Mellanrum: towards an entangled audiovisual practice
(2022)
author(s): Julius Norrbom
published in: Research Catalogue
This artistic research project is a document of an entangled audiovisual practice in progress. With a generative approach and thinking in systems applied to modular synthesizers and procedural computer graphics the aim is to blur the line between the process of generating sounding material and the process of generating visual material. The project represents a move from writing and performing fixed compositions towards designing and improvising with systems that output open-form pieces in real time. Through experiments with new tools and techniques based on theories and other influences, and through reflections upon these experiments, two pieces/concepts have emerged alongside the foundation for a reimagined practice. To share the journey, material and knowledge that led to these pieces and the conclusion; I have stopped writing music and started designing networks, an exposition has been constructed. You are invited to browse, scroll, click, watch, and read this non-linear representation of the project in any order you see fit.
The Act of Patching: Musicking with Modular Systems
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): E. Mattias Petersson
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This artistic PhD project is a composer-performer oriented exploration of live electronics understood as modular musicking systems. The conceptual framework draws upon an understanding of agency that views musical instruments as real or virtual objects-in-time that come into existence through the act of musicking. The systems created and presented in the thesis are explored through various scenarios presented as patches that include compositions, performance systems, and strategies for musicking. The project seeks to gain knowledge about the co-evolutionary processes found within the acts of composing and performing with such systems.
At the core of the research is an exploration of the field of tension between the relative stability and flexibility in the affordances of live electronic instruments. It presents strategies for the design of live electronic systems in order to obtain a balance between these two states, and to understand how instruments are adapted in relation to the artistic processes of composing and performing. The thesis addresses the following research questions:
1. In what ways are my live electronic setups adapted within the acts of composing and performing?
2. How do my live electronic instruments manifest the field of tension between stability and flexibility?
3. What type of strategies can be used to create a predictable field of affordances of live electronic instruments?
Through artistic research methods of meletē, transcription, and re-composition, the project gains a deeper understanding of when, how, and why human and non-human agents co-evolve in musicking with live electronics. It presents four core systems developed and refined within the project: Paragraph – a live coding environment, Parsimonia – a modular digital musical instrument, the EMP Triangle – a serial and modular composition tool, and the Sinew0od feedback system – used as a foundation for three transcriptions. The artistic outcomes are further studied using qualitative methods for data collection and analysis.
The main contribution of this thesis is a novel understanding of live electronic musicking as co-evolutionary acts of patching. These acts entail processes of making and breaking connections between human and non-human agencies, and through patching create, transform, and manipulate compositions and performance setups, in order to achieve metastable systems. Hereby, the thesis proposes a cybernetic understanding of musicking as a process, challenging the traditional notion of fixed musical works, blurring the lines between compositions, instruments, interpretations, and performances.