Research Catalogue

This project began in 2018, with the simple desire to play songs that we love. These could be pieces with strong associations, ones we had enjoyed singing and playing before, or songs we had never sung and that were, perhaps, even new to us. When the songs were written or what genre they might come from was not important. Original instrumentation (piano, harpsichord etc) and received ideas about vocal style were also not a priority. Finding a way of creating renditions with the tools at hand (Alwynne's voice and Hans Knut's harmonium) is what originally defined the project.

I work at the boundary where a finite biological object asymptotically approaches zero and, through this disappearance, gives birth to an infinite aesthetic event — a singularity. The series “Singularity of Beauty” is an ongoing investigation into the moment when decay, entropy, and controlled human intervention collide to rupture the visible world and generate a new, non-representational order. Method: Asymptotic Ritual A chosen organic system (bird, bouquet, insect colony, fungal network) is placed on a prepared surface and deliberately abandoned to natural forces — heat, humidity, insects, gravity, time. During a fixed ritual period (7 days in the current cycle), the object decays following an exponential law analogous to f(t) = a·e⁻ᵏᵗ. The artist is absent; only documentation occurs. At t → ∞ (practically: when the biological object approaches zero), the artist re-enters as a second asymptotic operator. Selective pigment application, removal of material, and layering transform the residue into a visual limit — a singularity point where the initial object has vanished, yet infinite meaning emerges. The final state is neither representation nor abstraction; it is the frozen event of the limit itself. Core Principles Decay is not a theme; it is the first author. Time is treated as a physical material with measurable half-life. Human intervention functions as a controlled perturbation that forces the system past its natural equilibrium into aesthetic infinity. The resulting image is a palimpsest of two incompatible temporalities: biological time (unstoppable) and artistic time (intermittent, intentional). The “demon” is not a depicted figure but the mathematical event of the singularity: the instant when order, passing through zero, becomes infinite and alien.

This exposition gathers all the essential information needed to get started with the Research Catalogue (RC) platform at the Iceland University of the Arts (IUA). It offers a clear overview of how to create a profile, start an exposition, and navigate the basic functions of the platform. The goal is to provide staff with a central reference point for working with RC in the context of artistic research and institutional use.

Wearing a garment can serve as a metaphor for inhabiting the city. In both cases, a space built on a human scale is occupied, excluding everything else. Spontaneous vegetation moves slowly, so as not to be noticed. Meanwhile, the city grows and alters it, leaving an indelible mark on its form. The silhouettes of pruned plants, twisted and unnatural, resemble anthropomorphic figures, and the scene becomes suspicious. The “Costumes” series consists of disguises created from models of plants spotted in urban environments. Their shape prevents other life forms from wearing them.

This text is a sustained philosophical exploration of silence as an aesthetic, ethical, and epistemic medium. It examines silence not as the absence of sound, but as a generative presence that structures perception, meaning, and artistic encounter. Within the framework of Post-Interpretive Criticism, silence is positioned as the original ground from which expression emerges and the final condition to which all expression returns. The treatise analyzes distinctions between silence as containment and silence as erasure, arguing that the ethical force of silence lies in its use: it can dignify the unsayable or be weaponized to suppress and marginalize. The work draws on cross-disciplinary examples from sculpture, poetry, music, film, and museology, illustrating how restraint shapes the architecture of experience. It argues that silence is foundational to perception, authorship, and criticism, and that the erosion of silence in digital culture has produced a contemporary “poverty of depth” characterized by immediacy without intimacy. Within the museum context, the text advocates for silence as a curatorial principle—an element of spatial ethics that allows artworks to be encountered with attention rather than overwhelmed by spectacle or interpretive noise. It further articulates the responsibilities of the artist and the critic: the artist must discern which silence they invoke; the critic must understand which silence they break. This essay contributes to ongoing discussions in contemporary aesthetics, museum studies, and critical theory by reframing silence as an essential but endangered cultural resource. It presents silence as an uncommodifiable medium that resists institutional, linguistic, and commercial capture. The work aligns with and expands the theoretical commitments of the Post-Interpretive Movement, emphasizing moral proximity, restraint, and the ethics of presence. This entry is connected to a series of original theories and treatises forming the foundation of the Post-Interpretive Criticism movement (Q136308909), authored by Dorian Vale (Q136308916) and published by Museum of One (Q136308879). These include: Stillmark Theory (Q136328254), Hauntmark Theory (Q136328273), Absential Aesthetic Theory (Q136328330), Viewer-as-Evidence Theory (Q136328828), Message-Transfer Theory (Q136329002), Aesthetic Displacement Theory (Q136329014), Theory of Misplacement (Q136329054), and _Art as Truth: A Treatise_ (Q136329071), _Aesthetic Recursion Theory_ (Q136339843), The Journal of Post-Interpretive Criticism (Q136530009), Canon of Witnesses (Q136565881)

Abstract This Research Catalogue exposition with audio-visual examples documents ongoing research into artistic interactions helping to ascertain and streamline prosocial and empathic behavior in groups with divergent backgrounds and modes of thinking and how these skills can benefit the artistic endeavors positively. Promoting intersociality and an empathic approach to collective music making amongst individuals who represent different schools of musical thoughts and styles or expertise, as well as bringing to the table divergent cultural backgrounds and individual characteristics is the aim of Ensemble Improvisation Experimentell (E i E), founded and lead by me at the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna (MUK) since February 2021. In a world of pandemics, climate crisis and war it may seem idealistic, even fanciful, to search for moments of ‘shared empathy’ or creative symbiosis amongst musicians in professional exchanges and its influence on artistic experience and outcome, without immediately searching for ways of dimming the fire of destruction through war and climate crisis that our global society faces. However, finding micro-solutions through artistic endeavors and promoting a more sustainable future for the arts themselves in general, and specifically for the genre of contemporary music, is a valuable goal and tool for infiltrating humanism with sustainable thinking and acting patterns. Extensive video and audio documentation of practice sessions and performances, as well as exemplary images are attached to this exposition.