Research Catalogue

This project aims to develop transcultural approaches of inspiration (which we regard as mutually appreciated intentional and reciprocal artistic influence based on solidarity) by combining approaches from contemporary music composition and improvisation with ethnomusicological and sociological research. We encourage creative (mis)understandings emerging from the interaction between research and artistic practice, and between European art music, folk and non-western styles, in particular from indigenous minorities in Taiwan. Both comprehension and incomprehension yield serendipity and inspiration for new research questions, innovative artistic creation, and applied follow-ups among non-western communities. The project departs from two premises: first, that contemporary western art music as a practice often tends to resort to certain degrees of elitism; and second, that non-western musical knowledge is often either ignored or merely exploited when it comes to compositional inspiration. We do not regard inspiration as unidirectional, an “input” like recording or downloading material for artistic use. Instead, we foster artistic interaction by promoting dialogical and distributed knowledge production in musical encounters. Developing inter­disciplinary and transcultural methodologies of musical creation will contribute on the one hand towards opening up the—rightly or wrongly supposed—“ivory tower of contemporary composition”, and on the other hand will contribute towards the recognition of the artistic value of non-western musical practices. By highlighting the reciprocal nature of inspiration, creative (mis)understandings will result in socially relevant and innovative methodologies for creating and disseminating music with meaning. The methods applied in the proposed project will start out from ethnographic evidence that people living in non-western or traditional societies often use methods of knowledge production within the sonic domain which are commonly unaddressed or even unknown among western contemporary music composers (aside from exotist or orientalistic appropriations of “the other”). The project is designed in four stages: field research and interaction with indigenous communities in Taiwan with a focus on the Tao people on Lanyu Island, collaborative workshops in Vienna, an artistic research and training phase with invited indigenous Taiwanese coaches in Vienna, and feeding back to the field in Taiwan. During all these stages, exchange and coordination between composers, music makers, scholars and source community experts will be essential in order to reflect not only on the creative process, but also to analyse and support strong interaction between creation and society. Re-interaction with source communities as well as audience participation in the widest sense will help to increase the social relevance of the artistic results. The University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (MDW) will host the project. The contributors are Johannes Kretz (project leader) and Wei-Ya Lin (project co-leader, senior investigator) with their team of seven composers, ten artistic research partners from Taiwan and six artistic and academic consultants with extensive experience in the relevant fields.

Arts-based-philosophy is an emerging research concept at the cutting edge of the arts, philosophy and the Sciences in which cross-disciplinary research collectives align their research practices to finally stage their investigations in field-performances, shared with the public. Our research explores the significance of the HEART in artistic research and performance philosophy from a cross-cultural perspective, partially based on the concepts of the HEART in the works of two artist-philosophers, in which philosophy already became arts-based-philosophy: Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Aurobindo’s poetic opus magnum Savitri. We generally assume that the works of artist-philosophers are not only engaged in “creating concepts” (Deleuze), but their concepts are also meant to be staged artistically to let them bodily matter in fact. The role of the HEART in respect to this process of “bodily mattering” is the core objective under investigation: Firstly, because we hold that atmospheres trigger the HEART of a lived-body to taste the flavor of things it is environmentally engaged with basically in an aesthetic manner (Nietzsche). In this respect the analysis of the classical notion for the aesthete in Indian philosophy and aesthetics, sahṛdaya––which literally means, “somebody, with a HEART”––becomes crucial. Secondly, because the HEART is said to be not just reducible to one’s manifest Nature, but has access to one’s virtual Nature as well. The creation hymn in the oldest of all Vedas (Rgveda) for instance informs us that a HEART is capable of crossing being (sat) & non-being (asat), which makes it fluctuate among these two realms and even allows its aspirations to let virtual possibilities matter. Such concepts show striking similarities with contemporary concepts in philosophy-physics, e.g. the concepts of “virtual particles” and “quantum vacuum fluctuations” (Barad).

short bio and cv

Research exposition of Sanne Bakker, as part of her master at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague. This research started with the aim of creating a better theoretical understanding and breaking down the creation process regarding the making of performances with lights. Ultimately, it became a reflection on the performative practice of a classical musician and the interdisciplinary collaboration while making an audiovisual performance. In particular, the process of the visualization of music. Through literary research into interdisciplinarity, audiovisual performances (specifically with classical music), and by doing a musical and narrative analysis through a case study of Paul Hindemith’s Sonate für Harfe, a theoretical framework is created for collaborative preparation with a visual artist and live experimentation. This research then shows the working process and the experiments that were conducted. It concludes with a reflection on the collaboration, the final product, and how playing the harp sonata in this audiovisual setting has affected the performance of the music.

A visual study/moodboard/presentation of a certain conspiratorial and often delusional stereotype of the character of the devil in the context of what was known as "SATANIC PANIC" in the era of 80's and early 90's in the US. Even though many of these associations come mainly from the western world, they have been more or less understood and recognized as "devilish" across the world and in the visual culture. There is a certain stereotype about calling something "SATANIC". Labeling things, activities, clothing, art, products, people etc. as "devil worshipping" often isnt connected to any kind of worship what so ever. There is this re-accuring act of calling out something as "Satanic" often snowballing the situation into an idea of an active threat, thats dangerous to the public. The "SATANIC PANIC" era lead to over a 12,000 unsubstantiated cases of these so called "Satanic practices" and many people ended up in jail because of it. This Satanic labeling has become a parcipatory missinformation quest.

The artistic research project I HAVE THE MOON was an experimental group activity or 'band retreat' for five composer-performers resulting in a public performance in the aDevantgarde Festival, 2019, in Munich. Research was conducted around a central research question stated verbally at the outset of the project: how can aesthetic innovations of contemporary classical music be made accessible to audiences without specialist education or background via communicative techniques of other music genres? After a substantial verbal discussion and sessions of musical jamming, each member created an artistic response to the research question, in the form of a composition or comprovisation, which the group then premiered in the aDevantgarde Festival. The results of the discussion, artistic works and final performance (by means of a video documentation) were then analysed by the project leader and presented in this article. The artistic research position is defined a priori through the research question, during the artistic process in the form of note-taking and multimedial documentation, and a posteriori through a (novel) 'Workflow-Tool-Application Analysis' (WTAA). Together, a method of 'lingocentric intellectual scaffolding' on the emobided knowledge inside the creative process is proposed. Insofar as this embodied knowledge can be seen as a 'field' to be researched, the methodology is built on collaborative autoethnography, 'auto-', since the project leader took part in the artistic process, guiding it from within.