Research Catalogue

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.

Illustration as research from within the field is of relatively new practice. The illustrators discourse on representation (Yannicopoulou & Alaca 2018 ), theory (Doyle, Grove and Sherman 2018, Male 2019, Gannon and Fauchon 2021), and critical writing on illustration practice was hardly found before The Journal of Illustration was first issued in 2014, followed by artistic research through illustration (Black, 2014; Rysjedal, 2019; Spicer, 2019). This research project developed as response to a rise in hate crime towards refugees and the targeting of European Jews in recent decade. A pilot project (This Is a Human Being 2016-2019) treated how narratives of the Holocaust may avoid contributing to overwriting of history or cultural appropriation. Asking how illustration in an expanded approach may communicate profound human issues typically considered unrepresentable, this new project hopes to explore representation and the narratives of “us” and “the others” in the contemporary world through illustration as starting-point for cross-disciplinary projects. The participants from different disciplines, have interacted democratically on common humanist themes to explore the transformative role of illustration in contemporary communication. our projects should afford contemplation of illustration as an enhanced, decelerated way of looking; and drawing as a process for understanding - a way of engaging in understanding the other, as much as expressing one’s own needs (McCartney, 2016). This AR project consisted of three symposia and three work packages, and the artistic research unfolded in the symbiosis of these elements. Our investigation of illustration across media and materials continues as dissemination and exhibitions even after the conclusion of the work packages in 2024.

Thesis / Research Document of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, 2023. Master Artistic Research (MAR). Designed by Faina Faigin Reflecting on personal experiences of being part of some groups and excluded from others makes me wonder how we connect when we are already clinging. Communities can be either chosen or forced, or both, which raises questions about how these bonds are formed and when we no longer belong.

The video is part of artistic research that explores a dialogue between human, non-human, and forces of the land in Utsjoki, Finland. In this artistic research, walking is used as a method to connect with the environment. During the walks, small amounts of soil – sand, stones, and clay – is gathered and processed further in a studio. Some soil is transformed to slips and used when painting hand-built vases made from the gathered clay. The fired vases are placed temporarily in local rivers. The result is a series of three vase experiments done in a dialogue between human, soil, water, and the forces of the land. The video presents the third vase experiment, where the vase is built from the local clay. The motifs of the painting are the nationally endangered animals: arctic fox, fell owl and glacial salmon. In the River Teno catchment, small juvenile salmon often spend some of their first years of life in tiny tributaries, which they enter from their birth place, the spawning areas in the main stem of the river. One of these nursery streams being Geassemahjohka. The vase is positioned in Geassemahjohka, which is running to the main stem of the River Teno some 70 km upstream from the estuary. Via the experiment we speculate: can act of crafting vase be conceived as act of caring, the vase being thus a symbolic shelter for the salmon?

Despite knowing that music and emotions have a lot to do with each other, sometimes it is hard to articulate which relationship they have. Since the emotional impact seems to be one of the biggest appeals for an audience, do we, the musicians (specifically the performers), pay and draw enough attention to it? After reviewing the relevant literature about the processing of emotions, I came across the philosophical approaches of emotions in and through music by Peter Kivy, Jerrold Levinson, and Stephen Davies, proposals that could serve as inspirations for an audience and for performers. Then, I decided to carry out a series of experimental sessions to test the impact of these three approaches, as well as the performer's role, and components that could also affect a performance, such as set-ups, musical manipulations, or what I have called 'extramusical' items or elements. In addition to my research question “How can a performer affect or manipulate the emotional engagement of an audience?”, I sought to explore another inquiry. Is engaging more with the public nowadays strictly a musical matter?

There are good reasons to consider point of audition (POA) as a problematic term when writing about sound. This essay addresses the different challenges one meets when using the term and discusses different alternatives for future use of this terminology within the field of television sound. The motivation for rethinking the term is the analytical and descriptive problems raised when writing about recent trends in television sound in drama, sports, news, documentaries and other television genres. The argumentation refers to the flexible and creative uses of television sound today and discusses how various production examples can be better accounted for by refining the term point of audition. All in all, four categories of point of audition are suggested for analysis: observational, active, individual and personal POAs.