Collabographies: Tracing shared processes between performer and composer
(2024)
author(s): Petra Valtellina
published in: KC Research Portal
This research aims to address the question of how performer-composer collaborations can effectively generate a jointly composed flute piece. By examining two collaborative processes undertaken over the past year with different composers, this research seeks to identify factors that facilitated successful collaborations and those that posed challenges. Through comparative analysis, the goal is to identify strategies and approaches that could inform and improve future collaborations of this nature. This study ponders the contrast in the background of the two composers involved and the different experiments in role balance. As the performer, I serve as the common thread between these collaborations; variations in the outcomes result from interpersonal dynamics and the composers' differing levels of familiarity with the flute. The methodology employed aligns with the principles of Action Research, with iterative cycles of feedback, reflection, and adjustments during the collaborations, prioritising the process over the final product.
Outcomes of this investigation include that complementary skills, clear expectations, transparent and unfiltered communication, external deadlines, defined final goals, and narrower guidelines might enhance collaborative engagement, improving satisfaction and musical products.
Following the introduction, which addresses the motivations underlying this study, Chapters 1 and 2 will contextualise the topic of collaboration through a literature review and present the chosen methodology. Chapter 3 will delve into a comprehensive overview of the two collaborations, while Chapter 4 will propose a comparative analysis of these processes and report the limitations of this study. Conclusions will follow.
I HAVE THE MOON: aesthetics of contemporary classical music from a composer-performer band retreat.
(2024)
author(s): Samuel Penderbayne
published in: Research Catalogue
The artistic research project I HAVE THE MOON was an experimental group activity or 'band retreat' for five composer-performers resulting in a public performance in the aDevantgarde Festival, 2019, in Munich. Research was conducted around a central research question stated verbally at the outset of the project: how can aesthetic innovations of contemporary classical music be made accessible to audiences without specialist education or background via communicative techniques of other music genres? After a substantial verbal discussion and sessions of musical jamming, each member created an artistic response to the research question, in the form of a composition or comprovisation, which the group then premiered in the aDevantgarde Festival. The results of the discussion, artistic works and final performance (by means of a video documentation) were then analysed by the project leader and presented in this article. The artistic research position is defined a priori through the research question, during the artistic process in the form of note-taking and multimedial documentation, and a posteriori through a (novel) 'Workflow-Tool-Application Analysis' (WTAA). Together, a method of 'lingocentric intellectual scaffolding' on the emobided knowledge inside the creative process is proposed. Insofar as this embodied knowledge can be seen as a 'field' to be researched, the methodology is built on collaborative autoethnography, 'auto-', since the project leader took part in the artistic process, guiding it from within.
Create the Present, Recreate the Past
(2024)
author(s): DAVID VAAMONDE LÓPEZ
published in: Codarts
The following report documents a research project that aims to incorporate improvisation in classical piano recitals in an effective way, as a manner of refreshing such an old-fashioned format. In order to make it possible, the process started by mapping the field, developing basic skills in improvising interludes between written pieces and reading literature on improvisation as a concept. Regarding the need for a larger amount of technical and artistic resources, a more intensive study on piano extended techniques applied to improvisation and free improvisation was carried out, finishing the project with a focus on analysing the own aesthetics and working on proportion (time management).
The artistic results are satisfactory, fulfilling the initial goals. Thus, the improvised interludes work sufficiently on their own and in relation to the written pieces surrounding them, thanks to the development of an efficient system that allows the improviser to adapt them to various contexts, according to their artistic needs. As a result, they are capable of adding artistic value to the content of a regular programme, potentially changing the perception of the listener and enhancing their engagement to the musical act.
Such outcomes can serve as an inspiration to other musicians in order to start their own process, getting as close and incorporating as many elements of this one as they wish, with the intention of achieving a similar artistic development as the one derived from this research project.
Bandoneon Explorations
(2023)
author(s): Mercedes Krapovickas
published in: Research Catalogue
This master's thesis explores the augmentation of the bandoneon, an iconic Argentine instrument traditionally associated with tango music, through the integration of live electronics and extended performance techniques. The research delves into the development of a unique system that enables real-time interaction between the performer and the electronics, transforming the bandoneon into a dynamic and expressive instrument. The study investigates the implications of this augmented approach on musical expression, embodiment, and the relationship between the performer and the instrument. Through a series of performances, including collaborations with other musicians and participation in festivals, the thesis examines the practical application and reception of the augmented bandoneon in diverse contexts. The findings contribute to the discourse on the intersection of traditional instruments, technology, and contemporary musical practices, offering insights into the possibilities and challenges of augmenting a culturally significant instrument like the bandoneon.
The Performer-Composer: A Practice in Interrelation
(2023)
author(s): Thomas Aurlund Lossius
published in: Research Catalogue
A simultaneous role of performer and composer is crucial in a vast number of artistic praxises. In this artistic research project, I explore creative possibilities the performing composer role offers. I also discuss how my performing composer praxis has inspired my interpretation of compositions by others.
The project is situated in my own artistic praxis and has an auto-hermeneutical approach. My primary method has been to compose music for myself and to perform it. This has led me to create compositions which are more improvisational, orally conveyed and open to diverse interpretations. I have also performed with a more co-creative, personally engaged and holistically oriented mindset. I have further experimented in performing compositions by others while imagining myself to be the composer. This has offered an alternative interpretative approach that resound deeply with me on an aesthetic level. Finally, I have reflected on how a performing composer discourse can unsettle the hierarchical language of composition and interpretation.
The project builds on a broader movement in artistic research and musicology, problematising the apparent dichotomy between composers and performers [Leech-Wilkinson, 2016; Cornish, 2015; Cook, 2013], and investigating the role of the performing composer or composing performer [Spears, 2022; Beaugeais, 2020; Groth, 2017]. The project constitutes my master thesis in performing music at the University of Bergen with specialisation in jazz .
Monsters I Love: On Multivocal Arts
(2019)
author(s): Alex Nowitz
published in: Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH)
Proposing a ‘multivocal practice’ in the vocal arts, this exposition (documented artistic research project) embodies an inclusive approach to four core categories for the contemporary performance voice: the singing, speaking, extended and disembodied voice. The culmination of a four-year PhD project in Artistic Practices (Performative and Mediated Practices, with specialisations in choreography/film and media/opera /performing arts), it documents artistic research sub-projects through the presentation of multimedia material, interweaving performance recordings with reflective and contextualising texts. Multivocality addresses various models of virtuosity, all of which are informed by a multi-faceted artistic knowledge, whether experimental or experiential, technical or technological, improvisational or compositional. Contemporary vocal performance practices are loaded by questions pertaining to detecting and solving technical issues that span the vocal domains. Through a range of artistic practices—vocal, oral, bodily and technology-related—the research project unfolds what is conceived as a bountiful ‘vocal imaginary’. When voice and body meet technology-related practices that aim at the expansion of the vocal realm by using custom and gesture-controlled live electronics, a performance æsthetics of the in-between emerges. This is explored via the ‘strophonion’, formerly built at STEIM in Amsterdam and, during the course of the PhD, further developed by Berlin-based software programmer Sukandar Kartadinata who created an intricate configuration on the basis of the audio processing application Max/MSP. Through the formulation and performance of ‘The Manifesto for the Multivocal Voice’—a ‘discursive solo performance act’ that aims to provide insights into principles and premises, and to develop the discourse on the politics of today’s performance voice—the exposition attempts to establish a potential theoretical and philosophical grounding for multivocality. Its second major concern relates to the poetics of the voice, investigating the thresholds of highly individualised vocal practices by asking: what are the boundaries of the contemporary performance voice? The exposition (on the Research Catalogue) comprises video and audio documentation of public live performances, lectures and artists’ talks as well as studio productions and rehearsals. The user is invited to study scores and various texts, such as poems, extended programme notes, translations, performance instructions, comments and other reflections. The collection of essays and articles that guide the user through the edifice of ideas that the artistic research project has unveiled remains central to the endeavour.
The Act of Patching: Musicking with Modular Systems
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): E. Mattias Petersson
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This artistic PhD project is a composer-performer oriented exploration of live electronics understood as modular musicking systems. The conceptual framework draws upon an understanding of agency that views musical instruments as real or virtual objects-in-time that come into existence through the act of musicking. The systems created and presented in the thesis are explored through various scenarios presented as patches that include compositions, performance systems, and strategies for musicking. The project seeks to gain knowledge about the co-evolutionary processes found within the acts of composing and performing with such systems.
At the core of the research is an exploration of the field of tension between the relative stability and flexibility in the affordances of live electronic instruments. It presents strategies for the design of live electronic systems in order to obtain a balance between these two states, and to understand how instruments are adapted in relation to the artistic processes of composing and performing. The thesis addresses the following research questions:
1. In what ways are my live electronic setups adapted within the acts of composing and performing?
2. How do my live electronic instruments manifest the field of tension between stability and flexibility?
3. What type of strategies can be used to create a predictable field of affordances of live electronic instruments?
Through artistic research methods of meletē, transcription, and re-composition, the project gains a deeper understanding of when, how, and why human and non-human agents co-evolve in musicking with live electronics. It presents four core systems developed and refined within the project: Paragraph – a live coding environment, Parsimonia – a modular digital musical instrument, the EMP Triangle – a serial and modular composition tool, and the Sinew0od feedback system – used as a foundation for three transcriptions. The artistic outcomes are further studied using qualitative methods for data collection and analysis.
The main contribution of this thesis is a novel understanding of live electronic musicking as co-evolutionary acts of patching. These acts entail processes of making and breaking connections between human and non-human agencies, and through patching create, transform, and manipulate compositions and performance setups, in order to achieve metastable systems. Hereby, the thesis proposes a cybernetic understanding of musicking as a process, challenging the traditional notion of fixed musical works, blurring the lines between compositions, instruments, interpretations, and performances.