Program (quick overview)
10:00-10:45
A co-creative algorithmic agency for contemporary music
Juan Vassallo
University of Bergen (2nd year presentation)
Moderator: Silje Aker Johnsen
11:00-11:45
Gesamtkunstwerk — Geteiltkunstwerk
Håkon Daniel Nystedt
Oslo Academy of the Arts, Academy of Opera (1st year presentation)
Moderator: Silje Aker Johnsen
13:00-13:45
Scenography as Symbiosis
Jakob Oredsson
Østfold University College, Norwegian Theatre Academy (2nd year presentation)
Moderator: Øystein Elle
14:00-14:45
ANANSIS WEB
Thomas Talawa Prestø
Østfold University College, Norwegian Theatre Academy (2nd year presentation)
Moderator: Øystein Elle
A co-creative algorithmic agency for contemporary music (Juan Vassallo)
This artistic research project reflects on the world of possibilities that afford the use of rule-based computer-assisted music composition tools and artificial intelligence as a means for investigating and developing stronger symbolic and perceptual relationships between musical structures and human language -considered as a general term which includes mainly speech and its written equivalent-. As a means for investigating these potentialities, I am currently developing a computational co-creative system named 'Versificator ', conceived as a metaphor and a way of bringing to life the original Versificator, a fictional generative device created by George Orwell in the novel "Nineteen hundred and eighty-four" (1949), described in the book mainly as a generator for music and text. Several inquiries arise from this project; in one hand, those related to the material-structural crossed-relationship between music and language: What relationships be traced between dimensions of human language and those of a piece of contemporary music? Is music ultimately a simulation of a model of production coming from another human emerging capacity, such as language? In the other hand, lays the question about creative agency of algorithmic processes in art creation: to this day, the heuristic processes involved and a composer's decision-making process in creating a musical work remain speculative, somewhat of a mystery. Is there is any a priori reason to deny creative agency to non-human entities, such as machines or algorithms? Is it possible to discuss a new perspective on the creative agency of algorithmic composition systems regarding to the idea of cognitive assemblages as described by Hayes? In the context of this artistic research, the Versificator is reframed as a technology that potentially extends the basic creative mechanism in favor of novel searches: A kind of cognitive assemblage that facilitates a novel approach towards contemporary music composition, by means of the establishment of multidimensional mappings between a complex network of musical and linguistic materials and structures. The talk will discuss the background for the project, and how it inserts within my current artistic practice. The research questions will be discussed and approached from the perspective of some relevant authors (K. Hayles, A. Clark), and some of my recent artistic production will be discussed (compositions, audio fragments and scores).
Gesamtkunstwerk — Geteiltkunstwerk (Håkon Nystedt)
The relationship between stage directing and music is the topic of my research. I want to explore new ways of interaction between the musical and theatrical expression in opera. My curiosity around this comes from my own experience as a conductor of opera, and my fascination for the spoken theatre. I want to try to include elements from spoken theatre in opera, especially the use of subtext.
There are two main areas where I want to explore possibilities:
1 - the rehearsal process
I plan to do projects where the cooperation between librettist, composer, director and composer are close and intertwined. We will try out models where the performers meet the music and the stage direction at the same time, and rehearsal processes where acting and music are worked with simultaneously. I will try out structures where the music can change depending on the development on stage.
2 - the music
I want to explore how some musical elements and ideas can influence the conception of the staged performance. The musical issues I want to use to open up for ideas from contemporary spoken theatre, are:
- Modules and other open shapes
- Polystyle
- Improvisation
The research work will include the production of two operas, three or more workshops and some conversations with relevant people, open for the public.
Scenography as Symbiosis (Jakob Oredsson)
This presentation will be related to the public work of scenography Symbiotic Scenes, the first work part of the artistic research project Scenography as Symbiosis, realized in Stavanger in September 2021. It will introduce reflections upon the challenges and strategies within the research project which this particular work engendered, both in terms of process and the work itself.
The word exhibit derives from the Latin exhibitus, past participle of exhibēre, from ex- + habēre to have, or to hold. In Symbiotic Scenes, the act of holding and consequently exhibiting was recurring, embedded within the work, as well as within three strategies which appeared through it, imitation, inversion and isolation. Focusing on an understanding of scenography as describing environment, the research project explores ways of outlining an ontology of scenography through artistic practice. I suggest describing an environment is an aesthetic experience based on solidarity with the environment being described. Describing something, feeling it, through vision or touch, may be likened to the act of holding something. This implies scenography as foundational for understanding the notion of exhibition. The phenomenon of symbiosis as understood from an Object Oriented Ontology perspective, will be used to analyze Symbiotic Scenes, through imagining scenography as objects which come into being through symbiosis between other objects, part of existing environments, transformed into a new object. When developing the work three phases were outlined as listening, recording and tuning. In the presentation these phases will be described, as well as examples of how various practices arose through them.
In this presentation I will reflect upon if the work Symbiotic Scenes through its being, proposed solidarity with a given context through the strategies of imitation, inversion and isolation, simultaneously holding environment and being held by environment, scenography as exhibiting environment, or holding the here.
Anansis Web (Thomas Talawa Prestø)
Anansis Web is an artistic research project which works through engaging, supporting and channeling Africana dance practitioners and their vie for existence in Norway.
It then expands through the Norwegian Africana practitioners extended network and communities of practice.
The project particularly looks at "Dancing in the pressure-cooker" a term I have coined to describe dance practices that spring from people in a pressured situation, such as enslavement, segregation, apartheid, forced migration, war, homophobia, transphobia and gender injustice.
The goal is to disrupt the hegemony of Europeanist theory and disembodied dance practices by also giving value to embodied theo-cultural-practices where dance has an integrated and intrinsic role in society.
The project especially draws from Voudun philosophy and cosmology where the unseen and seen world are given equal value, both in internal and external practices.
These are also practices of BECOMING rather than PERFORMING. Therefore, this project does not adopt Europeanist skepticism in relation to spiritual embodiment.
Babel Confusion - Suppression of the mother tongue via drawing and sound (Schwan Dler Qaradaki)
This presentation will be held in Norwegian: Research question: Can the suppression of the mother tongue of visual artists affect their visual modes of expression? Via the Babel Confusion project, I wish to investigate the kinds of artistic obstacles faced by individual artists with a minority background when totalitarian regimes prevent them from talking and expressing themselves in their mother tongue. I wish to investigate if suppression of mother tongue influences their visual modes of expression and how. What kind of people result from a ruling nation state preventing an individual minority from expressing itself in the language closest to its heart and brain? Through drawing and sound this project shall explore the suppression of the mother tongue.
I presentasjonen min vil jeg sette søkelys på de politiske og religiøse faktorene som fører til både språklig og billedlig (særlig figurativ kunst) undertrykking av det kurdiske minoritetsbefolkningen i Midøsten. Jeg går kort gjennom perioden etter islamsk maktovertagelse og deres begrensning av den figurative kunsten, med noen unntak for sjahene, særlig formidling gjennom islamsk miniatyr.
Jeg vil også gå in på årsakene til oppdelingen av Kurdistan etter kollaps av det Ottomanske riket av kolonimaktene i 1923, etterfulgt av en konstant undertrykking, folkemord og begrensning av bruken av det kurdiske språket. Til slutt ønsker jeg å si litt om hva andre kunstnere og forfattere som jeg har snakket med og som bor i Kurdistan tenker rund undertrykkingen og sensur fra totalitære regimer og politiske-religiøse lærdere. Jeg kommer også til å vise dette gjennom min praksis som er forankret i tegninger og lydarbeid.
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