Momentum: experiential development in sound composition
(2019)
author(s): Nat Grant
published in: Research Catalogue
Momentum is an online, cumulative sound art and composition project, created and curated by Nat Grant over the course of 2012-19.
URBAN FOREST: a 360 movie experience
(2019)
author(s): Maja Maletkovic
published in: Research Catalogue
observations on two types of research conducted and where to draw the line between them
Ng revisited
(2018)
author(s): Johan Jutterström
published in: Research Catalogue, University of Stavanger
The point of departure for my artistic research project is the piece Ng, composed by me in 2014 for an ensemble of three musicians without instruments and three dancers. Having reached a critical point in my own practice as a saxophonist where the identity of my music and that of the instrument seemed too intricately intertwined and convoluted, I happened to attend a dance rehearsal where the choreography was rehearsed without accompanying music. I listened to the rehearsal with my eyes closed, activated the situation musically and suddenly found myself in a soundscape that was full of musical possibilities seemingly free of much of the problems with western music that the saxophone represented for me. Possibilities that I tried to make sense out of when composing Ng. Approaching an interdisciplinary perspective towards choreography and dance, the movement of the human body became the music material. The sounds that appeared did not originate from an instrument built with the purpose of projecting a certain sound on to the world; they were of this world and in that sense concrete. But they were also of human anatomy and in that sense, I believed, more malleable than other concrete sounds and already in a close relationship to human perception and understanding. I hoped that, by abandoning the music instrument and approaching a choreographic perspective, I would contribute to the theories and practices of western art music while also challenging conventions that I felt was weighing it down—just as the saxophone weighed around my neck.
During my artistic research project I intend to challenge Ng and investigate the concepts behind it more thoroughly before finally revisiting and reworking it with the knowledge gained during the research project. Does a choreographic approach offer a substantial addition to western art music theory and practice? Can such a premise challenge how music notation is approached and help expanding how music structure is thought of beyond how it is communicated through notation? Can it change time measuring mechanisms of music and advance the way space is approached?
The disposition of my research project is such that I can criticize the ideas of Ng in retrospect, while still actively working on refining them both in practice and theory through Ng revisited. In juxtaposing Ng and Ng revisited I hope that my research questions, my methods, the context of my research and whatever new knowledge my research project can offer will become clear while simultaneously activated by, and contained in, my own artistic practice. As such coalescing concept, form, theory, material and presentation; something that I believe is an important ambition of artistic research.
Ecorchées
(2018)
author(s): Lisa Salamandra
published in: Research Catalogue
A theoretical linking of my "Raw Women", female figures from the series "Raw Meat" which feature a skinned, cut-up, recomposed body, with the "living dead" figure portrayed in the anatomical charts of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth centuries. I examine how our two images seek the representation of "truths" concerning the human body and its functionning as well as a common truth about the fate of the human flesh, and that of our human condition.
Format Exhibition - Schallwirkungen auf Mensch und Tier
(2018)
author(s): ingrid cogne, Tobias Pilz
published in: Research Catalogue
In early 2015, the art-based research project Six Formats gathered a group of artists, curators, and researchers 1) to co-think about an Exhibition as well as 2) to articulate this particular format of communication as knowledge. In Six Formats, formats of communication are the central knowledge. Format, content, and context are in relations. The format Exhibition was placed at Kunsthalle Exnergasse. In order to be in line with the aim of KEX to serve artists, the research process was intended to work with the exhibition space. The research group decided to improve the acoustic qualities of the room - for talks, screenings, and performances - and to intervene in the space without interfering with an artist’s needs. This decision led to reflections on visibility and subtleness.
Six Formats investigated “exposition” - proposed by Research Catalogue - as a format of communication. For Cogne and Pilz, the format exposition could be explored as “one” space (one room, one poster, one painting). Six Formats invites the visitor/reader to circulate between fiction and reality and to let their activated thoughts navigate without searching for any truth.
The exposition 'Format Exhibition - Schallwirkungen auf Mensch und Tier' proposes a double entry.
The visitor can visit it as they would enter the physical space of the Exhibition Schallwirkungen auf Mensch und Tier at KEX: 1) little by little, randomly, maybe not noticing all the elements placed in the exhibition space; 2) glancing through the space or directly diving into the reading of the exhibition booklet that the research group treated as a fictional space. The visitor can also directly access the process the group had - written in black on a white background. They will meet a quite linear writing that Cogne and Pilz exposed in a nonlinear way.
Six Formats (FWF, PEEK, AR291-G21) takes every opportunity to challenge formats of communication and explore ways in which art-based-related knowledge can be presented and articulated as well as activating and circulating.