Research Catalogue

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.

Raschx is a series of mutational performances based upon two fundamental materials: Robert Schumann’s Kreisleriana op. 16 (1838), and Roland Barthes essays on the music of Schumann, particularly focusing on ‘Rasch’ (1979), a text exclusively dedicated to Schumann’s Kreisleriana. To these materials other components may be added for every single particular version: visual elements (pictures, videos), other texts, or further aural elements (recordings or live-electronics). The main goal is to generate an intricate network of aesthetic-epistemic cross-references, through which the listener has the freedom to focus on different layers of perception: be it on the music, on the texts being projected or read, on the images, or on the voices. Situated beyond ‘interpretation’, ‘hermeneutics’, and ‘aesthetics’ the series Raschx is part of a wider research on what might be labelled as experimental performance practices—practices that productively deviate from conventional (repetitive) performative strategies and that lend the audience to think during the performative moment, transforming familiar artistic objects into objects for thought.

This research project gathers a series of interviews with some of the closest collaborators of Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson (1969–2018). Conducted between 2022 and 2025, the conversations preserve first-hand testimonies of his creative process, collaborative methods, and unique sonic universe. Through the voices of Echo Collective (Neil Leiter & Margaret Hermant), Francesco Donadello, Viktor Orri Árnason, and Yair Elazar Glotman, the project explores themes such as orchestration, sound experimentation, electroacoustic practices, and the integration of music with film. The interviews have been edited and adapted from their original form in order to ensure clarity and contextual coherence, while remaining faithful to the collaborators’ perspectives. Taken together, these accounts shed light on Jóhannsson’s aesthetics and working philosophy, offering a multifaceted portrait of a composer whose legacy continues to influence contemporary music.

After a long-term effort with “the body as an instrument” with the spotlight and focus on acting I was interested in exploring how my experience and practical knowledge of the actors physical skills could be “borrowed” and “translated” in encounters with several artistic disciplines both within and outside the stage area. The body is present in all artistic activity that in some way relates to the story of man. But the thought of the body isn't necessarily the same as a bodily and embodied thought. This nuanced and problematized approach has resulted in the research project Bodily Observations - on the lookout for new physical skills that I conducted in 2013-2015.

This exposition contains documentation of the artistic result of Magnhild Øen Nordahls artistic research PhD project Unmaking Abstractions. The exposition also contains the artistic reflection for the same project. On the exposition's landing page the reader can access its different components by clicking different sides of the unfolded cube. The rotating cube in the upper right corner will bring the reader back to the landing page.