Creative Processes in Irish traditional music: a bodhrán-playing perspective
(2023)
author(s): Robert Brian Sheehan
published in: Research Catalogue
This is the web-based written component of an arts practice research project carried out from May to August of 2022 as part of the MA Irish Music Studies programme at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance (IWAMD) at the University of Limerick. The project set out to explore the broad topic of creativity within Irish traditional music through the embodied means of my own bodhrán playing. In particular, I set out to see to what extent the creative process of switching between ways of gripping the bodhrán stick (“grip switching”) could be embodied effectively in my bodhrán playing. As well as this written component, which contains multimedia elements such as video and music notation, this project is also presented as a thirty minute performance of traditional Irish music where I accompany an accordion player to demonstrate and explain some of the findings of my research.
ECOGNOSIS: Ecological Awareness in Multimedia Composition
(2022)
author(s): Richard Hughes
published in: KC Research Portal
This paper is concerned with ecological awareness in multimedia composition often with the use of data as a compositional tool. It covers the philosophy of ecological awareness I wish to represent in my work and the aesthetic principles used to portray it. The philosophy is largely based on Timothy Morton’s Dark Ecology with influence from other writers and artists. The reader will be guided through my methodologies of multimedia composition (acoustic, electronic and visual), in four different works. The motivation behind this research has come from wanting to engage with environmentalism not just through writing and individual actions but through art and how understanding the importance of perception of the environment can change our behaviour to it.