Research Catalogue

“Free Improvisation – Method and Genre” was a research-fellow project from November 2007 until November 2010 at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) on Free Improvisation and the use of Improvisation in Experimental Music.

Lemur spelar, skaper og kuraterer. Ensemblet arbeider som ein firehoda kropp, ei eining sett saman av sterke individ med eigne ambisjonar og agendaer, samstundes som alle har eit sterkt fokus på kreative gruppeprosessar. Lemuria er vårt fjerde verk i ein serie av prosjekt der titlar, konsept og strategiar frå det 20. århundre sin kunstmusikalske kanon blir omforma og gjenbrukt, i vårt bilde. Verket er ein konsertinstallasjon for ensemble, to songarar og live elektronikk, framført i ein spredt scenografi, for eit mobilt publikum. Verket vart bestilt av Borealisfestivalen og urframført i Grand Selskapslokaler i Bergen, 10.mars 2017.

Hanne Darboven’s (1941-2009) Opus 17a is a composition for solo double bass that is rarely performed due to the physical and mental challenges involved in its performance. It is one of four opuses from the composers monumental 1008 page Wünschkonzert (1984), and was composed during her period of making “mathematical music” based on mathematical systems where numbers were assigned to certain notes and translated to musical scores. It can be described as large-scale minimalism and it is highly repetitive, but even though the same notes and intervals keep repeating, the patterns slightly change throughout the piece. This is an attempt to unfold the many challenges of both interpreting, preparing and performing this 70 minute long solo piece for double bass consisting of a continuous stream of eight notes. It is largely based on my own experiences of preparing, rehearsing and performing Opus 17a, but also on interviews I have conducted with fellow bass players Robert Black and Tom Peters, who have both made recordings of this piece as well as having performed it live. One is met with few instrumental technical challenges such as fingering, string crossing and bowing when performing Opus 17a, but because of its long duration what one normally would take for granted could possibly prove to be challenging.

Repetition plays a central role in many musical styles and genres. Repetition, rhythm and patterns also play an important part in the visual arts. Here we will show, examine and discuss repetition as a method and main musical element, as well as their correlation with moving images, in a series of audio-visual works we have been working on together since 2016. Accumulator is one such project and will be the main focus here, where not only repetition, rhythm and patterns appear as musical and visual elements, but is used as an artistic method in itself when repeating performances of a similar material, documenting each one of them and adding the individual performances as layers creating a dense audio-visual orchestral solo performance. As well as temporal repetition, Accumulator repeats in the spatial dimension, where the staging of a performance features the live performer multiplied, as he is accompanied by pre-recorded video images of himself. According to the spatial characteristics of the given performance space, this repetition of the performer may be frontal / two dimensional, or may extend across several surfaces, creating a surround projection in which the live performer is contained.

The Artistic Research Forum Expanded was a meeting place during the Artistic Research Forum and NTNU Artistic Research Week, opening up a space for experimenting with new ideas and to show work in a format complementary to the presentation format of the forum. During the NTNU Artistic Research Week we open Galleri KIT and the Artistic Research Concept Store (Rosenborg gate 22) for events, workshops and small scale experiments organised by artistic research fellows at NTNU.

This is the documentation of the artistic research project Love your Latency – a telematic improvisation project conducted as a collaboration between CreaTeME / University of Agder, Norwegian Academy of Music (NMH), and Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). The project started in January 2024 and will continue throughout 2025.