Research Catalogue

ARTikulationen 2022 - Subjective/Intersubjective - is an artistic research event conceived and organised by the Doctoral School for Artistic Research (KWDS) of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG). It takes place at Theater im Palais, Graz, 05–08 October 2022. ARTikulationen interweaves in-depth artistic research presentations, a festival character (intermezzi-performances), and a mini-symposium on the topic of research journeys between artistic and scholarly or scientific practices. Topics range from current acoustic, electroacoustic, and computer composition, historically informed and contemporary performance, to improvisation and theatre.

What triggered me to start this research is the multiplicity of reality. How something is represented, how it actually is and then how we all perceive it in our very own way. In that sense reality doesn’t exist, only versions of it. The lack of awareness of this multiplicity affects a lot our lives; what we believe, what we take as granted and how he behave.Through this practice based research I am experimenting on how to create moments of surprise and realization for the spectator. I work with copies and representations, replicas as I like to call them. The Replicas can be made of different materials, can be virtual or very physical. Until now I used scale models, mirrors and projections but the list is endless; so are the different ways to use the replicas or the impact that they will have. The way that the replicas are introduced to the spectator and their interaction is also very crucial in my work and another field to research. The movement and the body play a significant role to this. The special relationship that we have with our body, the way that we perceive it and how the movement can reset these relations and affect how we experience things.

Textorium is an experiment in collective writing in/on/with public space initiated by Lena Séraphin, with artist-writers Emma Cocker, Andrea Coyotzi Borja, Cordula Daus and Vidha Saumya. Between 30 May – 4 June 2022, this group of artist-writers met in Vasa, Finland, coming together over a period of days to write in/on/from the Market Square. This exposition gathers scores, documents and artefacts generated through a specific time-bound process of collective writing in this singular public space.

This exposition details an experimental art/research endeavour pivoting on an improvised exploration of the broader North Nordic region. It accounts for a hybrid, maximalist, and materialist performance practice that draws on an unconditionally eclectic exploration of a particular geographic region and of certain (non)human related activities and mobilities encountered therein. The endeavour is contextualised with respect to trains of thought and empirical research methods in experimental arts, object oriented ontology, non-representational theory, techno-scientific culture, post-humanism, and improvised ethnography. It is shown to concern, inter alia, on-location audio/video recording, DIY making, (found) physical artefacts, interviews, data displays, prose, cooking, knitting, and landscape cinematography/photography. The particular methods at play are detailed and theoretical ramifications are outlined. It is accordingly claimed that a structural, procedural, and sensory hybridity of sorts may bring forth original and genuinely exploratory artistic manifestations that contribute (non quantifiable, nor discursive) ways of knowing the North Nordic region under scrutiny; ones that lie at the crux wherein poetic, enactive, epistemic and speculative tactics meet, mingle, and intertwine. This exposition also features an extensive pool of audiovisual material to aid detail the method and to support this claim.

This exposition examines the possibilities and problems of using the elements of ancient musical culture for producing new music. It contains eleven video clips and associated texts explaining my artistic research on the Karelian kantele improvisation of the 19th century and earlier, which the kantele players called "soittaa omaa mahtia" ("playing their own power"). The word "mahti" ("power") means inner strength and knowledge. In this article, I call this particular music inner power improvisation. In addition, the article includes two case studies that exemplify the use of tradition and its philosophy as tools in creativity education. I address the question of whether I can surpass the challenges of understanding a musical culture from a different time era and of an entirely different society than my own. Is it possible to receive an insider view through artistic research, by learning to make music according to the information found in the archives, historical texts, and folk music research? How do I perform responsible research and introduce my conclusions and musical interpretations when there is not enough reliable information about the original tradition?

"Piano music has come to an end and something quite different is coming. I sense it clearly: with the claviers made up to this time, there is nothing new to discover any more," declared Karlheinz Stockhausen in 1992. Truly, the piano, a brainchild of its era, has gradually been alienated by our epoch. Contemporary composers engage themselves less and less with the piano – particularly as a solo instrument. Though, we have to consider that a musical instrument is a musical chronicler with the structure, tuning system and performance techniques reflecting to certain extent the epochs it was created and employed in. Consequently, the main principles of music representative of every epoch lead to transformation of the instrument, its renewal, refinement, enrichment of performance techniques. Each epoch adapts the instrument to the principles of the corresponding musical thinking in order to make it capable of producing contemporary sound. Using our artistic imagination, we compare this situation to the Apocalypse, trying to find some ways of dealing with it. In this exposition we present some results of our experiments with the piano and its sound conducted within the artistic project "Has Piano Music Come to an End?". Methodology we employ is comparative and experimental. Analysis of piano music repertoire, its compositional and performance techniques and instrument's structure in various epochs led us to the reconsideration of the piano and inspired us to offer to you some new experimental options of its employment and modification, the latter resulting in a new instrument “ModEkAl”. Of course, no artistic research about music and a musical instrument could be conducted without making the research and its results public. Publicity is an inherent part of music which has to be performed and perceived in order to fully fulfill its purpose.