COMPOSING with PIEZO
(2022)
author(s): daniela fantechi
published in: Research Catalogue
"Composing with piezo" is the title of my doctoral research which concerns the composition of instrumental music implemented with a specific use of piezoelectric microphones. During the research process, I explored a peculiar use of this technology not only to disclose and amplify the instrumental sound but also to produce otherwise unheard sounds, through a reinterpretation of some instrumental gestures, such as glissando, tapping, scraping, etc, produced by playing with the microphone directly on the instrument. Mainly because of the non-linear quality of unprocessed piezoelectric microphones, which thus present limits and different degrees of controllability and predictability - their introduction in my compositional work changed the relationships with the instrumental sound matter, bringing to question different aspects of my compositional approach. Therefore, during the whole research process, I looked for frameworks, theories, and examples, to understand and bring focus to my evolving compositional practice.
Elisenvaara-Pieksämäki - hajonnut kone
(2021)
author(s): Jaakko Ruuska
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
Elisenvaara-Pieksämäki –hajonnut kone on taiteellinen tutkimus irtikytkennän tilallisuudesta, jonka tapaustutkimuksena on eräs syrjään jäänyt rautatien raunio.Kun rautatien koneellinen kooste kerran hajosi, muodostui kokemuksesta irti kytketty alue, katve, jossa viitteet hajonneeseen koneeseen asettuvat kokemuksen taustalle, kuin aaveraaja, joka säteilee paikantumattomia tuntemuksia menetetystä raajasta. Tässä kokeellisessa tutkimuksessa kehitetyt harjoitteet ovat yrityksiä vastata ongelmaan: kuinka katveeseen jääneiden rautatien raunioiden aistinen ulottuvuus voidaan kytkeä uudelleen, uudeksi yhteiseksi tilaksi. Asetan Gilles Deleuzen elokuvaa luonnehtivan liike-kuvan käsitteen junamatkustamisen kokemuksen ilmaisulliseksi vastineeksi. Toisissa tiloissa kollektiivin jäsenten: Kati Korosuon ja Timo Jokitalon kanssa toteutetussa esityksessä: Elokuva ilman kameraa (2019) resiina valjastettiin alustaksi radan varren asukkaita osallistaville harjoitteille. Näissä harjoitteissa elokuvan käsite laajenee ilmaisemaan irti kytketyn rautatien aistista tilaa. Teemana irtikytkentä muodostaa taiteelliselle tutkimukselle utopistisen perustan, lähtökohdan, joka ei sijaitse missään. Öisellä resiina matkalla läpi takapajuisen seudun paikattomuuteen rakentui hetkellisesti uusi yhteinen tila. Digitaalista valokuvista, videoista ja kirjoituksesta koostuva ekspositio on koottu luettavaksi tietokoneen ruudulta.
The Limits of Traverso; Exploring the sound possibilities of traverso through contemporary music
(2020)
author(s): Dorota Matejova
published in: KC Research Portal
In ‘early music’ performance today ΄sound΄ does not get as much attention as other expressive devices, even though the sound was an inseparable part of expression in music performance in 18th century.
This research attempts to explore the traverso and its expressive sound possibilities when placed in the field of contemporary music. The tonal capabilities of the traverso will be viewed from the perspectives of both 18th century sources and modern-day ΄early΄ and ΄classical music practice΄. The research considers what have sometimes been seen as the instrument´s “limitations” and "imperfections", asking how they could be positively exploited in contemporary music. At the same time, so-called ‘extended techniques ’for the modern flute are explored on the baroque flute, by a study and performance of two contemporary compositions for traverso solo. At the end, I will be looking at how this untraditional perception of traverso sound could open up our expressive imagination in performance of the traditional 18th century traverso repertoire.
The research hopes to bring some new inspirations for traverso players as well as other ΄early music΄ performers, and to clarify the distinctive role of sound as an expressive device in early instruments. It also hopes to inspire composers to write more contemporary acoustic music using the specific sonority of this instrument. The presentation will be given in the form of performance-lecture.
Quest for a Breathing Performance
(2019)
author(s): Anu Vehviläinen
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
In this exposition, I study the concept of ‘experimentation’ in artistic research. I describe how the interdisciplinary collaboration of the Silence Ensemble influenced a violin-piano recital through both conscious and unintentional experimentation.
The focus of the experimentation is on the ‘now-moment’. A detailed explanation of the technical practicing process before the concert is also offered to introduce the experimental approach.
To define my individual experimentation, I refer to experimentation studies in artistic research and especially to Bart Vanhecke’s concepts of experimentation ‘in’ and ‘through’ art.
Marking the passage of time in space
(2017)
author(s): Lucila Nalvarte Maddox
published in: Research Catalogue
This text presents painting as a visual mechanism with which to communicate the otherwise invisible concept of the limitless passage of time in space. To do so, it demonstrates a series of ways through which the mind negotiates with the hand to process painting materials and techniques as part of an attempt to materialise the invisible. Consequently, the act of painting itself becomes both subject and motivating force. This project was first envisioned whilst travelling on a train high up in the Andes. My curiosity, although frightening was well rewarded when suddenly I noticed that the train tracks were not only limitless, but also invisible due to the speed of the train. At that moment, time and space became both eternal and invisible. Elucidating the invisible through sensory and non-sensory perception is not an easy task, for it implicates a conundrum that is no longer exclusively the domain of science but rather that of art and philosophy working in concert.
Romanticizing Brahms: Early Recordings and the [De]Construction of Brahmsian Identity
(last edited: 2023)
author(s): Anna Scott
connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Despite most pianists' claims of historical deference and creative agency, their performances of Brahms's piano works are nothing like the early-recorded performances of the composer and his students: gaps that are mediated by understandings of Brahms's Classical canonic identity, the performance norms that protect that identity, and those norms' underlying aesthetic ideology of control. This predication of Brahmsian identity on restraint leaves the composer and his students in a precarious situation, as their recordings evidence an approach that is governed by the inhibitions typically associated with Romanticism. This volume, by Anna Scott, seeks to problematize understandings of Brahms's identity: by investigating the origins and vestiges of the aesthetic ideology of control; by analysing and copying the recordings of pianists in the composer's inner circle; and by applying these pianists' styles in ways that are just as disruptive to modern notions of Brahmsian identity as their early-recorded models. In so doing, a thoroughly Romantic performance style emerges that catalyses a fundamental shift in understanding as related to Brahms's identity; thereby opening up a new palette of expressive and technical resources, and both elucidating and narrowing persistent gaps between modern and early-recorded Brahms style, as well as between what performers believe, know, and ultimately do.
The interdisciplinary conceptual composition process
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Linde Tillmanns
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
How does one translate concepts like Doughnut Economics into music and video? How can a performance create a safe and non/judgmental space for an open and constructive dialogue about big and difficult topics?
This is my journey on attempting to create such a performance; with a physical band, electronics and video. I am composing on different levels, collaborating with a video artist and producer, as well as curating the process.
Powers of Divergence – Online Repository
(last edited: 2019)
author(s): Lucia D'Errico
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This exposition is thought as an online repository of media for the book "Powers of Divergence". Exposition and book, in combination, are part of my doctoral dissertation, and should be read together.
The research project which this exposition refers to is integral part of the five-year research programme Experimentation vs Interpretation – Exploring New Paths in Music Performance in the Twenty-First Century or MusicExperiment21, funded by the European Research Council, hosted at the Orpheus Institute of Ghent (BE), and led by Paulo de Assis. The programme has explored and developed notions of “experimentation” in order to propose new performance practices of Western notated art music.
This research project proposes a move beyond commonly accepted codes and conventions of musical interpretation. Crucially based on a strong creative and practical component, it presents a new approach to the performance of Western notated art music. In this new approach, corresponding to an artistic practice supported by reflections and research, the performance of past musical works is not regarded in its reiterative, reconstructive, or reproductive function. This new practice instead insists on performance as a locus of experimentation, where “what we know” about a given musical work is problematised. The performative moment becomes both a creative and a critical act, through which new epistemic and aesthetic properties of the musical work emerge.
This new practice insists on the unbridgeable divergence between codification (score) and materiality (sounds, gestures). Rather than being minimised, this divergence is amplified, so that performance happens through sounds and gestures unrecognisable as belonging to the original work as an interpreter would approach it. Instead of relying on the culturally constructed system through which symbolic categories are biunivocally connected to material events, this practice exposes the arbitrariness of such a system, together with the boundaries of its epistemic implications.
The activity of interpreters and executants focuses on the balance between objectivity (the instructions contained in the score, the “facts” accumulated around the musical work, etc.) and subjectivity (the performer’s freedom, his/her expressivity, etc.). This new practice goes beyond both objectivity and subjectivity, embracing an experimental approach to music performance that challenges traditional notions of interpretation. Whereas execution and interpretation relate to an ideal and aprioristic sonic image of the musical work (as Platonic copies), the performance practice proposed here posits itself as production of simulacra: thus performance becomes a sonic “image” that relates to what is different from it (the score) by means of difference, and not by attempting to construct a (supposed) identity. In this process, internal resemblance is negated, together with the idea of composition as origin and performance as its telos.
Nietzsche N
(last edited: 2018)
author(s): Lucia D'Errico, Paulo de Assis
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Nietzsche N is a broader artistic research project on the music of Nietzsche and a satellite project of MusicExperiment21 [ME21] (PI: Paulo de Assis, Orpheus Institute Ghent, BE). Nietzsche N is being realised by Paulo de Assis, Michael Schwab, Valentin Gloor, Lucia D’Errico, and Juan Parra C.
In this exposition, I study the concept of ‘experimentation’ in artistic research. I describe how the interdisciplinary collaboration of the Silence Ensemble influenced a violin-piano recital through both conscious and unintentional experimentation. The focus of the experimentation is on the ‘now-moment’. A detailed explanation of the technical practicing process before the concert is also offered to introduce the experimental approach. To define my individual experimentation, I refer to experimentation studies in artistic research and especially to Bart Vanhecke’s concepts of experimentation ‘in’ and ‘through’ art.open exposition comments (0)
Nietzsche N is a broader artistic research project on the music of Nietzsche and a satellite project of MusicExperiment21 [ME21] (PI: Paulo de Assis, Orpheus Institute Ghent, BE). Nietzsche N is being realised by Paulo de Assis, Michael Schwab, Valentin Gloor, Lucia D’Errico, and Juan Parra C.open exposition comments (0)