For Issue #2 Varia / Spring 2024, HUB – Journal of Research in Art, Design and Society continued to develop work along the lines of artistic research, focusing its attention on multiple creative practices and the transversality of the processes explored. One year after the launch of Issue #0, HUB remains dedicated to the Research Catalogue platform and to finding effective ways to explore and view multimedia material that properly reflects the relationship between content and reading (and smart browsing modes). Enhancing navigation and reading experiences for the expositions remains a priority for this Issue.
The Varia Issue allows authors to submit proposals that do not fall under the umbrella of a guiding theme. It offers an approach and freedom to the subjects the authors wish to make visible. Although eclectic, the Editorial team finds common concerns in this issue, including crossing fields of study, the intersection between reality and imagination, choreographic concerns with people, the experience of movement, recordings, sound, and inter-presentational relationships. With the maturation and specialization of artistic research, different approaches to the reflection space of these practices are required. The concluded and exhibited object is not the main subject proposed for study; it is an approach to the process and methodologies that allow us to extract new communication opportunities and systematize operating procedures. HUB is investing in the Research Catalogue as a platform that presents exhibition challenges and requires different strategies to test the content's linearity, narrativity, visibility, and composition.
For this Varia Issue, five proposals compose its corpus:
The exposition Listening into the Lattice presents the collaborative research of sound artist Jorge Boehringer and archaeologist Camilla Bertini at Newcastle University. This interdisciplinary endeavor explores critical epistemological questions and the process of knowledge construction from artefact and materiality. The shared passion for prehistoric cultures has sparked an investigation at the intersection of sound production, listening, and information, known as sonification. This research embodies the essence of sonification, blending artistic decisions and contextual interpretations.
With Reflections on Walking and the Disruptive Experience, Kenneth Russo shares a journey of disruptive experiences, inviting readers to explore symbolic interrelationships and envision constructions of common space. Understanding space from the perspective of our moving body is a dynamic interrelation in real time, unfolding before the inhabited models, the forces and powers that shape economic, political, and cultural realities. The virtual space exists alongside our reality, enhancing our experiences and sparking our imagination. It's not a passive realm for the flâneur and their digital alter-ego to navigate. They actively contribute to their transformative capacity within disruptions, progressing alongside the networks, the pressures of globalization, and the body's actions. The virtual space coexists with reality, enriching our experiences and transforming our imagination. The space in which the flâneur and their digital alter-ego operate is far from passive.
Cripping Virtuosity: Cultivating Virtuosity from Disability through Music Technology by Molly Joyce explores reimagining virtuosity within the intersection of disability and digital music technology. Joyce fully embraces adaptive music technologies like the MUGIC system and motion capture systems to redefine virtuosity through her experience as a disabled musician. She delves into the role of music technology in performance, highlighting the intersection between technology and disability as fertile ground for redefining virtuosity.
The Significance of a Waterfall Divided in Two by Eric Maltz resonates with an escape of sensuality through the ears. It blends dreams with academic research, likening it to Peter Pan's pursuit of his shadow. Maltz also reflects on his extensive collection of field recordings, many of which remain unexplored. Maltz reflects on his extensive collection of field recordings, discussing the transformative nature of recording and the sensual experiences evoked by sound.
In So Many Futures: Aesthetic Experience and the Now in a Performance with and by Young People, Laura Navndrup Black explores how air can convey tactile experience in choreography involving children and adults. The focus shifts from movement language to expressive ideas, influencing the choreographic process. The unique work process required when children are involved allows for engaging with questions without relying solely on previous knowledge. The author reflects on how using air as haptically experienced material affects the choreographic process and resulting performance. While "LUFTIG" maintained the essence of its predecessor, it offered a transformative experience, feeling radically different. Laura Navndrup Black acknowledges the potential oversight in not fully exploring the rich potential of the adult-child relation as artistic material.
Finally, Issue #2 Varia / Spring 2024 promotes a cross-disciplinary view on documenting and writing about artistic research using the available tools. Most expositions interconnect sound, space, and body in their explorations. They also delve into the materiality of reality, inviting individual and collective sensory experiences in response to the environment and dimensions of the relational space. The proposals involve using various tools to think, question, and create. There's a strong inclination to revisit primal situations, such as archetypal human production, symbolic connotations, and a desire to refocus on post-memory. This revisiting is seen as a potential for affirmation with a redemptive character, achieved through creative artistic practices, and is reflected in writings and thinking that promote synergies.