What can a process do? A passage from ritual to rituality
(2019)
author(s): Usoa Fullaondo
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
In this exposition I try to build new relationships between different creative processes arising from nature, life, and art. This is done by setting up visual, textual, and affective analogies through superimpositions of layers of images, sound, and text based on the book Un Atletismo Afectivo (An Affective Athleticism) (publication on paper, 116 pp, 2016) and the audiovisual work Trenza (Braid) (HD video, 55', 2017).
These two works were developed around a particular space, the fields of Aixerrota in Algorta (Bizkaia, Basque Country). The book is an attempt to translate my habitual experience of running through this space into art, while the film mainly focuses on observing and experiencing how the landscape was turned into a space for a festive event. Three separate narrative strands, each referring to a particular process, intertwine. The first of these is filmings of young people's actions as they prepare the space for the International Paella competition. A second strand consists of fragments of a voice-over by David Attenborough from the documentary Bowerbirds: The art of seduction (2000), which shows male bowerbirds building the bowers where they will court the female bird. The third strand includes sequences from my own work, which outline emerging processes of artistic creation and research.
The aim of this exposition is to share the singularity of processes in which the need to bond or to attach (Juan Luis Moraza, 2009) instigates a conscientious preparation of space that will allow an event to succeed. It also highlights the way in which some of these processes may interrupt the normal course of things and the self-absorption born from habit by opening up from the individual towards the collective, by confronting the tension resulting from an indeterminate end result, and by re-enacting aesthetic experience through the production of an audiovisual and sculptural landscape. The underlying question of the work relates to the potential of new arrangements of materials to open up new creative processes.
Algorithms in Art
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): Magda Stanová
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
People interested in artificial intelligence usually ask whether computers could become as intelligent and creative as humans. I decided to think about it the other way around: I'm interested in the extent to which the creative process of artists is algorithmic. It's not difficult to create something that will look like art; you just need to imitate an already existing genre or style. The challenge is to create something that will be able to trigger an art experience.
In this visual essay, I'm studying where, in a spectrum of different kinds of experiences (jokes, magic tricks, pleasure from solving a mathematical or scientific problem), there are thrills triggered by art. All of these experiences depend on a sufficient amount of novelty. Therefore, the creators of experience triggers face the same problem: the impact of a joke, a magic trick, or an artwork tends to diminish when heard/seen repeatedly. The human brain has evolved in a way that it is able to distinguish repeating patterns, formulas, schemes, algorithms. Uncovering an algorithm causes pleasure. But once an algorithm is uncovered, it does not cause pleasure any more. To trigger an experience of the same intensity, we need a new trigger. In this work, I also address the question of why certain types of triggers wear off more slowly than others.
The outcomes of this project are a book—a visual essay in which drawings and texts form one line of an argument—and a series of lecture-like events, in which I combine sincerity and directness of lectures, panel discussions, and guided tours with richer ways of expression typical for object theatre, performances, and magic shows.
“Lasciatemi morire” o farò “La Finta Pazza”: Embodying Vocal Nothingness on Stage in Italian and French 17th century Operatic Laments and Mad Scenes.
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Elisabeth Laasonen Belgrano
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This music research drama thesis explores and presents a singer’s artistic research process from the first meeting with a musical score until the first steps of the performance on stage. The aim has been to define and formulate an understanding in sound as well as in words around the concept of pure voice in relation to the performance of 17th century vocal music from a 21st century singer’s practice-based perspective with reference to theories on nothingness, the role of the 17th century female singer, ornamentation (over-vocalization) and the singing of the nightingale. The music selected for this project is a series of lamentations and mad scenes from Italian and French 17th century music dramas and operas allowing for deeper investigation of differences and similarities in vocal expression between these two cultural styles.
The thesis is presented in three parts: a Libretto, a performance of the libretto (DVD) and a Cannocchiale (that is, a text following the contents of the Libretto). In the libretto the Singer’s immediate inner images, based on close reading of the musical score have been formulated and performed in words, but also recorded and documented in sound and visual format, as presented in the performance on the DVD. In the Cannocchiale, the inner images of the Singer’s encounter with the score have been observed, explored, questioned, highlighted and viewed in and from different perspectives.
The process of the Singer is embodied throughout the thesis by Mind, Voice and Body, merged in a dialogue with the Chorus of Other, a vast catalogue of practical and theoretical references including an imagined dialogue with two 17th century singers.
As a result of this study, textual reflections parallel to vocal experimentation have led to a deeper understanding of the importance of considering the concept of nothingness in relation to Italian 17th century vocal music practice, as suggested in musicology. The concept of je-ne-sais-quoi in relation to the interpretation of French 17th century vocal music, approached from the same performance methodology and perspective as has been done with the Italian vocal music, may provide a novel approach for exploring the complexity involved in the creative process of a performing artist.
Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Performance in Theatre and Music Drama
at the Academy of Music and Drama,
Faculty of Fine, Applied, and Performing Arts,
University of Gothenburg
ArtMonitor dissertation No 25
ArtMonitor is a publication series from
the Board for Artistic Research (NKU),
Faculty of Fine, Applied, and Performing Arts,
University of Gothenburg
A list of publications is added at the end of the book.
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ISBN: 978-91-978477-4-2