ARTISTIC RESEARCH REPORT GAMPSISS
(2024)
author(s): Micha Hamel
published in: Codarts
GAMPSISS was a comprehensive, 4-year collaborative, transdisciplinary project executed by Erasmus University (EUR), University for Techonolgy Delft (TUD), Willem de Kooning Art Academy Rotterdam, and the conservatoire of Rotterdam: Codarts.
In Year 1 we each conducted research in our own discipline, namely: on listening (Codarts), on persuasive games (TUD) and aligned these with the cultural sociological perspective (EUR) on concert audiences and concert experience. In Year 2, based on the knowledge gained, we jointly built a prototype of a game called 'Listening Space'. A game for the smartphone, to be played prior to a (classical music) concert to train listening skills, through awareness and playful practice of different listening modes. In Year 3, again with the entire team, we designed an interdisciplinary gamified performance called “Listening Mutant 2021” during which the audience worked through a wide range of listening games and training. This time the games were not only about music listening but also about social listening (listening to other people). The performance was played for a specially recruited diverse audience, and included orchestral music, theatrical scenes, audience participation, a quiz, a debate, a (new) smartphone game, an audio (headphones) story, all integrated into a total experience with a festival atmosphere. Due to COVID-19, it was not produced (in a modified version) until Year 4, and for a smaller audience than we originally envisioned. Year 4 we then finished analyzing, writing and reflecting. 'Listening Space' produced modest positive effects, and 'Listening Mutant' a major positive effect.
At the Willem de Kooning Academy in Years 2 and 3, we set up a GAMPSISS course in which all researchers taught. Students were asked to design listening games. Some of these served as inspiration for the games in “Listening Mutant 2021.
Two sub-studies were also conducted under the accolade of GAMPSISS, namely a study on what happens when people listen to a piece of music repeatedly (listening diaries, EUR, yet to be published) and a combination of empirical research and extensive desk research (Codarts) on listening from a predominantly philosophical perspective, resulting in a paper titled 'A concise theory of listening' that can be used in conservatories and music practices. The PHD candidate also conducted several more studies on other persuasive games (yet to be published).
Soft to the Touch: Performance, Vulnerability, and Entanglement in the Time of Covid
(2021)
author(s): Jennifer Torrence
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
What is the nature of human touch and human contact in contemporary music performance, both in general and in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic? In a time when bodies must be kept at several meters distance, what comes of works which explicitly call for closeness, physical contact, and sharing? How might these works be interpreted differently in light of the COVID-19 pandemic? Percussionist and performer Jennifer Torrence reflects on the impact of the pandemic on her artistic practice and on her research as part of the project entitled Performing Precarity, which seeks to explore the inherent risks in performance when musicians and audiences are entangled in codependent structures. In light of COVID-19, this exposition attempts to unfold and trace modes of vulnerability in contemporary music performance—from human contact via eye contact and physical touch, to the precarious negotiation of shared space—and to reflect on how such encounters might breed new understandings and knowledge.
***CLICK FOR MORE INFORMATION*** reading as performance / reading as composition
(2020)
author(s): Paul Norman
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
At the end of ‘Sentences on Conceptual Art’ (1969), Sol LeWitt states: “these sentences comment on art but are not art.” In the same work he also remarks, “If words are used and they proceed from ideas about art, then they are art and not literature, numbers are not mathematics,” thus creating a paradigm. Is writing or talking about artistic ideas art or not?
… Let’s say for now that it could be.
John Cage famously defined music as the “organisation of sound” perhaps though, reflecting on the origin of the word composition as coming from the Latin componere meaning to “put together”, the ‘organisation of things’, may be a more suitable definition. Not only sound, but all elements of a performance could or perhaps should be organised, put together or composed.
Consider the situation where your (yes, you the readers) organisational decisions matter. Maybe it’s as simple as ‘do I read the text or look at the given example first?’ These decisions matter, they effect what is communicated and when, what knowledge or assumptions are carried and for how long. These decisions are thus meaningful and potentially compositional in nature, establishing a new question. Is all reading compositional?…
…Let’s say for now that it could be.
Modes of Music Listening and Modes of Subjectivity in Everyday Life
(2018)
author(s): Ruth Herbert
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Technologically mediated solitary listening now constitutes the prevalent mode of musical engagement in the Industrialized West. Music is heard in a variety of real-world contexts, and qualities of subjective experience might similarly be expected to be wide-ranging. Yet though much is known about function (music as a behavioral resource) less research has focused on ways in which music mediates consciousness. This essay critiques conceptualizations of music listening in extant literature and explores how listening to music in daily life both informs and reflects subjectivity.
Psychological and musicological literature on music listening commonly distinguishes between autonomous and heteronomous ways of listening, associating the former with unusual and the latter with mundane, habitual listening scenarios. Empirical findings from my research, which used ethnographic methods to tap qualities of subjective experience, indicate that attentive and diffused listening do not map neatly onto 'special' and 'ordinary' contexts and that a distributed, fluctuating attentional awareness and multimodal focus are central to many experiences of hearing music.
Domesticated Noise: The Musical Reformation of Identity in Urban Vietnam
(2016)
author(s): Lonan O Briain
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
In his composition “New Moon” (Trăng non), saxophonist Trần Mạnh Tuấn appropriates sounds from the musical cultures of Vietnam’s ethnic minorities to create a fusion of regional Vietnamese and international jazz music. The musical cultures are reduced to the raw sounds of instrument timbres which are then reformulated as part of a new popular style by the composer. His detachment of these sounds from the minority cultures and propagation of them as sonic referents to an internal Other nurtures an essentialized understanding of the minorities as different and distant from the urban majority. This research deploys Georgina Born’s proposal of four planes of distinct socialities that are mediated by music and sound (2011) to examine how the musical domestication of these ethnic-themed sounds contributes to the conceptualization of new economically-endowed social classes in urban Vietnam.
How to use feedback, advice and judgement after an exam
(2015)
author(s): Barbara Bekhof
published in: KC Research Portal
Abstract
Name: Barbara Bekhof
Main Subject: Viola
Research Coach: Susan Williams
Title of Research: How to use feedback, advice and judgement after an exam
Research Question: How can feedback, advice and judgement be used in such a way, that it contributes to the learning process of the students?
Summary of Results:
This research paper is to conclude the study at the Royal Conservatory. This paper answers the question of how to use feedback, advice and judgments during an exam, and during the preparation of it. Feedback is information about how we are doing in our efforts to reach a goal. Important when giving feedback is that the learner is aware of receiving the feedback, and that the comments are objective. Advice is an opinion or recommendation offered as a guide to action. Important when giving advice is that the person receiving the advice is willing to receive advice and understands on what feedback the advice is based. A value judgment is a judgment of the rightness or wrongness of something or someone, or of the usefulness of something or someone, based on a comparison or other relativity. Judgement is an important part of an exam. For students it is important to know what the criteria are, and towards what they have to work to. To understand more of the learning process, different aspects of playing a string instrument are discussed in the fifth chapter. These aspects are technical facility, musicality and performance quality. The different phases in a musician’s preparation are discussed in the sixth chapter. From learning the score till mastering a piece. In this research all those aspects are combined to offer a guideline for juries and guideline for teachers during the preparation. Recommended for the examinations of the Royal Conservatoire would be to draw up a set of criteria, which are clear for the students and for the teachers who will grade the students.
Biography: Barbara Bekhof (1991) first started playing the violin at age 6. From age 12 she attended the external preliminary program of the Royal Conservatoire, where she was taught by Koosje van Haeringen and from 2008 viola with Liesbeth Steffens. After graduating from the gymnasium, she went on to study Building Engineering at the TU Delft, while simultaneously continuing the viola. In 2013 she received her bachelor diplomas for both Building Engineering as Viola. Her masters at the Royal Conservatoire enabled her to go on exchange to the Haute Ecole de Musique in Lausanne, where she studied under the renowned violist Alexander Zemtsov. After her return, she continued her master with Michael Zemtsov, as well as the master Urbanism at the TU Delft.
Tracing Rhythm
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Geir Harald Samuelsen
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Rhythm is everywhere. It is breathing and beating hearts; it is the sound of a drum and the repetitive carved lines in stone done by a prehistoric human being. It is the flickering screen and a million digital processes too small to see. It is engraved in the depth of our minds and bodies. It is remembering.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, rhythm (Greek rhythmos, derived from rhein, “to flow”) is an ordered alternation of contrasting elements, and according to Roland Barthes both painting and writing started with the same gesture, one which was neither figurative nor semantic, but simply rhythmic.
In this exposition we are approaching rhythm through contemporary artistic and archaeological gestures, starting with some engraved and painted lines drawn by our stone age ancestors in France and South Africa.
The participants are all from the artisitc research project: Matter, Gesture and Soul, which is based at the Art Academy in Bergen.
Eight to Infinite
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Alex Jovcic-Sas
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Eight to Infinite is an exciting collaborative project between electronic artist Afrodeutsche and PhD researcher, Alex Jovčić-Sas. The aim is to revise two unknown historical composers, Gertrud Grunow (Bauhaus) and Daphne Oram (BBC), by writing, recording, and performing a new work that uses their archival materials combined with contemporary digital compositional tools. Grunow and Oram worked with optical sound as a process for composing music, specifically focusing on colours and shapes as compositional tools. They both have been largely overlooked within their respective institutional histories and this project will bring to life their unique and rich compositional practices.
Eight to Infinite took place on the 7th of October 2021, at the Space at Nottingham Contemporary. Eight to Infinite was generously funded by Arts Council England, Midlands4Cities, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham Contemporary, and PRS Foundation.
Goldberg’s Variations: investigating Aaron Goldberg’s improvisational style
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Jelle van der Meulen
archived in: KC Research Portal
Name: Jelle van der Meulen
Main Subject: Jazz Piano
Research Supervisor: Patrick Schenkius
Title of Research: Goldberg’s Variations: investigating Aaron Goldberg’s improvisational style
Research Question:
How can I emulate characteristic devices from Aaron Goldberg’s improvisational style and apply these to my own playing?
Summary of Results:
In this research paper four improvisational devices that Aaron Goldberg uses are analysed. Examples of these devices are taken from five transcriptions of improvised solos on jazz standards (Con alma, Fantasy in D, The shadow of your smile, (Un) stable mates and Perhaps) and from recordings where Aaron Goldberg functions as a leader. The devices are selected for their occurrence in (almost) all of the transcribed solo’s and because they stand out and attract attention.
Together they make up an important part of Aaron Goldberg’s playing style. The four devices are: chromatic runs returning to one note, arpeggios over the bar line, motivic development and lines in intervals. Following the analyses and some words on the (possible) origin of these devices (Aaron Goldberg didn’t invent them, they are part of the jazz vocabulary and came forth out of the improvisational styles of musicians from the history of jazz) the research deals with the emulation of the devices and offers exercises which an improviser can do to apply the devices to his/her playing.
Biography:
Jelle van der Meulen (1990) studied jazz piano from 2008 at the conservatory of Amsterdam where he received his bachelor’s diploma in 2013. There he studied with Karel Boehlee, Rob van Bavel, Hans Vroomans and Kris Goessens. In 2015 he started his master studies at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague where he studied with Juraj Stanik and is currently studying with Wolfert Brederode.
Jelle is the pianist of the hard bop band Bop This! and he leads his own piano trio. Jelle’s playing is featured on three recordings so far, the albums ‘Introducing’ and ‘Page Two’ by Bop This! and on the album ‘Out of Universe’ by the Amstel Bigband of which Jelle was the pianist from 2011 until 2014.
Musified togetherness: Co-singing in families living with dementia
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Helene Waage
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
My PhD project aims to explore some of the potentials – and related implications – of low-threshold daily-life singing in the context of people living with dementia and their close ones. A central issue is how people with dementia and their relatives might use, and experience, singing as an integrated part of communication and interaction in their daily life. Accordingly, I propose the concept of co-singing to offer a supplemental approach to (indirect) music therapy and to music-therapeutic caregiving and caregiver singing developed within professional dementia care. Co-singing highlights singing as a relational activity – a form of togetherness – and draws on the people’s own experiences with singing throughout their lives.
The project’s empirical material consists of an exploratory case study inspired by participatory action research. The participants were an older woman living with dementia and her daughter. Together, we explored simple singing activities which they could integrate into their daily lives based on their preferences, interests and previous experiences. Theoretically, the PhD project is grounded in Karen Barad’s agential realism and theories connected to affirmative philosophy, neuropsychology and neurophysiology. The thesis’ research questions engage different aspects of co-singing as practice and experience; its underlying processes and mechanisms; and its conceptual implications. Thus, the research process unveils different aspects of co-singing in families living with dementia as a material-discursive practice (Barad, 2007).
Through theoretical and empirical exploration and diffraction, I introduce multiple perspectives to the notion of co-singing in families living with dementia. The thesis contributes to new knowledge by exploring and weaving together different theories and research findings with the case study and in this way illuminating affirmative and relational aspects of everyday singing for people with dementia and their close ones. Furthermore, the thesis proposes “co-singing” and various forms of “musified togetherness” as suitable terms and concepts – and examples of everyday practices – to convey the implications of such an approach to singing and dementia. Through its exploration via diffractive analysis in several layers, the thesis also provides a methodological contribution to performative and post-qualitative research.
The Palestinian music-making experience in the West Bank, 1920s to 1959: Nationalism, colonialism, and identity
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Issa Boulos
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Research by Issa Boulos.
Before 1936, musical practices in Palestine relied heavily on colloquial poetry, especially in rural communities, which constituted most of the population. During the first half of the twentieth century, Palestinian music evolved as a reflection of the social, cultural, and political evolution of Palestinians. Palestinian music-making evolved exponentially resulting in the expansion of various folk tunes into shaʿbī songs, the creation of the Palestinian qaṣīda song genre, new compositions of instrumental music for traditional and Western music formations, the establishment of choirs and children music programing, and active engagement in composing in the styles of the dominant Egyptian genres of the time as well as muwashshaḥāt.
In 1948, the vast majority of Palestinians were displaced, and musicians found themselves at the frontier of implementing new political and cultural visions in the countries of Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. Therefore, the continuation of the musical narrative in the West Bank did not seem attainable. By the early 1950s, Palestinian musicians and intellectuals developed a vocabulary that reflected the topography, scenery, culture, dialects, and history of al-Mashriq, one that is independent of Egypt’s. Their input, intuition, experience, and convictions of various Palestinian musicians helped to make the music scene in Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan what they are today.
Ease my day
(last edited: 2020)
author(s): Vilde Gunnes Bertelsen, Linda Aandalen, Mathias Walmann, Mussie Estifanos Ghebremichael, Thomas Brøsholen
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
A radio to ease your day, with a gentle and warm tune :)
RASCH 27: IN-FRICTION
(last edited: 2018)
author(s): Paulo de Assis, Lucia D'Errico
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Rasch 27: in-friction is a multimedia performance by Paulo de Assis, Lucia D'Errico, and Juan Parra C. that will happen in Barcelona, on the occasion of the ERC music conference, 11-13 June 2018. This exposition will be made in real time, during the performance, on 11 June 2018, 18:00-19:00.
MusicExperiment21 Timeline
(last edited: 2018)
author(s): Paulo de Assis, Lucia D'Errico
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
A visual representation of the complete activities of MusicExperiment21 with hyperlinks to the most relevant events, performances, publications and meetings.
The Dark Precursor
(last edited: 2015)
author(s): Paulo de Assis, Paolo Giudici
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The Dark Precursor: International Conference on Deleuze and Artistic Research (DARE 2015) explores possibilities, uses, and appropriations of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s philosophy in the field of Artistic Research. As references to Deleuze’s philosophy, alone or in collaboration with Guattari, have become frequent across the varied expressions of artistic research, the conference aims to identify, trace, and map concepts and practices that connect artistic research projects to their philosophy, both from the scholar’s and from the practitioner’s perspectives. DARE 2015 takes place from 9 to 11 November 2015 in three different venues: the Orpheus Institute, De Bijloke Muziekzentrum, and the Sphinx cinema, all in walkable distance from one another and within the city centre of Ghent (Belgium).
The conference is hosted by the Orpheus Institute, the leading European centre for artistic research in music, which is home to the docARTES doctoral programme, the Orpheus Research Centre in Music (ORCiM), and the MusicExperiment21 project funded by the European Research Council.
Rasch 27: in-friction is a multimedia performance by Paulo de Assis, Lucia D'Errico, and Juan Parra C. that will happen in Barcelona, on the occasion of the ERC music conference, 11-13 June 2018. This exposition will be made in real time, during the performance, on 11 June 2018, 18:00-19:00.open exposition comments (0)
A visual representation of the complete activities of MusicExperiment21 with hyperlinks to the most relevant events, performances, publications and meetings.open exposition comments (1)