Research Catalogue

The publication Paths of artistic research is a collection of interviews with artistic researchers - Andrea Buršová, assistant professor at the Nika Brettschneiderová Dramatic Acting Department, Faculty of Drama, JAMU, Jiří Honzírek, director, manager of the Feste Theatre and PhD student at the Theatre Faculty, JAMU, Barbora Klímová, head of the Studio of Environmental Design at the FFA BUT, Lenka Klodová, head of the Studio of Body Design at the FFA BUT, Lucia Repašská, researcher at the Cabinet for Theatre and Drama Research, Theatre Faculty, JAMU, Hana Slavíková, head of the Studio of Radio and Television Dramaturgy and Scriptwriting, Theatre Faculty, JAMU, Pavel Sterec, artist and former head of the Intermedia Studio at the FFA, BUT, and Lenka Veselá, researcher at the Department of Theory and History of Art at the FFA, BUT and PhD student at the FFA, BUT. These are artists who have been associated with art colleges in Brno, specifically with the Faculty of Fine Arts of the BUT and the Theatre Faculty of the JAMU. Through interviews with the artists, the reader will learn under what circumstances they began to engage in artistic research, how they perceive it, what meanings they attribute to it and the purpose it serves for them. The selected group of artists is very diverse and their creative and research strategies are different, as are the purposes for which they use artistic research. The publication does not aim to provide an exhaustive overview of the methods used in artistic research, but it does aim to show that there are many approaches to artistic research and to present the paths that have brought particular artists to artistic research.

The PD Arts + Creative Symposium takes place at LocHal in Tilburg (NL) on 20 June 2025. This year’s symposium will highlight the programme’s multidisciplinary character by zooming in on the diverse fields of practice that its researchers operate in, connect to, and impact. It asks where, how, and with whom does the PD-research resonate? And what is the contribution of artistic and creative research to societal challenges?

Following on from my PhD research, Deeper Canine Topographies continues to explore human-canine cartographies, rhythms, repetitions,micro geographies and relational choreographies towards a proposal for future research.

Two of the oldest manuscripts containing trumpet music lie in the Royal Danish Library and were both written in Denmark around the year 1600. They contain hundreds of fanfare-like melodies with little explanation as to how, why, or where they should be played. Written by trumpeters with limited musical education, the manuscripts present a unique challenge in deciphering distinct and personal notation styles. The aim of this research is to shed a new light on the so-called Thomsen and Lübeck manuscripts by stepping into the shoes of the trumpeters of the late renaissance and early baroque. The court of Christian IV (1577-1648), King of Denmark and Norway, was one of the most influential courts of early 17th century Europe and employed a respectable number of at least 123 trumpeters throughout Christian’s 60 year reign. By examining the role and duty of those trumpeters, as well as the culture around trumpet playing in the 16th and 17th centuries we gain a new insight into the festive, vigorous, and loud music of the royal courts. Improvisation plays a big part in interpreting the Danish manuscripts. By applying improvisation techniques described by Italian and German trumpeters in the 17th century, as well as considering the capabilities and limitations of historical instruments, new life is brought to fanfares which might appear monotonous and repetitive at first glance.

Finding an audience we can relate to, or bringing our social circle into our audience is still a struggle for most younger composers. With the Western classical opera audiences ageing and the attempts to bring younger audiences into opera houses and concert halls, we need to ask ourselves as composers who we write for, and how we reach these people. My opera Serenoid which had its premiere in September 2024 at Tête-à-Tête Festival in London came out of a niche space of queer and disabled geek culture in creative online fandom communities that I have been part of since I was a teenager. These groups are hardly engaged with classical music as a genre, their creative focus is on visual art and writing, mostly around an established pop-culture franchise, in this case Star Trek. Often decried as cringy, the spaces in which they move have been melting pots for many people outside of the narrow representation of mainstream media in search for community and belonging since the arrival of the internet. The decision to take Serenoid as a story from an obscure niche space on the internet to the opera stage attempts to speak to its members and therefore open the doors my own community to become part of the “opera audience”. My research describes the process and outcomes of this experiment and hopes to prove that as classical composers we can speak to younger and diverse audiences by openly and authentically being part of the group we write for.

Just as variety and change are the core principles of nature itself, they seem to be essential for music, too. This research examines doubles in the repertoire for flute between 1700–1750 as a specific type of variation. Originating as a vocal tradition of embellishing the second verses of airs de cour, the tradition continued in instrumental music by creating doubles mostly for songs and dance forms, such as Menuet, Gavotte or Sarabande and remained popular until it gradually evolved into the variation form in the second half of the 18th century. The role of the flute in this repertoire is unique thanks to the vogue of the airs the cour among flautists and composers for flute. The presented exposition traces the development of doubles in the flute repertoire of the first half of the 18th century. Highlighting the variety of unique compositional styles, the research distinguishes between three typological categories of doubles: diminutive, ornamental, and those presented in sets of variations, typical of a Galant sonata. The examination and analysis of a representative number of doubles led me to extract elements and patterns, typical for each category, and, in turn, this thorough study of the doubles allowed me to play them with a better understanding. Finally, the synthesis of both the theoretical and empirical approaches provided enough information and inspiration to compose doubles for other musical pieces from the same period. These newly composed doubles are included in the collection titled L’Art de doubler, attached to the exposition.