Composition strategies for the creation of science-based interdisciplinary and collaborative music-theatre
(2024)
author(s): Daniel Blanco Albert
published in: Birmingham City University
The practice-based PhD research project comprises the development and application of composition strategies and techniques generated through interdisciplinary collaboration to integrate elements and ideas from non-sonic disciplines into the musical discourse of new music-theatre works, specifically opera. I explore mechanisms of mapping and association that engage with both the specific subject matter of each piece and the creative collaborative environment in which they are created, thus generating different compositional resources that I use to inform the creative process. By using mapping techniques, I can deeply engage and communicate a subject matter on different levels in the musical composition.
The framework for this research is the intertwining of art and science on a variety of levels from a music compositional perspective. Within this framework, I explored the integration of knowledge and data from the natural and social sciences to inform the composition of four science-based music-theatre works: In response to Naum Gabo: Linear Construction in Space No. 1 (2020), Autohoodening: The Rise of Captain Swing (2021), The Flowering Desert (2022), and TRAPPIST-1 (2023).
With this approach, I aim to closely link these works with their particular subject matter instead of being composed based just on my personal musical taste. By consistently and cohesively applying the strategies and techniques explored in this research, the outcome is not creating music about science or music inspired by science, but, instead, music embedded with science in which the scientific data and knowledge inform the composition decisions. The subject matter is therefore intertwined within the musical discourse, its performativity and theatricality, and its relationship with the other disciplines and collaborators involved in the creation of these music-theatre works.
quiet citadel
(2022)
author(s): Ryan Evans
published in: Research Catalogue
'quiet citadel' is a site-specific, participatory music project that examines music-making and the purposes that music can serve. I made 'quiet citadel' as part of the Hinge Arts Residency with Springboard for the Arts. They describe the fellowship as a community development program that activates arts programming related to the historic Fergus Falls State Hospital, or "the Kirkbride."
Presented in four sections, this exposition offers a case study of how I instrumentalized my music-making and music-sharing to assist the residents of Fergus Falls, a small town in rural Minnesota, in determining what to do with the disused Fergus Falls State Hospital, or "the Kirkbride." All told, this exposition provides an example of using music as a research method for the purposes of collectively imagining the future of a community asset.
The Lost and Found project: Imagineering Fragmedialities
(2019)
author(s): Jenny Sunesson
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
The Lost and Found project began as an attempt to challenge my own sound making in opposition to a linear, capitalist, narrative tradition, dominated by visual culture.
I wanted to explore the possibilities of sound as a counterpart material risking our perception of what sound is and what it can do.
To reach beyond my own aesthetic and sociocultural baggage, I started to experiment with chance operated live performance as a method.
By multilayering uncategorised sound scraps the work emerged to “produce itself” and I began to catch glimpses of alternative sound worlds and sites.
I called the method fragmenturgy (fragmented dramaturgy) and the alternative realities that were created; fragmedialities (fragmented mediality, fragmented reality).
Modelling the Shopping Soundscape
(2018)
author(s): Björn Hellström
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
This article’s pivotal theme is: How to compose a site-specific sound-art installation for a commercial space in order to improve conditions, while taking perceptual, social, aesthetical, temporal and spatial criteria into account.
The interdisciplinary, art-based research approach is derived from the concept of acousmatics, i.e. the process of apprehending any sound, the source of which is invisible. Acousmatic perception concerns the everyday identification process; when lacking visual contact with the sound source, we automatically seek references, such as social (what produces the sound and what is my relation to it?), aesthetical, spatial and temporal (e.g. orientation and demarcation). The acousmatic concept identifies phenomena based on individually, culturally and spatially conditioned experiences.
Today, a shopping culture dominates urban space. Indoor malls expose us to all types of acousmatically perceived sounds: jingles, signals, music and Muzak from public loudspeakers, mobile devices, etc. In this respect, one could claim that the soundscape of the shopping culture embodies an acousmatic environment.
In 2009, the research and sound-art group Urban Sound Institute (USIT) created a permanent sound installation in a shopping mall (Gallerian) located in downtown Stockholm. This installation serves as a case study for the present paper. The artistic assignment involved the creation of a meeting place without material devices as well as the enhancement of the overall atmosphere. The research objective was to elucidate different qualities of the sound installation in regard to the acousmatics of the shopping mall, promoting discussions on the articulation of sound-space configurations in relation to time and site-specific context, issues on musical-architectural qualities as well as objective, subjective and inter-subjective interrelationships between the experience of the sound-art installation and the experience of the shopping mall soundscape. Other applied, interrelated concepts are metabolic environment and masking- and cutting effects.
'quiet citadel' is a site-specific, participatory music project that examines music-making and the purposes that music can serve. I made 'quiet citadel' as part of the Hinge Arts Residency with Springboard for the Arts. They describe the fellowship as a community development program that activates arts programming related to the historic Fergus Falls State Hospital, or "the Kirkbride." Presented in four sections, this exposition offers a case study of how I instrumentalized my music-making and music-sharing to assist the residents of Fergus Falls, a small town in rural Minnesota, in determining what to do with the disused Fergus Falls State Hospital, or "the Kirkbride." All told, this exposition provides an example of using music as a research method for the purposes of collectively imagining the future of a community asset.open exposition comments (0)
The Lost and Found project began as an attempt to challenge my own sound making in opposition to a linear, capitalist, narrative tradition, dominated by visual culture. I wanted to explore the possibilities of sound as a counterpart material risking our perception of what sound is and what it can do. To reach beyond my own aesthetic and sociocultural baggage, I started to experiment with chance operated live performance as a method. By multilayering uncategorised sound scraps the work emerged to “produce itself” and I began to catch glimpses of alternative sound worlds and sites. I called the method fragmenturgy (fragmented dramaturgy) and the alternative realities that were created; fragmedialities (fragmented mediality, fragmented reality).open exposition comments (0)