Research Catalogue

This exposition serves as an archive for the project "Meetings with Remarkable and Unremarkable Trees", where Annette Arlander spends time with specific trees and poses for camera together with them. The exposition is under construction

“Virtual Flesh” explores interfaces of desire and technology through the metaphor of sexual cannibalism.

In this research, I interrogate my practice as a performance photographer and explore how the digital space can be used as a tool to reflect on the unspeakable gazes and the notion of intimacy in an age where everyone can be seen and shown. The nature of the technologies used are as telling as we let them be but also pervasive in how they allow us to look into each other.

The project ‘Outward Threads’ is an artistic investigation rooted in music composition, integrating computational frameworks from machine learning and artificial intelligence to create new music. It seeks to develop a fresh approach to established compositional methodologies within computer-assisted composition, as well as incorporating novel tools. Some of these contributions, including the development of creative software tools, are discussed. Theoretically, the project examines various forms of creative cognition and their manifestation in Western art contemporary music composition, drawing insights from cognitive sciences and AI. These discussions provide a framework for presenting each composition within the project and serve as starting points for exploring individual creative processes, methodologies, and techniques. The goal is to deepen the understanding of these cognitive processes and their interactions in the creative process, aiming to bridge the gap between purely neurocognitive approaches and practice-based research. In a broader context, the project examines ethical aspects of music and composition and the composer’s role in society. Finally, it considers the impact of new technologies -particularly generative AI- on creative processes and discusses influential practitioners and current trends in the field.

The project Mediation as Discipline is an attempt to build bridges between disciplines and make the experience-based knowledge that the contemporary art field can offer relevant to a broader academic community. At the same time, it is an investigation of needs within the field itself, which should be served by a university that prides itself on having an artistic faculty. This report, carrying the same name as the project, is based on a comprehensive survey among contemporary art mediators conducted in 2024 by the project group, and it examines the foundation for specialised education for mediators of contemporary art in Norway.

The collaborative process that has fostered the texts in this anthology started with two questions: What does it mean to be a curator who writes, and, more specifically, how can curators write about textiles? Curatorial practices vary just as much as do curators’ interest in and capacity for writing. At the same time, there are prevailing opinions about, and institutional demands on, what kinds of texts curators should provide for audiences, for instance as contributions to art discourses in the form of catalogue essays and the like. The Community of Writers was set up to create time and space to retreat from these outside opinions and demands and to let curiosity and the joy of writing be the driving forces of the writing process. I have had the pleasure of leading this process and am indebted to the individuals who formed the Community of Writers for newfound insights into textile art and the role of textiles in society. The writing process challenged the contributors’ own writing practices, sparked their enthusiasm, playfulness and criticality pushed the project further. Our conversations have deepened and become more entangled over time, and the reader can find traces of this in the texts in this volume.