The Research Catalogue (RC) is a non-commercial, collaboration and publishing platform for artistic research provided by the
Society for Artistic Research. The RC is free to use for artists and
researchers. It
serves also as a backbone for teaching purposes, student assessment, peer review workflows and research funding administration. It strives to be
an open space for experimentation and exchange.
recent activities
Sonic Geographies of Hope: How can Song become an Act of Restoration for a Damaged Planet?
(2025)
Angela Valenzuela (Loica)
I dedicate this work to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s call for acts of restoration for our damaged planet. I choose song composition and performance as a way to find pathways for personal and collective restoration. Through the methods of artistic research I write Songs inspired by my experience of ecological grief, academic reading, interviews to song composers, and journaling. As a contribution from my work, I present a new compositional methodology, Sonic Geographies of Hope. This methodology calls for song composers to write songs grounded in personal and collective grief of our damaged planet. I suggest that this type of songs can become an act of restoration and create collective resonance for more hopeful ways of existing and experiencing the world. This methodology is heavily influenced by the work of A. Hazelwood and her methodology Geographies of Hope in Praxis. While it is inspired by it, it focuses mainly on emotional geographies. This work represents a starting point to explore Song methodologies to nurture immaterial geographies for concrete, structural ecological restoration. It is an exploration to find ways to restore yourself to continue to fight for the dignity of the places, more-than human life and people we love.
Sonic Fictioning: Podcasting as a Lure for Feeling
(2025)
Petra Klusmeyer
The audio essay Sonic Fictioning: Podcasting as a Lure for Feeling introduces the concept of sonic fictioning through Schizopodcast – a sonic artwork presented as a web application and later published on Research Catalogue: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1894089/2463127.
Schizopodcast: A Podcast is a Podcast is a Podcast builds on Deleuze-Guattari’s ontology of immanence, viewing nature as an autopoietic force. It frames sonic fictioning not merely as an abstraction but as a resonant dispositif, shaped by its physical, cultural, and political contexts. Rather than opposing lived experience in late capitalism, sonic fictioning enacts a speculative flight, a ‘lure for feeling’ in the Whiteheadian sense. Used as a verb, fictioning is a practice of fabulation that connects to the real through sound, challenging the opposition between fiction and reality, producing or altering worlds. Schizopodcast asks how one might live, and how sonic fictions affirm this question. It examines the philosophical and practical implications of sonic thinking in reflecting on perception, understanding, and loopholes.
The audio essay continues this exploration of sonic fictioning’s aesthetic and epistemological aspects as a lure-for-feeling. Though speculation may not reveal truths, it highlights fiction’s aesthetic value and its conveyance of corporeal knowledge.
recent publications
Petromusicality. On the Sonic Culture of (Plastic) Material and Beyond
(2025)
Paula Bracker, Karl Salzmann, Samo Zeichen
Petromusicality. On the Sonic Culture of (Plastic) Material and Beyond explores the fossil fuel-based history of music media, focusing on vinyl records and their environmental impact. This Audio Paper examines historical production processes, material consumption, and the resurgence of vinyl culture. Through artistic research projects and expert perspectives, it discusses the political and ethical dimensions of sound reproduction. By highlighting sustainable alternatives and exploring the connections between extraction, mass production, and materiality, the study encourages a deeper engagement with the physical aspects of sound and their global implications.
On the Sound Image and the Radical Plurality of the Audible
(2025)
Gabriel Paiuk
This essay postulates a novel notion of the sound image that – rather than conceiving it as an artefact, a visual surrogate or an exclusively mental entity – defines it as an instance of a process or an operation, unfolding within material circuits, technical infrastructures, and collective protocols. Based upon the image theory developed by Gilbert Simondon in his book Imagination and Invention, this notion enables an account of the variable nature of the audible in a post-anthropocentric context as intrinsic to the forms in which sensorial engagement takes places in singular material constellations.
Materiality as a Creative Practice of Musical Instruments: Makers’ Perspectives
(2025)
Lauren Redhead
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.