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.

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Sensing Making Senses (2024) Delphine Chapuis Schmitz
This exposition retraces the practice sharing session we, Delphine Chapuis Schmitz and Ines Marita Schaerer, conducted during Convocation II at Zentrum Fokus Foschung in Vienna. The practice addresses the following questions: how to practice languaging from sensory encounters? how to unfold sense(s) from sensing and aside from pre-given meanings? The shared exploration unfolded as an iterative process alternating a somatic practice with writing sequences in individual and collective constellations.
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Drawing Across x Along x Between x University Borders (2024) DRAWinU
CONFERENCE, UNIVERSITY OF PORTO. October 16, 17, 18th, 2024 :: Drawing Across :: Along :: Between University Borders considers the epistemological and transformative potential of drawing research to connect divergent areas in the university today. The conference focuses on drawing-based collaborations between art, science and society to tackle artistic, educational and societal challenges. We invite artists, scientists, educators, students, university policymakers and persons interested in inter-transdisciplinary practices across academia, research, and society to contribute and join the discussion in three possible directions: ACROSS - In what ways are drawing practitioners challenging the disciplinary strictures that often constrain thinking and acting across divergent areas in the university? ALONG - How can drawing activities be an ally of STEM education in the university, and how can STEM practices be an ally of drawing education? BETWEEN - How can drawing-based practices and STEM disciplines collaborate to address the urgency of societal challenges?
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SIG 8: Facilitating (2024) Adelheid Mers, Marija Griniuk
The SIG Facilitating took shape at the 2023 SAR Conference in Trondheim, after observing over an extended time how frequently artists, artistic researchers and even policy makers refer to facilitation when describing interactions with audiences, communities and research partners. Finding ways to examine such facilitating processes is crucial to the work under way. We know that facilitating practices exist widely in interactive and community based art, and in theater and the performing arts, for example using games, props and improvisation. There are intersections with pedagogy and professional facilitation and coaching, with at least the latter understood as prizing outcomes over processes. The SIG Facilitating asks: What does it mean to facilitate as part of artistic research? Why is this focus emerging now? How are we drawing on a greater web? Organized by Marija Griniuk, Postdoctoral researcher at Vilnius Academy of Arts, and director at Sami Center for Contemporary Art in Norway; Janne-Camilla Lyster, Associate Professor, Oslo National Academy of the Arts; and Adelheid Mers, Professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (coordinator). Contact: sigfacilitating@gmail.com
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(Back)ground Noise. A multimodal Ethnography of Loudspeakers in a Roma Neighbourhood (2024) Jonathan LARCHER
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.
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How to Fail a Field Recording. An Ethnomusicologist’s Perspective (2024) Victor A. Stoichita
This paper reflects on the relation between “field” and “recording” in listening to “field recordings.” It is rooted in the author’s experience as a student and, subsequently, a researcher in the anthropology of music. The paper strives to map the gap between academic and artistic conceptions of field recording by asking whether and how field recordings can be failed. The author’s own experience with the genre is indeed one of frequent disenchantment. The paper identifies different meanings of field, discusses how recordings are supposed to make those fields available to the listener, and asks whether in field recording “music” and “soundscapes” should be treated as different kinds of objects.
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Introduction: Exploring the Phenomenon of Sonic Waste in Anthropology (2024) Heikki Wilenius, Jonathan LARCHER
The introduction to this special issue of The Journal of Sonic Studies addresses the concept of sonic waste in anthropological research. Stemming from a laboratory session titled "Rubbish, Noise, Experimentations: New Afterlives of Field Recordings" at the 2020 European Association of Social Anthropologists conference, this collection reconsiders ethnographic recordings traditionally categorized as noise or errors. The text sets the stage for the ensuing contributions that critically engage with discarded audio materials, challenging the long-standing emphasis on clarity and precision in field recordings. This introduction explores the notion of “ethnographic rubbish” – recordings that fall outside the ethnographer's initial analytical framework – and positions this rubbish as worthy of scholarly attention. It argues for the inclusion of these “noisy” artifacts in the broader ethnographic narrative, suggesting that they can offer unique insights into the affective and infrastructural aspects of the researched environments. By foregrounding the materiality of sound and advocating for a multimodal ethnographic approach, this introduction invites a reassessment of what constitutes valuable data.
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