I HAVE THE MOON: aesthetics of contemporary classical music from a composer-performer band retreat.
(2024)
author(s): Samuel Penderbayne
published in: Research Catalogue
The artistic research project I HAVE THE MOON was an experimental group activity or 'band retreat' for five composer-performers resulting in a public performance in the aDevantgarde Festival, 2019, in Munich. Research was conducted around a central research question stated verbally at the outset of the project: how can aesthetic innovations of contemporary classical music be made accessible to audiences without specialist education or background via communicative techniques of other music genres? After a substantial verbal discussion and sessions of musical jamming, each member created an artistic response to the research question, in the form of a composition or comprovisation, which the group then premiered in the aDevantgarde Festival. The results of the discussion, artistic works and final performance (by means of a video documentation) were then analysed by the project leader and presented in this article. The artistic research position is defined a priori through the research question, during the artistic process in the form of note-taking and multimedial documentation, and a posteriori through a (novel) 'Workflow-Tool-Application Analysis' (WTAA). Together, a method of 'lingocentric intellectual scaffolding' on the emobided knowledge inside the creative process is proposed. Insofar as this embodied knowledge can be seen as a 'field' to be researched, the methodology is built on collaborative autoethnography, 'auto-', since the project leader took part in the artistic process, guiding it from within.
Death to the Welfare State: An Exposition on Political Discourse and Artistic Collaboration
(2023)
author(s): Kent G R Olofsson, Jörgen Dahlqvist
published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
Död åt välfärdsstaten (Death to the Welfare State) was a theatre performance for actors, dancers, and musicians that dealt with a concern that the welfare system in Sweden was about to be dismantled. To explore this worry political speeches were superimposed with a narrative inspired by George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm to examine how perceptions of welfare in Sweden have changed from the early 1900s to the present. This artistic research exposition elaborates on the process of developing the theatre piece. It unpacks how the relation between discourse and narrative informed the text and music, and how it allowed for a dramaturgical structure that included all the various performative elements and artistic expressions. Furthermore, the exposition discusses how the performance was composed through a collaboration that was characterised by an open-ended dialogue between the artists and how this enabled distributed decision making, as well as artists performing in other ways than they are used to. The exposition explores the open format of Research Catalogue. Through text and video documentation it builds on the dramaturgical structure of the performance itself: an introduction, five parts and an epilogue. The ambition of the exposition has been to make yet another iteration of the performance.
The Theatre of Words Set to Music
(2022)
author(s): Lars Skoglund
published in: Norwegian Academy of Music
This doctoral project in artistic research concerns the relationship between music and text when both are created by the same person: a composer writing his own libretti. The project is situated in ‘the everyday’, with commonplace language and daily life situations being examined and explored both thematically and as material.
The combination of music with other elements on the stage has resulted in pieces of music theatre, with a focus on different forms of storytelling. The reflection given withing this exposition describes how the works have evolved and discusses the different impulses that have led to specific artistic and ethical choices.
This exposition is presented in partial fulfillment of the Ph.d.-programmet i kunstnerisk utviklingsarbeid at the Norwegian Academy of Music.
One in Norway by One of Them: Vlogging for Classical Musicians
(2021)
author(s): Ursula Skaug
published in: KC Research Portal
The internet is a promising place for musicians; one can promote and perform music for free, with possibly endless reach. Especially online video and streaming are booming spaces with many opportunities. Online music videos are often either recordings of a live performance, or they are an "online performance" from a musician who acts as if they are part of a regular live concert with an audience. However, the practices of regular concerts and online video are very different in nature. Perhaps online video requires a different way of engaging with the musical material within the video format. What if classical musicians created videos that emphasized the more casual and chatty style of the online platforms?
Through an iterative process I researched how classical musicians can use the vlog-style format with classical music and music theatre. In these vlogs I draw inspiration from the book "Three in Norway by Two of Them" and combine it with music by Julius Röntgen and Edvard Grieg. From this process I drew some conclusions and came up with a process for other musicians to try out this video format.
Concepts of Embodiment in Interdisciplinary Work Within a Musical Context
(2019)
author(s): Sarah Albu
published in: KC Research Portal
Integrated musical experiences have long existed, previous to and outside of the traditional concert music setting. Interdisciplinary approaches to performance creation are becoming more accepted and more common in academic music contexts. This research asks the question "How does the concept of embodiment serve the creation of interdisciplinary work within a musical context?", examined through the lens of definitions of embodiment, spinning, technology, community, and inter/multidisciplinary vs. intermediality and expanded through case studies of two of the author's recent performance works.
The sound of a character
(2016)
author(s): Meric Artac
published in: Codarts
Art branches have nourished and affected each other for centuries. They formed common disciplines
and evolved into new formats. Interdisciplinary relationships have offered the artist enrichment of
artistic expressions.
Music Theater is a concept that brings together music and theater disciplines, and during it’s history it
evolved into different forms. Composers’ goal to merge their compositions with performing arts
formed a basis for forms like Opera, Singspiel, Operetta and Musical. Argentinian composer Mauricio
Kagel introduced the term “New Music theatre” for new forms of music theatre that are different than
the before mentioned traditional forms.
These musical genres, involve stories, various characters, and dramatic situations. For a composer who
incorporates visual art, the score is most of the time related to the story and its characters.
The composer who is also the stage director builds a bridge between two art forms and creates a world
of sound in which she connects music and theater. The particular sound world of a visual aspect has
changed through the centuries within art movements, and each composer presented to the audience
their own adaptation of a story and the sound of their characters in different forms.
This study explores a composer who incorporates visual art’ formed of music, and how this
incorporation is staged.
Unifying two strong art disciplines like theatre and music, the strength of this combination, and the
idea that each theater character carries out a different color and sound increased my desire to improve
myself in this field. I was introduced to this world which combines theatrical and musical elements
during my Master studies, and It was my ambition to write the story of my pieces, develop the
characters as well as the music.
The sounds of Hanoi and the after-image of the homeland
(2016)
author(s): Stefan Östersjö, Nguyen Thanh Thuy
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
This paper discusses the soundscape of Hanoi and of the countryside north of Hanoi in the Bac Ninh province with the experience of the two authors as artists in two collaborative projects, Arrival Cities: Hanoi and Que/Homelands. The content is structured in three layers, a conversation between the two authors on their individual experience of the projects, a jointly written text which takes a more distant perspective to the topic and a series of video and audio files taken from the two artistic projects. While the two projects were completely independent, this paper identifies ways in which they complement each other and, taken together, the sound art collected within the projects may have a further political meaning. The authors suggest that the shifting soundscapes of Vietnam are a direct reflection of social and political change in the country.
Hard Times. Lecture Performance as Gestural Approach to Develop Artistic Work-in-Progress
(2016)
author(s): Falk Hubner
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
Artistic work is often an essential mode of articulation within artistic research, specifically when practice is understood as both source and target domain of the research. Therefore, within the performing arts, both process and product are essential gestures of artistic research and are indeed “justified and critical articulations of an interest in knowledge production."
In this exposition, the format of a lecture performance is investigated and discussed as an explicit articulation through which the process of both artistic work and research is shared, rather than functioning merely as a format for disseminating findings. The format of lecture performance that is investigated here frames the artistic work and theoretical-conceptual framework as two distinct, yet interrelated, processes shared with a conference audience. This includes the deliberate choice for a live performance of artistic work-in-progress, adding a gestural and at times very kinaesthetic aspect to otherwise textually-dominated forms of presentation.
The exposition as such has two focuses that are strongly related to each other, approaching the form of a feedback loop: on the one hand, the creation process of a new experimental performance work by Falk Hübner is investigated. "Hard Times" refers to the title of this artistic work: I will carry you over hard times. The performance itself is part of an artistic research into reduction in music, a continuation of the completed PhD research of the author (Hübner 2014). On the other hand, the lecture performance that employs this artistic work-in-progress as "material" as well as the related discussions with conference audiences is also explored.
The exposition will demonstrate how these conference discussions strongly inform the work process of the specific artistic work in question and attempt to shed an alternative light on the well-known concept of "audience talks", which typically serve to generate feedback and insights into audience perspectives for artists after tryouts or performances of unfinished work. The audiences of conferences are, in most cases, considerably different in nature than "standard" audiences, offering the possibility of insightful input on quite different facets of both artistic work and research process––provoked by the very form of a lecture performance as described above. The exposition suggests that this type of lecture performance, explicitly including the audience at a conference as important source of information, feedback and peer-review, forms a gestural method of artistic research in itself, whose full potential within artistic research is yet to be explored.
What is Music Theater?
(2015)
author(s): Claudia Hansen
published in: KC Research Portal
Name: Claudia Hansen
Main Subject: T.I.M.E.
Research Coaches: Ines van der Scheer and Arnold Marinissen
Title of Research: What is Music Theater? (A definition by a staging musician.)
Research Question:
What is the difference between Music Theater – the modern performance art form and sub-genre of Music Theater – and other hybrid art forms that include musical and theatrical elements grouped under the hypernym ‘Music Theater’? And, is it possible to construct a definition for Music Theater?
Research Process: I used the word ‘music theater’ to describe the hypernym and the word ‘Music Theater’ to describe the subgenre. First, I researched the history and the evolution of the tendencies in Music Theater as hypernym genre and made a historical overview from the beginning of Music Theater up until the emergence of the subgenre ‘Music Theater’. I focused on the development of Music Theater as a subgenre.
In order to find out what the essence of Music Theater is, I analyzed the three major components of Music Theater. I made an overview of challenges that a creator faces in Music Theater and proposed several solutions, which are based on reasoning and existing performances. I tried to see as many performances as possible, which in the widest sense could be considered to be Music Theater, in order to get a wide overview of present day streams and chose six performances that in my opinion are perfect examples to illustrate my concept of Music Theater, and analyzed the various components of these works (such as music, visuals and text) in detail. Finally, I worked towards a new definition of Music Theater.
Summary of Results: Music Theater is a heterogeneous but symbiotic performance genre, which is constructed with a multitude of art forms. The name might suggest that the main focus lies on music and theater. However, any existing art form can be included. The art forms can be divided into three major categories called components: music, theater and visuals. Each art form is equally important as Music Theater is based on the structural equality of voices. Music Theater is constructed by first distilling four innate languages out of the art forms and then applying them to either the same art form or inducing them into another art form: musical language, verbal language, body language and visual language. Each language element has a valuable existence of its own and
is an autonomous element of the performance that adds a particular atmosphere to the whole picture. The languages are either layered in the performance or the aspects of the performance, such as the protagonists (human or material) or the art forms themselves. Music Theater is a performance genre that rather focuses on the impact that it has on the audience than on the compositional art forms. It is outcome-based and not medium-based. This creates space for each audience member to have a completely personal experience and interpretation of the Music Theater performance.
Entropy in Muziektheater
(last edited: 2018)
author(s): Wen Chin Fu
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
Name: Wen Chin Fu
Main Subject: Entropy in Music Theatre
Research Supervisor: Paul Slangen and Paul Koek
Title of Research: The state of entropy in Muziektheater
Research Question: How do artists from different disciplines work together?
Summary of Results:
For the last 40 years, Music Theatre has been a unique field in performance art in Holland. It always full of surprise , inspiring ideas and fun in Muziektheater. How does artists from different disciplines work together? What is happening in the process of making art? What is the psychological and physical reaction of artists during the process of making? When I work with other artists, am I fully aware of my role in this collaboration? Am I satisfied with myself? Do we believe what we made is what we really want? Do we know our audiences? This are the question I have asked myself repeatedly last year. I was eager to find an answer to my questions. In the process I discovered the entropy theory. In this research, I'll try to analyze, explain , experiment and experience the idea of entropy in the process of making. Entropy happens when there is an energy trigger point(an action), it is not a result, it is a state of process.
Marcel Duchamp mentioned in his talk The Creative Act: “The creative act is not performed by artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”
Biography:
Wen Chin Fu graduated in 2006 from the Classical Music Department of Shih Chien University, Taipei, and continued her studies at the ArtScience interfaculty of The Hague, where she graduated in 2010 and currently studies in the second year master in T.I.M.E. Her performances explore the relationship between physical movement, sound and the environment. She has been developing various instruments. All the instruments focus on the relation between the material and physical movement. A key element of her practice is concentration, which opens the senses for perceiving things through new perspectives.
This doctoral project in artistic research concerns the relationship between music and text when both are created by the same person: a composer writing his own libretti. The project is situated in ‘the everyday’, with commonplace language and daily life situations being examined and explored both thematically and as material. The combination of music with other elements on the stage has resulted in pieces of music theatre, with a focus on different forms of storytelling. The reflection given withing this exposition describes how the works have evolved and discusses the different impulses that have led to specific artistic and ethical choices. This exposition is presented in partial fulfillment of the Ph.d.-programmet i kunstnerisk utviklingsarbeid at the Norwegian Academy of Music.open exposition comments (0)