The Research Catalogue (RC) is a non-commercial, collaboration and publishing platform for artistic research provided by the
Society for Artistic Research. The RC is free to use for artists and
researchers. It
serves also as a backbone for teaching purposes, student assessment, peer review workflows and research funding administration. It strives to be
an open space for experimentation and exchange.
recent activities
Conference: Decentralised Creativity and Agential Systems in Music (Schedule)
(2025)
Adam Łukawski, Martin Zeilinger, Paulo de Assis
This conference will explore how emerging technologies—especially generative AI and blockchain—reimagine the current notions of creative agency. Conveners: Adam Łukawski, Martin Zeilinger
Artificial intelligence (AI), with its learning algorithms operating at scale, can mimic human creative agency, and blockchain technologies, through smart contracts, can augment works of art with more or less autonomous behaviours that correspond to the agency of human participants in socio-economic interactions. While such developments can destabilise traditional notions of ownership, provenance, and agency in musical practices, they can also empower artists. Those working creatively with sound and music are today increasingly becoming system-builders and curators of musical ecosystems, turning their focus from the creation of singular, standalone musical works (in any traditional sense of the term) to the design of systems capable of generating artworks. This suggests an evolving role of music-producing systems today: from fixed intellectual constructs and creative expressions to dynamic, more-than-human technological networks that not only actively participate in the production of artworks with increasing levels of agency, but which can themselves be considered as artworks that constitute generative, expressive assemblages. This shift is further emphasised in distributed contexts, where varying levels of automation blur the boundaries between human and non-human contributions, creating environments where agency is negotiated and shared across diverse actants.
Matter and Nothingness: How corporeality is related to the failure of the otherwordly
(2025)
Massimo Barbero
This research is rooted in nihilism, exploring how the contrast between materiality and spirituality leads to a radical way of perceiving existence. What does it mean to be unable to believe in "what's beyond"? What role does the body play in such an issue?
Starting from philosophy, this debate finds expression through art and different iterations, attempts to face the consequences of nihilism.
Aftermath - Or E for Installation
(2025)
Zoe Panagiota (aka Betty) Nigianni
Design for interactive art installation with urban regeneration proposal, as well as video about environmentalism and our technologically mediated private and public lives; installation catalogue design with photography and textual collage, 2021-2023.
"There is a massive abundance of goods that end up in landfills. With such abundance of goods, no one should be deprived."
Visitors will have to leave an unwanted item of theirs and take another to collect the installation catalogue. The installation will be monitored for this purpose. Designed with Wi-Fi light technology for agility training, the interactive floor in the entrance will be controlled by the visitors through a tablet computer that will allow them to select the difficulty level.
The exposition offers a critical viewpoint to the contemporary gallery-mediated commercial environment by making reference to the non-monetary economies of artistic and cultural production.
Art "is an instrument of war for attack and defense against the enemy". The enemy is whoever exploits their fellows out of egoism or personal interest (Pablo Picasso).
With summary and questions about David Murakami Wood's article "The Global Turn to Authoritarianism", 'Surveillance and Society', (15), 3/4, 2017: 357-370.
recent publications
I Love Listening to Music and Imagining Things Happening
(2025)
Richie Lux Kramár
This exposition explores the paradox of rendering visible a research that seeks to remain unseen. It examines concealment, obfuscation, and selective disclosure as strategies of resistance and protection, questioning the ethics and politics of visibility in academic and artistic inquiry. Absence, silence, and ambiguity are explored as ways of invoking presence, challenging dominant paradigms of transparency and access, and proposing alternative modes of engaging with hidden or fugitive research. Central to this inquiry is the operatic prompter, an unseen presence that feeds lines to the performer, ensuring continuity while remaining hidden. The prompter’s role complicates the link between knowledge and articulation, shaping the performance without claiming authorship. Like other fugitive voices in history, the prompter embodies a marginal agency, whispering from the wings.
Gestaltology Encoded
(2025)
DiPisaStasinski
Gestaltology Encoded is an experimental research article in the form of an exposition, centered around the development of an artificial organism, Arcana, coming to life through the artistic research project Gestaltology (2020–2023). The project aims to explore AI and robotics in a way that challenges Cartesian dualism, by investigating the interplay between mind, body, and environment. By engaging a transdisciplinary team, the project delves into evolutionary biology, AI, and robotics, creating an artificial organism that evolves through symbiosis with its environment. Arcana’s artistic process, rooted in these conditions, emerges through its ability to create visual outputs that transcend human-centric perspectives. This research proposes a posthuman approach to AI development, emphasizing an ecocentric and performative perspective that reshapes the relationship between technology, art, and ecology. The article reflects on the project's iterative nature, where failure is viewed as an inevitable and creative catalyst, guiding the project toward unforeseen futures.
Bland bryggor och brott: Artificiell intelligens som berättarverktyg i en skärgårdsmiljö
(2025)
Alexander Skantze
“Docks and Dramas: Artificial Intelligence as a Storytelling Tool in an Archipelago Setting” is an critical exploration of my screenwriter and TV dramatist practice. Through various AI models, I try to generate an episode synopsis for The Sandhamn Murders, a series I have previously written for. Through these AI-generated texts, I seek a deeper understanding of creativity, artificial intelligence, and dramaturgical mechanisms.