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.
Lecture by Efva Lilja at the book presentation of “Knowing in Performing” DOI: 10.21939/KIP-2021-LILJA
Cover image: Angelicá Castelló – magnetic room
Creative (Mis)Understandings (PEEK project)
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?
Social D(ist)ancing – AR Pilot Project
project blog: https://sociald-ist-ancing.blogspot.com/p/pilot.html
RAD Performance – AR Pilot Project
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.
Mobile Stage – AR Pilot Project
Concept
The interdisciplinary project with the working title “‘Mobile Stage'” combines different components and aspects of classical theatre, such as stage design, performance, sound, and the relationship between viewers and performers. It is a rotating stage that serves both as a performance space and as a sound installation and has been designed that it can be used for various external projects. The work is based on the idea of an inclusive public space and performance as an integral part of everyday public life and sees this as a prerequisite. The inclusion of the environment in this stage body is a central point in the individual disciplines. It has an influence on performance, sound and stage design. So we wanted to make the public space our space of action. Building on the stage body, we become part of the place, transforming and expanding the action space into a stage moment.
Design
In the design, the centre of movement forms a metal tube around which a stage surface moves and rotates the surface moves both on its own axis and up and down in a helical motion. This creates different height ratios and spaces in between.
Independency
Through the institutional independence of the performance space, the project stands for an open space of experience and deliberately opposes the categorised ascribed social classes of the viewing audience. The round shape is supposed to dissolute the classical frontal perception so each viewing side is equal.
Stage design
The rotating stage was designed to be able to change between scenes as quickly as possible. One starting point was the inclusion of the revolving stage as a basic element of movement to which the performers are exposed. Questions of proprioception in relation to moving surfaces come up. How does the body react, how do movements change?
Performative
New choreographies are tested by means of the stage project. The rotating movement of the platform simulates the dancers’ proprioception and dissolves their basic motor skills. New possibilities in movement material and self-perception are developed.
Proprioception – The 6th sense
Proprioception is the perception of the position of one’s own body in space, including the sensation of weight, tension, strength and speed. It is no organ of its own and operates invisibly deep inside the body. Its a product of all the nerve stimuli that our brain constantly receives, especially from muscles and tendons. Proprioception is also about internal sensations that are difficult to recreate. The 6th sense arises from the interaction between our body and our environment, it accompanies us consciously and unconsciously. At a time when our body is being used less and less and is being paralysed due to increasingly sedentary activities, it is good to listen to our proprioception – both in our self-perception and in our interaction with our fellow human beings and our environment.
Synthesis
The Mobile Stage is meant to go to different places to enable different reflections and happenings with its environment. The synthesis between the stage element/sound sculpture/installation and its environment/surroundings/environment as a central research topic on all levels. It is about the relationship between human and environment, as well as between sculpture and environment. (References to Anish Kappor or Dan Grahams’ Octagon for Münster)
Sound
The inclusion of the environment in the object is also an essential point in sound design. The “sonic environment” described by Murray Schaeffer serves as a central concept in dealing with sound. In
the stage, this would be the soundscape, by which the stage is surrounded by. For the development of the piece itself, a soundtrack is planned that will mixed with the “sonic environment”. Modulating effects could be Informations won out of the movement from the stage or the performer. Here we would like to experiment and research. How can movement change sound?
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
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)
