Research Catalogue

Excerpt from my forthcoming research project How to be a medium? including the script of How (not) to be a puppet and its first act as audio play.

Jenny Sunesson (b. 1973) is a Swedish artist predominantly working with sound. Her practice ranges from field recording and live collages to conceptual sound art and video. Sunesson uses her own life as a stage for her dark, tragic and sometimes comical re-contextualised work where real and invented characters and derogated stereotypes, collaborate in the alternate story of hierarchies and normative power structures in society.

'Empowering Collective Performing Arts: A Facilitator’s Toolkit for Overcoming Language Barriers' is a practice-led research project that explores the ways to encourage group connection through non-textual, embodied communication within diverse communities. Drawing on work experience with immigrant children, refugees, and deaf/hearing collaborators—as well as recent research residencies with ASSITEJ Norway, The Flying Seagulls and Red Nose Emergency Smiles—the project contains a growing body of facilitation strategies as an open-source toolkit. Rooted in my personal experience of linguistic displacement and background in voice and dance, this project proposes a shift away from text-centric facilitation models toward approaches that prioritise emotional intuition and situational awareness. The project is underpinned by critical frameworks around embodied knowledge, power, and positionality, aiming to challenge colonial and exclusionary norms around communication. Ultimately, it seeks to empower facilitators and communities alike to trust in the expressive potential of the body and encourage inclusive, trust-based spaces for collective performing arts experiences.

Music is bound to space; music happens in a space. There cannot be music without space, still, the vast majority of music throughout history has been mainly focused on "what happens when" rather than "what happens when and where.” Today, with the advent of Virtual Reality, Dolby Atmos, binaural recording, and surround systems musicians and listeners are developing a more refined sensitivity and creativity toward sound localisation and spatialisation. Space is gradually attaining greater significance in the way we perceive and conceptualise music. Moreover, the introduction of headphones into the audio market substantially affected the way we perceive music today. The present work describes the creative process and the results of two electronic music pieces for speakers and headphones which were composed for exploring the perceptual thresholds in which musical materials are perceived as connected or disconnected from each other. I hope this work ignites curiosity in the reader, inspires creation, and motivates reflection on the meaning of space, connection, and isolation. DISCLAIMER: The webpage takes some seconds to fully load.

Home page of the Journal of Sonic Studies

VARIA, the fourth issue of HUB — Journal of Research in Art, Design and Society is a compilation of insightful views on different subjects that drive us through expositions where the true interests and concerns and research of those who enjoy sharing their points of view to build an understanding of the meanings of contemporary art on a global level are presented. This edition presents a constellation of voices, gestures, and research paths that intersect across diverse geographies, temporalities, and concerns.