Research Catalogue

This is a collective introduction page to 'Matters of Care - Positioneren I-II', a project that runs from September 21st to June 21st 2021 for the 3rd bachelor in Architecture at the Department of Architecture of KUL in Ghent. Dit is de collectieve introductie-pagina voor 'Matters of Care - Positioneren I-II', een project dat loopt van 21 september tot 21 juni 2021 voor de 3de bachelor in de Architectuur van het Departement Architectuur aan de KUL, in Gent.

For you, I would take off my skin, Open my chest. I would soak you in Like a sponge, Take you in through my pores. Filter you through me Like I am a porous stone. I would breath you in Like flying dandelion seeds and have you grow in my lungs.

This exposition is the media repository of the artistic dissertation “Wandering Recurrence - Openness and Identity through Spatialization” for the Doctor Artium Program, in Composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz, Austria This thesis deals with creating musical situations that allow for contingency but still retain coherence. Composers have sought to create indeterminate situations by using open notations that iteratively create different results in each performance. A central claim of this thesis is that contingent situations can instead be achieved by simultaneously localizing multiple activities in different positions in space. Spatialization in today’s musical practices is a ubiquitous topic. What makes this approach different is an emphasis on the relation between form and space. This investigation aims to create a multifaceted and open musical work through the disposition of sound sources. It explores the contingency of a localized material by developing a series of compositional strategies. The notion of an open musical work implies the question of the agency of the material and its repercussions for the agency of the composer. As an artistic research project, this thesis also aims to articulate possible forms of artistic knowledge and develops a formulation of experimental practice. The project is conducted using three principal methods: Firstly, there is the development and modeling of compositional strategies in a series of case studies assisted by a spatialization model developed as part of the project. Secondly, the project employs musicological research methods and studies the contemporary compositional context and their concepts of space, openness, and form. Thirdly, the case studies are analyzed in conjunction with formulations of the concepts of space, openness, form, composer, and experiment. The main results of this project are four compositional strategies and four new musical works, one of which is an orchestra piece commissioned by the SWR (Südwestrundfunk), as well as the reconceptualization of said concepts. The kind of openness developed in the project is the product of the encounter of different layers of activities and materials localized in space, which is open to be interpreted by the listener during the performance. This practice of embracing openness proposes a non-hierarchical relation between composer and material, which implies a feminist reformulation of the figure of the composer, as well as of the notion of experiment as a critical practice.

Can we describe certain sonic experiences as “homely,” even when they take place outside of a traditional home-space? While phenomenological accounts of home abound, with writers detailing a rich spectrum of the felt characteristics of the homely including safety, familiarity, and affective “warmth,” there is a scarcity of research into sonic experience that engages with such literatures. With specific interest in the experience of embodied space, I account here for what might be termed feelings of “sonic homeliness” as they emerge during headphone listening. After forming a conceptual model of homeliness that draws from phenomenological philosophy, I investigate its applicability to experiences of headphone listening. Through analysis of primary interview data, I consider how headphones may be said to territorialize space for listeners, analyzing how sonic “boundaries” are experienced in relation to the body, as well as how some listeners describe their experiences as interiorized, comforting, and “wombic.”

Based on an ethnography of a bioscience laboratory in Tokyo before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, this paper focuses on telepresence, and the growing demand for workers to maintain extended simultaneous presence in multiple electronic, or electronically augmented, spaces. In contrast to views promoting the liberating affordances of telework in the maintenance of healthy work-life balance (reduced commute time; increased “presence” in family life), an analysis of sound reveals the way the home becomes reorganized, and ultimately de-prioritized, under work demands. In particular, online meetings, which privilege discrete information exchange, position the home as a barrier to productive communications. Receding the soundscape of the home in this way reflects a normalization of the neoliberal imperative to find self-realization in workplace forms of sociality.

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