Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
![Academy of Creative and Performing Arts](https://media.researchcatalogue.net/rc/cache/0c/33/19/87/0c331987ef31f53a68c102d63113afad.png?t=0f8acc828f7d48f6c8f4bf10789b843c&e=1725253800)
About this portal
The portal is used for the presentation of dissertations, papers, essays, artistic work, and work-in-progress of the ACPA PhD candidates. Furthermore, it is used by supervisors and other coaches to insert comments on the work of these candidates.
contact person(s):
Marcel Cobussen ![](/rc/images/email.gif)
,
Gabriel Paiuk ![](/rc/images/email.gif)
url:
http://www.hum.leiden.edu/creative-performing-arts/
Recent Activities
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The Cognitive continuum of electronic music
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Anil Çamci
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The use of the electronic medium to compose music entails a variety of cognitive idiosyncrasies which are experienced by both the artist and the audience. Structured around this medium on both practical and conceptual levels, this study utilizes a tripartite methodology involving artistic practice, cognitive experimentation and theoretical discourse to investigate these idiosyncrasies. All three components of this methodology operate concurrently to address a succession of questions: How do we experience electronic music? How does electronic music operate on perceptual, cognitive and affective levels? What are the common concepts activated in the listener’s mind when listening to electronic music? Why and how are these concepts activated?
In this dissertation Anil Çamc argues that our experience of electronic music is guided by a cognitive continuum rooted in our everyday experiences. Çamc describes this continuum as spanning from abstract to representational based on the relationship of gestures in electronic music to events in the environment. Conducting this research has significantly expanded my comprehension of the experiential depth of electronic music. It has also affirmed my belief that we have much more to gain from the electronic medium, and that the cognitive continuum is one of its most remarkable offerings.
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(De)Composing Immersion
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Miguelángel Clerc Parada
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This dissertation of Miguelángel Clerc Parada explores various perspectives on the term immersion, and its relation with, and transformation through, a composer’s practice. Immersion is presented as a key term to interconnect diverse aspects of musical practice and music listening with their various phenomenological and ontological implications. Immersion through music is proposed as a transitional experience that exposes and interrelates multiple layers of reality, questioning critically the tendency to think immersion as an experience within a particular or self-contained space (in music, in a book, in a virtual environment, in thoughts, in water, in a music hall, etc.). The compositions What about Woof? (for five percussionists and video installation), La línea desde el Centro (for twelve guitarists), Eufótica (for six percussionists and tape) and A Bao A Qu (for nine musicians and tape), analyzed and developed through the research trajectory, are the main artistic source to develop the ideas of each chapter of this investigation. The compositional processes described and the reflections about immersion derived from them offer diverse perspectives on the practical and phenomenological aspects of music composition, performance and listening.
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Creating and re-creating tangos : artistic processes and innovations in music by Pugliese, Salgán, Piazzolla and Beytelmann
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Barbara Varassi Pega
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
In this dissertation, Barbara Varassi Pega digs into the constituent elements of River Plate tango in order to decode how specific musical materials were organized and combined by four outstanding musicians: Osvaldo Pugliese, Horacio Salgán, Astor Piazzolla and Gustavo Beytelmann. For this purpose, Varassi Pega has analysed a select number of representative pieces through a study of their scores and recordings. This led to the definition of certain artistic processes and innovations within the genre, theoretical foundations for such processes, and, in all, a deeper understanding of the art of creating tango music, in addition to an overall, chronological view of its development and techniques. The articulation of this (partly) embodied knowledge has resulted in an original contribution to the field, providing new insights with which both Varassi Pega and the greater artistic community can enrich our skills in arranging, composing and performing tango music. The formulation of hypothesis and conclusions, and the translation of the findings into the own production through empiric methods and experimentation were executed alongside the analytical part of the work. The continuous exchange between the practical and theoretical aspects of this research project was fundamental, always strengthening and feeding back each other.
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LOCVS : herinnering en vergankelijkheid in de verbeelding van plaats : van Italische domus naar artistiek environment
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Krien Clevis
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
As an artist, Krien Clevis is fascinated by the phenomenon of place in relation to beginnings and final destinations. This study links up the concept of place with memory, with the idea of transience and the transition from life to death. The main research question addressed the following concern: 'how can I present my work in a way so that it both comprises a representation of place and emerges or exists as a place itself?'
As the research was geared toward places of meaning, Clevis also aspired to create new places of meaning. The search for them involved a journey through time and space __ not just _ la recherche du temps perdu, but also _ la recherche du lieu perdu. The research expanded into various areas that are somewhat affiliated with art, namely archeology, architecture and (art)history. Through the photo works and the installation Clevis created, Clevis intends to share a visual story with the audience and find a way in which viewers of the work may appropriate the story and add to it by mobilizing their own perceptions. The reflections on the quality and characteristics of place took Clevis to the classical houses found in Pompeii and the ancient tombs of Rome and Cerveteri. The connection between these spatial manifestations of life and death as two extremes is essential to me. The historical research made Clevis aware that as an artist Clevis is part of long tradition indeed. As such the artistic sightline cuts across the historical sightline in this work, to which Clevis also added a more personal, autobiographical sightline as a third meaningful dimension.
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Between air and electricity : microphones and loudspeakers as musical instruments
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Cathy van Eck
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This research of Cathy van Eck takes the artistic use of the devices that bring sound waves into electricity and back as its central focus point; they are commonly called microphones and loudspeakers. These devices have become essential for many forms of music making. Through the same pair of loudspeakers, people listen to diverse music and sound, such as violin sonatas, rock songs or simply the latest news. Accordingly, microphones and loudspeakers are often designed to remain transparent; that is, "inaudible" in the final sound result. From the 1950s on, microphones and loudspeakers started to play a crucial role not only in the mere reproduction of sound, but also in the creation of music. Composers and musicians often described these new possibilities of using microphones and loudspeakers as musical instruments.
This resulted not only in many pieces and performances that used microphones and loudspeakers in unusual ways but also in many new possibilities for musical composition. Confronted with microphones and loudspeakers through my own practice as a composer using electro-acoustic media, Van Eck investigated how microphones and loudspeakers could become musical instruments. This resulted in 28 compositions and a text about historical, theoretical, and practical aspects of the subject. To obtain a clear picture of the possibilities of microphones and loudspeakers in music, Van Ec develops four approaches in my dissertation. Three of them focus on the transparent use (reproducing, supporting and generating). The fourth approach focuses on the use of microphone and loudspeakers in an opaque way; that is, as musical instruments. Van Eck calls this the interacting approach, since the music should, in contrast to the other approaches, not be transmitted through microphones and loudspeakers, but formed, coloured, and changed by these devices. The fourth approach was the starting point for 28 compositions, in which Van Eck investigates in what ways one could interact or "play" microphones and loudspeakers. This resulted in a categorisation of three interaction parameters: movement, material and space. Van Eck looked at how these interaction parameters might be recognised in the work of other musicians and composers, as well as how the interaction with microphones and loudspeakers influenced compositional form, the performance situation, and the relationship between musician and musical instrument. This resulted in a theory and praxis in which Van Eck elaborates upon unique features of music, composed with microphones and loudspeakers.
Several chapters of this dissertation have been adapted and made into the book ‘Between Air and Electricity : Microphones and Loudspeakers as Musical Instruments’ which has been published at Bloomsbury Open Access DOI 10.5040/9781501327636
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Shifting identities : the musician as theatrical perfomer
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Falk Hübner
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The artistic PhD research "Shifting Identities", by Falk Hübner, investigates the musicians' professional identity and how this identity might shift when musicians start acting as theatrical performers. In most of the theatrical situations where musicians "perform", their profession is extended by additional tasks such as walking on stage or reciting text. As an alternative strategy to extension, this research introduces and focuses on reduction, which means the abstracting away of specific qualities or abilities of the musician's profession. The audience watches musicians not doing certain things that usually belong to their profession. Both the expansive and the reductive approaches are concepts of working theatrically with musicians. They are different, perhaps even contradictory strategies, but both bear the ability to enrich the musician's professional identity with a more theatrical appearance. In order to build an understanding of what is extended or reduced when the identity shifts from a musician to a theatrical (musician-)performer a dynamic model is developed which builds strongly on what musicians actually do, a model that categorises the musician's professional activities into internal, external and contextual elements.