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This exposition is the media repository of the artistic dissertation “Wandering Recurrence - Openness and Identity through Spatialization” for the Doctor Artium Program, in Composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz, Austria This thesis deals with creating musical situations that allow for contingency but still retain coherence. Composers have sought to create indeterminate situations by using open notations that iteratively create different results in each performance. A central claim of this thesis is that contingent situations can instead be achieved by simultaneously localizing multiple activities in different positions in space. Spatialization in today’s musical practices is a ubiquitous topic. What makes this approach different is an emphasis on the relation between form and space. This investigation aims to create a multifaceted and open musical work through the disposition of sound sources. It explores the contingency of a localized material by developing a series of compositional strategies. The notion of an open musical work implies the question of the agency of the material and its repercussions for the agency of the composer. As an artistic research project, this thesis also aims to articulate possible forms of artistic knowledge and develops a formulation of experimental practice. The project is conducted using three principal methods: Firstly, there is the development and modeling of compositional strategies in a series of case studies assisted by a spatialization model developed as part of the project. Secondly, the project employs musicological research methods and studies the contemporary compositional context and their concepts of space, openness, and form. Thirdly, the case studies are analyzed in conjunction with formulations of the concepts of space, openness, form, composer, and experiment. The main results of this project are four compositional strategies and four new musical works, one of which is an orchestra piece commissioned by the SWR (Südwestrundfunk), as well as the reconceptualization of said concepts. The kind of openness developed in the project is the product of the encounter of different layers of activities and materials localized in space, which is open to be interpreted by the listener during the performance. This practice of embracing openness proposes a non-hierarchical relation between composer and material, which implies a feminist reformulation of the figure of the composer, as well as of the notion of experiment as a critical practice.
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