The Institute of Constrained Chaos
(2024)
author(s): Tijs Ham
published in: Research Catalogue
This supportive narrative is connected to the graduation project 'The Institute of Constrained Chaos' (TIOCC) which investigates the use of chaotic processes in order to enhance musical expression of a live electronics performance. Inspired by the chaotic, expressive, musical power of overblown brass instruments, the project aims to develop a live electronics performance that utilizes a combination of new and existing hardware and software such as no-input mixing, circuit bending, digital signal processing and sensor based controlling to create an instrument that navigates the musical edges between order and chaos. The project has resulted in a ten minute improvised performance in collaboration with Bart van Gemert, a drummer, as part of a concert series organized and executed by a group of HKU graduate students operating under the name 'Custom Made Music' (CMM). Through many tryout concerts and several iterations of the instrument it can be concluded that the use of chaotic processes can enrich the expressive musicality of a live electronics performance.
The Unfinished Instrument
(2024)
author(s): Tijs Ham
published in: Research Catalogue
This essay is a poetic musing on the unfinished nature of chaotic instruments. These instruments are seen as flexible or displaying pliancy. Each time the instrument is played, it changes again, leading to a situation of perpetual discovery.
The Art of Design: Seeing The Bigger Picture
(2024)
author(s): Kathryn Jane Moore
published in: Research Catalogue
Using words and images referencing nature and culture, this research investigates the process and impact of creating spatial visions for ‘seeing the bigger picture’ in order to inform the transformation of regions. The researcher’s work explores radical mapping as an analytical and artistic tool, which has led to the development of a sequence of case-studies, exhibitions, richly illustrated presentations, publications, new policies, mentoring, student collaboration and an infrastructure of stakeholder engagement. Across this powerful and varied range of outcomes the research has situated a new cohesive and integrated landscape-led approach which transforms the physical materiality, ideas, memories and visions of the future in order to shape the experience we have of place as the social, physical and cultural context of our lives.
This research crosses professional and disciplinary boundaries using artistic, landscape and geographical expertise to re-evaluate the assumptions underlying practice-based research inquiry and the relationship between landscape and philosophy. It represents a significant shifting of methodology, away from the dominant scientific/social science paradigm, towards an approach that is deliberately more ambiguous and interpretative. The methods require an understanding of perception as intelligence and define landscape as the relationship a community has with its territory. The research thus seeks to address whether ideas can transform a region, and if so, how?
The research has led to an extraordinary number of high-profile outcomes spanning academic and public arenas. This includes peer reviewed papers, numerous exhibitions and developmental publications. In addition, it has informed the policy and ‘landscape-architecture’ thinking used by HS2 in the development of its pioneering West Midlands National Park, which underpins the West Midlands Combined Authority’s current sustainability agenda; directed long-term socioeconomic and environmental regeneration in the Black Country; and informed a UNESCO International declaration. Details of the research and publications are in the Research Catalogue exposition.
Epitafios y requetés
(2024)
author(s): Imanol Abad Martinez
published in: Research Catalogue
Este proyecto de tesis parte de la noción del requeté, cuestionando si éste podría ser un término subversivo a la hora de tratar la masculinidad en el arte. Para ello deberemos abordar primeramente la noción de lo masculino. Una vez activado dicho término haremos una exploración de lo biopolítico partiendo de autores como M. Foucault, F. Nietzsche o P. B. Preciado. Finalmente trataremos el término requeté no solo desde su contexto, sino desde su potencialidad en la actualidad, buscando así los límites de su performatividad.
A Love Letter to Ironing: Learning and Unlearning
(2024)
author(s): Tricia Crivellaro, Lynne Heller
published in: Research Catalogue
What does ironing have in common with learning to build a digital world? This exposition explores the nature of learning and unlearning through the juxtaposition of skills, specifically ironing, a competency acquired for the most part through unconscious absorption, versus creating in a digital medium where our learning was much more self-conscious. In learning to build and program in Unreal Engine (UE5), a game engine capable of enabling a virtual reality (VR) experience, we learned, once again, what it means to learn. The exposition is written as a lyric essay to encompass both the prosaic and poetic ways that we engaged with a project titled, Craft and the Digital Turn. By using VR as a means of data visualization we sought to bring our craft backgrounds together with future trends in digitalization and communication. Through personal narratives and histories, melded with theory and analysis we hope to record a process that was deeply engaging and extremely challenging for us as practitioners.
Group discussions on methods and places, 2020
(2024)
author(s): Natasha Barrett
published in: Research Catalogue
Summary of group discussions on methods and places