Research Catalogue

The context of generative processes encapsulates relevant data that influence the behavior of an algorithm including mental domains and 'internal' dimensions of a particular context such as goals and decision making. Of creative importance is how an algorithmic process reacts to the influence of its environment, the enclosing conditions from which it emerges. Given a clearly defined set of resources, a variety of processes can operate within the boundaries imposed by a certain context. Such a shared space can be seen as a composable structure, a space where both composition and generative activity take place. Contributing to the evolving properties of a certain situation, the persistence of state means that an environment behaves according to the previous activity that has occurred within it. Opposed to an amnesic situation, a persistent environment can resume previous developments, adapt to long-term interactions and evolve over time. Based on persistence and gradual change, the temporal unfolding of generative processes has an important impact on the becoming of compositional algorithms and the sound material they create.

Beröringspunkterna mellan språk och musik har intresserat många genom historien och i denna exposition står sambanden mellan muntligt berättande på dialekt och musikalisk interpretation samt komposition stå i fokus. Ann Elkjär är flöjtist och doktorand i musikalisk gestaltning, och i doktorandprojektet utforskas en nyfikenhet på muntligt berättande: Vilka musikaliska element går att hitta i muntligt, dialektalt, berättande och hur kan de omformas till kompositoriska och interpretatoriska redskap? Frågorna utforskas i ett samarbete med tonsättaren Ida Lundén, och expositionen bygger på en analys av videodokumentation av den kollaborativa kompositionsprocessen. Arkivinspelningar av värmländskt berättande utgör ett centralt material, där fragment av äldre berättares röster processas och spelas upp med rullbandspelare i dialog med soloflöjtstämman. Genom rullbandspelarna ges möjligheter att skapa loopar som även återspeglas i flöjtstämman, och på detta vis utforskar verket hur element i muntligt berättande kan omformas till musikaliskt material. English: The intersections between language and music have long intrigued scholars, and this exposition centers on the relationship between oral storytelling in dialect and musical interpretation. Ann Elkjär, flautist and PhD student in musical performance, explores the reflective spaces that emerge in the interstice between language and music. The research questions guiding the PhD project are: What musical elements can be identified in oral storytelling in dialect, and how can these be transformed into compositional and interpretative tools? To investigate these questions, Ann Elkjär collaborates with several composers. This exposition presents the collaborative compositional process between Elkjär and composer Ida Lundén. Archival recordings of storytelling in the Värmland dialect serve as a central material, where fragments of an elderly narrator’s voice are processed and played back via reel-to-reel tape recorders in dialogue with the solo flute part. The use of tape recorders enables the creation of loops, which are mirrored in the flute part, thereby exploring how elements of oral storytelling can be transformed into musical material.

Exploring methods of connecting thinking to space and embodiment in a research that looks at the connection between mental images, language and the body through felt experience.

Abstract This exposition investigates musically framed silence by extracting and analyzing auditory data and proposing new analytical strategies to deepen engagement with silence as a compositional element. It reontologizes ambient sound as capable of bearing musical and narrative significance. The study centres on Cageance (accessible at https://cageance.webflow.io)¹, the author’s web-based international collaboration extending John Cage’s 4′33″, exploring how chance-generated environmental sound may function ecologically, musically, and narratively. Using a Cageance performance recorded in Portugal as a case study, the research applies a multimodal analytical framework combining Schaferian soundscape theory, conventional musical analysis (including Schenkerian reduction), and dramatic analysis. Visual mapping methods classify sounds into soundmarks, signals, keynotes, and ecological categories (biophony, geophony, anthrophony), while revealing emergent musical and dramaturgical properties within the soundscape. The study proposes new notational and analytical approaches for non-composed sound, positioning silence not as absence, but as a generative site for compositional and narrative inquiry. These findings contribute to ongoing discourse in sound studies, ecological musicology, and practice-as-research methodologies. ¹ The Cageance platform functions best on tablet or desktop devices; headphones are recommended.

By combining text and three video essays, this contribution presents a multimodal ethnography of loudspeakers in the Roma neighborhood of a Romanian village. It is based on video recordings, which were left out of the analysis and editing of my documentary films because of sound distortion. Revisiting my fieldnotes and the “ethnographic rubbish,” here I establish a critical study of my initial position – for 15 years I wasn’t paying attention to loudspeakers as an object of study in their own right – and I argue how these sounds have become auditory markers of the neighborhood since, at least, the beginning of the 2000s. The article thereby contributes to the fields of both anthropology and sound studies. It shows how the use of loudspeakers is made up of rivalry, interference, fame, fraternity, and familism. Moreover, the analysis shows how the lines between public and private spaces, and between oblique listening and noise cancellation are continually reconfigured in a community obsessed with mutual acquaintance.

This article provides an overview and analysis of transformations of the Belarusian political soundscape. Based on the author’s archive of audio recordings made in Minsk and other Belarusian cities in 2016-2023, the article analyzes how protesters and the authorities used voices, noises, and music during the major political protests of recent years. The field recordings became the starting points for a further discussion on the multifaceted role of sound, music, and silence in contesting for urban and political space in Belarus. The “loudest” period in the country’s recent history is then put in a wider context of studying the clashing ideologies of the authoritarian regime and the democratic, pro-independence movement. The study of audio materials is accompanied by participant observations, interviews, and an extensive analysis of Belarusian and international media that reveal various sonic practices used by the country’s and its critics. The primary goal of this article is to address the gaps in studies of the contemporary Belarusian political soundscape and independent music scenes.