broad selection of autonomous and collaborative artistic, poetic and scientific expressions and responses to Prehistoric Art and its contemporary images. It will seek to stimulate a deeper understanding of contemporary and prehistoric artistic expression and the contemporary and prehistoric human condition. The participating artists and archaeologists will create autonomous projects, but also interact with each other in workshops, seminars and collaborative artistic projects.
The secondary goal of Matter, Gesture and Soul is to establish an international cross disciplinary research network at the University of Bergen and strengthen the expertise in cross disciplinary artistic and scientific work
with artistic research as the driving force.
The project is financed by DIKU and UiB and supported by Global Challenges (UiB)
Lintupäiväkirja
(2024)
Heini Nieminen
Lintuihin liittyvän taiteellisen tutkimukseni kohdalla pohdin ensin lintukatoa ja voisinko taiteen avulla tukea lintuja pesinnän onnistumisessa. Jossain matkan varrella huomasin, etten tiennyt keitä nämä linnut ovat, joiden kanssa pyrin toimimaan. Halusin ystävystyä pihani lintujen kanssa, oppia tuntemaan niitä. Rakensin "lintukopin", jossa vietin aina puoli tuntia kerrallaan. Olen kuvannut nämä puolituntiset ja kirjannut kokemuksista oleellisimmat seikat ylös.
recent publications
TO THE ONE I MISS
(2024)
Min Ji Cha
[SCHOOL] Thesis / Research Document of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2024.
[DEPARTMENT ] BA Interactive Media Design
[SUMMERY]
How can one unravel their relationship with a void through exploring their personal experience and knowledge of emptiness?
Starting from the long lost frustration and unfulfillment for the inner void that I entail and wanting to define and understand what this void is and gain safety and peace in mind with it. By unraveling the complicated knot of the relationship between human and inner void, looking into different experiences of “missing” in my personal life and knowledge of emptiness, such as Korean cultural background, Language gap in translation,
Definition of “Home”, Ambivalence in emotion, Moon jar, Clay and The connection in everything.
Morten Qvenild – The HyPer(sonal) Piano Project
(2024)
Morten Qvenild
Towards a (per)sonal topography of
grand piano and electronics
How can I develop a grand piano with live electronics through iterated development loops in the cognitive technological environment of instrument, music, performance and my poetics?
The instrument I am developing, a grand piano with electronic augmentations, is adapted to cater my poetics. This adaptation of the instrument will change the way I compose. The change of composition will change the music. The change of music will change my performances. The change in performative needs will change the instrument, because it needs to do different things. This change in the instrument will show me other poetics and change my ideas. The change of ideas demands another music and another instrument, because the instrument should cater to my poetics. And so it goes… These are the development loops I am talking about.
I have made an augmented grand piano using various music technologies. I call the instrument the HyPer(sonal) Piano, a name derived from the suspected interagency between the extended instrument (HyPer), the personal (my poetics) and the sonal result (music and sound). I use old analogue guitar pedals and my own computer programming side by side, processing the original piano sound. I also take out control signals from the piano keys to drive different sound processes. The sound output of the instrument is deciding colors, patterns and density on a 1x3 meter LED light carpet attached to the grand piano. I sing, yet the sound of my voice is heavily processed, a processing decided by what I am playing on the keys. All sound sources and control signal sources are interconnected, allowing for complex and sometimes incomprehensible situations in the instrument´s mechanisms.
Credits:
First supervisor: Henrik Hellstenius
Second Supervisors: Øyvind Brandtsegg and Eivind Buene
Cover photo by Jørn Stenersen, www.anamorphiclofi.com
All other photo, audio and video recording/editing by Morten Qvenild, unless stated.
Living in and through our bodies: somatic principles that support the experience of pain and discomfort
(2024)
Maisie James
This thesis is an autoethnographic, practice research investigation, offering further knowledge to the field of somatic practice, pain, and discomfort. As this thesis is a practice research inquiry, I offer practice to the field that is further supported by my autoethnographic positions. Embodied research and the lived experience are therefore central, exploring how somatic practice can support the sensations of pain and discomfort. Whilst practice is at the forefront of this investigation, theoretical frameworks from the somatic field, practical offerings from other practitioners, therapists, and researchers, and already established somatic ideologies have informed the research process and have offered an integrated approach to supporting the understanding of how practice can support pain and discomfort. Both the practical and theoretical elements of this research emphasise the importance of improvisatory movement and relationships with the self to engage with a sense of freedom and self-expression. By adopting different somatic principles within practice, together with a theoretical understanding of the applications of somatic practice to the body, this research explores movement and wellbeing from a practical perspective, whilst drawing upon key ideas from the somatic field of research. The refined set of principles that this thesis contributes to the field are: The Breath, Movement Economy, The Skeleton, Rotation and Flow, Embodied Rhythm, Stretch, Extension and Elongation, Dynamic and Light Self-touch, Noticing and Addressing Habits, and Rest and Active Stillness. Each somatic principle was explored practically throughout this investigation, resulting in an in depth, subjective approach to analysing data through the lived experience and the narratives of others involved in the research process.
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Birmingham City University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Supervisors: Dr Polly Hudson, Dr Carrie Churnside