From Interpretation to Collaborative Creation - Reframing the Performer’s Autonomy in Mixed Music for Cello and Live-Electronics
(2026)
author(s): Pedro do Carmo
published in: Codarts
This research investigates the performer’s role and autonomy in the interpretation and creation of mixed music with live electronics. The project begins with a multi-layered study of the interpretive process of Près (1992) by Kaija Saariaho — from the technical and expressive demands of the cello part, to the development of sensitivity toward the electronic transformations, and the testing of different performative configurations — and evolves toward the co-creation of a new work, Wolves and Wires (2025), in collaboration with composer Marta Domingues. In this later phase, the performer actively experiments with the relationship between gesture, sound, and the expressive and technical requirements of the electronic system.
This artistic trajectory, developed across three research cycles, moves from interpretative inquiry to creative authorship. The first two cycles focus on the cellist’s practice strategies and technical awareness of real-time electronics, while the third introduces a collaborative process in which the performer contributes to the design of the electronic material, spatial configurations, and control systems.
A defining outcome of this process is the physical repositioning of the performer within the quadraphonic field. In contrast to Près, where the performer remains outside the spatial projection, this immersive setup enables full auditory feedback and real-time interaction with the electronics. Spatial integration becomes a condition for performative autonomy, dissolving the separation between acoustic gesture and electronic transformation and allowing the performer to act as a unified sonic agent.
The research reveals that autonomy in mixed music does not arise solely from technological control, but from a situated, embodied relationship with space, instrument, and system. These outcomes contribute to broader reflections on performer agency and offer concrete insights for practice, suggesting new models for collaborative and transdisciplinary creation in mixed music contexts.
Composing Composing Instruments
(2024)
author(s): Tijs Ham
published in: Research Catalogue
This exposition aims to provide insights into my artistic practice and research 'Tipping Points', working within the field of live electronics and focusing on the exploration of tipping points in chaotic processes. The activities associated with my practice are profoundly interdisciplinary and include designing and buildinginstruments, composing artistic works for these instruments, and performing with them. Each of these aspects are interlaced and equally important in the development of new artistic works. The preface details my process in the production of new artistic works. Then the text details my thoughts on the term comprovisation and how it informs my approaches to the development of my work. Then the focus shifts to describe how my use of chaotic processes turns instruments into actant technologies which has important consequences on both my performance practice and instrument design. These insights are then illustrated through reflections on my work Multiple Minds, concluding that the instrument itself is actively composing, while at the same time, the act of designing and building an instrument can be viewed as composing.
The Remixician and the Triaxis
(2024)
author(s): Kristian Isachsen
published in: University of Agder, Faculty of Fine Arts
An artistic research project exploring the art of live remixing through the lens of the music philosophical framework "The Remixician's Triaxis". The project resulted in live studio recordings with multi-camera video of my duo with Alessandra Bossa - Before Without.
The Hybrid Performance. Exploring the realm between DJ- and Live-sets
(2024)
author(s): Brita Urstad Toft
published in: University of Agder, Faculty of Fine Arts
A Master Project in Artistic Research at University of Agder. Through artistic practice and reflection, I discuss my experience of developing as a performer and DJ. I look at three different performances; a live show for Klubb Kosmos, one for the Master Concert and finally a hybrid set at the Cornerteateret. I highlight non-male pioneers and perspectives from the history of club music and music production. The research project provides insight into my artistic practice and reflections on how the development of a hybrid performance can unfold.
Masterprosjekt i kunstnerisk utviklingsarbeid ved Universitetet i Agder. Gjennom kunstnerisk praksis og refleksjon diskuterer jeg min erfaring og utvikling som utøver og DJ. Jeg viser til tre forskjellige opptredener; et liveshow for Klubb Kosmos, ett for Masterkonserten og til slutt et hybridsett på Cornerteateret. Jeg trekker frem ikke-mannlige pionerer og perspektiver fra klubbmusikken og musikkproduksjonens historie. Forskningsprosjektet gir innsikt i min kunstneriske praksis og refleksjoner rundt hvordan utviklingen av en hybrid performance kan utfolde seg.
A Future In The Past
(2024)
author(s): Theodore Parker
published in: Research Catalogue
A Future In the Past is a research project engaging with the application of methods from Historically Informed Performance and Media Archeology towards problems found in the practice of Live Electronic music. In doing so the project sought to expose lost discourses in the medium as viewed from the performer’s perspective. Three pieces by composer Udo Kasemets were chosen as case studies. All compositions were originally written and performed prior to the 1990’s boom in digital processing. Each case study explores themes related to Liveness, Audience Interaction, and Hyper Instruments. In developing the historical context for each work several strategies were undertaken. Kasemets’ archives were reviewed at the University of Toronto, performers of the original pieces were interviewed, and investigations into period specific instruments were conducted. Additionally, Kasemets’ own published writings were used to reference his aesthetic ambitions as well as for comparison with his contemporaries. Rehearsals were carried out with The Estonian Electronic Music Ensemble, where the historical data and performer experiences were combined to create an individual interpretation for each composition. These interpretations were then presented to an audience and alongside contemporary issues currently debated in Live Electronics
Tipping Points (Reflection Component)
(2023)
author(s): Tijs Ham
published in: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
The Ph.D. project in Artistic Research, Tipping Points, conducted by Tijs Ham ('81), is situated in the field of live electronics and focuses on the exploration of chaotic processes within instrument design, compositional strategies, and performance. The unpredictable nature of chaos impacts many aspects of musicking. Artistic works emerge from the interferences between processes that are set in motion. Instruments are influenced and in turn influence the performer in return. The reflections turn to the notion of wondering as the performer and audiences alike encounter unforeseen sonic behaviors that are strangely musical despite their volatile and fragile chaotic origins.
Mind, the Gap. Synaesthesia and contemporary live art practice.
(2015)
author(s): Amanda Steggell
published in: Norwegian Artistic Research Programme
Misuse can mean the crossing of wires, both literally or figuratively. "Mind, the Gap" (2005-07) is a practice-based research project dedicated to the development of collaborative, interdisciplinary, performative live artworks that are influenced by the notion of synaesthesia - the cross wiring of sensory perceptions. It was conducted within the framework of the Norwegian Artistic Fellowship Programme (previously called the National The Programme for Research Fellowships in the Arts).
The documentation of the project has been reconfigured for the purposes of the Research Catalogue. Apart from some small adjustments, the content remains the same as it was in 2007.
Between Data and Breath: Machine Learning, Musical Embodiment and the Emergence of Voice
(last edited: 2026)
author(s): Jonathan Reus
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
From vocal deepfakes to artificial voice actors and pop star avatars, data-driven machine learning has intensified embodied, musical, and social complexities of voice. While disembodiment and decontextualisation of voice have been musical concerns since the invention of sound recording, AI voice synthesis accelerates these processes and adds new perceptual, cognitive, and social layers.
Many ontologies from voice studies imagine voice as resisting fixity, yet in today’s technological climate this resistance may be losing its ontological imperative. Voice is in transformation - possibly crisis - requiring both curiosity and care in paradoxical tension. These changes also unfold within a technological arms race for innovation, profit, and global AI supremacy. Artists are not only early adopters, but experimentalists and bards who participate in the narratives around AI and vocality.
This thesis evaluates the changing vocal condition through first-person artistic research with AI voice technologies, exploring their poetics and potentials in three artworks created between 2021–2025. In Search of Good Ancestors / Ahnen in Arbeit was a year-long generative radio broadcast exploring machine learning as a intergenerational vocal memory. iː ɡoʊ weɪ is a hybrid extended voice performance practice using real-time voice transfer to unravel vocal identity on stage. DadaSets investigates the invisibilized vocal labour of AI voice through collaborations with artists, new scoring systems, the absurdist dataset-making performance Bla Blavatar vs Jaap Blonk, and the invention of the voice synthesis instrument Tungnaá.
These works are analyzed through an interdisciplinary lens: experimental vocal traditions and the embodied musical-technological ethos of STEIM, alongside philosophies of voice, cognitive neuroscience, and material anthropology; while predictive coding theory frames compositional notions of uncanny, pathological and convivial technologisations of voice. Voice data emerges as paradoxical - both disembodied and relational, material and emergent, gift and commodity - functioning as the basis for musical animacy and collaboration within a rapidly changing socio-technical landscape.
Inter_agency
(last edited: 2018)
author(s): Gerhard Eckel, Artemi-Maria Gioti
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The discourse on interaction in live electronic music is often vague and inaccurate. Interaction – often confused with reaction – means above all reciprocity. There can be no interaction unless all interacting parts within a system are able to perceive each other’s actions, and act both in response to them and according to their own agenda. In human-computer music systems this would mean that not only the performer, but also the computer should be able to “act” – not just re-act. This idealistic vision of sonic human-computer reciprocity lies in the focus of our project. By incorporating machine intelligence in compositions for acoustic instruments and electronics, we seek to establish a reciprocal interaction between the musician as a cognising subject, and the computer as a cognising object.
An artistic research project exploring the art of live remixing through the lens of the music philosophical framework "The Remixician's Triaxis". The project resulted in live studio recordings with multi-camera video of my duo with Alessandra Bossa - Before Without.open exposition comments (0)
The Ph.D. project in Artistic Research, Tipping Points, conducted by Tijs Ham ('81), is situated in the field of live electronics and focuses on the exploration of chaotic processes within instrument design, compositional strategies, and performance. The unpredictable nature of chaos impacts many aspects of musicking. Artistic works emerge from the interferences between processes that are set in motion. Instruments are influenced and in turn influence the performer in return. The reflections turn to the notion of wondering as the performer and audiences alike encounter unforeseen sonic behaviors that are strangely musical despite their volatile and fragile chaotic origins.open exposition comments (0)
Misuse can mean the crossing of wires, both literally or figuratively. "Mind, the Gap" (2005-07) is a practice-based research project dedicated to the development of collaborative, interdisciplinary, performative live artworks that are influenced by the notion of synaesthesia - the cross wiring of sensory perceptions. It was conducted within the framework of the Norwegian Artistic Fellowship Programme (previously called the National The Programme for Research Fellowships in the Arts). The documentation of the project has been reconfigured for the purposes of the Research Catalogue. Apart from some small adjustments, the content remains the same as it was in 2007.open exposition comments (0)