Research Catalogue

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

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.

”Vi använder ord för att nå varandra och för att förstå oss själva och världen. Orden är alltid kroppsligt förankrade och sammanbundna med tanken och viljan”, förklarade gumman. ”Men vad har det med mitt gestaltande att göra?” suckade skådespelaren. ”Allt”, svarade gumman och log. ”När människokunskap länkas till skådespelarkonsten blir den både konkret och magisk. Du förstår, kroppsliga kunskaper om språkhantering är mycket viktiga att ha med sig i det gestaltande ögonblicket. Det räcker inte att analysera den dramatiska texten eller att göra medvetna val. Det finns något i oss som är större, något som vi ska vara rädda om.” ”Vad ska jag vara rädd om?” ”Du ska vara rädd om dig själv. Om ditt konstnärskap. Om din röst”, svarade gumman utan att tveka. Vad är det som sker i övergången från skriftlig till muntlig gestaltning? Orden som i det vardagliga samtalet flödar fram i förbindelse med avsikten och känslan, förlorar under högläsning både sin självklarhet och spänst. Istället för att finna övningar som skyler över det som går förlorat, tycks det mig mer intressant och verksamt att försöka förstå vad som sker. Och hur det kroppsligt intuitiva skulle kunna tas tillvara. Min forskning har utmynnat i en saga. Sagan om skådespelaren som återfann sin röst. Om konsten att gestalta med röst och tal.

Calling Songs is a research into the possibilities of using the sounds created by insect and frog choirs in a musical composition/soundscape. An 8-channel speaker system was developed for this purpose, able to stand outside conditions and fitting into a natural environment. The voices of crickets and frogs have characteristics that make them sound almost electronic and therefore blend surprisingly well with the sounds that the muiscians of Zwerm can produce using effectpedals, loop-feedback, modular synthesizers and occasionally a guitar. The listener is invited to question the idea of culture versus nature. For the performers, the central question is how to give non-human life a voice in our artistic practice. Calling Songs is a collaboration between Johannes Westendorp, Zwerm and Pieter Verhees

This exposition is part of the series The Sonic Atelier – Conversations with Contemporary Composers and Producers, dedicated to exploring the evolving role of the composer in the twenty-first century. Through a Q&A format, the project investigates how contemporary creators inhabit hybrid identities at the intersection of composition, production, performance, and technology. This interview features Iosonouncane (Jacopo Incani), who reflects on the influences that shaped his formation, the balance between composition, production, and mixing, and the challenges of navigating today’s algorithm-driven music industry. He also discusses his approach to film scoring, the role of spatialization as a compositional parameter, and his views on new technologies such as artificial intelligence and immersive formats. His insights highlight the tensions between experimentation and market logic, as well as the need to preserve complexity and diversity as essential values in contemporary music-making.