Program (quick overview)
09:00-09:45
(Re)-Thinking Virtuosity
Sergej Tchirkov
University of Bergen (1st year presentation)
Moderator: Knut Olaf Sunde
10:00-10:45
Tipping Points
Tijs Ham
University of Bergen (3rd year presentation)
Moderator: Jeremy Welsh
11:00-11:45
Holographic Composition Technique
Idin Samimi Mofakham
Norwegian Academy of Music (3rd year presentation)
Moderator: Solmund Nystabakk
13:00-13:45
Semiotics of Virtuality
Robert Seaback
Norwegian Academy of Music (2nd year presentation)
Moderator: Solmund Nystabakk
(Re)-Thinking Virtuosity (Sergej Tchikov)
The methodology of my project draws on the combined use of both artistic and scientific research strategies. The purpose of this presentation is to discuss the relational field between the theory and my artistic practice within my research. My primary aim is to identify potential problems that may arise at the initial stage of the research and to discuss possible problem-solving methods. The project aims to explore the performer's perspective on the notion and role of virtuosity in experimental music practice. Is it simply a reference to technical prowess and the ability to provide “error free” performance? Or it is a force that is codified in the structure of a composition and informs the actions of performers resulting from conscious or embodied knowledge of their instruments? And if so, how does this force affect the composer's experience embodied in the score and how does it inform the performer's strategies at the moment of performance? Could it be that virtuosity is actually for many not the few? To investigate this, I plan to problematise the notion of virtuosity by integrative use of artistic and scientific methodological strategies. The historical background of ‘virtuosity’ shall be explained in order to determine the validity of the term itself in the context of current discourse that considers performer a co-creator of the work. This will provide a framework for the core part of my research – reflection through practice on my own practice, in which I plan to unfold the process of integrative collaborations with five composers of very different backgrounds and to examine the collaborative and individual choices which are taken whilst conceiving the work, developing the compositions, and performing it in various environments. The objective is to focus specifically on the agent of instrumentality as part of the social mechanics of interaction between composer, performer and the score. The development of this collaborative method will be documented and examined using socio-scientific inductive tools. My key objective is to create a vocabulary of practice that apprehends new viewpoints on historically problematic meaning of virtuosity and to fill the existing gap in current research discourse when it comes to artistic investigation of the agencies which inform the uniqueness of sonorous production. The questions that I refer to in the abstract could be exemplified with the following video of my performance (credit: Sehyung Kim QI II for accordionist (2012).
Tipping Points (Tijs Ham)
My Artistic Research project 'Tipping Points' is situated in the field of live electronic music and explores the use of chaotic processes in the design of new electronic music instruments, compositional strategies, and performances. The resulting music is informed by the unstable and unpredictable nature of these non-linear systems, constituting its fragile sonic points of departure. Drifting along the turbulent currents we uncover sonic behaviors, infused with perpetual discoveries and vivid surprises. The instruments employed to steer through these tides are always in a state of becoming, unfinished, volatile, and displaying a sense of viscosity and pliability much like the sounds they are supposed to encapsulate. Subjected to the ongoing changes and adaptations, and consequently, never revisiting the same phrase twice, they act like fleeting, elusive creatures, impossible to control but ready to engage in playful encounters within a sphere of reciprocal influence. These encounters are driven by vulnerable, curious explorations of differences, or to be more specific, they are marked by an undercurrent of entropic erosion, pushing the sound ever closer to the edge of its tipping point. The normative is placed under tension, only to be released through a disruptive breach of expectation. Expression and meaning emerge from the unintended and unforeseen evocations that seduce the listener to reassess and recalibrate their auditory perceptions. There is a peculiar form of labor required to make or create sense out of these states of vertigo. Through a retracing of historical pathways, it becomes possible to fabricate novel meanings, manufacturing an allowance for the unimagined present to manifest itself, and then become a faint, flickering beacon to illuminate the dark void of what is yet to come.
Holographic Composition Technique (Idin Samimi Mofakham)
Holographic Composition Technique is a term I have made for my compositional path. It is a technique being based on two main subjects in music that interest me the most: psychoacoustics, and the world of microtonality, specially the world of just intonation and non-western tuning systems.
My interest in microtonality lies in all possible approaches to it: different temperament systems , “just intonation” techniques, non-octave divisions or the “traditional non-Western” practices. Still, my focus will stay on Iranian microtonality, especially on the tuning systems written by Persian physicians and polymaths between 9th to 15th century, like Mansour Zalzal (9th century), Farabi (10th century), Ibn Sina(10th century), Safi al-Din al-Urmawi (13th century) and Abd al-Qadir al-Maraghi (14th century).
The main goal of this research is to combine psychoacoustics & medieval Iranian tuning systems, to reach to a personal and unique, yet new sounding world, which in my opinion can be called as the fusion of Orient and Occident.
Semiotics of Virtuality (Robert Seaback)
The Semiotics of Virtuality is a heuristic device proposed by N. Katherine Hayles in “How We Became Posthuman” which she uses to map the posthuman concept as a literary phenomenon. I adopt Hayles’s framework to map posthumanism in aesthetic and technical dimensions of digital music, illuminating relationships between embodied complexities, representational absence, informational patterns, and noise.
In the context of digital sound composition, the interplay of physical and informational realities causes ruptures in acoustic patterns while simultaneously linking them to disparate reconfigurations only possible in the digital domain. One particular focus of this research is the degree to which traces of embodied complexity are preserved or erased when sound sources are digitally modified. “Semiotics of Virtuality” is part of a network of scholarship branching from Natasha Barrett’s Reconfiguring the Landscape project.
My presentation for the Artistic Research Spring Forum will focus on two works composed for loudspeaker array: Still Life and Lightness in Transit. These works use sound field recordings and tools for signal analysis and decomposition to construct sound images traversing between the hyperreal, digital abstraction, and (im)material hybridity.
Back out of the gramophone (Ingeborg Dalheim)
In her project «Back out of the gramophone», Ingeborg Dalheim will seek to learn the musical styles, techniques and repertory of the early 20th century Norwegian classical female singers through listening to gramophone recordings from the first two decades of the 20th century. Through exploring this repertory, she hopes to learn to sing like these largely forgotten women did, and understand why they sang in that manner, both on an individualistic level, and as a part of a European community of classical singers. Listening, repeating, learning by ear, and reenactment will be important methods throughout the course of her research, in cooperation with the pianist Heloisa Amaral. Together, they will aspire to become natives of the style by closely copying existing gramophone recordings and apply these newfound skills to other repertory from the same period. The project will include recordings made both with modern equipment and similar equipment to the gramophone recording devices of the early 20th century.
The vibrating drum, developing a musical practice for the modern percussionist (Ingar Zach)
In my Ph.D. project I seek to investigate in depth the musical potential of vibrating speakers (transducers) in contact with drumskins (membranes). The aim is to develop a haptic system with iPads, transducers, and small amplifiers that can lead to an alternative musical practice for percussionists, and to add new material to my existing language as a creator of music.
There are two sides in this research project that are active simultaneously:
1. The technological side. The development of the vibrating speakers in a haptic system with iPads, percussion, and various preparations.
2. The creative side. Putting to use the haptic system into making new music works.
In the development of the haptic system, I will constantly be changing and adjusting the configuration of its components to make the tools and my body to operate as fluent as possible. An important parameter is to ensure that the vibrating speakers will be able to handle and transmit frequencies in the low register.
Having a broad band of frequencies and musical material at my disposal, I will investigate how to prepare the skin with various objects and study the wide sonic results given by the preparation and manipulation. The result of this research will culminate in new music works for percussion.
In my presentation at the Artistic Research Spring Forum 2022 I will show examples of my ongoing artistic processes and results so far and share my thoughts and reflections in connection to these. I will also touch upon some of the challenges I have experienced and shed light on some of the choices that I have made which have had a direct influence on the direction of my research and its artistic results.