Dull Catastrophes and Love Songs: a Tacit Artistic Research Project
(2025)
author(s): Andrea Agostini
published in: Research Catalogue
My song cycle Dull Catastrophes and Love Songs, composed and recorded between 2022 and 2024, has a somewhat unusual placement within the context of contemporary music. In its original conception, it was first and foremost meant to investigate and extend the relation with recording technology, questioning a broad set of assumptions about the role and scope of musical notation, as well as the very conception and nature of the produced work, that are deeply ingrained in the practice and environment of score-based contemporary music. This would be achieved through an attempt to incorporate some techniques and creative approaches borrowed from the practices of popular music.
In hindsight, I realise that it was not only the strong orientation towards recording that influenced the creative process and its eventual outcome. Rather, technology enabled novel artistic possibilities and brought the work to addressing topics such as the agencies of the performer and the composer and the very ontology of the musical artefact.
Through the lens of practice-based artistic research, I will generate insights on the conceptual background, genesis, outcome and implications of this work. I set out to do this by delineating the musical, technological and socio-economic context in which the work is situated; exposing how the conception of the work changed over time, reflecting my growing awareness of its context and premisses; and describing the production process in order to show the difficulties and opportunities I encountered, as well as the ways it aligned with and deviated from the initial project. The goal is to spark a reflection on how the transfer of tools and techniques between different musical practices and creative approaches — with a specific reference to recording technology and its affordances and implications — may be an enriching opportunity for musical creation; and, more generally, on how technical and technological choices, far from being neutral, impact on the very aesthetic and ontological qualities of the work of art.
