Research Catalogue

research expositions

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  TRAVERSING SONIC TERRITORIES (TST) (2023) author(s): Søren Kjærgaard, Torben Snekkestad published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
  What happens when musicians improvising on acoustic instruments sample and exchange their sound libraries? How can such a transgression of sonic territories contribute to an expanded understanding of one’s own sonic identity? And could this b/lending of identities point to a more ambiguous yet vibrant field of intra-play? Departing from these questions, this project intends to challenge our idea of sonic identity as a personal subject-oriented entity, and consequently investigate how a collaborative sharing of sampled sounds, can contribute to an expanded understanding of the sounds we play and are played by. Individual idiomatic approaches to one’s own instrument are thus interfered as we transgress habitual boundaries for action possibilities and musical imagination. The practice circulates from the duo of Torben Snekkestad and Søren Kjærgaard toward external collaborators, where the sharing process involves different approaches to audio sampling and mapping, embedding and embodying, listening and playing with each other’s sonic material to a point where authorship, origin, instrument and sonic identity is diffracted.
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  THE POETICS OF A MULTIPHONIC LANDSCAPE (2019) author(s): Torben Snekkestad connected to: Rhythmic Music Conservatory Copenhagen published in: Research Catalogue
  The project is an artistic research project focusing on the saxophone􏰁s ability to produce multiphonics (multiple sounds on an instrument considered monophonic). It is a personal artistic exploration into the process of unfolding the poetics of these complex sonics and a reflection over the process, methods and the creation of an album trilogy, consisting of acoustic solo music recorded during the research period. The main question I have been asking myself during this project has been: What happens if the raw musical material, in the creation of a set of solo saxophone works, is based on the multiphonics only and what this material in itself suggest – possibly independent of any stylistic affiliation? 
My main objective was to examine why the saxophone’s multiphonics have such a captivating effect on me. How could I possibly explore their intrinsic qualities and unfold the poetic potential in them? By the same token, my ambition was to find a suitable artistic context for this enamored relationship that so heavily has stirred the waves of my imagination. In the reflection text on the project, I disclose how some unexpected paths during this pursuit revealed themselves. From sprouting interest toward underwater soundscapes, to the making of a hybrid instrument called reed-trumpet; and how my personal catalog of multiple sounds found its place, not in a public pdf-document or book release, but in a German wooden archive box. I relay in what way I began to take on the intrinsic qualities of the multiphonics and the reason why an oscillation between artistic intention and action is so pivotal for an improviser. To make sure that the project had this focus at all time I sat up a dogma that contains a list of eight fundamental criteria that manifest the intentions and structure as well as sharpen the working methods.
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