Research Catalogue

an international database for artistic research

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  A Porous Consciousness in and as Artistic Practice: Re-engaging with classical Indian philosophy and aesthetics as a living tradition (2020) author(s): Srisrividhiya Kalyanasundaram published in: Journal for Artistic Research
  Artistic creativity is critically and painstakingly intertwined with ecological creativity in Indian aesthetics. The underlying principles of form, grammar and structure are carefully considered applications and expansions of ecological principles. But what lies at the heart of a consciousness that can enact, embody and expand this creativity principle? I argue that the consciousness principle is 'porosity', an ability to transcend self to enter a state of being where life can move through as a seamless exchange of energy in consecrated time and space. This exposition draws insights from practice based research and unravels the practitioner’s point of view into subjective, qualitative research using text, image and movement. The philosophical and aesthetic underpinnings are drawn from Hindu Indian aesthetics, philosophy and ancient notions of ecology.
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  Composition as Commentary: Voice and Poetry in Electroacoustic Music (2020) author(s): Edmund Hunt published in: Journal for Artistic Research, Birmingham City University
  What is the role of a spoken or sung text in an electroacoustic composition? Does it represent anachronism, assigning the role of communication to the voice and thereby depriving more abstract electroacoustic material of its rhetorical force? Does the disembodied, electroacoustic voice distance the audience from the communicative power of the words that are heard? Although Simon Emmerson argued that the disembodied human voice in acousmatic music can often seem frustrating, this sense of disembodiment might be turned to the composer’s advantage, as the basis of a methodology for creative practice. In the process of developing a methodology to address questions of text, language, voice, and electroacoustic technology, I created two musical compositions. Both works used the untranslated words of an enigmatic Old English poem, ‘Wulf and Eadwacer’. At first glance, the idea of using a text in an obscure or ancient language that carries little or no semantic meaning for the listeners might raise further questions. Is this a deliberate attempt at obfuscation, hiding the paucity of the composer’s ideas behind a veneer of archaism or even naive exoticism? As my investigation progressed, I began to envisage the process of electroacoustic composition as a type of non-linguistic commentary on a text. Rather than hindering the listener’s understanding of a composition inspired by literature, the electroacoustic voice might help to reveal different interpretations of a text, allowing multiple ideas and identities to be heard.
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  Exploring the Efficiency of Artistic Practices within the Context of their Interaction (2020) author(s): Andrew Miller published in: Journal for Artistic Research
  This exposition presents the artistic research project ‘Exploring the Efficiency of Artistic Practices within the Context of their Interaction’, which examines the ways in which artistic practices interact with one another. It understands practices as the organised media and structures through which a researcher is able to initiate and continue the process of environmental constitution, the embodied process through which the world emerges as meaningful for and with us. The project is situated within the context of a phenomenological approach to consciousness and sense-making. It demonstrates the potential of artistic practices as phenomenological methods; practices not merely for the creation of art but as vehicles for investigation into human experience. The exposition is separated into two sections: The first section attempts to present—that is, to make present—the environment as constituted by the researcher through his engagement with the four main artistic practices; descriptive writing, auditory diagramming, sketching and composing. As part of these practices, the initial engagement with the researcher's surroundings was established through the practices of listening and hearing - making this a primarily aural undertaking. The artefacts are given to the reader in a way that hopes to facilitate desired conditions in which the researcher’s perceived environment becomes present. The artefacts relate directly to the practices which allowed the researcher’s understanding of his environment, and are therefore powerful objects, which may allow the reader to come into contact with the same dynamics that allowed the environment to appear in the first place. The second section contains a reflective text which looks back on this process of environmental constitution in an attempt to understand the role of each artistic practice within the context of their interaction. It also contextualises the project within the framework of artistic research, by understanding the artistic practices not only as methods for art creation, but also as mediators of human experience, and therefore as tools for understanding the way the world emerges with us. The text, therefore, simultaneously addresses the idea of consciousness as an enactive process, one which sees a blurring of agency between researcher, practice and environment. The reflection is split into two sections, each referring to two different phases of research: the first, an open and generative approach to the engagement of the practices. The second, a pre-determined and deliberate structure for this engagement.
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  The Missing Page: Place as Palimpsest and ‘Foil’ (2020) author(s): Jeremy Bubb published in: Journal for Artistic Research
  In this exposition, I analyse the making of The Missing Page, a short film I shot in 2016 (and completed much later, in 2018) in response to the disappearance of my mother, Dorothy, from her home for over twelve hours; she was later diagnosed with dementia. This exposition reflects on the key stages of the project: establishes the aims of the film and its inspirations; the nature of the exploratory research, which took place on location at my parent’s home; and the conclusions I drew. I also review my working methods and discuss influences such as slow cinema and defamiliarization, identifying the importance of narrative, ethnographic methods, sound design, the notion of ‘space’, ‘place’, and palimpsest in shaping my thoughts, and the progress of the making of the film.
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  Sounding Out Vacancy: Performing (anything but) Empty Space (2019) author(s): Julieanna Preston published in: Journal for Artistic Research
  This exposition translates the intentions and experience of the 2014 performance Sounding Out Vacancy as a piece of spatial writing structured by four voices operating in unison to contest ‘emptiness’ as a condition of interior space. The seven-day performance occurred in a street-level urban central business district retail shop that, like many other ‘for lease’ properties in the city, had stood empty for several months. Its glass façade obscured from view, the performance broadcast sounds continuously from the interior space to the general public as an alternative advertisement of the shop’s availability. During the nine-to-five work day, sounds were harvested from the interior where construction hand tools and material surfaces interacted as a process of virtual renovation. While the city slept, the ambient sounds of the space persisted and put the shop’s vacancy into question.
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  MEMORY AS A METHOD FOR FILMMAKING (2019) author(s): Emilio Angel Reyes Bassail published in: Journal for Artistic Research
  This research develops a method for filmmaking that uses autobiographical memory as a guiding principle for the production of images. The proposed method comes as the result of a double gesture in which I wanted to a) acquire a subjective understanding of memory that came from artistic practice; and b) materialize the process of memory through film. I used the filmmaking apparatus as a technique to give visibility to the process of remembering and forgetting: I worked with strategies such as the elaboration of a “memory diary”; the drawing of spoken portraits and locations based on memories; casting techniques which involved a dialectical approach towards memory; scouting trips to find places from my memory; hypnosis sessions as a technique to recover lost memories; reenactments of memories; a method to direct actors that relied on memory as a guiding mechanism; and the editing of the footage through a process of memory associations. While doing this research, I inadvertently found that the techniques I used led to a process in which memories were rewritten through experimentation. Thus, the method produced a conceptualization of "memory" that frames it as a creative process. In the process of working on this project, I developed a very subjective approach to the craft of filmmaking that was informed by my particular relationship with memory. Thus, the proposed method of using personal memory as a core mechanism for the production of audio-visual products can be utilized as a tool for film education, promoting the creation of personal film languages based on an individual's memory, and as device to reflect on the subjective process behind an individual's artistic practice.
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