Research Catalogue

In our exploration of the spatiality of language and, specifically, the activation of the site where writing "makes" rather than takes place, we propose a multilayered experience of the book as an object, as well as a geometrical, topological, and especially performative space, which we understand as an "ecology of the book". Extending this practice beyond the book's margins, yet simultaneously embedding it within the material and technical affordances of the book’s medial articulations, we evoke a "new" ecology—one unfolding alongside the interaction-landscape and its actual and invented inhabitants, as well as the techniques of its production. Texts, drawings, figures, figurations, methods, and both human and non-human authors weave together the heterogeneous texture of the book’s "new" ecology. In our monographs, "Fauna. Language Arts and the New Order of Imaginary Animals" (2018), "Flora. Language Arts in the Age of Information" (2020), and "Fiction Fiction. Language Arts and the Practice of Spatial Storytelling" (2023, De Gruyter/Edition Angewandte), we explore and map the territory of language arts. This approach manifests, on the one hand, through the transgression of traditional scientific methodologies and a shift in models—from thinking-of-the-other toward thinking-with-the-other, and on the other hand, through the agency of our eponymous characters, Fauna and Flora, who not only title our books but also act as conceptual operators—figures that navigate, perform, and activate the very spaces our texts explore. Applying Michel Serres' methodology of thinking by inventing personae, these characters move within and percolate through the margins of text (written, figural) and space (concrete, fictional), reconfiguring the notion of authorship and placing literary texts and digital drawings within the frame(less) collective of more-than-human and more-than-organic actants.

This conference will explore how emerging technologies—especially generative AI and blockchain—reimagine the current notions of creative agency. Conveners: Adam Łukawski, Martin Zeilinger Artificial intelligence (AI), with its learning algorithms operating at scale, can mimic human creative agency, and blockchain technologies, through smart contracts, can augment works of art with more or less autonomous behaviours that correspond to the agency of human participants in socio-economic interactions. While such developments can destabilise traditional notions of ownership, provenance, and agency in musical practices, they can also empower artists. Those working creatively with sound and music are today increasingly becoming system-builders and curators of musical ecosystems, turning their focus from the creation of singular, standalone musical works (in any traditional sense of the term) to the design of systems capable of generating artworks. This suggests an evolving role of music-producing systems today: from fixed intellectual constructs and creative expressions to dynamic, more-than-human technological networks that not only actively participate in the production of artworks with increasing levels of agency, but which can themselves be considered as artworks that constitute generative, expressive assemblages. This shift is further emphasised in distributed contexts, where varying levels of automation blur the boundaries between human and non-human contributions, creating environments where agency is negotiated and shared across diverse actants.

This exposition is a documentary project on the artistic research project Neither Fish nor Fowl. The research project consists of theater making, film making, workshops, performances and writing, and explores the wondrous worlds of becoming in theatre for early years. Together with my theater company Teater Fot, I have been investigating the significance of affect as philosophical, emotional, and material inspiration in the creative process, and in relation to young children in Theater for Early Years. Neither Fish nor Fowl was conducted as a performance project from April 2017 to March 2020. During this period, the research process was documented in RC, presenting methods, writings, and reflections along the way. The pre-production performance (for babies 0-2) was shown at the festival Olavsfestdagene in Trondheim, Norway, summer 2017 and at Trondheim Kunsthall autumn 2017. The full production, Begynnelser (for 3-5 years), was presented in april 2018 in co-production with the venue Teaterhuset Avant Garden in Trondheim. Baby Becomings (0-2 years), was presented at festivals and for kindergartens in Trondheim autumn 2018, and the final version Himmel & Hav / Sky & Sea was presented at Rosendal Teater in in March 2020, touring kindergartens for one week. Animalium (2019) was a a kind of spin-off with film making, workshops, visiting exhibition spaces and eventually article writing with an exposition in VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research #2 on the theme Estrangement. In 2020-22 Animalium has become a new research project, looking at post humanist approaches to different sites such as kindergarten spaces, libraries and art exhibition spaces. We are developing new performance strategies with deepening our improvisational and listening skills into a more-than-human sympoietic intra-playfulness. Trying to perform these concepts, we might understand more of what they actually mean to our artistic practice.

This video essay discusses how contemporary artists might directly address some of the philosophical and political challenges of a material approach to instrumentality through creative practice. I present and discuss the practical approaches taken by musicians who create and collaborate with instruments as a central part of their work: Khabat Abas and Sam Underwood. In examining their creative practice both creating and working with musical instruments, I examine how these artists navigate the agential and material aspects of the instruments and systems they create, in parallel with the conceptual ideas that they bring to and derive from such systems.

Andy Birtwistle’s introduction to this special issue addresses the question "what is sonic materiality?" by examining how both "new" and "old" materialisms offer productive frameworks for conceptualizing sound's material dimensions. Drawing on work by Cox, Voegelin, and Cobussen, alongside critiques from Goh, Thompson, and Campbell, the article proposes understanding sound's materiality through texture, temporal flow, and spatiality. By engaging with Structural/Materialist film theory and creative sonic practices, Birtwistle discusses how materiality intersects with aesthetics, agency, and ethics in sound. The introduction argues that exploring sonic materiality opens new avenues for understanding sound across environmental soundscapes, artistic practices, and cultural contexts.

Is the reality perceived by someone with dementia less real than our own? Can photography give authority to this alternate reality? This research, sparked by my newfound relationship with my dementia-affected grandfather Raymond, investigates the family album - often perceived as an unquestionable document - in order to uncover its ambiguities and to question photography in itself as the most trustful record of reality. The inaccuracy of a medium that aims for objectiveness and is perceived as the bearer of truth, leads me to focus on three different ways of approaching the family archive (collection, editing and manipulation) and the relationship between mortality and memory. By using a mix of photography and photogrammetry, Ray's distorted memories - as he recounted them during his illness - became new images in order to materialise his present parallel truth. Alongside this dreamlike everyday, what has survived of Ray's past is contained in a briefcase: 254 photographs that have been transformed into postcards, travelling keepsakes, ready to be sent. If photography is in itself unreliable, why should the reality of a person who has lost his memory be any less real than our own?