Research Catalogue

Performance Collector of Dreams Finding a goldfish to tell the wish Porto, Fonte dos Aliados – Public space 14.06.2025 18:30-19:00 Performance duration: 30 minutes Objects: gold tape, 10 gold ballons Photography: Camilla Formiconi

GOON In 2023, at the age of 28, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. This life-altering event led me to take a closer look at my sexual desire, question my relationship with my genitals, and rethink how I perceive my gender identity. Today, as I navigate a healing period, I seek to explore sensuality as a space of resistance and emancipation. GOON is an attempt to free myself from the shame surrounding (my) queer sexualities. GOON is a research performance inviting the audience to look up close at the way they see and seek pleasure. With a choreographic approach, I am researching queer eroticism as a place of joy. Ignoring the constraints of sexual norms, this exploration focuses on shaping a body that is both playful and desired, despite its apparent dirtiness.

This exposition reflects on how machine learning can be integrated with algorithmic composition and live coding to expand digital music creation. The research examines how ML-driven sound analysis, training data, and interactive models reshape compositional workflows. By viewing machine learning as an interpretative and generative process rather than a mere tool, this project challenges conventional boundaries between data gathering, system design, and artistic practice. The discussion is framed through experimental approaches that merge sound synthesis, live coding, and model training, questioning how algorithmic systems can act as both agents of composition and reflective mirrors of musical intention. Through the interplay of structured data, generative models, and exploratory workflows, the study situates machine learning within a broader conversation about creativity, computation, and the evolving role of the composer-programmer.

This short essay opens ArteActa’s issue AI (and) Art: Poetics of Prompting by proposing to understand generative algorithms as fundamentally metabolic: a dynamic entanglement of data, energy, affect, attention, and ecology. It argues that, given their ubiquity, generative materials can no longer be understood primarily as representations or discrete outputs. Instead, they function as metabolic processes that devour cultural material, extract planetary resources, and reshape perception below the threshold of consciousness. Prompting itself is always an act of transformation rather than merely a symbolic command, and intentional artistic experiments represent only a fraction of a larger infrastructure. The essay thus advocates for a multiscalar understanding of generative media: every prompt is already an ecosystem; every image is already a node in a planetary metabolism.

The fantasy of the algorithm and, by extension, artificial intelligence imagines that each performs by executing an operational task. Yet, based on its inherent computational structure, the digital performance fails to live up to its instrumental promise. This failure foregrounds an occasion for artistic intervention. “The Wager of the Algorithm: Towards a Performatic Gesture” presents a theoretical statement (illustrated via artwork by the author) in which the overall exposition underscores a dialectic within instrumental reason itself. The “prompt” names are a shorthand for the fulcrum of this problematic.

Cultivating a sense of ownership in beginner music students is important for fostering engagement and self-confidence in their educational journey. This study explores how integrating creative activities into a beginner clarinet curriculum promotes ownership among students aged 9–11. Focusing on three specific activities tested in multiple case studies, the research investigates students' relation with their musical development. Findings reveal that using creative activities as part of a personalized, student-centered teaching approach enhances students' motivation and engagement, ultimately fostering a stronger sense of ownership in their learning experiences. The study also offers practical insights for music educators seeking to creatively teach instrumental skills while creating a meaningful musical experience for young clarinetists.