Research Catalogue

Sheila Jordan, an important female singer in the history of jazz vocals, and an exploration of her life and musical characteristics.

This exposition gathers a series of visual and linguistic investigations in which signs, form, and the space between them construct expressions that invite multiple interpretations. Here, propositions are understood as attempts, movements, and modes of thought. Between sign and form, a space emerges where meaning can be brought into play – where rhythm, structure, wonder and quietness may interact as an expanded practice of seeing, reading, and listening.

In this work, I want to show some excerpts from my grandmother's patriarchal resistance. The narrative and the photographs will be at the center. They will clarify Esters Lindberg's attempt to negotiate and renegotiate her position within the usual norm. The narratives and photographs will hopefully give an expanded understanding of what it could be like to live as a woman with a desire for freedom in Sweden during the early 20th century.

This exhibition presents an investigation into the folk music and dance practice polska, involving a group of Swedish folk musicians and dancers. The investigation employs optical motion capture (mocap) to explore interactive music and dance performances and create innovative artistic expressions by merging traditional practices with contemporary media technology. As a musician working closely with the dancers he plays for, the author explores ways to mediate dance through the sonification and visualisation of movement data. The focus is on the fundamental connection between sound and movement in this performance practice, particularly showcased in the project's centrepiece, Dancing Dots. Documentations of this and other works included in the exhibition present live music and dance with sonic and visual displays derived from mocap data, asking how such multi-modal mediations can facilitate understanding of the interplay between movement and music and open new avenues for artistic expression in this folk music practice. The use of optical motion capture is contextualised as a means of mediating music-dance through narrow streams of movement data, and the exposition introduces a web tool for accessible sonification of folk dance. The exposition applies music and dance theoretical concepts in designing the movement mediations, examines their relevance in an artistic context, and grounds the results in a practice-based understanding of the rhythmic/metric framework of the Swedish polska. Download Accessible PDF

Improvising Time is a practice-led research project investigating embodied temporality in the performance of solo dance improvisation. It explores two temporal concepts in Japanese Noh theatre — the sequencing concept of jo-ha-kyū 序破急 and the notion of ma 間, defined as interval — investigating how jo-ha-kyū and ma can be embodied for the temporal organization of solo dance performance when improvised before an audience. Grounded in praxis where theory is imbricated in practice, Noh performance theory is brought into a dynamic interaction with the fundamental theory of time in physics and a phenomenological approach to intersubjectivity. Using a multi-voice dialogic approach as a key methodology, the studio research examines the experience of improvisation from both sides — as improviser and as watcher — in collaboration with solo dance practitioner Janette Hoe. The research shows how, in the act of improvising, an embodied temporality of the improviser is created not only by an awareness of embodied processes but also by the potentiality of unknown improvisational material. Culminating in a major project, Solo Dialogue (2021), the research proposes a new framework of embodied temporality offering an insight into how improvisation can be temporally shaped and organized by prioritizing attentiveness and attunement to diversify performance material and enhance the intersubjective experience between improviser and audience. Download Accessible PDF

The impossibility of perfect translation is a widely acknowledged trope, yet translation remains a powerful act of meaning-making. This research-creation project investigates not what is lost, but what is gained through translation, by presenting and reflecting on our artistic re-interpretation of Dichterliebe, Robert Schumann’s nineteenth-century song cycle on texts by Heinrich Heine. Drawing on theories of translation by Walter Benjamin, Umberto Eco, and Hans Vermeer, we approach art song translation beyond its conventional linguistic scope, exploring it as a mode of modernization and gendered recontextualization. Our project, The Poet’s Love(r), features a new, singable English translation, alongside newly composed spoken poetry that gives voice to the song cycle’s historically silent female protagonist. In our methodological approach, we consider translation as a generative act within a broader artistic assemblage, incorporating artificial intelligence (AI)-generated images derived from the translated texts. These visuals, created with minimal textual prompts, offer a ‘post-human’ reflection on our hybrid nineteenth-century/twenty-first-century intervention, illuminating both the creative potential and the inherent biases of AI-generated art. Through an iterative process of artistic experimentation, pedagogical engagement with students at the mdw — University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna — and comparative analysis of contemporary Dichterliebe adaptations, we examine the strengths, limitations, and ethical considerations of translation as artistic research. Ultimately, we argue that translation — understood both linguistically and as creative transformation — can enhance access to art song’s multiple communicative layers (music, text, subtext), expanding its interpretative possibilities. By embracing a translational methodology, we advocate for a shift away from rigid notions of fidelity to historical works and toward a more dynamic, pluralistic engagement with musical tradition, informed by feminist, posthumanist, and experimental artistic perspectives. By situating The Poet’s Love(r) within a broader assemblage of interpretations — drawing on Paulo de Assis’s concept of musical works as decentralized, evolving entities — the project challenges traditional notions of fidelity and authorship in art song. It argues for translation as a vital creative practice that expands accessibility, deepens emotional resonance, and enriches the afterlife of canonical works. Download Accessible PDF