Research Catalogue

an international database for artistic research

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  The Ever Changing Instrument (2024) author(s): APJ published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
  The project explores the artistic potential of unpredictability, specifically within the context of electronic music. By referring to an original instrument design—including programming a number of randomized systems—a series of compositions for keyboard instruments were developed. The central theme is the relationship between dialogue and loss of control during the creative process. This project was documented intermediately with new music, as well as technological and procedural reflections.
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  Multiplayer - Softenings and Inquiries into Matters of Toxoplasmatic Ectoplasm (2024) author(s): Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
  This project investigates Western musical instruments as being critical and even dangerous sites, which should be approached with the greatest of caution. Approached as liminal interfaces between the living and the dead, suspended between past(s) and present(s), turning these instruments into both paranormal and parasitic sites, which should be treated as such. Instruments as pathological contaminated bodies of parasitic discourse ready to jump at you and embed themselves in you, sedimenting within you and, subsequently, playing you. Instruments as haunted sites saturated with ghostlike matters of toxoplasmatic ectoplasm, fostering ghosts with the capacity to possess and inflict pain on to other bodies, active in the past as well in the present. With an interest in the notion of instrumentalization and what instruments can mean, control, and do to bodies, instruments are approached from a safe(r) distance through different (group) interventions, raising questions on how best to emolliate and soften the instrumental body? How to soften the big silent? How to soften the sedimented?
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  The Music Producer as Artistic Co-creator (2024) author(s): Morten Büchert published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
  In my artistic research project, I embarked on an exploration of the continuum between the roles of a music producer as both facilitator and initiator. Through in-depth engagement with real-world scenarios in professional music production, I examined the dynamics and nuances of how these roles negotiate, intersect, and shape the final artistic outcomes. This investigation not only unveils the intricate processes that underpin music creation but also highlights the implications these negotiations have on the resulting works of art. The findings shed light on the subtle artistry embedded in production decisions and offer a fresh perspective on the evolving landscape of music production.
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  Echoes from the torn down fourth wall - Genklangen fra den væltede fjerde væg (2024) author(s): Jacob Anderskov published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
  The project “Echoes from the torn down fourth wall” aims to build bridges between contemporary-music-as-an-art-form and community singing within songs from the Danish songbook ‘Højskolesangbogen’. In a hybrid concert format created for the project, within the context of an abstracted approach to intense, improvised concert music, several passages with community singing occur, where the audience sings along in songs they know. The research process has investigated how to create a musical environment that might bridge the different positions (art music and community singing), how the idea of the listener/spectator can be negotiated within different art domains and how, from a genre perspective, the project can be narrated as a meeting between confirming and destabilising forces. What is being reimagined in the project is not so much the past itself, and not necessarily established narratives about the past, but rather possible current and future narratives of how we may reinterpret songs from the past – together. What is being revealed is not so much specific perspectives in the past but rather hidden potentials in how a majority cultural assemblage like Højskolesangbogen may be renegotiated. Abstract in Danish: Projektet “Genklangen fra den væltede fjerde væg” forsøger at bygge broer mellem kunstmusikken og fællesskabet, her repræsenteret ved den danske sangbog ‘Højskolesangbogen’. I et hybridt koncertformat, skabt til projektet, hvor en intens, abstraheret tilgang til det musikalske materiale er gennemgående, opstår i løbet af koncerterne adskillige passager med fællessang, hvor publikum synger med på sange de kender. Projektet har blandt andet undersøgt hvordan vi kunne skabe et musikalske miljø, der kan bygge bro over de forskellige positioner (kunstmusik og fællessang), hvordan ideer om lytterens/tilskuerens roller kan genforhandles indenfor forskellige kunstdomæner, og hvordan projektet fra et genre-teoretisk perspektiv kan opfattes som et møde mellem bekræftende og destabiliserende kræfter. Det, der bliver gentænkt i projektet, er ikke så meget selve fortiden og heller ikke nødvendigvis etablerede fortællinger om fortiden, men snarere mulige samtidige og fremtidige fortællinger om, hvordan vi kan genfortolke sange fra fortiden – sammen. Og det der opdages, er ikke så meget skjulte perspektiver i fortiden, men derimod skjulte potentialer i, hvordan en majoritetskulturel ’assemblage’ som Højskolesangbogen kan genforhandles. Samtidig nedbrydes barrierer mellem udøvende og lytter, og der etablere nye måder at opleve ny musik på. Og vi mindes om, at vi aldrig ved, hvordan vores kulturelle fortid bliver fortolket i morgen.
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  TRAVERSING SONIC TERRITORIES (TST) (2023) author(s): Søren Kjærgaard, Torben Snekkestad published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research, Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
  What happens when musicians improvising on acoustic instruments sample and exchange their sound libraries? How can such a transgression of sonic territories contribute to an expanded understanding of one’s own sonic identity? And could this b/lending of identities point to a more ambiguous yet vibrant field of intra-play? Departing from these questions, this project intends to challenge our idea of sonic identity as a personal subject-oriented entity, and consequently investigate how a collaborative sharing of sampled sounds, can contribute to an expanded understanding of the sounds we play and are played by. Individual idiomatic approaches to one’s own instrument are thus interfered as we transgress habitual boundaries for action possibilities and musical imagination. The practice circulates from the duo of Torben Snekkestad and Søren Kjærgaard toward external collaborators, where the sharing process involves different approaches to audio sampling and mapping, embedding and embodying, listening and playing with each other’s sonic material to a point where authorship, origin, instrument and sonic identity is diffracted.
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  Transformative Reflections (2023) author(s): nikolaj hess published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
  This project investigates how Transformative Reflections can be developed as a range of methods and processes and how it can be used to create music based on and inspired by paintings. The project has worked with developing a method for translating from painting to composition and improvisation, and making inspiration from another artistic domain tangible. It also seeks to get closer to the artistic material and inspiration that to me seems to lie before the art expresses itself as a work, with an idea of what could be called a pre-art. Methodologically the project explores through four different method categories and an artwork dialogue perspective, both how to get closer to the intrinsic material and values in the reflected work, and to how the extrinsic expressions might translate to meaningful artworks in another domain, in this case music. Furthermore, it investigates the potential of new artistic hybrid art experiences based on the findings and examines the processes and considerations of these. The artistic purpose is through transformative reflections of painting to new works in improvisational and compositional contemporary music (jazz), to create a multidimensional, multisensory art experience space, where the individual work can be experienced both independently and in close communication with a work from another artistic domain.
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  Sculpting Air In The Sub Habitat (2023) author(s): Lotte Anker published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
  Sculpting Air in The Sub Habitat (subtitle: Texture and Form in Composition for Larger Ensemble of Improvisers) is an exploration and unfolding of creative processes in composing for a larger ensemble (6+ musicians) of improvisers as well as the processes in the ensemble rehearsals and concerts. In Sculpting Air, I am both composer and performer. I work with an ensemble created for this project: Sub Habitat. Sub Habitat members are: Lotte Anker (DK), Mazen Kerbaj (GER/LBN), Katt Hernandez (S/USA), Nina de Heney (S), Sten Sandell (S), Andrea Neumann (GER), Burkhard Beins (GER) Sculpting Air grew out of a need to deepen, (re)examine and challenge my compositional practice (including aesthetic preferences and inclinations) within a larger ensemble of improvisers, and I went into the project looking for something: more or less vague, fragmented notions of particular sonic and textural qualities and structural concepts. Notions of a higher degree of connectedness between predetermined and undetermined elements in composition etc. The project is based on my own compositional work and 4 ensemble Sessions and Session concerts during 2020-22. It includes examples and reflections from these processes, and through them I try to articulate answers to the following research questions: Based on the concepts of texture, MODE and LIBRARY, how can I develop new compositional tools for a larger ensemble of improvisers in a music that reflects the sonic palette and expression of the individual musician, the expression and identity of the ensemble as an entity, and my artistic intention?  Including: How can these tools be deployed as sculpting materials in a large form piece, where the predetermined and indeterminate elements mutually reinforce each other and thus help to extend the musical space? How can I explore the sonic potential of the ensemble in dialogue with the musicians? How does the ensemble's overall expression inform my compositional work and vice versa? In score form, how can I develop a specific vocabulary, concepts and notational forms that clarify my artistic intention and convey the balance between the predetermined and indeterminate elements of the composition? 
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  Sonic Complexion (2022) author(s): Jacob Anderskov, Niclas Hundahl published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
  The Sonic Complexion project has investigated from an artistic perspective the musical dimensions texture and ‘klang’ (harmony), with the aim of creating new music and new perspectives. The outcomes of the project are a number of new albums, methodologies and perspectives, coming from quite different starting point in terms of how to systematically-artistically investigate texture and harmony.
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  Rooms of Resonance (2022) author(s): Lars Greve published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
  This is the final exposition for Lars Greves artistic research project "Rooms of Resonance" (2019-21), undertaken at the Rhythmic Conservatory in Copenhagen. The project seeks to investigate the artistic potentials in Greves acoustic solo improvisations, the concert room's acoustics and selected objects, which are brought into vibration. Through experiments and procedural concerts, the research has hoisted artistic, technological and methodological experiences which will be unfolded in this exposition.
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  Multilayeredness in Solo Performance (2021) author(s): Søren Kjærgaard published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
  This project investigates the multilayered potentials of solo performance with the intention of opening up the single player limitations often experienced during the creative process of play and practice. In performance contexts ranging from acoustic solo piano to a digital code-based video keyboard, concepts of multilayeredness are explored through compositional and improvisational strategies, that include instrument topography, extended piano techniques, audio-visual sampling and digital keyboard mapping. The purpose is also to create results that will contribute to how solo artists across formats can express themselves more dynamically and with greater flexibility in the interaction between their various materials and artistic ideas. A contribution also in terms of expanding methodological approaches to how solo performers and research practitioners can work iteratively and interactively in their reflective processes, inviting both a more verbalised and dialogic form, and to explore ways of documenting and communicating these processes in hybrids between text, sound and image.
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  Composition of graphic and sonic works through the improvisers' co-creation (2021) author(s): Laura Toxvaerd published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
  Taking my compositions as a point of departure, the project investigates the improvisers’ co-creation in the compositional process. The composer (in this case, me) explores how improvisers’ ideas can be integrated into the development of the compositions, and explores what impact the integration has on the works of art. In the project, graphic scores are being designed, through the means of which I am seeking to bring forth new aesthetic forms of expressions. Along the way in this project, I have created new compositions that came to be drawn out as scores, which were continually adapted and re-arranged on the basis of the improvising musicians’ concert performances of the existing compositions. The working method could be characterized as an iterative artistic developmental process, which shuttled back and forth between my own compositional work, together with the design and elaboration of the graphic scores, and videotaped rehearsals and performances of my compositions with the collaborating musicians.
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  Action vs. Reaction (2020) author(s): Jacob Anderskov published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
  "Action versus Reaction - Artistic encounters with an aesthetic otherness", was a research project undertaken at the Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen in 2015-2016. The primary artistic output of the project is the album ”Resonance”, released on Sundance Music in September 2016. My ensemble Resonance (previously known as ” Strings, Percussion & Piano”) consists of 3 string players as well as Peter Bruun on drums and myself on piano. The string players all have a background in European classical music and (composed) new music, whereas Peter and I originally came out of improvised music, jazz and its neighbouring regions. In this ensemble, we have been dealing with artistic encounters between our different aesthetics backgrounds for several years. I have realized that my primary curiosity orbits around the questions: 1) How can all members of a cross-genre ensemble stay true to their own musical intuition, developed through decades of full immersion? 2) How can these confident artists then transcend their notion of themselves and meet anew in an aesthetic field different from their respective origins? In 2018, Jacob Anderskov was nominated for the Nordic Council Music Price for the album Resonance.
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  Habitable Exomusics (2020) author(s): Jacob Anderskov published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
  PROJECT DESCRIPTION: “The project examines post tonal material structuring principles in improvised music.
 It deals with (searches for) unexploited opportunities or new forms of expressions within improvised music through studies of possible ways to organize the musical material - and with relevant practical and creative ways to find room for them in improvised music.” Original RESEARCH QUESTION: Through my own artistic practice, I will examine -  To which extent it is possible for me to use definable post tonal structuring principles in my improvisations, and 
-  Which of these principles can best be used in my improvisational universe. 

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  Music for the inner ear (2020) author(s): Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard published in: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen
  Our fantasy has crumbled - yet we must go into utopia to articulate alternative realities that will allow us to escape the current systems we are living in and by. What can we do if we only dream pragmatic and rational dreams that speak into already existing paradigms and systems? When a catastrophic or sudden event occurs we often say that reality exceeds fantasy, this being the exception of the norm, but what if reality exceeding fantasy is in fact the norm - and not vice versa? - what if our fantasy has crumbled in such a degree that we only are capable of imagining realities and solutions which already fit into a dysfunctional system? Are we doomed? - or do we dare to go full on into utopia? In the artistic research project; Music for the inner Ear - Niels Lyhne Løkkegaard looks into the realms of imaginary sound and sonic potentiality unfolded within different artistic domains - raising the questions; Is it possible to create imaginary music only audible for the inner ear of the listener & when does something actually exist? In the project the notion of potentiality is a main driver both in activating the listener but also simply by addressing the potential of potentiality.
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  The Poetics Of A Multiphonic Landscape (2019) author(s): Torben Snekkestad connected to: Rhythmic Music Conservatory, Copenhagen published in: Research Catalogue
  The project is an artistic research project focusing on the saxophone􏰁s ability to produce multiphonics (multiple sounds on an instrument considered monophonic). It is a personal artistic exploration into the process of unfolding the poetics of these complex sonics and a reflection over the process, methods and the creation of an album trilogy, consisting of acoustic solo music recorded during the research period. The main question I have been asking myself during this project has been: What happens if the raw musical material, in the creation of a set of solo saxophone works, is based on the multiphonics only and what this material in itself suggest – possibly independent of any stylistic affiliation? 
My main objective was to examine why the saxophone’s multiphonics have such a captivating effect on me. How could I possibly explore their intrinsic qualities and unfold the poetic potential in them? By the same token, my ambition was to find a suitable artistic context for this enamored relationship that so heavily has stirred the waves of my imagination. In the reflection text on the project, I disclose how some unexpected paths during this pursuit revealed themselves. From sprouting interest toward underwater soundscapes, to the making of a hybrid instrument called reed-trumpet; and how my personal catalog of multiple sounds found its place, not in a public pdf-document or book release, but in a German wooden archive box. I relay in what way I began to take on the intrinsic qualities of the multiphonics and the reason why an oscillation between artistic intention and action is so pivotal for an improviser. To make sure that the project had this focus at all time I sat up a dogma that contains a list of eight fundamental criteria that manifest the intentions and structure as well as sharpen the working methods.
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