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 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