Research Catalogue

an international database for artistic research

• 2024. ACPA ACPA 2024

• Multiple Paths: Towards a Performance Practice in Computer Music (2015) author(s): Juan Parra published in: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
  This research project proposes multiple paths towards the development of a performance practice in computer music. It starts with the author’s transition from traditional instrumentalist to electronic musician, assessing the roles of composer, performer and instrument builder as integrated in computer music practice. Three of the case studies presented in this thesis suggest approaches to understand the notion of interpretation with electronic instruments, introducing the methods of reconstruction, reinterpretation and re-appropriation as applied to the performance of music by Cage, Feldman and Nono. The remaining five case studies deal with the author’s own creations, developed on the basis of concepts such as mapping, sonification, historical contextualisation and spatialisation, and informed by the multithreaded role of the computer music practitioner. The situation of the performer of electronic instruments in relation to traditional instrumentalists is a topic of consideration throughout this thesis, informing the final conclusions as well as refuelling the questioning for future work. ---- Thesis information (in Dutch): Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden op gezag van Rector Magnificus prof. mr. C.J.J.M. Stolker, volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties te verdedigen op dinsdag 2 december 2014 klokke 16.15 uur door Juan Parra Cancino geboren te Osorno (CL) in 1979 Promotiecommissie Prof. Frans de Ruiter 1e promotor Prof. Richard Barrett 2e promotor Dr. Marcel Cobussen co-promotor Prof. Clarence Barlow Prof. Dr. Nicolas Collins School of the Art Institute of Chicago Prof. Dr. Simon Emmerson Leicester Media School, De Montfort University Dr. Vincent Meelberg Prof. Dr. Larry Polansky University of California, Santa Cruz Dit proefschrift is geschreven als een gedeeltelijke vervulling van de vereisten voor het doctoraatsprogramma docARTES. De overblijvende vereiste bestaat uit een demonstratie van de onderzoeksresultaten in de vorm van een artistieke presentatie. Het docARTES programma is georganiseerd door het Orpheus Instituut te Gent. In samenwerking met de Universiteit Leiden, de Hogeschool der Kunsten Den Haag, het Conservatorium van Amsterdam, de Katholieke Universiteit Leuven en het Lemmensinstituut.
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• Moving early music: Improvisation and the work-concept in seventeenth-century French keyboard performance (last edited: 2023) author(s): Mark Edwards connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  At present, historically-informed performance (HIP) functions simultaneously as an established musical tradition and as a method for artistic inquiry and renewal. HIP’s capacity to effect change within artistic practice is, however, constrained by its own doxa. This study of Mark Edwards therefore asks the question: what kinds of new practices might have once been, and might still become possible without the influence of the work-concept? Using the keyboard music of Jacques Champion de Chambonnières as its central case study, this dissertation proposes understanding a piece’s fluid range of identities using the concept of mouvance, conceived as a kind of variance that arises within performances and is acknowledged by cultural participants (audiences and performers). Moreover, this study attempts to re-create this practice of mouvance by also re-creating the improvisational practice upon which mouvance relied. To that end, it adapts and extends existing research on historical improvisation (particularly studies of partimento) using techniques from computational musicology. It puts forward an “inductive” approach to style re-creation and improvisation pedagogy in which techniques and procedures are extrapolated from highly specific repertoires. Through mouvance, this study thus offers a new and historically-informed approach for applying the insight gained through improvisational practice to the creative performance of historical repertoires.
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• The Palestinian music-making experience in the West Bank, 1920s to 1959: Nationalism, colonialism, and identity (last edited: 2023) author(s): Issa Boulos connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  Research by Issa Boulos. Before 1936, musical practices in Palestine relied heavily on colloquial poetry, especially in rural communities, which constituted most of the population. During the first half of the twentieth century, Palestinian music evolved as a reflection of the social, cultural, and political evolution of Palestinians. Palestinian music-making evolved exponentially resulting in the expansion of various folk tunes into shaʿbī songs, the creation of the Palestinian qaṣīda song genre, new compositions of instrumental music for traditional and Western music formations, the establishment of choirs and children music programing, and active engagement in composing in the styles of the dominant Egyptian genres of the time as well as muwashshaḥāt. In 1948, the vast majority of Palestinians were displaced, and musicians found themselves at the frontier of implementing new political and cultural visions in the countries of Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq. Therefore, the continuation of the musical narrative in the West Bank did not seem attainable. By the early 1950s, Palestinian musicians and intellectuals developed a vocabulary that reflected the topography, scenery, culture, dialects, and history of al-Mashriq, one that is independent of Egypt’s. Their input, intuition, experience, and convictions of various Palestinian musicians helped to make the music scene in Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan what they are today.
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• Musika: The becoming of an artistic musical metaphysics (last edited: 2023) author(s): Stanimira Withers connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  Musicians spend a significant amount of time practicing. Over the years, intuitions and understandings accumulate that may be difficult not only to share, but also to make sense of. 'Musika', a research by Stanimira Withers, is an exercise in musical metaphysics, which attempts to articulate and contextualize some of these intuitions and understandings, expanding the territory on which thinking about music is familiarly performed. With the presumption that consciousness is fundamental, this dissertation proposes that music is a form of consciousness, which enters in a mutualistic relationship with sentients to acquire experience and to propagate its evolution. ‘Musika’ is defined as a consciousness organization cultivating sound-based forms and intelligences. Incorporating and integrating insights from physics, philosophy and psychology with a cultural-musicological attitude, 'Musika' is concerned with contextualizing and validating the artistic experience and its practice-derived tacit knowledge. A contribution to the fields of philosophy of music and music ontology, and specifically, to the musicological discourse of musical meaning, the study explores how music and consciousness trace the same fundamental process of evolution, constructing different information-based realities.
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• Blind maps and blue dots: the blurring of the producer–user divide in the production of visual information (last edited: 2023) author(s): Joost Grootens connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  This dissertation of Joost Grootens explores the question of what contemporary mapmaking practices can reveal about the ever-evolving field of graphic design. The shift towards digital modes of production has fundamentally changed the field of graphic design, to the extent that a clear distinction between the producers and users of visual information no longer exists. The evaluation of graphic design’s recent developments is too strongly focused on what happened to the persona of the graphic designer. In this research an alternative model is introduced that focuses on the technologies that have shaped the field. Graphic design and cartography have different origins and concerns, but their contemporary practices have much in common. In this research, cartography is considered a testing ground to understand the transformations of graphic design. Adopting notions from post-representational cartography, three mapmaking practices of amateurs and technology companies were selected to survey, analyse and test that transformation. The dissertation contains of a series of visualizations that embody an alternative documentation of the research. The development of alternative and complementary languages is considered to be an essential aspect of artistic research. This parallel visual documentation of the research questions the discursive text, and all the prejudices and histories contained within it.
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• The variational mode: three cases about documents, artworks and animation (last edited: 2023) author(s): Riccardo Giacconi connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  The artistic practice of Riccardo Giacconi deals with documents and, more specifically, with the use and the exploration of their narrative potential. This dissertation is about three different cycles of artworks Giacconi produced as part of the research project. The notion of animation inheres in each of the three case studies: – Case 1 focuses on my artworks about Simone Pianetti (1858-?), an Italian mass murderer who escaped and disappeared, and who then became a puppet character, animated as a stock character.– Case 2 focuses on Augusto Masetti (1888-1966), an Italian soldier who shot at his superior officer and declared not to remember having done it, as if in a state of ecstatic possession, as if animated by an external entity. Mainly using publications and workshops, Giacconi produced a series of artworks related to legal, medical and anarchist records on his case.– Case 3 follows the appearance of a puppet character in Colombia, el espiritado, and its supposed connections to the Masetti case. Giacconi describes a series of artistic works the author produced, starting from a puppet script about the self-destruction of a village, which can be read as a commentary on puppetry, anarchism and animation.
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