Welcome to ARC_view, an online documentation project of the ARC (art_research_convergence) sessions. ARC is the platform of Leiden University Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) and the University of the Arts The Hague for the active communication of artistic research. This exposition seeks not only to document the ARC sessions, but to create a virtual extension of the themes and content: lectures, book presentations, performances, and the different discourses developed by the participants of the events.
This is a presentation of the expanded approaches to artistic research. The focus is on the diversity of the practices, ranging between performance practice, improvisation, visual art, design, music and technology, and others. The intent is to establish a network of connections between the different approaches, and to reflect on the possible interactions between various methods and discourses.
ARC_view is created with the belief that in a world which relies more and more on virtual and online resources and ways of communication, this kind of platform is a natural continuation of the physical events: an online amplification of the real-life, ephemeral, and current ideas, sounds, and images. ARC_view is a platform for practitioners and researchers to present their own work and access other’s work, and to be able to engage in discussion and continuous correspondence. Finally, the aim is also to expose practice-based research to a broader audience, outside of the research community.
Each event is introduced by a short introduction, and further elaborated with text, sounds, and images presenting the work of the participants. The blog is gradually updated after each ARC session. You can also learn about future events (read forthcoming session's abstracts).To conclude, a space for post-event corresponding and discussion will be available, with the hope to develop the themes even further.
Book Presentation- Blind Maps and Blue Dots by Joost Grootens
(12 January 2021, online)
On January 12, Joost Grootens has presented his book Blind Maps and Blue Dots (Lars Müller Publishers, 2021), the first comprehensive publication to explore the disappearing boundaries between producers and users of maps. Grootens examines three mapmaking practices—the Blue Dot, the location function in Google Maps; the Strava Global Heatmap, a world map showing the activities of a fitness app; and the ‘Situation in Syria’ maps, a regularly updated map of the Syrian conflict made by an Amsterdam teenager. Through these examples and numerous visualizations, the book shows the blurring of the binary distinction between producing and using, ultimately offering a whole new approach to graphic design.
Click to watch the video presentation by Joost Grootens and interview with Gert Staal
Lectorate Music, Education & Society Koncon, with Paul Craenen and Richard Barrett
(9 February 2021, online)
In this session musicians and researchers Richard Barrett and Johan van Kreij presented their projects. Working at the intersection of improvisation and technology, each of them brings a unique perspective on collaborative music making. Their ideas address the challenges we are facing in the recent world-pandemic period, and suggest how improvisation might play a crucial role in interlocal networks and bridge the physical gaps between collaborators.
Click to read watch and dear about the presentations by Richard Barrett and Johan van Kreij.
Lectorate Design KABK, Walking as a Method in Artistic Research, with Alice Twemlow
(9 March 2021, online)
This ARC session, curated and moderated by Alice Twemlow, revolved around the topic of walking as a research method. A panel of five artistic researchers presented their unique approaches to walking, touching upon subjects such as: the relationship between walking and words, sounds, and images; the working out of the walking routes; documenting the paths emerging during the walk; and critically reflecting on the various historical, social, and environmental narratives encountered up by the walker. The act of walking offers us the opportunity to explore space and time by using our body as a tool, and to question our relationship to our whereabouts, our sense of belonging, as well as the sense of property on the land we walk upon.
Click to watch excerpts of the video presentations, with links to works by the panel members:
Justin Bennett, teacher in Institute of Sonology at the Royal Conservatory, the Hague, and member of Interdisciplinary Research Group of the KABK (Royal Academy of Art, The Hague), KC (Royal Conservatory, the Hague) and ACPA (Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden University)
Rebecca Dunne, alumna, MA Artistic Research, Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Sophie van Romburgh, lecturer at LUCAS, Leiden University
Stephanie Springgay, director, School of the Arts, McMaster University, co-director of WalkingLab
and Alice Twemlow, Design Lector at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, associate professor at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, Leiden University
Musicians Playing With Computers | Musicians Interacting With The World, with Ilya Ziblat (13 April 2021, online)
The use of technology in music is extremely diverse, and incorporates different practices: gestural and sensory digital instruments, machine learning and AI music recognition, live coding, and many others. The following discussion revolves around the work of three musicians-researchers who regularly employ technology in their practice. How do they design digital tools and computer instruments in order to address the potential needs of a future performance situation? How do these tools and interfaces relate to human behaviour and perception? Can technology in music be used as a critical tool to retheorise not only aesthetic, but also scientific, cultural, and social issues?
Click to read more about the work of:
Anıl Çamcı (Assistant Professor of Performing Arts Technology at the University of Michigan)
Ilya Ziblat (Independent composer and researcher)
What Method for Erotohistoriography? with Jed Wentz
(11 May 2021, online)
Elizabeth Freeman’s “erotohistoriography” proposes that “contact with historical materials can be precipitated by particular bodily dispositions, and that these connections may elicit bodily responses, even pleasurable ones, that are themselves a form of understanding.”
This presentation advanced the idea of an erotohistoriographical method by focusing on emerging audiovisual approaches to practice research in performing and embodied arts. What if the interplay of history and identity in the researchers’ own bodies were recognized as central to the research process? What if the inherently collaborative concept of the laboratory were taken as a starting point for research in arts and humanities? What if audiovisual production were understood not only as a source of objects for analysis but also as a form of scholarly publication?
The presentation examined audiovisual materials from Ben Spatz’s Judaica project, which explores jewish identity through audiovisual embodied research, as well as a new collaboration between Spatz and a lab run by actor-musician Jed Wentz at the Leiden University. Also participated in the discussion: Laila Neuman and João Luís Paixão
Read more about this session and watch excerpts from the video pressentations
REFUSE/NIKS: Classical Music Performance Norms—Resist or Obey? Daniel Leech-Wilkinson in Conversation with Anna Scott (7 June 2021, online)
Why aren't classical music performances more varied and imaginative? As this session's special guest respondent has provocatively argued, classical music is a police state: one that demands absolute conformity to the wishes of long dead composers, imaginary traditions, and other utopian delusions (Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, 2016). Miniscule departures from its norms are applauded; radical divergences are harshly punished.
In dialogue with Challenging Performance: Classical Music Performance Norms and How to Escape Them, artist-researchers are invited to present persuasive musical and/or discursive arguments either for or against confronting this system. What tools, methods and mindsets are needed; who can resist and who must obey; what is at stake, who are the stakeholders, and who really cares?
Read more about this session on Leiden University's website:
Daniel Leech-Wilkinson in conversation with Anna Scott
with contribution by
Heloisa Amaral
Carlo Diaz
Håkon Skogstad
Emlyn Stam
Read more about the challenges involved in the documentation of this session
SEI & DUE, Dance and Music Performance by Giuliano Bracci and Suzan Tunca
(Saturday 25 September 2021, Festival Peel Slowly and See, Scheltema, Leiden)
SEI & DUE are two chapters of the ongoing collaboration between Suzan Tunca and Giuliano Bracci: dance and music navigate on the edge between improvisation and choreography, between immediate intuitive action and pre-determined acoustic and choreographed movements.
Suzan Tunca has worked as a dancer, choreographer, dance teacher and choreographic assistant in the Netherlands and internationally. Giuliano Bracci is an Italian composer and artistic researcher based in the Netherlands. They are cuurently PhD candidates at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA), Leiden University.
Read more about this ARC session
Watch an excerpt from SEI DUE
Sounding Sonic Materialism
(6 December 2021, online)
Although New Materialism – an interdisciplinary, theoretical field of research, emerging roughly around 2000, and spearheaded by thinkers such as Karen Barad, Rosi Braidotti, Jane Bennett, Manuel DeLanda, and Graham Harman – often uses terms like vibration and resonance – terms often used in the fields of music and sound studies – the connection with these fields is mostly absent or implicit at best. Christoph Cox and Salomé Voegelin have tried to fill this gap by coining the term Sonic Materialism. This ARC session will start with a brief theoretical introduction to Sonic Materialism before the focus will shift to the artistic contribution to this concept: how can/does it sound? What can sound/music “itself” contribute to the discourse and materialization of Sonic Materialism? How can Artistic Research make this Sonic Materialism audible and thinkable through sound?
Click to watch the presentations and links to works by:
Marcel Cobussen, Professor of Auditory Culture at ACPA
Gabriel Paiuk, sound artist and PhD candidate at ACPA
Richard Barrett, composer, performer and Professor of Creative Music Research at ACPA, Kevin Fairbairn, musician, instrument builder, and theoretician who graduated cum laude at Leiden University in 2020
Sonification of Environments: Contemporary Film Sound Research
(11 January 2022, online)
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay presents his research and his two recent publications, The Auditory Setting (2021) and Between the Headphones (2021).
Budhaditya Chattopadhyay is an artist, media practitioner, researcher, and writer. Incorporating diverse media, creative technologies and research, Chattopadhyay produces works for large-scale installation and live performance addressing contemporary issues of environment and ecology, migration, race and decoloniality. Chattopadhyay has received numerous residencies, fellowships, and international awards. His sound works have been widely exhibited, performed or presented across the globe, and released by Gruenrekorder (DE) and Touch (UK). Chattopadhyay has an expansive body of scholarly publications in the areas of media art history, theory and aesthetics, cinema and sound studies in leading peer-reviewed journals.
Click to read about and watch the presentation