Research Catalogue

an international database for artistic research

• 2024. ACPA ACPA 2024

• Cantos da Floresta (Forest Songs) : exchanging and sharing indigenous music in Brazil (last edited: 2023) author(s): Magda Pucci connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  This thesis of Magda Pucci presents the research process behind the project Rupestres Sonoros, by the São Paulo-based musical group Mawaca, that recreated indigenous Brazilian songs, and the Cantos da Floresta tour of the Amazon, involving an intercultural exchange with six different indigenous groups. The thesis also addresses the projects’ outcomes, such as the publication of didactic books, creation of websites, workshops and new projects that seek to shed light on indigenous musical expressions. The thesis is about the journey of going up on stage, organizing intercultural activities, producing books, records and videos that transformed Pucci and Mawaca, in a postmodern context, into artists that create in order to help raise awareness on the current political issues concerning the indigenous communities in Brazil. The purpose of this thesis is to reveal how music performance and research can be conducted by “anthropophagizing” knowledge, that is, consuming from a broad range of cultural sources, regurgitating and reinventing multicultural musicalities.
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• The reflections of memory : an account of a cognitive approach to historically informed staging (last edited: 2023) author(s): Gilbert Blin connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  The research is dedicated to Gilbert Blin’s work in staging operas of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nourished by a decade of productions for the Boston Early Music Festival, the first objective of his dissertation is to enable a better understanding of both his creative and interpretive processes in the operatic field. The main research question he attempts to answer in his dissertation can be phrased as follows: how can a post-modern stage director use historical research for creative purposes? The title of this dissertation, The Reflections of Memory, is the appellation Gilbert Blin has been giving to his current approach as an artist and constitutes a conceptual answer to this question.
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• Ebifananyi : a study of photographs in Uganda in and through an artistic practice (last edited: 2023) author(s): Andrea Stultiens connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  In Luganda, the widest spoken minority language in Uganda, the word for photographs is 'ebifananyi'. However, 'ebifananyi' does not, contrary to the etymology of the word photographs, relate to light writings. 'Ebifananyi' instead means things that look like something else. 'Ebifananyi' are likenesses. This research project of Andrea Stultiens explores the historical context of this particular conceptualisation of photographs and its consequences for present day visual culture in Uganda. It also discusses the artistic practice as research method, which led to the digitisation of numerous historical collections of photographs. This resulted in eight books and in exhibitions that took place in Uganda and in Europe. The research was conducted in collaboration with both human and non-human actors. These actors included photographs, their owners, Ugandan picture makers and visitors to the exhibitions that were organised in Uganda and Western Europe. This methodology led to insights into differences in the production and uses of, and into meanings given to, photographs in both Ugandan and Dutch contexts. Understanding differences between ebifananyi and photographs shapes the communication about photographs between Luganda and English speakers. Reflection on the conceptualisations languages offer for objects and for sensible aspects of the surrounding world helps prevent misunderstandings in communication in general.
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• The deep-rooted microtonality of the bass clarinet (last edited: 2023) author(s): Henri Bok connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  The existing literature only partly acknowledges the microtonal possibilities of the bass clarinet, restricting the options mainly to quartertones. When measured, the results of the proposed fingering patterns are often approximative. This PhD project of Henri Bok proposes a new microtonal approach of the bass clarinet, further developing the instrument’s capability to produce not only exact quartertones, but also smaller units: eighth-tones and 31-tones. The ‘root-overtone’ microtonality of the bass clarinet is explored as well, using the natural overtones which can be generated on top of roots, as a means to create more microtonal variants, often in the form of nano tones. The numerous fingering patterns that are the outcome of this research have been documented in the appendices. All these fingering patterns are shown in combined audio/video recordings. Instruction and demonstration videos clarify the different subjects of this research. Audio recordings illustrate the use of the microtonal bass clarinet playing in the pieces which were the result of the collaboration with several interested composers. The findings are also applied in a number of compositions of the author. The extension of the bass clarinet’s microtonal possibilities presented here will allow bass clarinettists, composers and other instrumentalists to inform and enrich their creative processes.
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• The 'cello' in the Low Countries : the instrument and its practical use in the 17th and 18th centuries (last edited: 2023) author(s): Elske Tinbergen connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  This research of Elske Tinbergen is only available in Dutch. In 20e-eeuwse naslagwerken is niet veel geschreven over de cello in de Lage Landen in de 17e en 18e eeuw, wat doet denken dat het instrument in die tijd hier niet of amper gebruikt werd. Echter, geschreven en pictoriale bronnen alsmede instrumenten en bladmuziek uit deze twee eeuwen geven wel informatie. Op basis hiervan kan gesteld worden dat de cello in de Nederlanden veel meer gebruikt werd dan gedacht. Er werden hier instrumenten gebouwd, er werden zeer veel afbeeldingen geproduceerd (schilderijen, maar ook bijvoorbeeld gebruiksartikelen zoals tegels, drinkglazen en zilver) en er is ook een substantiële collectie muziek voor cello gecomponeerd, zowel voor cello solo als cello continuo. De meest verrassende uitkomst van het onderzoek is wel dat er door veel cellisten in de 17e eeuw een andere streektechniek (n.l. onderhands) werd gebruikt dan in de 18e eeuw. Deze uitkomst wordt ondersteund door een overweldigende collectie afbeeldingen. Deze andere streektechniek resulteert in een andere klank en articulatie wat een ander karakter aan een muziekstuk geeft. Daarnaast is er uitgebreid onderzoek gedaan naar Alexis Magito, lid van een beroemde 18e-eeuwse Rotterdamse familie van voornamelijk kermisklanten maar ook van enkele musici. Alexis was cellist, componist en graveur. Tijdens dit onderzoek is veel informatie over zijn levensloop boven water gekomen. Twee van zijn cellosonates zijn door de promovenda op cd gezet. Conclusie: het onderzoek laat zien dat de cello ook in de Lage Landen wijdverbreid was en dat er vele verschijningsvormen en speelwijzen waren.
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• Imagined Voices : a poetics of Music-Text-Film (last edited: 2023) author(s): Yannis Kyriakides connected to: Academy of Creative and Performing Arts This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
  'Imagined Voices', a research by Yannis Kyriakides, deals with a form of composition, music with on-screen text, in which the dynamic between sound, words and visuals is explored. The research explores the ideas around these 'music-text-films', and attempts to explain how meaning is constructed in the interplay between the different layers of media. Issues that initially arose out of the research, were directly related to the question of 'voice': Who is narrating? And where is the voice located? These questions became more pertinent after noticing a phenomenon occurring during performances of these works: that when we read text synchronised to music, we become very aware of an inner voice silently reading along. This effect of hearing one's own voice in the music, was a discovery that had many consequences for the ways in which the ideas about listening and the role of multimedia could function within music. In the creative work of the research, that has resulted in over thirty works of 'music-text-film' the media are set up to highlight ways of listening that puts emphasis on the role of the listener/spectator. A state of limbo is created between the narrative voice of the text and the implied voice of the music, due to the absence of a conventional focal point to pin it on - an actor or a singer. The thesis suggests that because of this vacancy and the way the projected word takes the place of the sung or spoken voice, the inner voice of the audience becomes activated. This then becomes a vital immersive dimension in the performance, as the inner voices of the audience find their place within the fabric of the music.
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