Research Catalogue

A practice based research on questioning.

Tuomas Laitinen is a doctoral candidate at Tutke, the Performing Arts Research Center of Theatre Academy, Uniarts Helsinki. The subject of his doctoral research is the audience: what is the audience? Why is the audience? How to be an audience? In the Research Pavilion of the Venice Biennale 2019 Tuomas will engage in two projects: 1) creating a series of phenomenological etudes that focus on the phenomenon of audiencing. 2) observing the construction and opening of the Research Pavilion as a durational performance.

This is the documentation of the process and performance of Brain Machine Dérive developed in the frame of the Research Project Neuromatic Game Art PEEK/FWF 581 headed by Margarete Jahrmann.

WITHDRAWING THE PERFORMER WITHDRAWING THE PERFORMER is conceptualized and conducted collaboratively by Charlotta Ruth (SE/AT) and Jasmin Schaitl (AT). The starting point are two artistic practices based on methods of mindfulness and game/play; Performances for the Mind and Choreographic Clues. These two individual perspectives on participation emerge from the project leaders’ ongoing artistic research and merge in their common artistic curiosity in the creation of immaterial material. Accompanied by neuroscientist and performer Imani Rameses (US/AT) the research asks: How does immaterial material perform within participatory situations? What role does participatory setting play and how does participation differ if situations are communicated as a workshop, a treatment, a practice or a performance? How can neuroscience support how immaterial and participatory art practices are developed and described? What relation exists beyond involvement and how can a participant become the performance rather than being part of a performance? What has to occur in the mind and body for this to happen? Through practice and dialogue conducted with experts in the fields of contemplative sciences, sound art, choreography, game art and somatics, the research explores how input from participants (e.g. memory, thought, emotion) can be placed at the centre of a flexible yet framed performance situation. “Withdrawing the Performer” collaborates with the Angewandte Performance Laboratory, and will present its research outcomes in a public series of participatory events. In the course of the project, various participatory performance formats will be exchanged within the Angewandte e.g. at the Center for Didactics of Art and Interdisciplinary Education, as well as in external art institutions. Collaborating expert practitioners and dialogue partners are: Philipp Ehmann (AT), Nikolaus Gansterer (AT), Mariella Greil (AT), Margarete Jahrmann (AT), Dennis Johnson (US/AT), Anne Juren (FR/AT), Krõõt Juurak (EE/AT), Imani Rameses (US/AT), Christian Schröder (AT), Lucie Strecker (DE/AT).

WITHDRAWING THE PERFORMER researches live performance practices that place the visitors/participants at the center of the experience. During our four Saturday series, you are invited into the participatory practices of Philipp J. Ehmann, Mariella Greil, Dennis Johnson, Anne Juren, Krõõt Juurak and Christian Schröder - all offering diverse knowledge from contemplative sciences, sound art, choreography, game art, and somatics. Together with the core-artistic-researchers Charlotta Ruth, Jasmin Schaitl and neuroscientist Imani Rameses, we invite you to a practice-based reflection on the degrees of participatory involvement, individual and relational engagement, as well as the aspects of hierarchy, timing, and participatory sense-making.

Who or what carries, develops and transmits knowledge when it comes to performance and socially engaged art? An institution? An archive? A body? A collective body? A teacher? A website? A hard-drive? A box? ARCHIVES IN PRACTICE investigates methods for how to better include intersubjective and embodied knowledge inside archival practice. The research is especially devoted to socially engaged performance art whose participatory and often delicate practice is difficult to document. The methods of performative archiving will be based on two case studies in collaboration with APL - Angewandte Performance Laboratory and Raw Matters. Rather than a well organised storage we imagine the archive as a vibrant memory field. A place where concentrates (Konzentrate) of practice can be planted and where we activate and also continue the traces and artistic thinking of our peers. The idea of a concentrate has its roots in the three main researchers transdisciplinary and continuously developing performative archival practices; such as the Scenario Method – whereby past events can be artistically examined and recreated (Performatorium) and Living Documents – where performing in a loop is explored as a live documentation format (Ruth & Grünbühel). Through a concluding dialogue with archivists the methods of concentrates as a performative archiving practice will be evaluated and its compatibility with traditional archival logics will be tested. The long term aim is to support horizontal and sustainable transmission of knowledge developed within performative practice and explore how institutions and art educations, such as the University of Applied Arts can better include social and embodied knowledge in its ongoing programming and curriculum.

Through Phenomena Themselves Schedule

the second letter in the series of phenomenological etudes focuses on observing the explicit and implicit rules of our research environment.

Game Art currently undergoes a rush of presence and importance in the context of artistic research, as it informs methods of insight and experiments. This happens at the same moment as new mobile interfaces linking body, brain, and electronic networks become available in a subtly gamified world. Ludic Theory, the concept of Flow, and the transformative potential of play will serve as theoretical frameworks for a series of publicly performed artistic experiments evolving around neurointerfaces.  Hypotheses / research questions / objectives According to our hypothesis the everyday availability of neurointerfaces will create new dimensions of social and ethical questions reaching from of privacy and surveillance to self-optimization, but will also carry the potential for new forms of creativity and interaction. As arts-based research question we take up the challenge to critically evaluate neurointerfaces as technological devices of potential everyday use. Our research objective is the creation of a new form of experimental game art – the neuromatic one – to contribute new knowledge, awareness, and resilience, and to elucidate ethical questions, possibilities and limitations of technologies that intrude the individual brain and to ultimately change self-optimization into self-expression.  Approach / methods In a series of staged and performed artworks informed by Game art, concepts of Flow and play, we will create a hybrid interplay and inquiry of questions around personal data and brain measurement informed by the neuroscientific research and techno-philosophical discourse that accompanies the project. By artistic re-engineering neurointerfaces will be transformed from intrusive measurement devices into participative and creative tools.  Level of originality / innovation The present project constitutes a unique, original, and urgently needed critical but playful artistic examination of an emerging technology. The prototypes and artefacts of our research, a new innovative form of modified playful neuromatic devices, will be the seed for further artistic and philosophical use.  Primary staff involved in the project The highly transdisciplinary project is carried out by five experienced researchers from complementary fields. The leading roles are held by artistic researchers. Margarete Jahrmann is an experienced artist, professor in the artistic research PhD program at Angewandte Vienna and in Game Arts at the Zurich University of the Arts. Ruth Schnell is a leading media artist and holds the chair for Digital Arts, Angewandte Vienna. The techno-philosophical research line is led by Mark Coeckelbergh (University of Vienna). Stefan Glasauer (Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg) guides the neuroscientific research. The group will be complemented by several young emerging artists and researchers.

Ongoing Experiment is a listening experience that sketches an alternative mode of being together through the act of listening. It experiments with the friction of what is present and what is absent, what is now and what is past, what is close and what is distant, what is felt and what is imagined. Ongoing Experiment explores togetherness and proximity to space and time through custom built headsets that allow a simultaneous streaming of external audio sources (spoken instructions, field recordings of different environments) and an enhanced listening of the actual acoustic surroundings.