Assembling a Praxis: Choreographic Thinking and Curatorial Agency - Being and Feeling (Alone, Together)
(2023)
author(s): Lauren O'Neal
published in: University of the Arts Helsinki
What "moves" in an exhibition, if not the bodies of artists, audiences, and objects? How does conversation move us? What can speculative artistic research offer? This exposition, "Being & Feeling (Alone Together),” held at the Lamont Gallery at Phillips Exeter Academy in 2020, is part of my doctoral research project, “Assembling a Praxis: Choreographic Thinking and Curatorial Agency.” While some aspects of the project (including the title), were developed before the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the project unfolds in relation to myriad cultural, spatiotemporal, and civic situations that the pandemic produced. This situation required experimental and responsive curatorial methods that encouraged the project to move in unexpected ways.
[This exposition corresponds to Section Seven: Letting Things Move in the printed dissertation.]
Voicelanding - Exploring the scenographic potential of acoustic sound in site-sensitive performance
(2021)
author(s): Mareike Nele Dobewall
published in: Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH)
This practical artistic research project explores how the performance of acoustic sound in dialogue with site can create a sonic scenography, experienced by an audience from within the sonic structures.
Six art projects were carried out in the context of this research. Their form varies due to the site-sensitive approach that is employed: the space and the participating musicians are both the source and the frame for the resulting spatial sound performances.
During workshops the collaborating musicians are introduced to site-sensitive methods. They learn full-body listening, spatial sounding, and space-care. The musicians learn to co-create with the space. In a collaborative process, spatial sound compositions are created using the site-specific sonic material that is elicited from the dialogue between the performers and the space. The relation to the audience plays an important role in the sharing of the performance space and the experience of the sonic scenographies. Therefore, active audience encounter is considered during the creative process towards the performance and it is further explored during each performance.
As sound is invisible and ephemeral it is a vulnerable material to engage with when creating scenographies. In this research its instability has revealed itself as an indispensable quality of a scenography that aims to connect the elements of a shared space and make their relations perceivable.
There is a tendency to make ‘reliable’ material scenographies and to sustain spatial sound through audio systems while attempting to overcome the challenges a site brings to performance. This approach to performance, scenography, and spatial sound composition, however, limits the relation between acoustic sound and site. In my sonic scenographies the performers are dependent on the dialogue with the space in order to create sonic structures that can be experienced by an audience. The attention needed for this collaboration is space-care. It includes care for all entities in the space, and especially the audience. The ephemeral quality of acoustic sound creates an active sonic scenography that performs together with the musicians, and engages multimodal listening.
The resulting spatial sound performance includes the placement and movement of sonic expressions that are specific for each instrument-site relation. In the created performance, as the audience can ‘roam through’ it, they can experience a sonic scenography that unfolds around them. In the interaction of performers and audience in these shared spaces (architectural space and sonic space) a social space can develop that allows for an ephemeral community to emerge.
Exploring and Prototyping the Aesthetics of Felt Time
(2020)
author(s): Elsa Kosmack Vaara, Cheryl Akner Koler
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
The intention of this research is to investigate how interaction designers may explore felt time through the culinary practice of sourdough baking. In this exposition we share how the physical experience and manipulation/shaping of time in sourdough baking provides an experience of fulfillment and satisfaction. We show our insights on how interaction designers, and possibly many other communities of practice and discourse, may learn from this.
The goal is to inspire the audience to engage in a broad and critical discourse around felt time and to emphasize the value of prototyping a felt time repertoire in interaction design. The research exploration is built on the collaboration between an interaction designer/researcher, a culinary connoisseur baker and a sculptor/design researcher and teacher.
Movement Practice: A developmental research journey in improvised drumming
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Conor McAuley
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
About this exposition:
This work documents a progressive journey in improvised drumming. Research was centred around movement, and focused on three major players in the improvised world; Milford Graves, Chris Corsano, and Steve Davis.
The page contains written text analysis of performance, as well as video performance, voice-over, and face-to-camera critique. This mixed methodology, whilst lending itself well to the documentation of progress, resulted in a deepening of knowledge that has now crucially been folded back into my own practice.
Research questions include:
What can I learn from analysing the playing of other drummers? Why do we (drummers) move in certain ways in performance, and why do we play the things we do? What are the processes involved in movement? What can I learn from and how can I develop an awareness around a movement practice? All these questions are aimed at improving my own movement practice behind the drum kit. They were at the fore of this entire portfolio. I address these questions in text, and through video documentation of my own playing.
Themes include:
The role of the body, expression, embodied play, and animated/gestural play. An overarching theme of movement is central to all of this.
Embodied experiences as a call for action
(last edited: 2020)
author(s): Franco Ismael Veloz
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This project attempts to explore different ways of connecting with someone else’s reality . How can we cause an impact with storytelling? Generate reflection, a look from another perspective? It attempts to close the gap between information and the actual person behind it.