At the time of writing the proposal we were convinced that the most delicate question concerning artistic research, the one requiring special thought and discussion, was its methodology, and so did we state it in our text. Accordingly, we designed with care a plan, a system of methods, which would serve as guide into our research work, while keeping a critical eye on it. With time, however, our concern seemed to be focusing rather on the form to communicate artistic research, perhaps also because our system of methods was working reasonably well. And, indeed, the question of how to communicate to a broad audience the advances of such a research, where reflection and artworks intermingle, where the sensual experience is as important as the conceptual, is anything but evident. It is for this reason that in this text –this meta-reflection on our research–, I will address these two moments of artistic research through our experience in the project.

Artistic research is a boiling subject looking for its proper place; learning from reflection and from action –through the many projects that are already, or have been, active.  Not that research ‘in the arts’¹ had not existed before –it has existed since always–, but the new status of artistic research integrating into university, enrobes it with new responsibilities and demands, while offering new advantages. In our project proposal we included, as part of its development, a critical reflection on our own research, and it is only natural, therefore, that we have encountered ourselves in our progress with many of the challenges that this light might pose. Many discussions and exchanges of texts along the project were relating to artistic research rather than to our ‘proper’ subject of research itself.

The experience has been interesting though not exempt from some difficulty: to be fully involved in a subject and at the same time above or besides or, in any case, afar and yet keeping it in sight has not always been easy. Nonetheless, however small our input to the general discussion on artistic research might be, I am glad to contribute to it. It is difficult to imagine what other “external” frame would have cuddled such intense concentration on something as subtle and fragile as the composition of the spatial dimension of music – an exploration beyond a scientific or engineering perspective, beyond even the production of an artwork, and yet within the one and the other and the other.

Art will find through this new frame different and varied paths to concentrate, explore and search, and this is what is most important, but care has to be taken: the last century pushed the boundaries of art away, blurring them –what is art and what not?– while the scientific method and its communication protocol have become even more precise and demanding, arising almost as a universal model. Artistic research is not science, it has to embrace other forms of knowledge and something of its subject’s freedom and openness has to permeate into its essence:  a challenge, no doubt.

Methodology

Our system of three methods –conceptualization, modelling, experimentation– has worked, as already mentioned, quite well. In our search to define a system of methods, we finally opted, as described in the proposal text, to lean on the ‘most natural’ and underline these three conceptual stages as articulating moments in order to represent as much the creative as the research process.

Kandinsky, in his “Punkt und Linie zu Fläche”², represents also the creative process in three steps, starting with a ‘vision’, which he associates to the warm, sharp, overactive resonance of the internal conception, followed by a ‘realization’, associated with the cool and controlled resonance of the masterly execution. His third step, ‘le cafard’, as the French expressively name it, is associated with the feeling of weakness and dissatisfaction at the completion of the work. The two first steps match rather well our own; his third we decided to live in isolated silence, and our third, which we should have probably named ‘Experiencing’ rather than ‘Experimentation’, he probably associates to both the previous stages.

Our system of methods has had, as expected –being the representation of a process–, all type of variations in the paths between them, modelling going ‘back’ to conceptualization, experiencing feeding directly modelling and so on. The most noteworthy of these paths being perhaps some kind of ‘short-circuits’ were conceptualization would feed conceptualization, or any other to itself, without having to go through the whole cycle, as if the result of the other methods would have been known beforehand. This is of course possible, or apparently possible, for in any case the whole cycle is probably always traversed so to speak by hard, when deeply and enthusiastically concentrated on one or other task, when tacit knowledge tells you in the ear all that would have happened in the intermediate steps.

There are two aspects, both related to creation, worth some reflection. We had, in our proposal, associated the moment of creation to that of conceptualization, but we had specified also that modelling included the act of expressing/formalizing artistic ideas. In my On Software text I am making a distinction between two artistic activities dealing with software, the building of the underlying system to compose, and that of writing the ‘software score’, of expressing concrete artistic ideas. It is in this second activity where conceptualization and modelling merge to a degree, which at times is difficult to separate: the pencil (in our case the computer keyboard) and the mind being one. This is not always the case (unfortunately!), formalization of ideas sometimes is a hard task, a process full of difficulties, a struggle to keep the envisioned model alive –as object of contemplation, exam, analysis–, and here, of course, the two method-moments are clearly distinctive. But there are these other situations also, where the one and the other –formalization and creation– are one.

The second aspect is probably much more interesting. We had chosen the idea of ‘Case Study’, with the knowledge that the term study in music has a history including true artistic pieces that concentrate one way or other on some kind of technical or musical problem. Therefore, the idea of artistic creation was embedded in our project from the start, even if at the time of presenting the proposal we were only timidly acknowledging it. As I mentioned in my Introduction text, study cases expanded to become developed pieces. Indeed, I do not think I would have managed a certain depth of knowledge into the research subject had I only involved myself in the composition of case studies. A piece is of a different breadth, it has many more dimensions; it is like getting immersed into the ‘real world’, leaving the limpidity of the laboratory. The decision, good as I think it was, has had other consequences, if only because it has accentuated some difficult question. I mentioned in the round-table at the “On the Choreography of Sound” presentation event that I had felt a certain friction between research and creation, and curiously (for me at least) the colleague composers present or, say, most of them, acknowledged a similar difficulty.

Making a piece of music implies taking many decisions of an aesthetic value which depart largely from the research subject, and these decisions bring in their own paths, their own consequences. There are many details, suggesting their own demands their own implications, and, as I wrote in my internal notes, “some would have a reason, for others we would find one. […] I could have just as much planned them as dreamt them, and properly speaking, I think there will always be a share of both”. In the case of electroacoustic music this is even specially so because in its composition there is much of performance, minute details for which there can be no formal reasons. Beyond that, and I shall quote again my text: creation “means a mode of operation where the conscious and the unconscious, knowledge and intuition, share responsibilities. It means setting oneself in a certain disposition to envisioning and daydreaming. Certainly, there are ideas appearing as ideas, but there are others appearing as internal listening, more or less clear, more or less nebulous. […] My belief is that reflecting reflection would contaminate the subject itself, that the creative act is not always a reflective act, but something that can move into the realms of intuition and envisioning, and that those would be severely affected by keeping a mind's eye observing, not to mention transcribing. My own personal feeling is as if all of oneself would be highly concentrated as if on another state of conscience.”

This friction has accompanied me during my work in the project, particularly so along the first half. To begin with there was a self-imposed discipline, let us say, external to the creative demands of the work itself; an interesting struggle and, in the long run, I think also inspiring. But it was also posing a problem, an ethical problem: I was doing research and wanted to be under the supervision of the method, but in order to compose I had at moments to ‘leave myself’ and in no way I would have managed to advance in my work as I did had I not accepted this fact. Neither this can be a universal problem nor it can only affect me –“corps qui s’envole” says Barthes³. The important question is, as Aldous Huxley was stating in a somewhat different context, “How can we reconcile analysis with vision?”⁴. Research in-the-arts has to cope with this friction, for it must embrace all kinds of art making and not only some kind of conceptual approach able to assimilate a reflected reflection in its being. At the present moment I see this friction as natural, even as healthy, it is like the barking of dogs telling us that there is movement. And, well considered, we knew already about this question when talking in our proposal about finding a perfect “balance between lights and shades”.

Communication

Presentations, as a form of feedback and communication, have been very important in our project. I have mentioned in my Introduction text of the need to ‘listen through others’ ears’ –an opening from the closed, intense, long sessions of concentrated listening and work, and a metaphor for the need to share sensual experiences. Similarly, we could have mentioned the innate need of reflection to leave the womb and have its conceptual developments exposed to an external discussion. Research, like art, attain new lights, new dimensions through their sharing.

The challenge of conjoining different modes and means of sharing knowledge became, therefore, the source of many discussions. One interesting and controversial topic arose from the idea of making of the presentation a part of the research process, even, one could say, an artistic goal of the project. The need to imagine, invent new forms of communication coming to the fore of the research process itself. While fully convinced of the importance of form, of the format, of the modes, of the details and delicacies to convey results, the assumption of the presentation as a result itself and not only as a means to present results, was, to my understanding, a perversion of the idea and a potential danger introducing a pressing demand to deviate from the research subject proper. Should the conception of the potential work(s) of art accompanying an artistic research project, be solely concerned with the subject itself, introducing other lights and types of knowledge into the researched subject, or should it inherently include a communication-pedagogic vocation? An interesting issue indeed, through the discussion of which the essence of artistic research may come as a question, well worth its own reflection; every project, every subject, nonetheless, posing possibly its own shades to the debate.

The Choreography of Sound has had to find its own ways. ‘Experience and Reflection’ became the two axes on which we have based all our communication. Nothing very innovative conceptually as format of communication, but designed in its details with minute care and ambition. Our plurality of approaches, a source of richness, but a challenge to share and combine needs and desires, was posing, in pure frankness, questions concerning the global vision, the interrelationships, the overlaps. Presentations have been like shaking up moments were everything had to fall into its place in all its richness and plurality but compact and designed –the only possible way to transmit with clarity– and have received hence the effort and dedication which they were due. I want to refer here to three quite different types of public presentations.

I mentioned above the “On The Choreography of Sound” event, which has been the major presentation of the project, and where we shared with invited guests two days of experience and reflection (and so did we entitle each of the days). Listening to the music produced at the project through commented concerts, listening to sound-installations which had been reference pieces for the project, with software demos and a large round table session, lengthy but so animated thanks to the generous contribution of our guests that it felt as short. This was the best way, as we thought, of presenting our research to a relatively small group of people. I think we can say it was a success from the very nice responses we got from the people, even from the involvement that our guests showed during the discussion at the round table, asking even at its end, late as it was, to listen again to one of the pieces. This form of communication of an artistic research project, including different modes of presentation, to an audience conformed by interested and interesting persons from related fields, is probably an ideal way, but it can only address a limited amount of people, those that could locally be present, and even within limits in its number.

There was a previous presentation of a rather different nature which I would like to mention here because of the importance it had for us. It became crucial for the development of the project for it was a most motivating and reassuring session. This was a presentation that the vice-rector for research at KUG was asking us more than a year before the one mentioned above, and for which we had little time to prepare. There was some other guest but the presentation was almost exclusively for him. In this case, in a rather informal atmosphere, we were discussing, playing excerpts of yet un-finished pieces, playing some tests and experiments, and explaining and formalizing ideas, so to say, on the fly.  Of course one needs an addressee like him, capable of becoming successively just one more member of the group and a friendly but critical external party, so that things could go so well. This was our first presentation to someone outside the group, and his ears were the first we could use to feel ourselves outside ourselves. Again a combination of experience and reflection; again a lively discussion seasoned with listening, or the other way round, one never knows; again a special audience.

Another important event of communication, and once more of a very different type, was the workshop at the Impuls academy. This had a pedagogical character and the workshop’s theme was exactly The Choreography of Sound. I tutored three participants, composers, just finished or finishing their studies, very different and with whom I had never had any previous contact. Before the actual workshop, via email, I supplied them with some software and information, and hints in the form of reflections of what The Choreography of Sound could mean, although there was, of course, the webpage with much information on the project. They were very bright people, and as I said very different, but all of them managed to produce some very personal piece/study at the Ligeti Hall –with a large amount of speakers in a ‘composed’ setup–, within a week, something which, with all my experience I can really say it is not a trivial question. The workshop started with a presentation given by Gerhard and myself in which we played a couple of pieces and gave some talks, and ended with a large concert in which all participants played their just cooked music and gave some presentation talk. I was very pleased with the people and delighted with the experience, but the important thing in this context is that I am quite convinced –from their productions and from their comments– that they managed to internalize the project’s vision.

In as far as artworks are part of the results of an artistic research project –and probably this should always be the case–, their ‘natural’ mode of presentation has to be part of the communication scheme of the project. Some artworks merge well with the panoply of communication supports we can count with nowadays in order to disseminate easily, but this is not true for all types of them. In our case this is difficult because we are dealing with ‘music in space’ demanding a large space for its presentation and a good amount of loudspeakers and technology. The bodily presence, the perception of materiality and plasticity cannot really be transmitted through the usual media reduction. Some person asked me at the “On The Choreography of Sound” round table, if I needed the presence of the speakers for my music, my answer was that I do not, but that I do need the space. I have mentioned in the paragraphs above different events of communication, let us say successful, all of them combining experience and reflection, but all of them having taken place in bodily presence, with a local audience. The broad audience we were mentioning at the beginning of this text will only with some difficulty be able to get the experiencing knowledge, essential as it is. This documentation includes reflection through texts and will try to convey some of the experience through diagrams, photographs and some special recordings of the music. It is another challenge of the project, and an important one.

As an epilogue I would like here to mention one last presentation, outside the time-span of the project. This has been a concert, a normal concert so to speak –“Ein MusiCoSlisches Opfer” as I have named it–, for a larger audience, partly composed of usual concertgoers, which KUG and IEM through the Signale series organized. I played three of the pieces I had been producing during the previous years plus two new ones, essentially conceived as an outcome of CoS, which got their premiere at this concert. People are prudent and kind so, of course, I was not going to get any critical remark, but I was somewhat surprised to listen from several different people some variation on a same comment: an equation between the music they had just heard and (the sound of) nature; some friend even making a parallel to the sound of the Mur⁵ on our way back to the hotel. Beyond some initial perplexity and a rather pleased feeling as an afterthought, I have been pondering at the possible implications which this comparison could have with respect to the subject of research. May the bodily presence which the sounds of nature carry in their essence may have anything to do with this metaphor of perception?

How important to listen through our friends’ ears!

Notes:

1] Henk Borgdorff : “The Debate on Research in the Arts,” Focus on Artistic Research and Development, no. 02, Bergen: Bergen National Academy of the Arts, 2007

2] Wassily Kandisnky: Punkt und Linie zu Fläche (1926); Point et Ligne sur Plan, Gallimard, Paris, 1991; p. 86

3] Roland Barthes: Le Plaisir du texte précedé de Variations sur l’Écriture; Éditions de Seuil, Paris 2000; p. 65

4] Aldous Huxley: Island; Vintage Books; London; 2005; p203

5] The river flowing through Graz.