Projects and Publications – artistic research at mdw

12th SAR International Conference on Artistic Research hosted by mdw

Hosted by mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna in cooperation with the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and the University of Applied Arts Vienna

Conference will be hosted as a live online event: from 7th to 9th April 2021.

 

Deadline for submissions via the Research Catalogue (RC): 30th Sept 2020.

Deadline for registering as full users at the RC: Ten days earlier – 20th Sept 2020.

 

The 12th SAR International Conference on Artistic Research invites submissions that relates to the three attractors dare, care, and share.

It will be the first SAR conference organized as a live online event. We are calling for artistic researchers to present their work, processes, methods, discoveries, knowledge interventions, new insights, understandings, and to engage in exchange – in actions and words, in complex and simple, conventional and unconventional, robust and fragile ways.

 

We encourage original contributions that take on the challenge of bringing liveness to this mediated online event. Each contribution shall receive ample discussion time (in real time via video conference).

We will support the following presentation formats:

  • Presentation using preproduced material, which will be “presented” and integrated in an interactive online conference;
  • Streamed live-performances/demonstrations.

 

The conference website (including the detailed call and the link to the submission form at the RC) is now online: sar2021vienna.ac.at

Contact: sar2021vienna@mdw.ac.at

Creative (Mis)Understandings (PEEK project)

This project is a project of artistic research funded by the PEEK (Programme for Arts-based Research) funding program, managed by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF, AR 463-G24). It aims to develop transcultural approaches of inspiration (which we regard as mutually appreciated intentional and reciprocal artistic influence based on solidarity) by combining approaches from contemporary music composition and improvisation with ethnomusicological and sociological research. We encourage creative (mis)understandings emerging from the interaction between research and artistic practice, and between European art music, folk and non-western styles, in particular from indigenous minorities in Taiwan. Both comprehension and incomprehension yield serendipity and inspiration for new research questions, innovative artistic creation, and applied follow-ups among non-western communities.

The project departs from two premises: first, that contemporary western art music as a practice often tends to resort to certain degrees of elitism; and second, that non-western musical knowledge is often either ignored or merely exploited when it comes to compositional inspiration. We do not regard inspiration as unidirectional, an “input” like recording or downloading material for artistic use. Instead, we foster artistic interaction by promoting dialogical and distributed knowledge production in musical encounters. Developing inter­disciplinary and transcultural methodologies of musical creation will contribute on the one hand towards opening up the—rightly or wrongly supposed—“ivory tower of contemporary composition”, and on the other hand will contribute towards the recognition of the artistic value of non-western musical practices. By highlighting the reciprocal nature of inspiration, creative (mis)understandings will result in socially relevant and innovative methodologies for creating and disseminating music with meaning.

The methods applied in the proposed project will start out from ethnographic evidence that people living in non-western or traditional societies often use methods of knowledge production within the sonic domain which are commonly unaddressed or even unknown among western contemporary music composers (aside from exotist or orientalistic appropriations of “the other”).

The project is designed in four stages: field research and interaction with indigenous communities in Taiwan with a focus on the Tao people on Lanyu Island, collaborative workshops in Vienna, an artistic research and training phase with invited indigenous Taiwanese coaches in Vienna, and feeding back to the field in Taiwan. During all these stages, exchange and coordination between composers, music makers, scholars and source community experts will be essential in order to reflect not only on the creative process, but also to analyse and support strong interaction between creation and society. Re-interaction with source communities as well as audience participation in the widest sense will help to increase the social relevance of the artistic results.

The University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (MDW) will host the project. The contributors are Johannes Kretz (project leader) and Wei-Ya Lin (project co-leader, senior researcher) with their team of seven composers, ten artistic research partners from Taiwan and six artistic and academic consultants with extensive experience in the relevant fields.

www.mdw.ac.at/creativemisunderstandings

Rotting Sounds (PEEK project)

Most of today’s media output, be it audio or video, is produced and stored in the digital domain. Although digital data are adorned by the myth of lossless transmission and migration, everyday experience does prove the existence of degradation and, ultimately, data loss in various forms. This pertains to the physical nature of storage media and playback devices as well as to media formats and software in the context of their technological infrastructure. The project strives to elaborate on the causes, mechanisms and effects of such deterioration, specifically in the context of digital audio.

Since degradation cannot be avoided on principle, it is our general aim to unearth latent degrees of freedom pertaining to the artistic practice in the omnipresence of decay.

How can degradation effects be understood, actuated, reproduced, directed and harnessed within sound art? Which are the mechanisms and implications of obsolescence concerning hard- and software? How can we model the process of decay in the digital domain, and what are its products and residues? What is the impact of the environment and human interaction? To which extent are artworks products of their material sources or their symptoms of decay?

 

http://rottingsounds.org

AR Pilot Call – support for artistic research

In 2018 the mdw began offering internal financial support for pilot projects in the field of artistic research.

The objective of this call was to facilitate the further development of artistic research practices, methods, and discourses within the fields and disciplines represented at the mdw. Nine artistic research projects, most of which are transdisciplinary and collaborative in nature, have since been granted support, and several of their teams have already submitted third-party funding applications to the Programme for Arts-Based Research (PEEK) of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). The nine internally funded projects were selected from over 20 submissions by virtue of their innovative research questions and commensurately portrayed methods, with the idea being that artistic practice should play a central role in the research process. A further objective of this pilot call, above and beyond facilitating eventual third-party funding applications, was to disseminate projects’ findings via public performances, exhibitions, and publications. One avenue of publication is the website “Research Catalogue”—an online database that collects, archives, publishes, and exhibits artistic research—run by the Society of Artistic Research (SAR), of which the mdw is a member. The University’s present objective is to further intensify and refine its activities in the field of artistic research, a field that is now developing in so many respects, via the lecture series Knowing in Performing, the ongoing PEEK projects Rotting Sounds and Creative (Mis)understandings, and preparatory work for the future doctoral programme.

Further informations at the Webpage of Research Support at mdw

Pilot call at mdw magazin

Think Tank – about the foundations of artistic research

In 2018 in three meetings at mdw with experts from mdw and from outside  perspectives of artistic research were discussed, their foundation, contexts, possible or impossible definitions.

 

Think Tank Artistic Research (documentation, in german)

Past projects

Lecture Series ``Knowing in Performing``

The lecture series  “Knowing in Performing” at mdw presented in two years the transdisciplinary dynamics of  artistic research with special focus on music and performing arts.

Homepage of the lecture series: “knowing in performing” 2018-2020

Recordings of presentations at Mediathek.

Team

Project team: Johannes Kretz, Therese Kaufmann, Susanne V. Granzer, Annegret Huber, Doris Ingrisch, Johannes Meissl, Gesine Schröder, Tasos Zembylas

Coordination: Karoline Feyertag

Organisation: Slavomíra Martišková

Contact & Information: knowinginperforming@mdw.ac.at

Symposium ``Knowing in Performing``

Artistic research as it has emerged and evolved over the last three decades is related to an increasing interest in epistemological questions as well as an interrogation of how artistic practices constitutively support and instigate processes of knowledge creation. Art is thus being looked at both as an object and a medium of research, becoming part of a general discourse on knowledge regimes and research models.

The symposium investigated this dynamic, ever-renewing field of interrelations with a special focus on the performing arts. Highlighting the issue of various implementation models in curricula and study programmes in higher arts education, it critically analysed international institutional policies and facilitated an open debate on how to integrate current practices and discourses into future teaching and research structures.

 

4 April 2018, 9.30 am – 6.00 pm
Fanny Hensel Hall
Anton-von-Webern-Platz 1
1030 Vienna

Website of the Symposium

Program

Therese Kaufmann at Knowing in Performing, a symposium for the artistic science, at the MDW. Credits: Gerard Spee

Rector Ulrike Sych at Knowing in Performing, a symposium for the artistic science, at the MDW. Credits: Gerard Spee

Johannes Kretz and Wei-Ya Lin at Knowing in Performing, a symposium for the artistic science, at the MDW. Credits: Gerard Spee

Thomas Grill at Knowing in Performing, a symposium for the artistic science, at the MDW. Credits: Gerard Spee

PEEK Project ``Quo Vadis Teufelsgeiger``

The arts-based-research project „Quo vadis, Teufelsgeiger?“ (QvT) at mdw investigated over two years the effect of one’s own sound (improvisation) and own musical language  (idiolectic) on the development of classical musicians.

It was the first artistic research project at mdw, supported by FWF / PEEK.

Project Website