Research Catalogue

In this autoethnographic arts-based research, I return to the gift of music in my life and use it as the ultimate form of expression. I explore the process of navigating my own transgenerational trauma through composing and working with musicians from different musical and cultural backgrounds. Something like home explores the effect of finding common ground of love and compassion between my family members, especially those who have been navigating the traumas of war. I collected stories, memories, and impressions from my family’s childhood, and composed music that is inspired by them. In the first sections I discuss some concepts related to the transmittion of war trauma , and Bowen’s family system theory. Moreover, I relate to reasearches and projects that have been concerned with trauma art therapy and dealing with cultural trauma through music. As well as showing examples of composers who have been working with similar processes. In this project, I unfold my compositional process, and I present some possibilities of dealing with harmonizing traditional Arabic music, using partials from the harmonic series. I also share my process of collaborating with a lyric writer and a videographer who have helped me to bring the stories to life. Throughout the process I discovered that engaging with the stories unlocked new artistic outcomes and some unexpected artistic practices, expressions and results. Another important outcome of this project was the need for coming up with approaches that were used for transcultural music making and engaging the musicians with the stories but making sure to leave space for their own artistic identities to come across and shine. In the near future, I am hoping to use this project as a basis of my doctoral research project which will focus on memory expression through music by working with the diverse citizines of the finnish community.

This exposition gathers all the essential information needed to get started with the Research Catalogue (RC) platform at the Iceland University of the Arts (IUA). It offers a clear overview of how to create a profile, start an exposition, and navigate the basic functions of the platform. The goal is to provide staff with a central reference point for working with RC in the context of artistic research and institutional use.

This artistic research exposition serves as a virtual presentation of the sound art installation, 'Welcome Children (Stay Small)', on view at 'The WaveCave: An Experimental Sound Space' at California Institute of the Arts within the Herb Alpert School of Music from September 14 - 20, 2025. Works: Welcome Children Color video with sound 14 minutes 19 seconds (loop) 2025 Stay Small Color video with sound 3 minutes (loop) 2025 Artist Statement: Welcome Children (Stay Small) is a multimedia installation exploring a series of manipulated Google Search images of diverse children, which are juxtaposed with moving images of a children’s night lamp. The images are concurrent with drones and reverberated audio samples, which sonically collide. Through the symbolism that sound and image provide, this installation highlights the inevitable reality of children losing their innocence in an imperfect world and the longing of so many of us to protect them from the harm of life and adulthood. Welcome Children (Stay Small) was inspired by the song “Stay Small” by former North American post-rock band, The Receiving End of Sirens, and the New Testament theological essay, “Jesus Loves the Little Children: A Theological Reading of Mark 9:14-29 for Children with Serious Illnesses or Disabilities and Their Caregivers”, written by Dr. Melanie Howard. It is important to note that from 2004 - 2018, I worked with children as a music teacher and Christian educator. I dedicate Welcome Children (Stay Small) to those who also work with children and seek to help them become resilient in the face of life’s pain and ambiguities.

This article is emulating fictional informal notes that the author would have taken during his research. The handwritten annotations of Marinus de Jong (1891-1984), and his artistic and pedagogical legacy, have formed an interesting case study within the Flemish Archive for Annotated Music (FAAM) at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp. The “making of” the documentary Imaginary Conversation with Marinus de Jong, recorded together with pianist Anna Alvizou, is presented in a playfully manner.

NY FUGE – visualisering af soundscapes refers to an area where artistic expression in the form of hand drawing evolves, questions itself, changes and renews itself. The project is an exploration of the relationship between sound and image at the center of artistic expression. - Questioning how knowledge arises, is used, reused and changes in unknown contexts. I work with graphic translation of acoustic areas via hand drawing in two selected sound- scapes with Hi-Fi and Lo-Fi contrasting qualities in a remote and an urban soundscape. Parallel to the artistic development, I explore underlying / inherent processes of artistic work in my case. I am questioning the way in which the present and past experience interact and what role intuition, imagination, reflection-in-action and, not least, the knowledge of the body play in the artistic space of action. I am focusing on the active act in the present moment, where I draw, where my artistic expression takes shape and manifests itself. In the project, I seek to move closer to an understanding of how artistic knowledge is developed during creative work processes.

This page gives a first impression of the content, functionality and design of the upcoming online publication ‘Sonic Inspiration Guide’. The guide will be published in Dutch in October 2025 and in English shortly after to make it available to an international audience.