Research Catalogue

This exposition or archive is a work in progress, under construction, for gathering material of encounters with junipers.

This artistic research investigates the timbre of the violin in Ottoman music from the perspective of a musician outside the tradition. Its goal is not only to understand how this distinctive sound is created but also to experience how cultural, historical, and stylistic influences shape it. Approaching the tradition as both learner and artist, I learn from master musicians, immerse myself in traditional musical environments, and engage in reflective creative practice. I explore how violinists trained in Western classical music can enter this tradition respectfully, embody its nuances, and remain true to its core. Using four guiding frameworks—tacit knowledge, meşk - oral transmission, cultural immersion, and instrument modification—I document a journey of listening, learning, and transformation. This process integrates literature review, conceptual framing, artistic methodology, and reflective analysis, turning the violin into a space where diverse musical traditions engage in meaningful dialogue. Key outcomes of this study show that timbre in Ottoman violin playing is not fixed but culturally constructed and personally shaped. Timbre is deeply contextual, influenced by cultural models like the human voice and traditional instruments, and expressed through subtle choices in vibrato, ornamentation, bowing, and instrument setup. The expressive identity of Ottoman music relies on sensitivity and subtlety, with small variations significantly affecting the emotional and modal character of the music. Learning in this tradition depends heavily on embodied, tacit knowledge passed down orally through the meşk system, where core concepts such as makam nuance and microtonality are absorbed through long-term listening, singing, and playing alongside masters. Deep listening and cultural immersion were essential for developing stylistic understanding, revealing nuances that notation alone cannot capture.

Conceived and co-organised by Emma Cocker, Alexander Damianisch, Cordula Daus and Lena Séraphin, this Society of Artistic Research Special Interest Group (SAR SIG) provides contexts for coming together via the exchange of language-based research. The intent is to support developments in the field of expanded language-based practices by inviting attention, time and space for enabling understanding of/and via these practices anew.

This article discusses four artworks that employ artificial intelligence (AI) as practice as research (PaR) by artist Garrett Lynch IRL. These are: I’m not Garrett Lynch IRL – DoppelGANger Portraits (2021), a series of Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) portraits; TheLastStraw (2021–23), a performative generative artwork for social media; Flag for States of Damage (2018), a performative mixed-reality artwork for the web and The Traveller (2024), a four-channel video installation with artefacts. The objective of the works is two-fold. Firstly, each artwork’s use of AI is distinct yet is intended to form part of a broad ongoing exploration of how networks can be transformative to art practice. The works maintain that AI is a form of network that enables emergence. Not the emergence of intelligence as defined in the field of AI, but instead in the context of art theory a manner in which artworks are expanded, extended or activated beyond their artist/author defined forms. AI as a network is therefore defined as both the generative adversarial network, the input, employed in the formation of the work and the resulting network of artist, artwork and audience that emerges when a work is expanded, extended or activated. Secondly, instrumental in facilitating AI as a network is the use of language as a combined form of encoding and performative utterance (Austin, 2018). Building on a fundamental basis of computing that all digital media is reducible to language, code, and numbers as well as a basis of communication theory that language is a social construct, the works explore language as both form of representation and communication between human and machine. Language enables a process of folding (O’Sullivan, 2005) or flipping (Sloan, 2012) of concepts, media and artefacts between ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ spaces, between digital and materialised forms.

Interested in how photographs are constituted, this exposition situates itself in between materialities of photography to discover how photographs are actualized. Using photography as artistic research practice, it uncovers how matters, sounds, bodies, and machines intra-act within the practice of photography. The inquiry challenges the bifurcation between the outside/inside of the frame, rather it emphasizes its fluid nature. It delves into the cosmogenesis of a photograph exploring the multiple folds and transformations in actualizing a photograph revealing the intricate and dynamic assemblages of humans and non-humans from the outside folding with the inside. Thinking with Gilles Deleuze's concept of the Folds, the exposition was able to surface layers upon layers of bodily and material folds that trouble the traditional notion of photographs as images separated from the outside. In the middle of its messiness, the exposition was able to develop an Applique technique as a method of knowing that emerges from this artistic research practice. What came out are layers of images that describe photography as performative movement of matters and bodies, a metamorphosis of infinite images while navigating the rich culture of Vietnam’s Hanoi capital.

AS this is an informal tale, restating my master’s studies. AS I was in the midst of a Uturn, entering formal art education, my hopes and expectations were unclear but deeply felt. AS ever, I feel compelled to question, review, examine some more. AS every question gives an indication to the inner world of the questioner. AS if I want to know if there is a pattern or a path? AS a collector I have documented, framed and reflected with words and stored. As curators act I showcase my creative learning journey.