Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen

About this portal
The portal is used as an environment for presentation, and development of Artistic Reesearch done within the University og Bergen.
contact person(s):
Anne-Len Thoresen 
url:
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1310123/1435694
Recent Issues
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10. Projects
KMD Research projects and artistic results
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9. PHD 2025
KMD Artistic Research
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8. PHD 2024
phd fellows
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7. PhD 2023
PhD 2023
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6. PhD - KMD 2022
PhD - KMD 2022
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5. PhD - KMD 2021
Thesis under evaluation
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4. Articles
Various articles published in the KMD portal.
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3. Crisis Collective - contributions to a lost conference
Crisis Collective - contributions to a lost conference
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2. PhD - KMD 2019
Finished thesis. 2019
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1. Past projects - 2018 and prior
Projects KMD
Recent Activities
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Topographies of the obsolete
(2026)
author(s): Anne-Helen Mydland
published in: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
Topographies of the Obsolete is an artistic research project conceived in 2012 by
University of Bergen Professors Neil Brownsword and Anne Helen Mydland,
in collaboration with six European HEI’s and the British
Ceramics Biennial.
Emerging through two phases (2012-15; 2015-2020) it has to date engaged
ninety-seven interdisciplinary artists, scholars, cultural commentators and
students from thirteen countries. It has transformed participants’ practices, with
works originating out of the initial research being celebrated on an international
platform. Topographies of the Obsolete has received funding from a variety
of
institutions, alongside its core support from the Norwegian Artistic Research
Programme (2013-15 & 2015-17), whose peer review system (2015)
rated it
as ‘exemplary… strengthening artistic research and its scope beyond potential
communities of practitioners/researchers’. The project explores the landscape and associated histories of post-industry,
with an initial emphasis on Stoke-on-Trent, a world-renowned ceramics capital that bears evidence of fluctuations in global fortunes.
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DESERT DWELLING
(2025)
author(s): Christine Hansen
published in: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
Desert Dwelling is a research project conducted by Associate professor Christine Hansen and Independent Artist Line Anda Dalmar. The desert is used as a site and framework to reflect on landscape, environment and time. In addition, Desert Dwelling endeavor to explore the act of observation and documentation. The project uses common documentation/observation methods such as photography, video and sound. In addition, we employ more obsolete and time-consuming observation means such as drawing, casting and watercolor painting. This is to stress that different observation methods render the world differently, and provide noninterchangeable information about the world. Much of the visual material is from a field study in deserts in California in spring 2018. The study took place mainly in Death Valley and Joshua Tree and had a processual method. We selected a place in the desert and stayed there until we found something interesting to work with. Every day, we made experiences that we built on the next day. The working method focused on the fluid relationship between process, work and documentation.
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In a Place like this
(2025)
author(s): Johan Sandborg, Duncan Higgins
published in: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
In A place Like This sets out to investigate and expand the issues and critical discourses within Sandborg and Higgins' current collaborative research practice. The central focus for the research is concerned with how art, in this instance photographic and painted image making and text, can be used as an agent or catalyst of understanding and critical reflection.
The research methodology is constructed through photography, painting, drawing and text. This utilises the form of an artist publication as a point of critically engaged dissemination: a place for the tension between conflicting ideas and investigation to be explored through discussion.
The research question is focused on how the production of the image and the act of making images can communicate or describe moments of erasure or remembering in terms of historical and personal narratives with direct reference to moments of violence and place.
This is seen not in terms of a nostalgic remembrance of the past; instead as one that is rife with complicated layers and dynamics where recognition is denied the ability to locate a physical representation. Embedded in this is an exploration of particular questions concerning the ethics of representation: the depiction of ourselves and other? In this sense it brings into question an examination of the act of remembering as a thing in itself, through the production of the image and text, contexts of knowledge and cultural discourses explored through the form of an artists publication.
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Outward Threads - Intuitive Computers / Rational Composers
(2025)
author(s): Juan Sebastián Vassallo
published in: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
The project ‘Outward Threads’ is an artistic investigation rooted in music composition, integrating computational frameworks from machine learning and artificial intelligence to create new music. It seeks to develop a fresh approach to established compositional methodologies within computer-assisted composition, as well as incorporating novel tools. Some of these contributions, including the development of creative software tools, are discussed. Theoretically, the project examines various forms of creative cognition and their manifestation in Western art contemporary music composition, drawing insights from cognitive sciences and AI. These discussions provide a framework for presenting each composition within the project and serve as starting points for exploring individual creative processes, methodologies, and techniques. The goal is to deepen the understanding of these cognitive processes and their interactions in the creative process, aiming to bridge the gap between purely neurocognitive approaches and practice-based research. In a broader context, the project examines ethical aspects of music and composition and the composer’s role in society. Finally, it considers the impact of new technologies -particularly generative AI- on creative processes and discusses influential practitioners and current trends in the field.
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re- radio
(2025)
author(s): Karen Werner
published in: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
re- radio is an artistic research PhD project about relationality in radio articulated through three durational artworks: SkottegatenFM (2021), a three-month mini-FM radio station based in my apartment and neighborhood; Radio Multe (2021-ongoing), an experimental city-wide AM, FM and online radio station with an accompanying shadow station and Seijo & her Soul (2024), a nine-evening performance installation in an art exhibition space. The project situates the artworks in the contexts of mini-FM and community radio practices, radio art, theories of relationality, relational aesthetics and dialogical aesthetics. I chart the move from broad questions, such as what is relationality? What is community? What is communication? to more specific realizations: that the radio station as an artistic form can foster an immersive, collective subjectivity that supports many forms of unlearning and learning with and that on-air conversation can be an artistic material. By shifting attention from senders and receivers to the spaces between them, on-air conversation as co-creation contributes to a relational ethics. re- radio also contributes to the field of artistic research regarding relational methodologies and the politics of knowledge.
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Formidling som fagfelt
(2025)
author(s): Anne Szefer Karlsen
published in: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
The project Mediation as Discipline is an attempt to build
bridges between disciplines and make the experience-based knowledge that the contemporary art field can offer relevant to a broader academic community. At the same time, it is an investigation of needs within the field itself, which should be served by a university that prides itself on having an artistic faculty. This report, carrying the same name as the project, is based on a comprehensive survey among contemporary art mediators conducted in 2024 by the project group, and it examines the foundation for specialised education for mediators of contemporary art in Norway.