Dissolving distances: Designing close-to-body experiences for remote settings
(2023)
author(s): Nesli Hazal Oktay
published in: HUB - Journal of Research in Art, Design and Society
I aim to offer embodied intimacy for people who are close by heart but physically apart. Specifically, I explore designing close-to-body experiences at a distance through intimate bio-rings, rings made of natural ingredients. Intimate bio-rings are highly customizable, can be biodegraded, and start dissolving when exposed to humidity e.g.: rain, sweat etc. The idea of creating a non-lasting object to be worn on the body—that required care, that was ambiguous and tangible—was a result of a prior user study of cultural probing and embodied design ideation. I further experimented with intimate bio-rings by making the ring and wearing it in everyday life together with my father, whom I live far away from. In this paper, I showcase a user study with 3 pairs (6 participants) that made intimate bio-rings at their homes while self-reported and self-documented their personal experiences. They then further shared their meaning-makings with me through an interview. Overall, participants found intimate bio-rings to be supporting new understandings about intimacy at a distance. As a result, their experience of "distance" alters slightly or changes completely by i) embarking on a journey, ii) creating time and space to be together, and iii) carrying each other through a tangible object.
Moving through Choreography – Curating Choreography as an Artistic Practice
(2021)
author(s): Marie Fahlin
published in: Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH)
The purpose of the artistic research, Moving through Choreography – Curating Choreography as an Artistic Practice, has been to consider choreography and curating in their similarities and differences. Thus, at different phases of the working process, choreography and curating were treated as one and the same artistic practice; while, in other moments, as practices that are distinct from each other.
Curating has been implemented as a ‘taking care’ principle and a relational activity impacting the production, presentation and documentation of choreography. Choreography has undergone a process of self-reincarnations, or rather, of trans-carnations, whereby the entire body of work has been scrutinized and altered. Key figure/body/agent of these trans-carnations has been the horse, or rather, the assemblage of human and horse, women and horses, here called ‘Centauring.’
Curating and choreography have been integrated to a scrutiny of the art of riding, specifically, the choreography of dressage. In dressage, the research has identified the rigor needed by the research to both steer and unleash the working process.
The research has been pursued by purely artistic means, within a circumscribed field. Different perspectives and the making use of ramifications and loose ends, has proliferated into a plethora of intra-related works, objects and choreographies within which research result and artistic result coincide. The research har proceeded in consecutive phases. Each phase has developed its own specific artistic methodologies.
The overarching methodology has provided for a clear navigation of undetermined directions and dramaturgies. The concept of ‘One’ has produced and collected both core outcomes and residual manifestations. The exhibitions and the exhibitor have carried, pursued and embodied the works and otherwise choreographies, throughout the research process.
Sonic Affordances of a Sacred Spring. The Urban Courtyard as a Figure of Rehabilitation of the Medina
(2020)
author(s): Noha Gamal Saïd
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
This article investigates, from an in situ sonic experience, the rehabilitation project of the Source Bleue in Tiznit, Morocco, realized in 2015 by the architect and anthropologist Salima Naji. As the new architecture has favored the acoustic aspect of the spring, I reflect on the sonic affordances of the rehabilitated space.
The study hinges on three concepts – affordances, thresholds, and ambiances – in order to analyze a double focus on sounds: field recordings (fixed points and short journeys) and a text that basically represents the author’s feelings, reinforced through short interviews conducted with users of the space. By using these methods, it is possible to determine the particularities of this soundscape and to comprehend the sonic affordances of the Source Bleue.
This Untethered Buffoon or the Trickster in Everything
(2020)
author(s): Stacey Sacks
published in: Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH)
This Untethered Buffoon or the Trickster in Everything is a documented artistic research project (Doctoral Thesis) in Performative and Mediated Practices, comprising a series of excavations and vivisections of W(w)hiteness through clowning, making and thinging. This work/play traverses the fields of critical whiteness studies, performance and clowning, visual and cultural anthropology and decolonial critique.
This eclectic mash-up of history, memory and trauma unfolds from my original question: as an actor, which bodies is it appropriate for me to inhabit? Via hyper-disciplinary experiments of the impulse and
what it means to be ‘on’ the moment, the research fabricates a series of clowters, performed entanglements of clown and character passing between various continents, temporalities and situated histories.
SQUIRM is the title given to both the final performance essay as well as to the reflective documentation emerging from this research. As experimentations with auto-ethnography and productive discomfort, the performing essays in SQUIRM document, animate and satirise explorations of W(w)hiteness, privilege and colonial logic. At the intersections of histories, they dig through remnants of collective memory, personal genealogy and shame, in the hope of reassembling new, sharper ways of giving and receiving attention.
From inside the body of this performer SQUIRM is about TONGUE-ING, about licking the future into softness by reinvigorating ancient clown practices to poke at whiteness in the current age. It’s about squirming and laughing through the discomfort of privilege in what feels like a crumbling time.
But mostly it’s about feeling great in a beard.
On intimacy,
(2019)
author(s): Eugene A. Kim
published in: Research Catalogue
This poetics study seeks to answer a question like, "What is music?"; its conclusion would be something like, "It's sharing time with the Other." Investigations into how one shares time with the other, privately or publicly, leads the author to intersect personal observations within musicking and resonant concepts from various other domains, such as ethics and love. The result outlines a sparse poetics of being (loving) with the other—this principle inseparable from musical practice.
INTIMATE TENSION
(last edited: 2022)
author(s): Verena Wieland
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This research catalogue will try to guide you through my ongoing research dealing with intimate tension. You can see what incidents led me to new experiments and how different themes emerged from daily life, coincidences and artistic inspirations. My goal is to collect these moments to explore different layers required to create environments that trigger those ambivalent, complex and beautiful emotions that mirror our fears, desires, society and its norms.
Sense and Sensibility, performing music by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
(last edited: 2017)
author(s): Ingrid Eriksen Hagen
connected to: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
For Norwegian version, see the exposition "Fornuft og kjensle - å framføre musikk av Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach"
Engaging in the complex and expressive music of Bach; on the clavichord, which is as intense and nuanced as it is delicate and soft in volume; aspiring to a musical empathy in which the performer and the listener jointly experience the true content and emotion of the music – spurs a craving for closeness and intimacy.
But how close can we get? How close do we want to get?
Close enough to hear the instrument. Close enough to understand what the music is telling us – to follow all the wonderful diversions – in close up. Deepest sincerity. Tender caresses. The rush of joy. The thought that could not be – could… be… – …
But then the floor creaks. Someone turns round. I can’t hear it. Why is she playing so faintly? I don’t understand it. All those notes. So full on the whole time! So, who was that guy anyway – he lived a long time ago, right?
These are the reflections in Ingrid E. Hagen’s research fellowship project. Based on my personal encounters with the music of Emanuel Bach (1714-1788) and his concepts of musical empathy, I worked on public mediation of his music, mainly on the clavichord. I have explored the tension that exists between intimacy and distance – and have experimented with different means of achieving that intimacy, and registered the resulting resistance to these experiments.
I have reached out to people outside of the conventional concert setting, on a quest for the intimate interaction in the interests of empathic, shared experience of the music. I have performed Bach's music in the open air, at museums, for people who were not expecting to experience live music. I have investigated relationships between music and language; structural, stylistic and contextualising. Both in order to improve my own understanding and artistic empathy with the subject matter, and to investigate the ways in which different means of communicating and their use in musical mediation can influence experiences in various ways.
Through this process, I became aware of the great extent to which different concert formats or other modes of presentation influence what audiences listen to in the music, and what they gain from it.
I have worked intensively on a selection of Bach's keyboard music, and recorded the CD für Kenner und Liebhaber. Together with the final concert in November 2016, the CD represented the artistic results of my research fellowship.
My artistic method has been a reflexive process in which questions are addressed in experiments, articulated in a dialogue with the study material, be it musical, literary or artistic experience, in a constant quest for intimacy; for getting closer. I organised this non-linear approach in the form of 'tracks', which allowed me to address multiple questions in parallel and as they intersected along the way.
My research fellowship was undertaken at the Grieg Academy, Institute of Music, under the Norwegian Artistic Research Programme and was funded by the University of Bergen.
My supervisors were Professor Torleif Torgersen of the Grieg Academy, and Professor Maria Bania of the University College of Theatre and Music, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
Fornuft og kjense - å framføre musikk av Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
(last edited: 2017)
author(s): Ingrid Eriksen Hagen
connected to: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
For English version, see the exposition "Sense and Sensibility, performing music by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach".
I møtet med Emanuel Bach sin komplekse og uttrykksfulle musikk – med klavikordet, som er like intenst og nyanserikt som det er sart og lydsvakt – med tankane om musikalsk empati, der utøvar og lyttar saman opplever det sanne innhaldet og kjenslene i musikken – oppstår ein trong til nærleik, intimitet.
Men kor nær kan me kome? Kor nær vil me kome?
Nær nok til å høyre instrumentet. Nær nok til å forstå kva musikken seier – til å følgje med i alle dei vedunderlege svingane av – skarpt vidd. Djupaste alvor. Ømmaste kjærteikn. Boblande glede. Tanken som ikkje let seg – let … seg … – …
Men så knirkar golvet. Nokon snur på seg. Klarar ikkje høyre. Kvifor speler ho så svakt? Klarar ikkje forstå. Så mange notar. Fryktelig fort heile tida! Kven var no eigentleg denne fyren – det er veldig lenge sidan han levde?
Dette er refleksjonen i Ingrid E. Hagen sitt kunststipendiatarbeid. Med utgangspunkt i mitt personlege møte med Emanuel Bach (1714–'88) sin musikk og hans idear om musikalsk empati har eg utforska formidlinga til publikum, i all hovudsak på klavikord. Eg har arbeidd i spenningsfeltet mellom intimitet og avstand – prøvd ut ulike måtar å kome nærmare på og kjend på motstanden som oppstår i desse forsøka.
Eg har oppsøkt menneske utanom den konvensjonelle konsertsituasjonen, på jakt etter det nære møtet for empatisk samoppleving av musikken. Eg har framført Bachs musikk utandørs, på museum, for menneske som ikkje forventa å oppleve levande musikk. Og eg har undersøkt relasjonar mellom musikk og språk, både strukturelle, utrykksmessige og kontekstualiserande. Dette har eg gjort for å betre mi eiga forståing og kunstnarlege innleving i stoffet, og for å finne ut korleis ulike vis å kommunisere og utnytte desse i formidlingssituasjonen kan forme opplevinga på ulikt vis.
Gjennom arbeidet har eg vorte merksam på kor mykje ulike konsertformat eller andre presentasjonsformer påverkar kva publikum lyttar til i musikk, og slik kva dei får ut av den.
Eg har arbeidd inngåande med ein del av Bachs klavermusikk, og spelt inn CD’en "für Kenner und Liebhaber" med solo klavikordmusikk. Saman med avslutningskonserten i Stranges Stiftelse i Bergen i november 2016 utgjorde CD’en stipendiatarbeidets kunstnarlege resultat.
Min kunstnarlege metode har vore ein refleksiv prosess, der spørsmål blir undersøkt i forsøk, utforma i dialog med det faglege stoffet – det vere seg musikalsk, skriftleg eller kunstnarleg erfaring, i eit stadig forsøk på å kome nærmare. Denne ikkje-lineære arbeidsforma organiserte eg som «spor», og kunne slik arbeide med parallelt fleire problemstillingar som grip inn i kvarandre undervegs.
Stipendiatarbeidet blei gjennomført på Griegakademiet, inst. for musikk innan Program for Kunstnerisk Utviklingsarbeid, og var finansiert av Universitetet i Bergen.
Rettleiarar var professor Torleif Torgersen ved Griegakademiet og professor Maria Bania ved Högskolan för scen och musik, Göteborgs Universitet.
The Body of the spectator-participant in a performance
(last edited: 2015)
author(s): Julius Elo
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Research questions:
What follows, when a performance is based on physical experience instead of watching? What if a performance, is not made for the sense of sight, but for the body of the spectator, bodily encounter, and physical contact?
What happens, when we move into the field of interactive and participatory performance, and the body of the spectator-participant becomes the scene? How does this affect the performance, performers, spectators, and art itself?
In my artistic research, I explore and create theoretical principles that clarify how this kind of a performance type works. My aim is to create a spectator-derived performance theory, where the basis is the bodily encounter and perception of the spectator-participant.
Research plan and methods of the study:
The study consists of three different artistic works. The main method is the planning, carrying out, reflecting and theoretical analysis of these artistic performances. Rehearsals form the basis for practice-based research. The performance event is an experiment, which on one hand, explores the material attained from the rehearsals, and on the other hand, rises question relevant for the study. Information, on these relevant issues and answers for the upcoming questions, can be attained only through practical work.
Artistic works:
1. The Realm of the Invisible – an interactive performance (2008) Kiasma (Kontti – exhibition room, 4 floor) and Hurjaruuth (theatre space, black box)
-Reality Research Center (Helsinki)
2. Dialogues – a participatory performance event (2009) Kiasma-theatre
- Julius Elo & Working Group
3. Circle (2013)
-Reality Research Center (Helsinki)