Metamorphosis - Ethics and Aesthetics are One - from a Neuroscientific Perspective
(2024)
author(s): Erika Matsunami
published in: Research Catalogue
Wittgenstein's "Ethics and Aesthetics are one" is the starting point of this research. "In the Notebooks, Wittgenstein states that 'the world and life are one', so perhaps the following can be said. Just as the aesthetic object is the single thing seen as if it were a whole world, so the ethical object, or life, is the multiplicity of the world seen as a single object". (Diané Collinson, The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 25, Issue 3, SUMMER 1985, pages 266-272)
Art transcends boundaries of race, nationality and gender. It is a creative act of unifying in the context of humanity, from the subject to the various topics, by asking questions. This point is the lack of "reality" (dealing with reality) from a sociological perspective. However, it is impossible to define humanity and reality based on sociological statistics alone–which is my perspective of Wittgenstein's "Ethics and Aesthetics are one". Thereby, I examine 'world and life' from the 21st century perspective.
In other words, my research is on immateriality from a 21st-century perspective in relation to the context of neuroscience—on multifoldness.
I would like to explore the following
"What is diversity and its coexistence?"
...
Tales of the unexpected (public version)
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Hans Koolmees
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
The starting point for this research was mainly practical: exploration and mapping of the possibilities of electronics, the combination with acoustic instruments, and the application of this knowledge and skills in new compositions. After one year it became clear that this original plan needed to be adjusted. An essential characteristic of electronic instruments is their relative unpredictability, and this should therefore be taken into account when investigating the integration of electronics in a composed environment. This lead to an expansion of the research field:
1. Exploring, editing and applying the possibilities of electronics in compositions.
2. How to deal with factors such as unpredictability, improvisation, freedom, coincidence, intuition and control.
As a result of this research I have expanded my knowledge and skills in working with electronics, and I applied this in a series of new compositions for electronics, and for electronics and voice. It also gave new insights on the balance between control and improvisation, and thus provided a possible answer to the research question.
An unforeseen by-product of the research is the reflection on the communication between musician and instrument, and by analogy, the communication between composer and music, or, better formulated: the role of the composer in the balance between the musical imagination and the musical result.
Beside the musical content, the topic of this research is the reflection on the process itself: it also sheds new light on the relation between composing and researching.