Journal for Artistic Research
About this portal
The Journal for Artistic Research (JAR) is an international, online, Open Access and peer-reviewed journal for the identification, publication and dissemination of artistic research and its methodologies, from all arts disciplines. With the aim of displaying practice in a manner that respects artists' modes of presentation, JAR abandons the traditional journal article format and offers its contributors a dynamic online canvas where text can be woven together with image, audio and video. These research documents called ‘expositions’ provide a unique reading experience while fulfilling the expectations of scholarly dissemination.
The Journal is underpinned by the Research Catalogue (RC) a searchable, documentary database of artistic research. Anyone can compose an exposition and add it to the RC using the online editor and suitable expositions can be submitted to the editorial board for peer-review and publication in JAR. Read more about submissions or start composing expositions straight away by registering for an account, which is free of charge.
JAR is published by the Society for Artistic Research (SAR).
url:
http://www.jar-online.net/
Recent Activities
-
[text]uring: writing through fashion for a new literacies dissertation
(2023)
author(s): Rachel Kaminski Sanders
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
The term 'literacy' encompasses reading and writing practices, each with distinct meanings and histories. Scholars define individuals as 'literate' or 'illiterate' based on these practices, a point not to be taken lightly. New literacies studies have expanded literacy from print to encompass all forms of meaning-making, leading to an expansion of associated terminology. In American higher education, despite the expanded meanings of terms like 'writing' and 'text,' the term 'research' remains dominated by written language, even within dedicated disciplines (Coiro et al. 2008; New London Group 1996; Wilber 2008).
Through a cultural studies perspective, I traced the historical evolution of American literacy to the present day. The study revealed darker consequences of literacy's past, providing insights for scholars to understand silenced voices and advocate for their inclusion in the future. Given the ever-expanding practices of literacy, the need for increased attention to writing instruction, and the problematic otherness of arts-based disciplines such as fashion, my goal is to broaden the range of accepted scholarly compositions in higher education. I believe this pursuit is key to the advancement of academic research publications.
To address this paradox, I actively embraced new literacy practices by creating a dissertation supported by Barone & Eisner’s (2012) concept of arts based research. Drawing on my experiences in the industry, I sought to challenge views of fashion as frivolous by writing my dissertation in the language of dress, offering a new perspective on the interwovenness of literacy and fashion. My dissertation argues that fashion is a form of writing by exploring nonverbal communication in scholarly work. This move reconciled the perceived frivolity with the substantive nature of fashion and ignited my commitment to the acceptance of research in diverse language forms.
-
TroublingGAN: generated visual ambiguity as a speculative alternative to photojournalism
(2023)
author(s): Lenka Hamosova, Pavol Rusnák
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
This exposition documents artistic research that engages with generative neural networks and artificial intelligence-driven visual synthesis, the goal being to challenge the limits of the research and question the value of the generated visual outcomes. We present here our experiment with a customised StyleGAN model. In contrast to its utilisation by computer scientists, it has been trained on a heterogeneous dataset, voluntarily exposing the generative neural network to failure while focusing on the unexpected moments of surprise that arise from such a process. Led by the critical thoughts of The Nooscope Manifested (Pasquinelli and Joler 2020), this experiment questions what kind of knowledge generative neural networks produce, whether they could change one’s perspective on studied objects (the dataset) and whether they could function as a viable tool for artistic research. The observed object in this project is the concept of ‘troubling times’ (inspired by ‘Designing in Troubling Times’, the theme of the 2021 Uroboros Festival) — rapid socio-ecological changes caused by shifts in global economic, political and technological power and the subsequent series of troubling events, including the COVID-19 pandemic, violent conflicts and environmental catastrophes. StyleGAN is used as a pattern-recognition and knowledge-production tool to create an intuitive understanding of what this ambiguous term ‘troubling times’ actually means today. During the experimentation process, multiple unforeseen moments and twists happened, offering valuable insights into the nature of synthetic media, generating ethical questions concerning the use of generative neural networks and spawning new propositions for further research.
-
The Making of 'Commotion'
(2023)
author(s): Sara Pinheiro
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
“Commotion” is a fixed media multichannel composition that revolved around the principles of minimalist music. This exposition aims at understanding these principles while it tries to place the process of composing the piece within the common premises of artistic research. Due to the nature of its context, this approach includes also theories of reception - mostly by exploring themes such as intentionality, interpretation and representation. With this exposition, the author shares technical terminology of sound practices, in order to promote it in contexts predominantly visual-oriented.
-
Running Freight on the River. A Clean Cargo Prefiguration
(2023)
author(s): Tim Boykett, Tina Auer
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
We are interested in exploring the types of futures that are preferable for us all. Discussions of preferable futures can be made difficult by a lack of understanding of the lived experience of that possible future. We like to think that some wise person once said: “I hear futures and I forget. I see futures and I remember. I do futures and I understand.” In order to explore scenarios of possible futures, we thus look into experiential modalities.
This exposition examines our Danube Clean Cargo project. The prefigurative process imagined what small scale localised transport could be like and attempted to run a pilot scheme. Reporting on that, merging the quantitative, qualitative and experiential aspects of the project, we present some resulting insights and imaginations. The project leaves us with speculations and visions drawn out by the process of prefiguration. It also leaves us with questions around heterotopic instantiations, queered economics and the everyday to be pondered as artistic research. This helps us reflect on the process of imagination and speculation, on dreams of various freedoms and the harsh realities of logistics chains.
The exposition develops ideas in both internal and external reflective modes. The exposition is oriented along a chart of the Danube river for the region of interest. Along the south bank of the Danube the project and its internal reflections are arrayed as episodic text fragments, leading up to a short vision that echoes older stories of sailing cargo barges. Along the north bank a more external reflection is positioned, bringing the project and its understandings into context with a collection of previous developments and external references. The entire exposition is arranged as a single page paper nautical chart, which in contrast to a digital chart plotter, always displays all of the information and does not hide features.
This exposition is part of Curiouser and Curiouser, cried Alice: Rebuilding Janus from Cassandra and Pollyanna (CCA), an art-based research project from Design Investigations (ID2) at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and Time's Up. It is supported by the Programme for Arts-based Research (PEEK) from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF): AR561.
-
Performing with Sonic Tools. An approach to designing and analysing new instruments
(2023)
author(s): Gaute Barlindhaug
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
In recent decades, digital technology has accelerated the development of new musical instruments, not only establishing new techniques for creating sound but also enabling new performance practices. From the perspective of the performer, this has significantly broadened their possibility to express themselves, but through earlier experimentations it has become clear to me that audiences have problem comprehend such use of new musical instruments. In a traditional setting, when an artist performs with an instrument the audience can build on their cumulative experience and knowledge to evaluate the skill of an artist. With new experimental instruments such a strategy to understand a performance is not possible. This text describes my work with the dance performance Sound of Silence, and the creation of a device called the Looping Camera. Base on previous experience from using sensor technology in musical performances combined with theories and about the listeners position, we tried find a new approach to the creation of new sound producing devises that could overcome earlier problems with audience comprehension. With our work we tried to create a device that, even if it was largely unfamiliar for the audience, could establish a sense of meaning for the audience by including references to non-musical media technology. This performance also resulted in the developing of an analytical concept, that of “sonic tools”, that is meant to draw attention to the aesthetics of new an unfamiliar instrument through liberating such tools from the dichotomy of musical vs- nonmusical sounds.
-
Heterotopia of the Practice Room: Casting and Breaking the Illusion of Tristan Murail’s Tellur for Solo Guitar
(2023)
author(s): Maarten Stragier
published in: Journal for Artistic Research
A combination of highly unusual extended playing techniques with open intabulated notation makes the solo guitar work Tellur altogether unique in Tristan Murail’s catalogue. When placed in the broader discursive context of Murail’s compositional philosophy, this unique configuration of elements causes a quandary. The composer aims to integrate “the totality of sonic phenomena” into his compositional language, and within this context he maintains a traditional view of musical authorship. However, how does a performer reconcile this perspective with a score of which the combination of unconventional techniques and open notation leaves so much of the sonic material to their individual discretion and know-how?
This exposition offers the first performance-led study of this conundrum in Murail’s music and writings. Using Lydia Goehr’s historical study of the work-concept as a point of orientation, I explore the functioning of Werktreue in Tellur. I show that the processual structures that should make up its “ideal” score are correlative with the composer’s abstraction of the guitar, which is in its turn correlative with the guitarist’s unconventioned heuristics. I argue that confronting traditional musical authorship with this system of correlation creates a discursive aporia, but not a practical impossibility. Rather the discursive aporia brings to light what I call the “heterotopia of the practice room.” In this heterotopia, I as a performer navigate a musical reality that simultaneously reflects and contests a tradition of classical music performance built around the regulative work-concept.