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• Vensters by Lucien Goethals (2019) author(s): Karin DE FLEYT published in: Research Catalogue
  This is a video of the inter-medial work Vensters by Lucien Goethals, a live performance at the Articulate research Festival in Antwerp, 24 October 2019
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  Orchestrating timbre - unfolding processes of timbre and memory in improvisational piano performance (2019) author(s): Magda Mayas published in: Research Catalogue
  The doctoral research investigates the orchestration of timbre from a performer’s perspective. Through the dissertation, I explore orchestration as means to “unfold” improvisational processes. The foundation of the work lies in my practice as a pianist in the realm of improvised music, in which I often use preparations and objects as extensions of the instrument. Whilst timbre is often understood as a purely sonic perceptual phenomenon, this view of timbre does not accord with its use within con- temporary site-specific improvisational practice. This research grew out of the need to explore the potentiality of timbre, and to renew and situate it within my own practice. Through the research, I argue that a range of aspects that exceed the purely sonic—for instance, changing spatial circumstances, the affordances and agency of instruments and objects, and the performer’s movements and gestures— all impact upon a performance and the listening experience. All of these aspects need to be taken into account in understanding and working with timbre. In this dissertation, I introduce and argue for an extended and situated understanding of timbre in relation to material, space, and body that recognizes timbre’s complexity and embraces its potential to contribute to an ethical engagement with the contextual environment. I understand these material, spatial, and embodied relations to be non-hierarchical, inseparable, and in constant flux, and to require continuously re-configuration without being reduced or simplified. This timbral approach, which navigates multiple media beyond the sonic, radiates throughout my research. From a performer’s perspective, I define “orchestrating” timbre as the attentive re-organization of these active agents and the creation of musical structures on micro and macro levels through the sculpting and transitioning of timbre— spatially, temporally, physically, and mentally—within a variety of com- positional frameworks. Understanding timbre in this way requires that we recognize the multiple and complex roles that memory plays in contemporary improvisational practice. I therefore introduce the term timbral memory in order to describe how I use memory strategically as means to gain knowledge about improvisational processes undertaken in line with an extended understanding of timbre. In the course of the research, I conducted four investigative projects that were integrated into my practice, which were further extended through collaborations with sound engineers, an instrument builder, and a choreographer. The resulting practice-based research explores multiple, combined, artistic, and analytical approaches to timbre: I use systematic mappings to detail vocabulary and technique, explore amplification and recording in the creation of spatial compositions, em- ploy a custom-built device for live spatialization as a means to expand and deepen spatiotimbral relationships, adopt gestural approaches in composing timbre choreographies, and articulate a range of diverse perspectives through dialogues and interviews with other practitioners. Taken together, these diverse studies constitute an exploration of both timbral memory as a structural, reflective, and performative tool, and the creation of performing and listening modes as integrated parts of timbre orchestration. The thesis opposes the notion of generalizable, reproducible, and transferable techniques and instead offers detailed and intimate approaches to technique and material, describing object timbre, action timbre, and gesture timbre as active agents in sound-producing processes. Orchestrating timbre forms a hybrid compositional approach, which can be applied to various improvisational contexts and which, by engaging with dynamic relationships, reconfigures them; in this, it offers a way of understanding and using the potentials that instrument-body-space interactions afford. By reaching beyond the sonic, my research makes a contribution to the field of critical improvisation studies. It addresses practitioners and audiences in music and sound art alike, attempting to constitute a bridge from artistic research in music—which is often viewed and treated as a self-contained discipline—into multiple artistic fields, in order to inspire discussions, creation and education in broader audiences.
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  Johannes Kretz and Wei-Ya Lin: con | versation – de | fragmentation (2019) author(s): Johannes Kretz published in: Research Catalogue
  This is the exposition for the application of Johannes Kretz and Wei-Ya Lin for the SAR conference in Bergen 2020.
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  The variables that affect colour in the digital textile printing process (2019) author(s): Becky Gooby published in: Research Catalogue
  The development of digital printing is a major change within the textile design process as a designer is no longer restricted to number of colours, repeat patterns, and may include photographic images and intricate detail. With digital print it is now possible to print anything between a metre, or hundreds of metres, at the click of a button. However, there is a marked difference between screen-colour and print colour. A textiles designer using Computer Aided Design (CAD) to create a design will be required to experiment with a number of variables in order to feel more confident about the outcome when using digital fabric printing.
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  Colour Maps (2019) author(s): Becky Gooby published in: Research Catalogue
  This exposition presents 48 colour maps signifying the hue, saturation and brightness (HSB) differences between a screen colour and the resulting colour outcome when printing onto fabric with a digital inkjet textile printer. Each map is a 360 degree hue colour circle that has inner rings decreasing in saturation and brightness. These diagrams visualise the results of initial gamut mapping exercises to explore the colour shifts for a set of Pantone colours printed onto wool (w), linen (l), cotton(c) and silk (s) using reactive dyes. The colour maps, or digital lab dip tests, provide designers and SMEs with a visualisation of expected colour shifts, allowing them to make amendments to design work prior to printing, and managing expectations of printed colour outcomes.
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  The Musical Dyad - Crisis and Growth through Music (2019) author(s): Jessica Kaiser published in: Research Catalogue
  Music has the fundamental ability to open up spaces of intersubjectivity and social interaction. When two people engage in making music together, questions surrounding relationality arise: As a duo, the two individuals can musically act together in various ways. In fact, it is the wide range of relationality, from close attachment to the possibility of crisis, dissociation, or at least the struggle for togetherness, that unleashes the artistic potential. Confronting a piece of music, the question of relationship is prompted by music itself. To answer this question, the duo negotiates relational qualities through the process of interpretation. Together with the violinist Johanna Ruppert, I aim to explore how a developing interpersonal dynamic can be challenged and how it may respond to an audience that is made aware of the relational potential in the duo situation. In an open rehearsal format, we experiment with choreographic elements and (extra-musical) objects that can facilitate interaction. This performative approach allows to shift focus between different aspects of relation, such as connectivity, trust, resonance, fragility, embodiment or shared space. Drawing on the concept of musical empathy (Deniz Peters 2017) and joint feeling (Angelika Krebs 2015), this also entails questioning how empathetic processes, between co-performers as well as performers and listener, can be induced or intensified, without construing an artificial narrative. In a live research situation, the audience is called upon interfering and interacting with us as a duo. This may be by moving through the room, (re-)positioning us and/or themselves or intervening with vocal statements. Objects such as threads, ties, hoops or clothes can be used as additional provocative means. Venturing into a state of crisis, our relationship shall be put to the test, only to give rise to new possibilities of relation and eventually to come out of this crisis – strengthened in our togetherness.
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