RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research

Experience and Experimentality in Artistic Research

The theme of the first issue of RUUKKU "Experience and experimentality in artistic research" involves questions which relate to both art and research. If the concept of experience refers to past time, experimentality opens up to future. However, it is worth noticing that still during the Middle Ages, experimentum and experientia, experiment and experience, were used more or less synonymously and experiments were not arranged in order to gain new information in a systematic way, unlike in later years.

Those Lips Were Made to Suck that Button (2013) Taina Riikonen
In this liquid text/sound, the act of recording breastfeeding is explored in terms of artistic research as machinic liminality and embodied listening. In line with Felix Guattari’s notion of a machine as a prerequisite of technology, the highly intimate recording of neonatal nutrition is explored as an artistic inquiry, which is dependent on the interconnecting processes of the machinic assemblage (the coupling of a baby and a breast). Listening to breastfeeding through the headphones with a microphone touching the skin, produces a particular technology of recording that is noisy in its radical exclusion of other sounds, temporalities and spaces, as well as in its endless counter-oscillation and intrusiveness. The theoretical rhizomes of the article draw from the work of Luce Irigaray, Felix Guattari and Jean-Luc Nancy. The qualities of recording the breastfeeding are analysed through visceral parameters based on touch, embodied listening, and recording as a corporeal-political activity.
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Kokemuksen symbolit – pohdintoja nuotinnoksen ja soivan välisestä suhteesta (2013) Pasi Lyytikäinen
In my article ‘Symbols of the Experience’, I will approach artistic research through the relationship of a musical idea and the notation of it. How can experimental musical ideas be translated to notation, so that other musicians can understand the notation in a similar way? How does the tradition of notation guide me as a composer? How have workshops with other musicians guided my way of notating music? In this article, I will focus on the relationship between the notation and what is sounding – in general and with reference to my own work.
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Mediatisoitunut ooppera - johdanto tutkimukseen (2013) Jaakko Nousiainen
This article presents two operas in the context of artistic research: OMNIVORE, an experimental mobile application designed to be experienced with mobile devices, and LA FIGURE DE LA TERRE, a stage performance using reactive audiovisual projections. As the librettist and director of both operas I examine what kind of means and ways of content creation and presentation mediatized opera can bring to librettists and directors. This introduction presents a model for approaching the two differing artworks and sheds light on how they can be structured in the context of artistic research. Later the actual research will explore how the libretto, the storyboard and the structure defining media manuscript are built. The work process of the director and the production chain become pronounced. In this way the research produces new practice-based knowledge about the mediatized nature of opera. The article is in Finnish.
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Tilakokemuksia esitysinstallaatiossa (2013) Elina Lifländer
In this writing, I open up the process of a previous site-specific live installation which I was involved in: Between two skies (2012). This piece is the first part of my doctoral thesis in artistic research, dealing with the spatial experience and the transformation of the scenographer’s working methods. The concept of the event was mainly formed collectively by the discussions and experiments of the working group. In this text, I observe the spatial experience from three points of view: via my own experience, from the perception of the visitors and connecting it to a wider perspective, namely reflecting the nature of the live installation to the art critic Claire Bishop’s thoughts and examples in the book Installation Art, A Critical History (2005) and Anna Moszynska's book Sculpture Now (2013). In the end, I am summing up the kind of impact this process and these three different views have had on my research and how the thoughts and questions have evolved during the preparations.
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WIND RAIL - Sort of a Beginning / TUULIKAIDE - Eräänlainen alku (2013) Annette Arlander
In this exposition I present a project called Wind Rail as an example of the beginning of a more extensive artistic research project. The experience of this small experiment in performing landscape led to further explorations almost accidentally. I am recounting my experiences on Mount Randa and presenting some materials of the first experiments I conducted there. By returning to an old work I ask, whether it contains some abandoned or alternative paths worth returning to. Besides an introduction, which forms the main part of the discussion, the exposition consists of appendixes: videos, sketches for video installations, voice-over texts, documentation of the performance and the paper “Landscape as a View” as well as a conclusion.
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Female genealogy (2013) Maarit Mäkelä
The exposition uncovers my journey as an artist opening up to an ambiguous autobiographical space produced by narrative means. The space can be conceived both as mental and spatial. The mental space is an autobiographical state where identity is constructed through the stories we tell ourselves about our lives; the spatial space is a concrete exhibition, which is produced out of the mental one. During the journey I ask: How did the exhibition Mirrorplay come about, and especially, how did the creation process, resulting in the exhibition, progress? What were the means I used for creating this space, and what did it mean to me to work in this autobiographically flavoured space?
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Life in Bytom: Plasticity and schizoanalytic performance practice / Plastisiteetti ja skitsoanalyyttinen esitystyöskentely (2013) Tero Nauha, Daniel Franz
The foundation of my research is my artistic practice in the field of performance art. It is a practice-based research including three artistic works. The context of this research is the capitalism in its contemporary form. What are the qualities demanded of subjectivity in the contemporary neoliberal context? What is the particular locus of artistic production or live art in this context? The focus of this exposition is my second artistic work Life in Bytom. Bytom is a former mining town in Upper Silesia, Poland. I visited this place several times during 2012. Each of these trips lasted around seven days. These visits were composed of workshops, interviews, field trips andsmall events, which produced source material for an affective interpretation of the situation. The final works, a scripted performance, an installation and a video piece were presented at the Kronika from the end of November 2012 to the end of January 2013.
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