Here we take an oblique approach to the situation. Not only does this project not address research students’ individual topics directly, it intentionally frees them from the burden of their own work for its duration. Students know they will not be called upon to present, justify, develop or explicitly draw new relationships with their own work. They are returned to the liberating joy of learning, of being taught - an experience far back in the memory of most researchers at this advanced level. The intensity of teaching and learning is crucial to this process. There is no time or intellectual space for students to be continuing their regular research. On the other hand, the level of teaching needs to be judged very carefully in order for the whole group to remain both fully stimulated (simply put, difficult and interesting enough) without any becoming left behind or alienated (not unachievably ambitious). The experience is intended not only to impart useful and interesting knowledge, but to be cognitively transformational – and in that to open students to exploring and discovering new kinds of understanding and creativity. Students are liberated, inspired and empowered. In terms of the wider aims of RAPP Lab, this project encourages students to develop a new set of tools for reflection: tools that require instruction and practice (like music itself), that are both practical and far-reaching. This is not merely the transmission of knowledge; the process of learning is transformative.
Teaching is an undervalued resource at doctoral level, where students are naturally encourage primarily to develop their own skills. This is particularly the case in artistic research, an area in which the student’s individual set of skills, interests and questions is at the heart. As we know from earlier stages in education, direct, concentrated teaching is a powerful tool for rapid and sustained development, particularly in subject areas that are new to students. Its success is founded in pedagogical skill and experience, in readiness to learn, and in trust.
In broad outline, we create the following situation: a group of research students works intensively for a week with a faculty of three teachers – a ‘bootcamp’ situation. In this case the students were eleven PhD candidates, all working towards a doctorate in Artistic Research. The teachers were all experienced experts in their field, each with an established successful university-level pedagogical practice.
Teaching takes place in what is essentially a classroom environment. This is important; the students and teachers together form an intimate and supportive group that pursues its work in a secure, private and uninterrupted space. The timetable ensures a fully immersive experience: each teacher gives a class of 1.5 hours every day for the entire week, and gives the students a further 1.5 hours of homework to complete. In addition, each teacher is available to students for a further period each day for tutorial sessions; this allows students to develop points of particular interest, and ensures that no student gets blocked at a point of non- or misunderstanding. Great care is taken to support all students in the progress of the subjects. It is important to note that there is no element of examination or assessment; it is the ‘safety’ of the space that allows such intensity of teaching and learning.
The selection of subjects is a crucial issue. They should involve learnable skills, require technical exercise and cognitive practice, and be relevant in some way to the broad range of contemporary musicians. While assessment as such is antitechitcal to the ethos of this approach, the skills should be both practical and testable – the students know when and how they are applying such skilss, and with what results and satisfaction. The aim is to encourage individual development through the acquisition of common material and identifiable skills. In this case we identified three complementary areas of study, each requiring active and sustained engagement with the teaching: Critical Thinking, Sixteenth Century Counterpoint, and Programming in the Arts. In requiring guidance, effort and training they become transformative; in their diversity they encourage students to observe new relationships across the subjects and in the context of their own work. Direct applicability to a particular research project is not the point. The broad relevance of these subjects to the contemporary understanding of music is clear; they are not abstract theoretical topics open to debate but rather areas of clear technique.
Critical thinking
Teacher: Prof. Marianne Talbot, University of Oxford
The evaluation of arguments and of evidence in general is fundamental to research – a foundational skill which especially in the humanities is often developed in a somewhat informal manner. We first considered Formal Logic as a candidate subject, as the basis of the analysis of arguments. However, Formal Logic as conventionally taught tends to address students who already have a particular mind-set, and can be perceived as over-abstract or even alienating by others. Critical Theory, another candidate subject in this area, brings an implied requirement for a philosophical foundation if it is to be taught in any depth, and would thus stretch beyond the timescale of this project. Prof. Talbot has developed a remarkable pedagogical strategy that is grounded in philosophy, incorporates the essential elements of formal logic, plots a clear technical trajectory and remains fully and pragmatically grounded in the concerns of student researchers. The techniques and materials imparted are both empowering and useful – in researchers’ own work, in analysing material in general, but also in setting the tone for engaging with the other subjects of the week.
Sixteenth-century counterpoint
Teacher: Prof. Dr. Markus Roth, Folkwang University of the Arts, Essen
The great range of musical practices and languages involved in current Artistic Research makes it difficult to identify an expert musical-technical subject (beyond the rudiments of Western art music) that will be relevant across such a group. Polyphony, in its broadest sense, is a foundation of Western music and a major contribution to human knowledge and understanding. Indeed, we could see it as a musical analogue to other developments in thought through the early modern period. It reaches a peak of artistic achievement and technical codification in the sixteenth century. Prof. Roth has taught the techniques of complex counterpoint to music students of many interests and backgrounds. By grounding his teaching in treatises of the sixteenth century and showing how the concepts he introduces persist through contemporary music, the technical exercises and problems he presents to the students become live, practical musical questions. This highly technical area of study thus remains both musically alive and historically fascinating – in short, musicianly. Students feel that they are exercising and expanding their ‘musical brain’.
Programming in the arts
Teacher: Prof. Magno Caliman, Orpheus Institute, Ghent
We inhabit a common technological environment. Regardless of how explicitly the work of a particular researcher engages with this state, it all takes place within a knowledge and cultural economy enabled and governed by technology. More invisibly, contemporary modes of thought are infused with concepts and models that derive from our technological condition (just think of the instrumental but plastic functionality of terms such as ‘network’, ‘feedback’ or ‘algorithm’). Teaching computer science or a specific programming language from scratch is potentially alienating to those not disposed to such work, and may seem arbitrary to others. Prof. Caliman teaches a course that sets out from questions of creativity, materiality and organisation – issues relevant to music researchers in general. The domain of the ‘virtual’ is also ultimately a material world in which technical solutions have to be found. This course begins with the material challenge of making sound with an Arduino microprocessor (not its intended use); it sets out from an essentially sonic premise. The students require only their laptop, from which their work involves programming the Arduino using its simple open-access coding environment. In the course of the week, students discover that they have acquired, understood and assimilated the basic principles of computer science and coding. They have done so in ways that can apply across different contexts of computational technology.