The Sonic Beings Laboratory: children as artistic researchers weaving meanings of sound by Jelizaveta Vovka

What questions emerge when children and adults engage in artistic research together, exploring sound, identity, and creativity as co-researchers? In this AR pilot project, a fourth-grade class at a Viennese elementary school, Campus Landstraße, together with three adult researchers, collaboratively shape an open-ended inquiry into the sonic. This exploratory phase should lay the groundwork for a larger artistic research project. It focuses on how children and adults collaboratively shape the direction of inquiry: What questions related to sound matter to us? How do we, together, engage with sound as material, metaphor, and method? And how do the modes of questioning transform our understanding of what artistic research can become? Guided by principles of Participatory Action Research and entangled sound-making, this pilot creates an open, flexible space, the Sonic Beings Laboratory, where research practices are not delivered or taught, but discovered in collaboration. It is a space where children and adults co-develop questions, sub-projects, and methods through relational and creative engagement. As adult researchers and artists, we were not external observers but co-learners—creating alongside the children, responding to their sonic ideas, and reflecting on our own evolving practices. Our field notes, sketches, and interventions were not supplementary; they were integral to the research process, allowing us to trace how the project challenged our assumptions and shifted our ways of listening and making. This pilot is not about finding answers. It is about staying with the questions that emerge through our shared inquiry, attending to how our research practice unfolds, and how all participants are changed through the process.

This sub-project, by the band STRAY GIRLS, was formed within the Sonic Beings Laboratory by Ryjin, Yeji, Yuri and Hannah. It grew out of a shared fascination with K-pop. From the very first laboratory session, they began exploring what K-pop is, who makes it, and how it travels across cultures. Their curiosity quickly turned into creative action, and soon they decided to form their own band. The name STRAY GIRLS intentionally echoes Stray Kids, one of their favourite groups, marking both homage and transformation.

Everything on this page was created by the group themselves, from the artwork to the composition and performance of their original song ESEOL. They developed the rhythm, wrote lyrics, rehearsed extensively, and directed the sound design process. Acting as creative directors, they guided one of the facilitators in finding the exact sounds they envisioned, before learning to record and operate the digital audio workstation (Logic) independently. The final recording features Yuri on vocals.

Alongside the music, they created their own artist photo, a drawing representing the four members, extending their band identity visually. Additionally, they created the album artwork for their single, ESEOL. The process of making ESEOL intertwines imagination, collaboration, and technical skill, showing how artistic research can emerge through self-initiated, collective creation.

Methods used are songwriting, composing, drawing, recording, directing, collaborative authorship and performance.

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