The Witness Openlab: Worlding Through Socially Engaged Art Practice
(2025)
author(s): Iulia-Andreea Smeu
published in: Research Catalogue
This paper examines The Witness Openlab, a transdisciplinary artistic research project conducted in fall 2023 as part of the pilot phase for a new Master of Arts program at Basel Academy of Music/FHNW. Inspired by Pauline Oliveros' score The Witness, twelve emerging artists and students explored deep listening practices, embodiment, and community-building through two key projects: Urban Witnesses, investigating trans-border communities around Basel, and Soil Witnesses, exploring human-more-than-human relationships in urban gardens.
Drawing on concepts of "worlding" from Martin Heidegger and Donna Haraway, the project positioned the body as an active medium for understanding ecological and social interconnectedness. The methodology integrated ecosomatic practices, and community engagement, culminating in a public presentation at Tinguely Museum Basel that translated collaborative processes into immersive experiences.
While highlighting the transformative potential of embodied practices in fostering ecological consciousness, the paper critically examines the limitations of privileging somatic approaches, arguing for their integration with theoretical frameworks and systemic analysis to avoid aestheticizing ecological connection.
Principy dialogu
(2025)
author(s): Šárka Zahálková
published in: Research Catalogue
Ve své disertační práci zkoumám jak praktické, tak teoretické aspekty veřejného prostoru jako sociální hmoty a roli umění jako aktivního prostředníka potenciálních pozitivních změn v něm. Namísto fyzické podoby uměleckých děl, soustředím se na dynamiku komunikace na různých úrovních, které se podílejí na kolektivním utváření těchto prostorů v širším kontextu okolního světa. Můj přístup je založen na ekofeministickém a neantropocentrickém chápání sdíleného prostoru dialogu a vychází z mé dlouholeté kurátorské, umělecké i aktivistické praxe.
Principy akustické ekologie, vědomého naslouchání a chůze využívám jako nástroje pro zvyšování citlivosti vůči okolnímu prostředí. Z přírodních věd si půjčuji pojem ekoton, označující přechodovou zónu mezi různými společenstvy. Prostřednictvím této analogie reflektuji prostupnost komunit, odolnost, hierarchii, empatii a v neposlední řadě umělecké gesto rozprostřené v čase.
Akademie výtvarných umění v Praze, 2025
Ateliér: Intermédia 2
Školitelé: prof. Mgr. art. Dušan Zahoranský, doc. MgA. Pavla Sceranková Ph.D.
Konzultantka: Mgr. art. Magda Stanová Ph.D.
Prohlašuji, že jsem tuto práci vypracovala samostatně a uvedla všechny použité zdroje. Asistenti AI jako ChatGPT a DeepL byly použity pouze jako vyhledávací a překladatelské nástroje, nikoli pro vznik nového textu.
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In my PhD research, I examine both the practical and theoretical aspects of public space as a social substance and the role of art as an active mediator of potential positive transformations within it. Rather than focusing on the physical form of artworks, I concentrate on the dynamics of communication at various levels involved in the collective formation of these spaces within the broader context of the surrounding world. My approach is grounded in an eco-feminist and non-anthropocentric understanding of shared dialogic space and is informed by my extensive curatorial, artistic, and activist practice.
I employ principles of acoustic ecology, conscious listening, and walking as tools to enhance sensitivity to the surrounding environment. Borrowing the term ecotone from the natural sciences—where it describes the transitional zone between different communities—I use this concept to reflect on the permeability of communities, resilience, hierarchy, empathy, and, importantly, the artistic gesture unfolding over time.
Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, 2025
Studio: Intermedia 2
Supervisors: prof. Mgr. art. Dušan Zahoranský, doc. MgA. Pavla Sceranková Ph.D.
Consultant: Mgr. art. Magda Stanová Ph.D.
I declare that I have prepared this work independently and have listed all sources used. AI assistants such as ChatGPT and DeepL were used only as search and translation tools, not for the creation of a new text.
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).
Walking As Practice WAP23
(last edited: 2026)
author(s): WAP
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
WALKING AS PRACTICE
WAP23 was a process-based residency during September-November 2023, where artists using walking as a method delved into each others’ knowledges and things they encountered together at BKN, the Northern Stockholm Archipelago in Sweden. Fieldworks, share sessions and seminars were created jointly to locate and entangle structures, narratives and themes for walking. The residency formed a transformative, dynamic space for art that engaged with life and nature towards critical and poetic explorations, influenced by the immediate surroundings: the forest, lakes, sea and people living in the rural area. Processing how walking is interlocked in our artistic practices, this exposition represents a gathering of texts, visuals and audio from the walking art residency.
The selected artists contributed with interdisciplinary practices, primarily drawing, photography, video, performance and dance. They worked both individually, in spontaneous constellations and in group sessions. The dissemination of the program took place in share sessions upon arrival of new artists - including dinners, open studios, walks, workshops etc. In addition, as the program unfolded, each artist developed their own exposition.
Exploring the Unique Timbre of the Violin in Ottoman Music
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): Ana Lazar
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This artistic research investigates the timbre of the violin in Ottoman music from the perspective of a musician outside the tradition. Its goal is not only to understand how this distinctive sound is created but also to experience how cultural, historical, and stylistic influences shape it.
Approaching the tradition as both learner and artist, I learn from master musicians, immerse myself in traditional musical environments, and engage in reflective creative practice. I explore how violinists trained in Western classical music can enter this tradition respectfully, embody its nuances, and remain true to its core.
Using four guiding frameworks—tacit knowledge, meşk - oral transmission, cultural immersion, and instrument modification—I document a journey of listening, learning, and transformation. This process integrates literature review, conceptual framing, artistic methodology, and reflective analysis, turning the violin into a space where diverse musical traditions engage in meaningful dialogue.
Key outcomes of this study show that timbre in Ottoman violin playing is not fixed but culturally constructed and personally shaped. Timbre is deeply contextual, influenced by cultural models like the human voice and traditional instruments, and expressed through subtle choices in vibrato, ornamentation, bowing, and instrument setup. The expressive identity of Ottoman music relies on sensitivity and subtlety, with small variations significantly affecting the emotional and modal character of the music.
Learning in this tradition depends heavily on embodied, tacit knowledge passed down orally through the meşk system, where core concepts such as makam nuance and microtonality are absorbed through long-term listening, singing, and playing alongside masters. Deep listening and cultural immersion were essential for developing stylistic understanding, revealing nuances that notation alone cannot capture.
Deep Listening Today: Connecting with audiences through the music and teachings of Pauline Oliveros and others
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Joseph Puglia
connected to: KC Research Portal
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Work in progress...
This study explores a year's worth of research into how performers, composers and audiences can highlight different ways of listening in order to better communicate with one another. Inspired by the work of Pauline Oliveros, the study takes an in-depth look at Oliveros' Deep Listening practice, and how aspects of this practice and other works of Oliveros might be incorporated into traditional concert settings, with audience participation, to deepen connections between performers and audience members.
Further attention is given to works of James Tenney and Cornelius Cardew which highlight certain aspects of listening and music making, and which can be used to explore how we give meaning to sounds and symbols.
NOISE
(last edited: 2018)
author(s): ARNAU MILLÀ BENSENY
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
NOISE
A SONIC CHOREOGRAPHY WITH LIVE COMPOSING
Series of performance pieces. Each one is the result of a site-specific creation and research laboratory. The creation laboratories are focused on a specific city or location and on its inhabitants.
The first version of NOISE was created and executed in the city of Kitakyushu, Fukuoka prefecture, Japan.
VOL.1 NOISE - KITAKYUSHU
NOISE is an approach and a perception of a city, neighbourhood, town or area through the sounds that the space itself and its inhabitants generate.
From this sound material, movement and body perceptions are generated. They will later be developed to create the choreographic piece.
The composition in real time is organised through the language of Soundpainting. The entire soundpainting encoding is used to extract, analyse, dissect and sort all the sound and visual material that can be found in the apparent chaos of metropolitan and natural spaces.
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)