Mapping Noizart: A Cartography of Imperfection, Tactile Memory, and Performed Absence
(2025)
author(s): Diego Piñera
published in: Research Catalogue
This artistic research stems from a sound archive of profound personal meaning: the damaged recording of a friend’s last recital were she played the second movement of Mozart's C Minor Sonata. This corrupted file is a central material in my composition Concerto for an Absent Performer, a work-homage exploring absence and remembrance. My inquiry addresses: Considering the particularities of this archive, how can the iterative creation and modification of an audiovisual artefact, taking the imperfections (corruption or fragmentation) of the recording as its starting point, function as an artistic research method to analyze relationships between archival materiality, tactile memory, and what perceptual qualities and meanings around an absent-presence could be revealed or generated through this new mediation? Furthermore, what reflections on my compositional practice, the recontextualization of classical music references and systems (Mozart's Sonata, the use of scores, etc.), and the nature of mediated memory emerge from this process?
The hermeneutic approach is practice-led, involving an iterative creation/development of the different audiovisual artifacts. This process also serves as a post-compositional and post-performance reflection, aiming to reflect on pre-existing compositional solutions within the Concerto, particularly its engagement with found sound material and the performance of 'tactile memory' via the piano automaton. Visual strategies employed in the audiovisual artefacts include the alternated illumination of Mozart’s score excerpts and individual note heads; an emergent constellational network visualizing tentative connections within this mnemonic field; and a direct audiovisual correspondence where the archive's sonic noisiness visibly degrades the musical score's legibility. The distinct visual characteristics of each iteration, and how they might engage principles of Gestalt perception in organizing or disrupting form, will be key to analyze the different interactions with the concept of performed memory.
These audiovisual explorations are approached as a mode of experiential inquiry, investigating whether such artistic practice can function as a non-standard form of music theory by generating open-ended cognitions rather than definitive analytical statements. Within this framework, errors and glitches within the archival materials—central to the Concerto's sound palette—are framed as events that reveal the archive's material substrate and its haunting nature. Each visual configuration aims to transfigure these imperfections into expressive elements by making, as Arthur C. Danto says, the medium “opaque”, thereby reflecting on the work’s original aesthetic/compositional choices. A subsequent cartography, composed of screenshots from the audiovisual artifacts, will analyze these visual iterations, articulating how the tactile medium (the piano automaton) activates imperfections and how each artefact might distinctly modulate perception and understanding.
This research, while engaging with the work of artists who have explored archival degradation in the past (e.g., William Basinski), focuses on how this specific iterative audiovisual process can illuminate my own compositional engagement with what Mark Fisher called Hauntology. It seeks to provide a deeper understanding of how the artistic re-framing of a broken archive could open avenues for reflecting on the cultural resonance of performance, the figure of the absent soloist, and the persistence of memory in technologically mediated forms.
Why I Paint Thousands of Circles
(2024)
author(s): Leanna Moran
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
Why I paint Thousands of Circles explores psychological barriers and multilayered themes that stem from a single horrific event that involved Moran’s father and his brother. The artist collates information, photos and constructs an ar(t)chaeological archive where family photos, product imagery, together with newspaper clips to form units of a historical and psychological mind map. The exposition becomes an auto-ethnographical exploration of mid 90's working class North West London. The repetitive painting process, exposed and documented in the exposition, functions as transformative method, where ambiguous feelings of a violent upbringing are directed towards the creation of a visual system with an inherent logic – “creating some kind of beauty out of ugliness.”
the tenderness of silence
(2024)
author(s): Giulia Menicucci
published in: Royal Academy of Art, The Hague
Research Paper of the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague 2024. BA Photography.
This research paper began to investigate photographers and visual artists who use their practice as a coping mechanism to deal and understand family dynamics and events connected to it. Drawing inspiration from personal narratives and correspondence with my father, the research navigates through themes such as generational silence, family, and Italian patriarchal culture.Through a reflective process, I believe that artistic practice can become a way to delve into the traumas that affect the family environment. In this way, it is possible to approach places and people we do not know well, such as our parents. This process not only facilitates healing but has also given me the tools to further develop my practice by using knowledge gained from the practice of other photographers and exploring the combination of different methods of writing. The research paper was the starting point of my collaboration with my father as it gave me the possibility to open a conversation with him and discover the untold things that lay between us. In the process of writing, I’ve used the paper as a way to remember the stories of my childhood and take inspiration for my photography.
The elements that I’ve touched appon the stories came back later in the process of making allowing me to have a clearest idea of my further steps into the project. To understand this, I looked in someone else’s houses, experiencing the tradition of mourning on the Greek island through the photography of Ioanna Sakellaraki and the tenderness of a mother in understanding her children with the project of Sian Davey. I moved to different places, to different generations, entering the house of Larry Sultan, full of kitschy design and colorful wallpaper that sets the scene for a story of discovery.
The driveway of Deanne Dikerman has seen many days and many goodbyes and the loving words and confession of Chantal Akerman who could not give more for her mother. I discovered the work of Tami Aftab in the little post-its stuck in the corners of a house and now part of the outside world. And then between laughter and tears, I entered the complicated house of Richard Billingham, between one glass of wine and another.
Each of these artists showed their intimate space, in which we discover stories that do not belong to us but that can guide us to understanding where we are, what we feel, and what we suffer. There is a lot of vulnerability in being behind the camera while a parent is in front. To ask questions and start seeing them as people and not just as parents. To reveal the stories of pain that lie in the past and are hidden by the passing of time. We hide in the home to escape from what frightens us and then we are called to talk about what is hidden. Photography is a way in which we can reshape what has happened, a way in which we can understand the succession of events and build a home that hides nothing. In doing this research I opened up a conversation and brought the house outside. I broke a silence that had lasted too many years and found a passionate father who wanted to discard the past. And so, in staying in silence while you are willing to say things but don’t know where to start there is some tenderness and there is some strength. In unfolding the memories and breaking the silence I know I have found empathy instead of trauma, creating a common ground where climbing trees is a moment of rest somewhere in the past.
Why I paint Thousands of Circles explores psychological barriers and multilayered themes that stem from a single horrific event that involved Moran’s father and his brother. The artist collates information, photos and constructs an ar(t)chaeological archive where family photos, product imagery, together with newspaper clips to form units of a historical and psychological mind map. The exposition becomes an auto-ethnographical exploration of mid 90's working class North West London. The repetitive painting process, exposed and documented in the exposition, functions as transformative method, where ambiguous feelings of a violent upbringing are directed towards the creation of a visual system with an inherent logic – “creating some kind of beauty out of ugliness.”open exposition comments (1)