Research Catalogue

an international database for artistic research

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  Electro-Brazilian rhythms on the drum kit (2025) author(s): Fred Warnby published in: Research Catalogue
  A work that explores the possibilities of creating hybrid genres on the drum kit to achieve a personal artistic expression. From experimenting with different groove combinations and rhythmical structures to developing concrete practice methods for limb independence, Fred establishes a way to mix electronic and Brazilian rhythms on the drum set. As the work deepens, he continues to explore the hybrid expressions through improvisation, composing and ensemble playing. With the purpose of connecting the otherwise loose threads of a peculiar musical background, he seeks new ways to approach the drum kit to create a united sound that reflects his earlier musical journeys within the electronic and Brazilian traditions.

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  RETHINKING MUSICAL CREATIVITY: THE ETHICAL AND ARTISTIC CHALLENGES OF AI-GENERATED MUSIC (2025) author(s): Angelina Tarlovskaia published in: Research Catalogue
  As artificial intelligence continues to advance, its role in the creation of music has raised profound questions regarding the nature of authorship and the ethical implications of algorithmic composition. Exploration of a fast-evolving relationship between music and AI broadens researches` horizons on the transformation of creative processes and the challenges it presents to traditional creativity. Delving deeper into the ethical considerations surrounding the ownership, originality, and emotional authenticity of machine-created music plays an important role in the understanding of modern music industry and helps to navigate creative development in today’s reality. Ongoing ethical aspects of AI presence in music and creative industry show the importance and actuality of this topic. This paper aims to provoke a deeper understanding of how AI is reshaping musical creativity and to encourage a critical dialogue about the future of art in a digitally driven world.
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  Building Bridges, Exploring Identity: A Musical Journey of a Brazilian Cantautora in an Intercultural Context (2025) author(s): Clara Gurjão published in: Research Catalogue
  This thesis presents the outcomes of my artistic research conducted as a master’s student in the Improvisation and World Music Performance program at the Academy of Music and Drama, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The present study investigates how a musical identity is constructed and reshaped over time, drawing from my background as a Brazilian singer, guitarist, and songwriter, and examining how exchanges with musicians from different fields and exposure to new artistic inputs can influence my creative practice. Central to the research is finding tools to broaden my expressive possibilities within the song format, through the integration of improvisation, diverse ensemble instrumentation, and inventive strategies for communicating artistic intentions and political concerns through music and stage performance. This work also explores possible approaches for overcoming creative blocks and performance-related fears, especially those related to improvisation, seeking to cultivate a state of freedom, openness, fulfillment and joy while playing.
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• Mapping Noizart: A Cartography of Imperfection, Tactile Memory, and Performed Absence (2025) author(s): Diego Piñera published in: Research Catalogue
  This artistic research stems from a sound archive of profound personal meaning: the damaged recording of a friend’s last recital were she played the second movement of Mozart's C Minor Sonata. This corrupted file is a central material in my composition Concerto for an Absent Performer, a work-homage exploring absence and remembrance. My inquiry addresses: Considering the particularities of this archive, how can the iterative creation and modification of an audiovisual artefact, taking the imperfections (corruption or fragmentation) of the recording as its starting point, function as an artistic research method to analyze relationships between archival materiality, tactile memory, and what perceptual qualities and meanings around an absent-presence could be revealed or generated through this new mediation? Furthermore, what reflections on my compositional practice, the recontextualization of classical music references and systems (Mozart's Sonata, the use of scores, etc.), and the nature of mediated memory emerge from this process? The hermeneutic approach is practice-led, involving an iterative creation/development of the different audiovisual artifacts. This process also serves as a post-compositional and post-performance reflection, aiming to reflect on pre-existing compositional solutions within the Concerto, particularly its engagement with found sound material and the performance of 'tactile memory' via the piano automaton. Visual strategies employed in the audiovisual artefacts include the alternated illumination of Mozart’s score excerpts and individual note heads; an emergent constellational network visualizing tentative connections within this mnemonic field; and a direct audiovisual correspondence where the archive's sonic noisiness visibly degrades the musical score's legibility. The distinct visual characteristics of each iteration, and how they might engage principles of Gestalt perception in organizing or disrupting form, will be key to analyze the different interactions with the concept of performed memory. These audiovisual explorations are approached as a mode of experiential inquiry, investigating whether such artistic practice can function as a non-standard form of music theory by generating open-ended cognitions rather than definitive analytical statements. Within this framework, errors and glitches within the archival materials—central to the Concerto's sound palette—are framed as events that reveal the archive's material substrate and its haunting nature. Each visual configuration aims to transfigure these imperfections into expressive elements by making, as Arthur C. Danto says, the medium “opaque”, thereby reflecting on the work’s original aesthetic/compositional choices. A subsequent cartography, composed of screenshots from the audiovisual artifacts, will analyze these visual iterations, articulating how the tactile medium (the piano automaton) activates imperfections and how each artefact might distinctly modulate perception and understanding. This research, while engaging with the work of artists who have explored archival degradation in the past (e.g., William Basinski), focuses on how this specific iterative audiovisual process can illuminate my own compositional engagement with what Mark Fisher called Hauntology. It seeks to provide a deeper understanding of how the artistic re-framing of a broken archive could open avenues for reflecting on the cultural resonance of performance, the figure of the absent soloist, and the persistence of memory in technologically mediated forms.
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• Community art as an egalitarian participatory practice (2025) author(s): BANGHUA SUN published in: Research Catalogue
  The most discussed participatory art projects today for their values, are always based on either breaking new ground (or shaking the theoretical foundations of public art, or existing frameworks and definitions), significantly expanding participation (which is still as an important, even decisive indicator), or elevating the audience/recipients to a position of priority (or using local indicators to evaluate success or failure).The results are often hidden rather than immediately apparent on the surface. The core issue here is to what extent the choices of participants are respected, or how to minimize intervention in their choices? This study aims to re-examine the two aesthetic preferences represented by Kester and Bishop—collaboration and antagonism—as an extension of Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics, further developing them into two distinct approaches: bottom-up, community-based collaborative and dialogic participatory art, and top-down, large-scale participatory art. Today, non-community participatory art is generally understood as an attempt to control the audience’s perception and interpretation, exerting a broader influence and gaining favor among critics as a form of post-elite art. Community art, on the other hand, is often questioned for its aesthetic value, with its social value as an priority, being emphasized in the context of excessive intervention by art institutions and governments, resulting in a smaller influence and little attention from critics. If these limitations are overcome, community art can practically enable the public to reach the true “collaborator” stage of participation. This study serves as a further reflection on the position of community art in today’s art world, as presented in Matarasso’s book A Restless Art (2019), and provides a value assessment diagram for participatory art, attempt to clarify the practical value of community art as the significant participatory art through a visual model.
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  The theme of fragility through sculptural portraits and drawings - an artistic research on matter and its impermanence (2025) author(s): Antonio Ricca published in: Research Catalogue
  This project explores the theme of human fragility, examining its many dimensions through sculpture and painting. Fragility is not approached as weakness, but as a fundamental aspect of existence — a space of vulnerability, yet also of sensitivity, transformation, and creative potential. The works emerge from an intimate dialogue with the body, memory, and time: delicate or weathered materials — such as wax, plaster, paper, and fluid pigments — give shape to ephemeral figures, incomplete or transforming bodies, and marks that evoke the instability of identity and the constant interplay between resistance and collapse. Through this process, art becomes an act of listening and bearing witness — to what breaks, but also to what, in breaking, reveals a new possibility of presence.
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