creative (mis)understandings - Methodologies of Inspiration by Johannes Kretz

This project aims to develop transcultural approaches of inspiration (which we regard as mutually appreciated intentional and reciprocal artistic influence based on solidarity) by combining approaches from contemporary music composition and improvisation with ethnomusicological and sociological research. We encourage creative (mis)understandings emerging from the interaction between research and artistic practice, and between European art music, folk and non-western styles, in particular from indigenous minorities in Taiwan. Both comprehension and incomprehension yield serendipity and inspiration for new research questions, innovative artistic creation, and applied follow-ups among non-western communities. The project departs from two premises: first, that contemporary western art music as a practice often tends to resort to certain degrees of elitism; and second, that non-western musical knowledge is often either ignored or merely exploited when it comes to compositional inspiration. We do not regard inspiration as unidirectional, an “input” like recording or downloading material for artistic use. Instead, we foster artistic interaction by promoting dialogical and distributed knowledge production in musical encounters. Developing interdisciplinary and transcultural methodologies of musical creation will contribute on the one hand towards opening up the—rightly or wrongly supposed—“ivory tower of contemporary composition”, and on the other hand will contribute towards the recognition of the artistic value of non-western musical practices. By highlighting the reciprocal nature of inspiration, creative (mis)understandings will result in socially relevant and innovative methodologies for creating and disseminating music with meaning. The methods applied in the proposed project will start out from ethnographic evidence that people living in non-western or traditional societies often use methods of knowledge production within the sonic domain which are commonly unaddressed or even unknown among western contemporary music composers (aside from exotist or orientalistic appropriations of “the other”). The project is designed in four stages: field research and interaction with indigenous communities in Taiwan with a focus on the Tao people on Lanyu Island, collaborative workshops in Vienna, an artistic research and training phase with invited indigenous Taiwanese coaches in Vienna, and feeding back to the field in Taiwan. During all these stages, exchange and coordination between composers, music makers, scholars and source community experts will be essential in order to reflect not only on the creative process, but also to analyse and support strong interaction between creation and society. Re-interaction with source communities as well as audience participation in the widest sense will help to increase the social relevance of the artistic results. The University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (MDW) will host the project. The contributors are Johannes Kretz (project leader) and Wei-Ya Lin (project co-leader, senior investigator) with their team of seven composers, ten artistic research partners from Taiwan and six artistic and academic consultants with extensive experience in the relevant fields.

An important element of the whole project is the development of Scalable Compositions based on field research and recordings of traditional songs. We asked young Tao people about their musical preferences, then Johannes composed a series of transformed songs in various styles. Afterwards we collected feedbacks from the younger Tao. One example of this participatory process is the scalable song Boat Sunk Near Five Cave Area.

In September 2018, Wei-Ya found out during her fieldwork that the schools on Lanyu has just started embarking the program Indigenous Experimental Education (原住民族實驗教育), as suggested by the Ministry of Education in Taiwan. This program aims at integrating indigenous knowledge into local school curricula.

Since the traditional Tao songs also document the collective history of Lanyu, why cannot we try to transform the content of this kind of songs into formats understandable and interesting for the younger generations, for example a rap, a r&b etc.?

This first experimental study aims to search for the tastes of the school pupils. Maybe we could make an audio-history book for the local schools in the end of our project?

Case I Boat Sunk Near Five Cave Area

蛻變

Transformation

2018年九月，維亞在田野調查時得知了蘭嶼完全中學剛在起步籌備由台灣教育部所提出的原住民族實驗教育的課程，這項計畫的目的是將原住民知識融入當地學校的課綱安排。

既然傳統達悟古謠也記錄著蘭嶼人的共同歷史，我們何不試著將這些歌曲的內容轉化為Rap或是R&B這類年輕世代可以理解並會覺得有趣的形式呢?

這個首次嘗試旨在調查學校青年學子的喜好，或許我們計畫最後可以為當地學校設計出一本蘭嶼語音歷史來當作教學教材?

這個計劃的一個重點是以田野調查與歷史錄音作為基礎來建立可調整式創作的方法論。我們詢問了蘭嶼青年他們的音樂喜好，而Johannes以此為出發點嘗試了一系列不同風格的創作及轉換，也收集到了一些反饋及建議。而「五孔洞沈船記」就是其中一個例子。

實驗一 五孔洞沈船記

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