Research Catalogue

A cross disciplinary artistic research project that departs from, and investigates several encounters and alignments between Contemporary Art and Archaeology. Its primary goal is to create a broad selection of autonomous and collaborative artistic, poetic and scientific expressions and responses to Prehistoric Art and its contemporary images. It will seek to stimulate a deeper understanding of contemporary and prehistoric artistic expression and the contemporary and prehistoric human condition. The participating artists and archaeologists will create autonomous projects, but also interact with each other in workshops, seminars and collaborative artistic projects. The secondary goal of Matter, Gesture and Soul is to establish an international cross disciplinary research network at the University of Bergen and strengthen the expertise in cross disciplinary artistic and scientific work with artistic research as the driving force. The project is financed by DIKU and UiB and supported by Global Challenges (UiB)

How can one learn to improvise convincingly within the context of the nineteenth-century piano repertoire? And why is it important to improvise on this repertoire in the twenty-first century? Taking the music of Robert Schumann (1810−56) as a departure point, Playing Schumann Again for the First Time proposes an answer to these questions through methods towards a pianistic practice that is driven by experimentation and strives to continually find more layers where improvisation can take place, both in sounding musical practice and in notation. These practice-based methods are contextualized by a discussion of the presence of improvisation in Western classical musical practice in the nineteenth century. They are then substantiated by an argument to use improvisation as a tool for rethinking the current performance practice of nineteenth-century music. Improvisation itself and the concepts driving this term will also be addressed: improvisation in musical performance will be described as a process guided by a feedback loop between mimesis and morphosis with which the practitioner engages using his or her individual cognitive and embodied approach to listening, forgetting, and conceptualizing; the results of which bear his or her own sonic signature. The knowledge gained in this project lies within the realm of what will be described as improvisation as practice, a category of improvisational behavior that circumvents the need to be presented as art and is rather intended for the development of one’s own music-making.

PRIOR is a functional experimental installation that explores the relationship between the sensory apparatus and spatial orientation. The subject of investigation is the link between the prediction model and the sensory input of the visual apparatus. By the method of disruption of the visual apparatus, the sequence of the mechanism responsible for spatial orientation is disentangled.

The artistic research project I HAVE THE MOON was an experimental group activity or 'band retreat' for five composer-performers resulting in a public performance in the aDevantgarde Festival, 2019, in Munich. Research was conducted around a central research question stated verbally at the outset of the project: how can aesthetic innovations of contemporary classical music be made accessible to audiences without specialist education or background via communicative techniques of other music genres? After a substantial verbal discussion and sessions of musical jamming, each member created an artistic response to the research question, in the form of a composition or comprovisation, which the group then premiered in the aDevantgarde Festival. The results of the discussion, artistic works and final performance (by means of a video documentation) were then analysed by the project leader and presented in this article. The artistic research position is defined a priori through the research question, during the artistic process in the form of note-taking and multimedial documentation, and a posteriori through a (novel) 'Workflow-Tool-Application Analysis' (WTAA). Together, a method of 'lingocentric intellectual scaffolding' on the emobided knowledge inside the creative process is proposed. Insofar as this embodied knowledge can be seen as a 'field' to be researched, the methodology is built on collaborative autoethnography, 'auto-', since the project leader took part in the artistic process, guiding it from within.

This PhD project is a study in and through filmic conversations. The project addresses the role of conversation in philosophy education. While philosophy often is manifested in individually written form, this is a study of how filmic conversation can act as philosophical expression, mainly based on the film "Samtal om samtal" which is the principal material of this PhD project. The film begins by addressing the manner of which we speak to one another in a seminar; and by extension how that manner decides which philosophy is at all made possible: Who is speaking and who is listening? Whose experiences count and whose ideas are welcome? Yet, conversation is not only of interest as practice but also as expression. Sometimes something is said through/as conversation that could not have been expressed in any other form. What would happen if conversation, as a communal way of saying things, would constitute a form of philosophical expression in its own right, on par with the individually written text? What form would such an expression be allowed to take? Could philosophy be expressed through the medium of film? In and through the filmic conversation of this study, these queries also lead on to issues of representation and responsibility: What signifies the practice of making a film about or with someone? How are those involved in a film project affected, and how can the film act (in the world) independently? How could responsibility be understood in the process of making a film and regarding the final result? In addition to "Samtal om samtal", the text "Eftertext" is submitted. The text further explores the previously mentioned questions, but adds another layer in commenting on the filmic work of "Samtal om samtal". "Eftertext" also refers to the films "Ett jag som säger vi" and "Rehearsals", as well as the document "Transkription". These works are included as appendices, forming sub studies in the process of making "Samtal om samtal".

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