Projects and Publications – Artistic Research at mdw

Angélica Castelló - magnetic room

Book – Knowing in Performing

Knowing in Performing. Artistic Research in Music and the Performing Arts

This anthology takes stock of current developments in and reflections on artistic research in music and the performing arts. Thirteen international contributions explore the possibilities of processual knowledge production, taking into account participatory and experimental approaches, and examine their institutional implementation. How can performing be transformed into cognition? What does it mean to think through music, theatre, or dance?

The anthology published by Annegret Huber, Doris Ingrisch, Therese Kaufmann, Johannes Kretz, Gesine Schröder and Tasos Zembylas with transcript is based on contributions to the symposium “Knowing in Performing” in April 2018 as well as to the eponymous lecture series that took place at the mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna from 2018 to 2020. As part of the book presentation, the dancer, choreographer and artistic researcher Evfa Lilja has read excerpts from her opening statement on the state of artistic research.

PDF “Knowing in Performing” DOI: https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839452875.

Lecture by Efva Lilja at the book presentation of “Knowing in Performing” DOI: 10.21939/KIP-2021-LILJA

Cover image: Angelicá Castelló – magnetic room

credits: Wolfgang Liebhart 2019

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

rottingsounds

credits: Tobias Leibetseder

Rotting Sounds - Embracing the temporal deterioration of digital audio (PEEK-Projekt)

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

rottingsounds

distancing

credits: Adrián Artacho, Hanne Pilgrim

Social D(ist)ancing – AR Pilot Project

The development of a networked artistic practice out of confinement whose aim is to develop effective tools and strategies for networked co-creation. Led by Rhythmics Prof. Hanne Pilgrim and researcher Adrián Artacho, the project started in September 2020 with six graduate rhythmics students as participants, dance scholar Mariama Diagne, and the support of the Artistic Research Center (ARC) of the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. Structured around six case studies –each featuring a different mode of intermedial transformation– and making only use of freely available software as a principle, the project has so far yielded useful insights on the limitations of the medium, while at the same time raising questions about networked artistic practice: In which ways —if any— can ”virtual rehearsals” be thought of as equivalent to traditional (co-located) ones? What is unique about this mode of collaboration that is relevant for artistic practice? In which ways does this circumstance determine the artistic output? and most crucially, how can the limitations of the medium be reframed to add value to the rhythmics practice?

project blog: https://sociald-ist-ancing.blogspot.com/p/pilot.html

distancing

RADPerformance

credits: Ioana Tarchila

RAD Performance – AR Pilot Project

Sonic Environment & Performance – a choral movement with mobile loudspeakers

RAD Performance places concerts and sound art on bicycles, in motion and with a multitude of loudspeakers at the centre of artistic research. Under the artistic guidance of Conny Zenk, the project started in July 2020 as an Artistic Research Pilot at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. Based on historical drawings and approaches to participatory, bicycle-related forms of play (Reigenfahren u. Radfahr-Spiele by Josef Adametz, Vienna: Kreisel u. Gröger, 1901), the artistic team (Petra Sturm, Veronika Mayer, Rahel Kraft and Conny Zenk) is developing a choreography for cyclists, as well as graphic notations for musicians as the basis for 6-channel compositions. RAD performers will perform in public spaces using mobile loudspeakers on their bicycles. The acoustic, urban space complements, overlays and expands the electronic composition. At the crossroads of concert, performance and sound art, the bicycle becomes an artistic medium.

radperformance.at

RADPerformance

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)