Research Catalogue

an international database for artistic research

• 1. Doctoral Research Doctoral research undertaken in the Faculty of Arts, Design and Media at Birmingham City University.

• Working Class-ical Music: Exploring the creative potential of embodying working-classness in a folio of new interdisciplinary compositions (2025) author(s): AIDAN Teplitzky published in: Birmingham City University
  In my practice-based research I have developed a portfolio of new interdisciplinary compositions that explore the creative potential of embodying working-classness in classical music. The impact of my research is the production of a portfolio of compositions that effectively provide new considerations to various aspects of classical music’s culture, including: • Performance Environment (Holding, The Damned, and The Weight of History and Background Etudes) • Instrumentation (It’s Hard to Make an Oboe Sound Working-Class) • Musical forms (Budget Cuts to Faure’s Piano Trio in D Minor and Theme With Variations Forced by Expectations) • The experience of those working in/engaging with classical music’s culture (Budget Cuts to Faure’s Piano Trio in D Minor and The Weight of History and Background Etudes) • Musical language (Seven Working-Class Time Pieces, Baguette Baton and Escapism). The following exposition also provides a resource to address the stereotyping of working-classness in contemporary creative outputs, a methodology for how working-classness can be embodied in artistic practice, a display of how interdisciplinary methods can be used to effectively express the working-class experience, and a space for other working-class artists to express their class through classical music.
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  Living in and through our bodies: somatic principles that support the experience of pain and discomfort (2024) author(s): Maisie James published in: Birmingham City University
  This thesis is an autoethnographic, practice research investigation, offering further knowledge to the field of somatic practice, pain, and discomfort. As this thesis is a practice research inquiry, I offer practice to the field that is further supported by my autoethnographic positions. Embodied research and the lived experience are therefore central, exploring how somatic practice can support the sensations of pain and discomfort. Whilst practice is at the forefront of this investigation, theoretical frameworks from the somatic field, practical offerings from other practitioners, therapists, and researchers, and already established somatic ideologies have informed the research process and have offered an integrated approach to supporting the understanding of how practice can support pain and discomfort. Both the practical and theoretical elements of this research emphasise the importance of improvisatory movement and relationships with the self to engage with a sense of freedom and self-expression. By adopting different somatic principles within practice, together with a theoretical understanding of the applications of somatic practice to the body, this research explores movement and wellbeing from a practical perspective, whilst drawing upon key ideas from the somatic field of research. The refined set of principles that this thesis contributes to the field are: The Breath, Movement Economy, The Skeleton, Rotation and Flow, Embodied Rhythm, Stretch, Extension and Elongation, Dynamic and Light Self-touch, Noticing and Addressing Habits, and Rest and Active Stillness. Each somatic principle was explored practically throughout this investigation, resulting in an in depth, subjective approach to analysing data through the lived experience and the narratives of others involved in the research process. A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Birmingham City University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Supervisors: Dr Polly Hudson, Dr Carrie Churnside
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• ‘LIBRETTISING’ SCIENCE: Using operatic narrative and performance to re-present scientific thought in an investigation of new methods towards developing contemporary opera. (2024) author(s): Roxanne Korda published in: Birmingham City University
  This practice-based research investigates presenting scientific concepts and research on the operatic platform through an interdisciplinary and collaborative process. It focuses on libretti writing and performance, using tools such as anthropomorphism, archetype and mythological characters to engage participants and the audience with the subjects on stage. The work explores how to create an experience which enables a deeper sense of the reality of the science presented, and makes the audience, performers and creative practitioners complicit in the existence of the concepts, or objects, being performed. The performativity of the work is allowed to play a key role in shaping the final piece, as the researcher explores the embodiment of the characters during the process of production towards cyclical presentations of the work. This investigation includes two major collaborative projects in which I participated as librettist, producer and performer: 1. The Flowering Desert. An opera about the discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system, written to be performed specifically in planetaria. This involves a collaboration with: composer Daniel Blanco Albert; designer Alexander Kaniewski; filmmaker Tadas Stalyga; projectionist Leon Trimble; and the ThinkTank Planetarium (led by Colin Hutcheson). 2. Lipote: An Interconnected Journey. An opera/musical about deforestation due to intensive agriculture. Set in the soil from the perspective of the roots of trees. This involves a collaboration with: composer Oliver Farrow; jewellery maker Wanshu Li; choreographer Jingya Peng; and sound artist Leon Trimble.
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  Composition strategies for the creation of science-based interdisciplinary and collaborative music-theatre (2024) author(s): Daniel Blanco Albert published in: Birmingham City University
  The practice-based PhD research project comprises the development and application of composition strategies and techniques generated through interdisciplinary collaboration to integrate elements and ideas from non-sonic disciplines into the musical discourse of new music-theatre works, specifically opera. I explore mechanisms of mapping and association that engage with both the specific subject matter of each piece and the creative collaborative environment in which they are created, thus generating different compositional resources that I use to inform the creative process. By using mapping techniques, I can deeply engage and communicate a subject matter on different levels in the musical composition. The framework for this research is the intertwining of art and science on a variety of levels from a music compositional perspective. Within this framework, I explored the integration of knowledge and data from the natural and social sciences to inform the composition of four science-based music-theatre works: In response to Naum Gabo: Linear Construction in Space No. 1 (2020), Autohoodening: The Rise of Captain Swing (2021), The Flowering Desert (2022), and TRAPPIST-1 (2023). With this approach, I aim to closely link these works with their particular subject matter instead of being composed based just on my personal musical taste. By consistently and cohesively applying the strategies and techniques explored in this research, the outcome is not creating music about science or music inspired by science, but, instead, music embedded with science in which the scientific data and knowledge inform the composition decisions. The subject matter is therefore intertwined within the musical discourse, its performativity and theatricality, and its relationship with the other disciplines and collaborators involved in the creation of these music-theatre works.
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  Documenting Non-Sonic Music (2023) author(s): Paul Norman, Andy Ingamells, Michael Wolters published in: Research Catalogue, Birmingham City University
  How to document music with non-sonic elements? Or: How to document all the performative qualities of a piece of music that can’t be heard? Beginning with this question our group of researchers, filmmakers and dramaturgs from Birmingham (UK), Frankfurt (Germany) and Fredrikstad (Norway) met between 2019 and 2021 to develop initial ideas and questions, then test them.
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  We Reap What We Sow, embodiment and urban allotment gardening. Part 1: autumn- late winter, October- January. (2021) author(s): Polly Hudson published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research, Birmingham City University
  This research investigates the inquiry: how is embodiment illuminated by a relationship with the land, earth, and plants, specifically in the context of an urban allotment gardening practice? It reveals the act of writing from the body, the relationship between a movement practice and gardening, the ancient ritual of growing and nurturing plants, and notions of gardening as a somatic practice. The research project was carried out over the space of a year, from 2019-2020, and in this exposition the activities and interventions that were carried out during part I of the research are revealed. The work shared here is part of an on-going long-term project instigated in 2017 ‘And so we Sow’ which looks at the relationship between dance and gardening.
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