Research Catalogue

an international database for artistic research

• 
  Copy, tweak, paste: methods of appropriation in facsimile artists' books (2017) author(s): Rob van Leijsen published in: Journal for Artistic Research
  Iconic artists’ books from the 1960s and 1970s have recently been subject to numerous attempted appropriations by publishers and artists, resulting in the production of facsimiles and bootlegs of famous titles. The original versions of artists’ books from the 1960s and 1970s have become scarce over time because of the relentless interest of art dealers and antiquarians, who sell the books for extraordinary prices. Outside the art and book markets, rare artists’ books are mainly available for consultation in libraries or exhibited in showcases. A re-enactment tendency concerning artists’ books has become a recurrent phenomena, the result or answer to the scarce status some artists’ books hold today. Reviewing several re-enacted artists’ books produced by artists and publishers allows their methods of appropriation to be identified and the discourses of this practice to be pursued. Written from the perspective of a graphic designer, the focus lies on visible technical aspects of book production, such as materials and production techniques, which allow comparison of the books, their makers, and their discourses. The conclusion surveys the found methods used by artists and publishers and discusses future tasks in producing and disseminating re-enacted artists’ books, as well as redefining the position of graphic designers in this process.
  open exposition comments (0)
• 
  If film is a language, can birds make movies? An essay and two heretical descriptive systems (2017) author(s): Tim Ridlen published in: Journal for Artistic Research
  The work presented here uses the analogy of artists as talking birds and draws on research from cognitive ethology, linguistics, and film studies to ask, what kind of knowledge does art produce? Drawn diagrams and short structural videos illustrate but perhaps complicate or even obfuscate various parts of the text. The starting point is a 1966 film by Pier Paolo Pasolini, 'The Hawks and the Sparrows', alongside his essay published with the script, 'The Cinema of Poetry'. That text made a compelling argument about the nature of cinematic language, while his film imagined a world in which birds could speak. This essay – made up of text, drawn diagrams, and short video loops – takes the next logical step and asks, can birds make movies? The question is left unanswered, at least explicitly, and remains a figure or stand in for artistic forms of knowledge, research, and thought. This essay may not be of interest to those studying linguistics, cognitive ethology, or film history in earnest, but rather to those interested in visual forms of knowledge production and communication, humanistic explorations of the natural sciences, and the history of ideas. This presentation is the first of a three-part series titled 'The Artist’s Field Library', an arrangement of essays and source materials that explore the mutually transformative relationship between art and the university. The second essay in the series deals with academic institutions as the site of artistic and political practices, as well as what stands to be won or lost, and the third deals with critical pedagogy.
  open exposition comments (0)
• 
  Talking field: listening to the troubled site (2017) author(s): Budhaditya Chattopadhyay published in: Journal for Artistic Research
  This exposition examines my recent multi-channel sound composition 'Decomposing Landscape' (2015), inquiring into the complex, nebulous, and evolving relationship between sound and site that is thoroughly challenged in the practice of phonography or field-recording-based sound artworks dealing with environmentally troubled sites. Phonography-based compositions and sound artworks are developed through location-aware listening and field recordings made at specific sites and landscapes. The compositional strategy in these works relies on artistic interventions through the intricate processes of field recording and processing of recognisable environmental sounds using multi-channel spatialisation techniques. The artistic transformation renders these sounds into a blurry area between compositional abstraction and a portrayal of their site-based origins. The question is, how much spatial information is retained and how much abstraction is deployed in these sound artworks? A discussion of this work sheds light on some approaches and a methodology of handling site-specific evidence in sound art production.
  open exposition comments (0)
• 
  Creative practices and public engagement (2017) author(s): Daša Spasojevic, Ana Souto Galvan published in: Journal for Artistic Research
  This exposition explores the role of creative practices in creating methods for public engagement and the promotion and recognition of tangible and intangible heritage at a local community level. It argues that principles of participatory design and co-creation have the power to contribute to community social cohesion and development. A literature review covering the main concepts and methods is introduced to provide an appropriate context for the main case study: Mapping Nottingham’s Identity. This research project includes the methodological and conceptual framework that were piloted and tested in collaboration with three localities within Nottingham (Sneinton, Carrington, and West Bridgford), including different stakeholders (community organisations, higher education, primary schools, local authorities, and the general public), producing a variety of outputs (a participatory methods’ toolkit, performative maps, community furniture, exhibition, websites) and reflecting on their role in creating meaningful interactions and place-making.
  open exposition comments (0)
• 
  Moving through the double vortex (2017) author(s): Jan Schacher, Patrick Neff published in: Journal for Artistic Research
  Music, when performed live, carries the musician's physicality with it, either embedded within the sound or perceivable through the musician's physical presence. A dancer's movement follows dynamics and expresses shapes that are based on musical phrasing principles and 'kinetic melodies'. The two pieces 'Double Vortex' for trombone, movement, and live-electronics and 'Moving Music' for interactive dance and electronic sounds represent experimental devices for exploring the relationships between musical actions and movement, sound and space, and between instrumental and embodied performance modes. With physical tasks and movement components added to open-form, improvised, and compositional work, the otherwise tacit and taken for granted contributions of the performer's corporeal presence is brought to the foreground. By putting the dancer into the role of an instrumentalist and by setting the trombone player into movement, the intrinsic musicality of movement and the dependence between dance and music is shown. By linking sound and movement in both the corporeal and the technological domains, a shifted relationship is established that generates forms of interaction particular to this specific practice. The work on the two pieces is carried out with a focus on artistic creation, and in parallel becomes the object for observation, trace interpretation, and analysis from the perspective of art as research. The exposition further thematises the methods of trace collection and analysis, as well as the making of maps, diagrams, and assemblages, and addresses the scope of this secondary discursive format. In a movement that goes from media trace to text to sketch, from descriptive to contextual to associative juxtaposition, the exposition speculates about – rather than claims to generate – insights and understanding on corporeality in technologically mediated music and dance performances.
  open exposition comments (0)
• 
  ANCHORAGE: a phenomenology of outline (2017) author(s): Joe Graham, Steven Dickie, Chantal Faust published in: Journal for Artistic Research
  'ANCHORAGE' constitutes a collaborative piece of phenomenologically inspired drawing research, undertaken by artists Joe Graham, Steven Dickie, and Chantal Faust. Comprising forty drawings plus a written text, the objective is to ‘outline’ an understanding of the phenomenon of outline, described in an effort to overcome the traditionally definitive descriptions of it that abound (Rawson 1987; Maynard 2005; Thomas and Taylor 2003). In this respect, it constitutes both a relocation and an online extension of an earlier stage to the project, published in print: 'ANCHOR' (2015). In outlining an alternative form of reply to the earlier question (what is an outline?), the purpose of 'ANCHORAGE' is to revisit what was left uninspected or simply assumed; namely, whether an invariant understanding of outline in relation to drawing as a form of art might sensibly be defined. To address this notion, a variety of hand drawn ‘outlines’ by Graham, Dickie, and Faust are supplied for analysis, using original material from 'ANCHOR' as a guide. As lead investigator, the text by Graham seeks to unpack these variations as a part of a Husserlian-inspired methodology (Husserl [1950] 1999). This is geared towards seeking what an essential or perhaps even ‘truthful’ understanding of outline might look like, contingent on the drawings presented here.
  open exposition comments (0)