Research Catalogue

This project examines subjectivity and its embodiment through the application of interactive electronics within sound installation and performance. It employs a merging of theory, method and practice that has not been fully researched to date and which represents a valuable addition to sound performance and electroacoustic composition. My artistic research focuses on an ongoing series of improvisational/compositional experiments, moving between a dedicated workspace and sound production studios where I will work with acousticians, engineers, and programmers. The aim is to develop gestural/embodied approaches for applying interactive electronics within sound performance and fixed-media composition—mining tensions between failure and fluency; and diffusion strategies that highlight correspondences between embodiment, sound and space—emphasizing tensions between absence and presence. Foundational research includes studying methods and applications for investigating spatialization and psychoacoustics, employed by artists including Maryanne Amacher. I will also study concepts/methods developed by artists such as George E. Lewis, focusing on interaction between algorithmically-based technology tools and physical gesture in musical improvisation. This research also engages with Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytically-based writing on abjection and the sublime, grounding my studio-based research in theoretical inquiry that engages with subjectivity and embodiment. Supplementary research will address psychoacoustics, aural architecture, and spatialization theory and technologies. The outcome of the project will be twofold: a body of sound installations and performances demonstrating an interactive approach to addressing relationships between the body, materiality, sound, space and situation; and a set of reflective writings that articulates the poetics and affective aspects of this multi-layered inquiry. The completed project will offer new knowledge production in the field of artistic research, and transmission of interdisciplinary knowledge to creative practitioners.

Collaborative creative processes within the realm of Western Art Music are usually hidden and/or not actually collaborative at all. Vera John-Steiner (2000) defines ‘integrative collaboration’ as a working situation in which roles merge and a shared ideology and vision emerge through dialogue. This artistic research project investigates to what extent intimacy is a condition for collaboration and what it means within music-making. Intimacy is newly defined as the play of affective, physical and emotional borders between people where our own sense of ourselves can be shaped. By considering collaborative working as a compositional tool, intimacy becomes something that can be encouraged, indeed collaborative skills can be practiced. Through a variety of music-making projects in which I am project lead, composer and/or performer or composer-performer, I devise strategies for handing over power to my colleagues and harnessing their creativity such that they become co-creators rather than just interpreters. I investigate different approaches to intimacy within the domains of music and theatre. I also reflect on my own development as a collaborator and attempt to create a set of principles for successful collaborative working. A set of advantages to adopting a devised process have emerged and a new focus on the long-term potential of a group or partnership changes the context for collaboration. Understanding that a creative partnership is a tree and artistic products are the fruits of that tree has caused me to understand collaboration as multimodal, beyond the score, and made clear the options for the choices of values within collaboration.

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.