Sounding Philosophy

University of Bergen, Department of Fine Art, Music and Design, the Grieg Academy

Project leader: Dániel Péter Biró

About the project

The project Sounding Philosophy (2021-2025) integrates the fields of music composition, philosophy and science to understand how theories of reason and the mind can be approached from creative, metaphysical and scientific perspectives. This project builds on research-creation initiated by a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017-2018, presentations at the interdisciplinary annual conference of the Swiss Philosophical Society in September 2018 and discussions undertaken in the context of the Grieg Academy Composition Research Group in the years 2018-2023.

The question of reason and the mind has been dealt with in the fields of art, philosophy and science and this has given way to contemporary theories of emergence, e.g. by the Nobel-Price Winner in Physics Robert Laughlin. Emergence can be described as the condition of an entity having properties distinct from the properties of the parts of the system from which it emerges, an important concept within the theoretical framework of complex systems. While philosophers have described thinking, doing and perception as different “states of mind,” scientists have not only concerned themselves with the question of how intelligence in the universe is possible but also how intelligence plays a role in the evolution and emergence of nature. Philosophers, such as Spinoza and Kant, regarded both philosophy and art not merely as rational modes of explanation but also as expressions of spirit (spiritus) and intelligence (Geist). The project seeks to understand such concepts from philosophical, scientific and artistic vantage points, allowing the various fields to inform and influence one-another.

 

About the Presentation

In 2023, the artistic research project Sounding Philosophy has concentrated on the topic of “Intuition.” The presentation will be overview of the findings and outcomes of the research group, exploring now intuitive knowledge interconnect in the fields of music composition, music performance, music analysis, philosophy and science.

 

Dániel Péter Biró is Professor for Composition at the Grieg Academy, University of Bergen. He studied in the U.S., Hungary, Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Israel before receiving his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2004. From 2004 -2009 he was Assistant Professor and from 2009-2018 Associate Professor for Composition and Music Theory at the University of Victoria in Victoria, BC, Canada. In 2010 he received the Gigahertz Production Prize from the ZKM-Center for Art and Media. In 2011 he was Visiting Professor at Utrecht University and in 2014-2015 Research Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. In 2015 he was elected to the College of New Scholars, Scientists and Artists of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2017 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is leader of the research project Sounding Philosophy of the Norwegian Artistic Research Program (2021-2025).

 

Project Website: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/634973/634974