Research Catalogue

Unstable Systems Instability can be a creative force in art, design, and architecture. Artists, designers, and scholars work both with and against systems that are ever-changing, fragile, or unpredictable. Whether dealing with technological systems, ecosystems, social structures, or sensory experiences, instability is often a prerequisite for creation. Instability opens pathways for new ideas and processes, reshaping how we approach and redesign the systems that shape our lives. It can also refer to the creative act itself—one that does not follow predetermined trajectories or established norms. Art, design, and architecture serve as tools to disrupt stable systems and/or shed new light on systems that appear stable but in reality, they are not. No system is truly stable, and when we resist that instability, it becomes a problem. Instability is perhaps the only certainty we can rely on. Hugarflug 2025, the annual conference on artistic research, will take place on September 11–12. It will serve as a platform for research that engages with instability across various systems—from technological advancements such as AI and interactive systems to issues related to politics, society, and the environment. We will explore how instability functions as a tool for generating new possibilities while also fueling unrest and transformation within society and academia. The Iceland University of the Arts invites proposals of all kinds, including presentations of ongoing or completed research by our faculty, students, and collaborators.

In this exposition I’m showing you my journey for these past two years of investigating my artistic practice through the meeting of identity and aesthetics. Due to my Iranian background, I have felt a need and curiosity to bring together my Iranian and European identities. This project is a dialogue between myself and music, encompassing sounds, arrangements, physical presence, materiality, technology, context, and politics. By politics I mean; history, cultural appropriation, diversity, colonisation, beliefs, and the current needs of the western culture. A project involving confrontations with habits, default parameters, and elements within digital audio workspaces, thereby incorporating scales.

Digital overview of artistic works by musician Jordan Sand

PhD Candidate: Sidsel Christensen Project title: INTERDIMENSIONAL ARTISTIC REFLECTION: Speculative movements through Spatial, Digital and Narrative Media Period: 2020 - 2024 Host institution: The Art Academy – Department of Contemporary Art, Faculty of Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen PhD supervisors: Brandon LaBelle, Frans Jacobi and Sher Doruff

This exposition brings together the epistemologies of art-making and translation. It presents a series of artworks the curators commissioned for a travelling exhibition on ‘Experiential Translation’ (2022-2025). Many of the works were created under the auspices of the Experiential Translation Network, which facilitates collaboration and exchange between translators, writers, poets, artists and scholars from across the globe. The concept of ‘experiential translation’ as elaborated by Campbell and Vidal (2019, 2024, 2025), highlights embodied, multimodal communication as a performative inquiry into meaning-making. Blending art and translation practices, experiential translation values materiality, participation, and co-creation. Rather than mere transfer of meaning, translation is seen as a process of discovery, research, and knowledge production, embracing the unknown and exploring that which escapes language. Encouraging a rhizomatic viewing experience, the exposition is structured into three interconnected thematic 'rooms', Serial Metamorphosis, (Un)repetition and Ludic Translation, which can be visited in any order, or even simultaneously. The exposition includes video art, performance, (interactive) installation, sound art, poetry, painting and photography. This work was supported by the AHRC under Grant AH/V008234/1, awarded to Ricarda Vidal (PI) and Madeleine Campbell (Co-I) . Ethical Clearance Reference Number (King’s College London): MRA-22/23-34543

I explain "microtones" as the sounds between the piano keys, making it universally understandable. This widespread understanding through "piano keys" demonstrates how the 12-tone equal temperament (12-TET) has become standardized as the dominant system. When 12-TET was introduced, it created a hierarchy where diverse sounds were forced into a rigid system. Other sounds were marginalized and coded into one of the twelve tones, physically embedded in the piano's keyboard. As a result, pianists became subordinate to these physically embedded conditions of the piano. In this project, I attempted to dismantle this organizational principle. By deterritorializing these fixed tones and liberating the peripheral sounds now called "microtones," I explored not just the piano's timbral possibilities, but also the interactions that emerge in these spaces - between sounds, between people, between cultures... Through collaborations with over 30 composers, I discovered that microtones exist in the "ma" (space) between standardized tones, representing voices that don't fit into established systems. What began as an exploration of piano timbre evolved into an investigation of humanity itself, generating new meanings through ongoing dialogues and discoveries.