From culture to nature and back. A personal journey through the soundscapes of Colombia
(2020)
author(s): Lamberto Coccioli
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies, Birmingham City University
The purpose of this essay is twofold: to celebrate the astonishing richness and diversity of Colombia’s natural and human soundscapes, and to reconstruct the process through which my direct experience of those soundscapes has influenced my own creative work as a composer. Reflecting on a long personal and intellectual journey of discovery that plays out on many levels – musical, anthropological, aesthetical – helps bring to the fore important questions on music composition as the locus of cultural appropriation and reinterpretation. How far can the belief system of a distant culture travel before it loses its meaning? From a post-colonial perspective, can a European composer justify the use and repurposing of ideas, sounds and songs from marginalised indigenous communities? In trying to give an answer to these questions through the lens of my own experience I keep unravelling layer upon layer of complexity, in a fascinating game of mirrors where my own identity as a "Western" composer starts crumbling away.
Can I Paint It? Exploring the 'Art-tool' Method in Anthropology
(2019)
author(s): Paola Tine
published in: Research Catalogue
This essay is divided in two sections: a theoretical reflection on the premises and advantages of painting in anthropological research, and a practical experiment. The first section offers a proposal for the use of painting within anthropological outcomes as an important tool for representing the feelings of the researcher and of the people observed, as well as mediating between their perspectives. Additionally, the proposed visual essay, entitled ‘City and Nature’ is a visual exploration of human life within the modern globalised world, focusing on nature and consumerism through dark surreal images. The exploration of the possibilities of expression offered by artistic practice can be a great way to explore the sphere of perception and interpretation, that deeper world of meanings and understandings, that is the real heart of anthropology.
Stop and go: nodes of transformation and transition
(2017)
author(s): Michael Zinganel, Michael Hieslmair
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
Stop and Go is a research project investigating physical and social transformation at nodes and hubs of transnational mobility and migration alongside major pan-European road corridors in a geographic triangle between Vienna, Tallinn, and the Bulgarian-Turkish border. It draws on intensive embedded field trips with a mobile lab (a Ford Transit van) using (deep) mapping, workshops, installations, and exhibitions both on tour and in a stationary work space in a Vienna logistics hub (a former railway station). Intermediate and final results have been represented in diagrammatic drawings, maps, and (animated) graphic novels.
Noise as “sound out of place”: investigating the links between Mary Douglas’ work on dirt and sound studies research
(2017)
author(s): Hugh Pickering, Tom Rice
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
“Noise” is an important subject in sound studies research. However, due in large part to the fact that judgements about what constitutes noise are highly subjective, researchers have often struggled to define it. Where attempts have been made, many have settled on a definition of noise as “sound out of place,” a reformulation of Mary Douglas’ definition of “dirt” as “matter out of place” (Douglas 1966: 44). Beyond this, however, no effort has been directed towards exploring the link between dirt and noise or seeing how far the analogy between the two extends. This article corrects this omission by undertaking a close reading of Douglas’ writing on “dirt” and linking it to contemporary sound studies research. It argues that far more than simply giving rise to the definition “sound out of place,” Douglas’ classic anthropological work can be used as the basis for an integrated “theory of noise,” deepening our understanding of what it means when we describe a sound as “noise” and drawing attention to the ambiguous, transgressive and dangerous qualities and potentials of noise.
Partisans With a Hoe - Spontaneous Gardening in Urban Space
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): Ivana Balcaříková, Barbora Lungova
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This project combines artistic and anthropological research on spontaneous gardening in open public space, predominantly in Brno, CZ. The team, mostly comprising recent graduates and graduate students of the Faculty of Fine Arts of Brno University of Technology, chose gardens and plantings which were, in most cases, rather exceptional. Unlike most typical front gardens, the ones in this study are somehow peculiar, due to their location, their composition and planting schemes, their scale, or methods of those who garden there. The anthropologists on the team analyzed a Facebook group dedicated to street gardening and conducted several interviews, while the artistic team responded to particular places with which they interacted. Some results of this research have been presented to the public in the form of an application comprising an audioguide and an interactive map; this exposition in the Research catalogue documents
some of these findings.
The team
Barbora Lungová is a visual artist and has taught at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Brno University of Technology since 2007. Her field of practice is painting and art projects focusing on plants, gardening, and queerness. She is the coordinator of the Partisans with a Hoe project.
Lucia Bergamaschi is a visual artist working across the media of photography, sound, and installation. She earned an MA in Fine Art at Università Iuav di Venezia and an MA in Law at Università di Bologna. She is currently finishing her MA studies at the FFA BUT.
Nela Maruškevičová combines painting, installations, and glass in her artistic practice. She is a 2023 graduate of the FFA BUT. Kateřina Konvalinová is a visual artist interested in the overlapping spaces of art, communal life, farming, and ritual. She earned her MA in Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, and is currently a doctoral student at the FFA BUT.
Iva Balcaříková is a graphic designer and a member of the team behind the curated audio walks created by Galerie Art in Brno. She is currently finishing her MA studies at the FFA BUT. Hana Drštičková is a visual artist and a social anthropologist interested in environmental and queer topics. She graduated with an MA in Fine Arts from the FFA BUT in 2022 and with a BA in social anthropology from the Faculty of Social Sciences at Masaryk University and is currently a doctoral student at the Gender Studies Department of Charles University in Prague.
Anastasia Blokhina is a social anthropologist who graduated with an MA tfrom the Faculty of Social Sciences of Masaryk University in 2022. Polyna Davydenko is a photographer and a video artist who documents social and environmental issues in her work, most recently those connected with the war in Ukraine.
Filip Dušek is a media artist who studied at the Department of Photography at the FFA BUT.
The project was conducted under the Specific Research FaVU-S-23-8441 Program.
creative (mis)understandings - Methodologies of Inspiration
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Johannes Kretz, Wei-Ya Lin, Samu Gryllus, Zheng Kuo, Ye Hui, Wang Ming, Daliah Hindler
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This project aims to develop transcultural approaches of inspiration (which we regard as mutually appreciated intentional and reciprocal artistic influence based on solidarity) by combining approaches from contemporary music composition and improvisation with ethnomusicological and sociological research. We encourage creative (mis)understandings emerging from the interaction between research and artistic practice, and between European art music, folk and non-western styles, in particular from indigenous minorities in Taiwan. Both comprehension and incomprehension yield serendipity and inspiration for new research questions, innovative artistic creation, and applied follow-ups among non-western communities.
The project departs from two premises: first, that contemporary western art music as a practice often tends to resort to certain degrees of elitism; and second, that non-western musical knowledge is often either ignored or merely exploited when it comes to compositional inspiration. We do not regard inspiration as unidirectional, an “input” like recording or downloading material for artistic use. Instead, we foster artistic interaction by promoting dialogical and distributed knowledge production in musical encounters. Developing interdisciplinary and transcultural methodologies of musical creation will contribute on the one hand towards opening up the—rightly or wrongly supposed—“ivory tower of contemporary composition”, and on the other hand will contribute towards the recognition of the artistic value of non-western musical practices. By highlighting the reciprocal nature of inspiration, creative (mis)understandings will result in socially relevant and innovative methodologies for creating and disseminating music with meaning.
The methods applied in the proposed project will start out from ethnographic evidence that people living in non-western or traditional societies often use methods of knowledge production within the sonic domain which are commonly unaddressed or even unknown among western contemporary music composers (aside from exotist or orientalistic appropriations of “the other”).
The project is designed in four stages: field research and interaction with indigenous communities in Taiwan with a focus on the Tao people on Lanyu Island, collaborative workshops in Vienna, an artistic research and training phase with invited indigenous Taiwanese coaches in Vienna, and feeding back to the field in Taiwan. During all these stages, exchange and coordination between composers, music makers, scholars and source community experts will be essential in order to reflect not only on the creative process, but also to analyse and support strong interaction between creation and society. Re-interaction with source communities as well as audience participation in the widest sense will help to increase the social relevance of the artistic results.
The University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (MDW) will host the project. The contributors are Johannes Kretz (project leader) and Wei-Ya Lin (project co-leader, senior investigator) with their team of seven composers, ten artistic research partners from Taiwan and six artistic and academic consultants with extensive experience in the relevant fields.
This essay is divided in two sections: a theoretical reflection on the premises and advantages of painting in anthropological research, and a practical experiment. The first section offers a proposal for the use of painting within anthropological outcomes as an important tool for representing the feelings of the researcher and of the people observed, as well as mediating between their perspectives. Additionally, the proposed visual essay, entitled ‘City and Nature’ is a visual exploration of human life within the modern globalised world, focusing on nature and consumerism through dark surreal images. The exploration of the possibilities of expression offered by artistic practice can be a great way to explore the sphere of perception and interpretation, that deeper world of meanings and understandings, that is the real heart of anthropology.open exposition comments (0)
Stop and Go is a research project investigating physical and social transformation at nodes and hubs of transnational mobility and migration alongside major pan-European road corridors in a geographic triangle between Vienna, Tallinn, and the Bulgarian-Turkish border. It draws on intensive embedded field trips with a mobile lab (a Ford Transit van) using (deep) mapping, workshops, installations, and exhibitions both on tour and in a stationary work space in a Vienna logistics hub (a former railway station). Intermediate and final results have been represented in diagrammatic drawings, maps, and (animated) graphic novels.open exposition comments (1)