Three years later... by Orpheus Instituut

Three years later... An overview of the outputs of the ORCiM Research Focus 2010-2013 on 'Artistic Experimentation in Music'

Orpheus Research Centre in Music (ORCiM)

This brochure presents a variety of outputs related to the ORCiM Research Focus on ’Artistic Experimentation in Music 2010-13.’ In 2010, ORCiM chose this research theme because it seemed crucial to artistic practice and to processes of music-making. At the time, it was quite adventurous to set out a single research focus for a group of more than ten – now around fifteen international artist-researchers. Finding enough commonalities and modes of collaboration proved to be an experiment in itself. Three years later the outcomes produced, show a rich variety of shared approaches and methods, shedding light on the topic of experimentation, whether through the generation of novel concepts, the development of atypical performances or the creation of innovative research outputs. This brochure, and the research described in it, hope to accomplish an important step forward, not only for ORCiM but for artistic research in music in general, by bringing together a substantial corpus of knowledge and practice upon which future artistic research on experimentation can be built. Only tangible research outcomes, which can be consulted by other researchers, are listed in this brochure, thus not all the outputs of the ORCiM Research Focus 2010-2013 are presented. It is clear that the initial enthusiasm with which ORCiM Fellows began their collaboration in 2010 has not waned, and that ’Artistic Experimentation in Music’ has proved to be so rich an area of exploration that it will remain in the foreground of ORCiM’s research agenda.

(October 2013)

Table of Contents

Performances ......................................................................................................................... 9

A day in my life ................................................................................................................................... 10 Adayinmylifeinaday ............................................................................................................................ 10 Deleuzabelli Variations ........................................................................................................................11 Gesucht: Robert; Gustav spielt auf; Einsam, aber nicht allein?; Johannes oder Richard? ..................11 Head down among the stems and bells ............................................................................................... 12 Piano and Other Things ....................................................................................................................... 12 Rasch1-8: Schumann’s Somathemes .................................................................................................... 13 Reconstructing Kagel .......................................................................................................................... 13 Scar3 No+ Sch3 .................................................................................................................................... 13 The modes of listening, memory, and physicality at play in the preparation and performance of Morton Feldman’s later works for solo piano. .................................................................................... 14 Books ..................................................................................................................................... 15

Discovering Artistic Experimentation in Music: A Multi-Media Anthology ...................................... 16 Experimental Systems: Future Knowledge in Artistic Research ........................................................ 17 On Calendar Variations ....................................................................................................................... 18 Productive Tensions: Co-Creative Practices in Music ........................................................................ 18 Sounding Cartograms: Visible Invisible Traces of Urban Trajectories ............................................... 19 Sound & Score: Essays on Sound, Score and Notation ...................................................................... 20 The Practice of Practising ................................................................................................................... 21 To Perform Kagel’s Tactil and Unter Strom ........................................................................................ 22 Multimedia and Recordings ................................................................................................ 23

100 Dollar Guitar Project. 65 guitarists, 1 Guitar (CD) ...................................................................... 24 Calendar Variations (video)................................................................................................................. 24 Chambre 119: Translations, Versions and Interactions (video)........................................................... 24 Disjointed (video) ............................................................................................................................... 25 Sounding Cartograms: Audible Inaudible Traces of Urban Trajectories (DVD) ................................ 25 Strandlines (CD) ................................................................................................................................. 25 Von der Aare zum Amazonas: Music by Ernst Widmer and Valery Voronov (CD) ............................ 26 To Perform Kagel’s Tactil and Unter Strom (DVD) ........................................................................... 26 Articles .................................................................................................................................. 27

Allotropes of Advocacy: A Model for Categorizing Interpretational Strategies Used by Performers in Generating Persuasive Performances .................................................................................................. 28 An Artistic Logic of Practice: The Case of the Performer .................................................................. 28 Bubbles of Strings and Scales: A Plea for the Foam of Music ........................................................... 28 Experiential Knowledge and Improvisation: Variations on Movement, Motion, Emotion ................ 29

Exploring Multi-Temporalities: An Orchestration of Luigi Nono's ‘…..sofferte onde serene...’ ...... 29 From Emulation to Instigation: Revising the Notion of the Etude as Compositional Form in Live Computer Music.................................................................................................................................. 30 Gilles Deleuze Meets Helmut Lachenmann: The Conditions of Creation and the Haecceity of Music Material ............................................................................................................................................... 30 Humans, Heroes and Artists, (re)-Creating the Unexpected Situation ............................................... 30 In re: ‘Experimental Analysis’ ............................................................................................................ 31 In re: ‘Experimental Music’ ................................................................................................................ 31 (Non)-Discursive Space of the Body: In-between Discipline and Play in Visual and Performing Arts ............................................................................................................................................................. 31 On the Art of Research in the Arts: Tracing Praxis and Reflection .................................................... 32 Progress, Protest, and Impossible Music ............................................................................................ 32 Reinterpreting Michael Musgrave and Bernard D. Sherman's Performing Brahms: Early Evidence of Performance Style ............................................................................................................................... 32 [Review] Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage, by Kenneth Silverman ...................................... 33 [Review] Off the Record: Performing Practices in Romantic Piano Playing by Neal Peres Da Costa ............................................................................................................................................................. 33 Sensory Fluidity: Dialogues of Imagination in Art ............................................................................. 34 The Resistance of the Turkish Makam and the Habitus of the Performer .......................................... 34 Visual Praxis: Moving the Body, the World and the Self.................................................................... 35 Where am I: Body and Mind Reviewed in the Context of Situatedness and Virtuality...................... 35 Book chapters ...................................................................................................................... 36

Artistic Research and Music Scholarship: Musings and Models from a Continental European Perspective .......................................................................................................................................... 37 Between a Rock and a Hard Place ...................................................................................................... 37 Inside Outside: Towards an Expanded Notion of Musical Gesture .................................................... 37 Integrating the Exposition into Music-Composition Research ........................................................... 38 (Re-)searching Artists in Artistic Research: Creating Fertile Ground for Experimentation at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent ..................................................................................................................... 38 Scaling Parnassus in Running Shoes: From the Personal to the Transpersonal in Artistic Research . 39 The Agile Musical Mind: The Musician's act of creation ................................................................... 39 To Submit or not to Submit: Negotiating Artistic Research in the Academic World.......................... 40 Compositions and Arrangements....................................................................................... 41

3 sonification pieces for the project ‘Sounding drawing’ ................................................................... 42 Deleuzabelli Variations ....................................................................................................................... 42 Disjointed ............................................................................................................................................ 42 Eigengang............................................................................................................................................ 43

Everlasting Voices ............................................................................................................................... 43 Flux|Pattern # 1-3 (for soloists and two computers) ........................................................................... 44 Improvisation fixe sur une image........................................................................................................ 44 KVSwalk ............................................................................................................................................. 45 Life is too precious… .......................................................................................................................... 45 Multiple Paths (Ommaggio a Nono) ................................................................................................... 45 Rasch1-8: Schumann’s Somathemes .................................................................................................... 46 Scar3 No+ Sch3 .................................................................................................................................... 46 The walk to the tarn ............................................................................................................................ 47 Tracce .................................................................................................................................................. 47 Version for orchestra and 3 spatialized instrumental groups of Luigi Nono’s ‘.....sofferte onde serene...’ .............................................................................................................................................. 47 Presentations ....................................................................................................................... 49

Researching Performance, Performing Research ................................................................................ 50 Sounded Gestures and Enacted Sounds .............................................................................................. 50 Other ..................................................................................................................................... 51

Charles E. Ives: Symphony No. 4. (Critical edition full score) .......................................................... 52 Designing Environments for Life (Three Postcards) .......................................................................... 52

Performances (More information on the individual performances available at: http://www.orpheusinstituut.be/en/ research-centre-orcim/research-outputs)

A day in my life Concept: Kathleen Coessens Performers and composers: Catherine Laws, Juan Parra, Vanessa Tomlinson, Kim Cunio, Eliot Britton, Erika Donald, Ben Duinker, Bart Vanhecke, Stefan Ostersjรถ, Bennet Hogg. May 2012

A day in my life is an artistic encounter with a text. It is an aesthetic exploration of everyday experiences and their transformations into artistic experiences. A poetic text with instructions was written by Kathleen Coessens. The score offers open-ended instructions for exploring the relation between everyday experiential knowledge and artistic know-how. The score reveals life as an experiential activity: it has a beat, a rhythm, a movement, sounds. It describes life as performed in travel and trajectories, gesture and motion, movements in space and time. In these elements, music resembles life. It is an invitation to create music out of life experience, everyday materials, embodied and enacted in the now, and to look at art as a form of intensification of the body that links the intensities and energies of the human being to the rhythms and forces of the earth itself. From June 2011 to June 2012, different improvisers, composers and performers engaged with that text. Musicians were asked to interpret the text in a sounding result, implying personal artistic actions of translation and transformation. Different compositions and improvisations were made. The music responses opened human possibilities of semiotic interpretations, transformations and translations between different domains of understanding, perception, effect and affect.

Adayinmylifeinaday Concept: Kathleen Coessens Performer: Kathleen Coessens May 2012

The score was meant to be the basis for a sounding result, a music piece. The materials had to be collected in one day. Send to my friend and artist Ann Eysermans, she send me back raw visual and sound materials and 11 written letters, all gathered during one day. This was unexpected. Moreover, the process had to be continued and finished, taking up these materials and realising a sounding result. The pictures show the beauty and ugliness of Flanders environment, of everyday life. Ann's materials of that one day in her life, and fragments of Samuel Beckett's texts, became materials for the creation of Adayinmylifeinaday. The creation resulted in a life intermedia installation-performance: the interactive creation of a video, a sound-tape and an improvisation-composition on the piano. In this experimental creation, the eye of the observer, the ear of the artist and the experiences of two human beings, embedded in different lives and environments came together. Private 10

thoughts and experiences, different approaches of space and time joined in the whole process. Nothing was decided beforehand, only a score was written and two lives unfolding.

Deleuzabelli Variations Concept: Paulo de Assis Performers: Mieko Kanno, Tania Lisboa, Alessandro Cervino, Stefan Östersjö, Michael Schwab, Juan Parra and Paulo de Assis

Drawing upon the Deleuzian concepts of “becoming”, “encounters” and “lines of flight”, this presentation proposes a view of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations as a path of mutation and continuous metamorphosis, precipitated through the actualisation of connections among sound bodies of the utmost disparate origins, situated both in the past and the future. By considering the single variations not as closed, static substances, but as escaping doors from a temporary state of being, and by focusing upon them in terms of unfolding forces, of bodies affecting and being affected by other bodies, a dialogue on identity and difference is proposed. In a broader perspective, this performative project makes a strong case for sensory, conceptual and aesthetic "experimentation" (as proposed and argued by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 1972) as opposed to traditional approaches based on "interpretation".

Gesucht: Robert; Gustav spielt auf; Einsam, aber nicht allein?; Johannes oder Richard? Concept: Valentin Gloor and Rahel Sohn Achermann Performers: Valentin Gloor, Rahel Sohn Achermann, Ingrid Alexandre, Stephanie Boller, Antonia Frey, Liliane Glanzmann, Noëmi Sohn Nad, Christoph Stähli, Oliver Weber and Samuel Zünd

The four concert cycles—Gesucht: Robert (2010), Gustav spielt auf (2011), Einsam, aber nicht allein? (2012), Johannes oder Richard? (2013)— thematically reflect on certain composers or on constellations of composers. They combine original texts, music and biographical facts with scene, space and “performance time”. All of those components are used as basic “materials”. Association amongst those materials then conducts the detail programming and is used as a method for detecting and displaying interrelations. Thus the format of the “Liederabend” itself is challenged in an experimental setup. In the actual performance, different relations between performers and audience are tested according to the concept of performativity.

Head down among the stems and bells Concept: Catherine Laws Performer: Catherine Laws

Head down among the stems and bells, for amplified, prepared piano, by the composer Martin Iddon was inspired by the following lines from Samuel Beckett’s novella Mercier and Camier: ‘It is here one would lie down, in a hollow bedded with dry heather, and fall asleep, for the last time, on an afternoon, in the sun, head down among the minute life of stems and bells, and fast fall asleep, fast farewell to charming things.’ Beckett’s protoganists are often to be found lying in ditches or vegetation, as if nestling into or being gradually absorbed by the earth. But this very situation induces an alertness to tiny bits and scraps of sound, stirrings on the very borders of audibility – faint hums, plips and pings that confirm the persistence of activity, mental and physical. The extraordinary, fragmented soundscape of Iddon’s piece evokes exactly this state. The research linked to the performances of this work formed part of an ongoing exploration of the materials of piano performance. Iddon invites the performer to take an experimental approach to articulation and resonance, exploring degrees of unpredictability and fragility in the sound production. Instability is built into the musical fabric through the use of specific kinds of piano preparations, dynamics on the threshold of audibility, and notation which foregrounds inthe-moment decision-making and responses. A particular awarewness of the body in performance is also necessary: this formed a point of focus in the research.

Piano and Other Things Concept: Catherine Laws Performer: Catherine Laws

‘Piano and Other Things’ was a performer-led project that took place in 200911, with performances across the UK and some of the work shown in Ghent. The process involved collaborating with four composers—Damien Harron, Juliana Hodkinson, Edward Jessen and David Prior - to develop new pieces for piano, untrained voice, electronics, toy piano, and other live and prerecorded sounds. These were combined with performances of extant pieces for piano and electronics by Yannis Kyriakides and Donnacha Dennehy. The project exploited my interest in instrumental colour and interaction; the wide and subtle variations of touch, tone, dynamic and texture possible on the modern piano, and the innate drama of interactions between performer and piano, piano and other sounds (electronic or otherwise), and performer, instruments and audience. The composers worked with me, through an 12

experimental process, to open up contrasting soundworlds and explore the embodied relationship to the instrument.

Rasch1-8: Schumann’s Somathemes Concept: Paulo de Assis Performers: Paulo de Assis, Juan Parra and Gerhard Nierhaus

Rasch1-8: Schumann’s Somathemes, for piano, tape, live-electronic and dataprojector is an experimental performance—a critical reading of Robert Schumann’s Kreisleriana op.16 (1838) through the lens of Roland Barthes’ writings on this piece, particularly his original concept of “somatheme.” In addition to the music of Robert Schumann, recorded voices, projected texts and images bring the listener to a state of “inner resonance” with the body of the music played on stage, making Barthes’ “second text” ("l’affolement des coups") more perceptible.

Reconstructing Kagel Concept: Luk Vaes Performers: Luk Vaes, Seth Josel and Jona Kesteleyn

In 1969 and 1970, Mauricio Kagel “made” two instrumental theatre pieces, Unter Strom and Tactil, for experimental sound producers. Since a fully encoded and composer-authorized score is lacking, the historical performers have been the only ones to play and record these compositions. The only adequate possibility to perform these pieces anew is through reconstruction of the original performance practice and the making of a score. This is the challenge Luk Vaes tackles in his practice-led research project ‘To Perform Kagel’s Tactil and Unter Strom’.

Scar3 No+ Sch3 Concept: Paulo de Assis Performers: Paulo de Assis and Juan Parra

Conceived as an "assemblage" of works by three composers, texts about them and images related to them, this experimental performance questioned what one thinks to know about the "original" works. For what instrument were these pieces composed? What is the role of extra-musical elements in the conception and performance of them? What is the transformative power exerted over them by reflective procedures (such as texts about them and concepts generated from them)? It included three sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, ".....sofferte onde serene..." by Luigi Nono, and three pieces from Kreisleriana op. 16 by Schumann. The video materials were shot in Venice and Ghent, while the audio materials were prepared after recordings of texts by Roland Barthes about Schumann and music. 13

The modes of listening, memory, and physicality at play in the preparation and performance of Morton Feldman’s later works for solo piano. Concept: Catherine Laws Performer: Catherine Laws

This project took place in 2009-2012, with performances in the UK and Ghent. The research comprised a reflective process of practice, performance, listening, interviewing, musicological and analytical study, and writing. I explored a range of questions, including: as a performer-listener, what I am listening to in playing this piano music: in particular, how do I judge relative qualities of sound across time? In terms of the pianist as a listening structuring self, what is the relationship between the technical questions of sound production and timing, and the ambiguities of timing and patterning in Feldman’s music? How is piano sound heard “through” the body and how is my body involved in the sound qualities I produce? In relation to all of these questions, what might it mean to practice “experimentally”?

Books

Discovering Artistic Experimentation in Music: A MultiMedia Anthology ď&#x192;&#x2DC; Crispin, Darla, and Bob Gilmore, eds. Discovering Artistic Experimentation in Music: A Multi-Media Anthology. Leuven: University Press (Orpheus Institute Series), expected publication date: 2014.

Practice-as-research operates in an exposed no-manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s-land of thinking in cultural, educational and social spheres, demanding from its exponents proficiency in both the intellectual and the practical realms that are relevant to the specific research areas explored. Since the approaches involved demand a high degree of self-scrutiny and analysis, the challenge to produce research outcomes that can bear critical scientific scrutiny is considerable. It requires the development of tools to inform critically the processes of practitioners, as well as opening new questions within the established scientific realms of musicology and social theory. It was this critical space that ORCiM, once established, sought to inhabit and explore with a more precise focus than had been the case at its inception. ORCiM members gradually came to the realization that working with music, trying things out, exploring the nature of artworks in their process of coming into being and attempting to articulate aspects of this, formed a process that all researchers in ORCiM, though each in their owns style, could see in common. Each of them was involved in a continuous process of trying things out, evaluating the results of each trial and using these to inform and refine the nature or the next test. ORCiM could be regarded as a metaphorical laboratory for artistic experimentation. This Anthology thus presents an opening selection of materials that will continue to be developed, as well as a number of responses by researchers external to ORCiM to its artistic experimentation agenda. This reveals ORCIM itself to be an incomplete experiment, but one with which artist researchers are invited to engage through study of the writings that follow. The Anthology is not necessarily meant to read sequentially; rather, it presents a series of reflections by artist-researchers on ORCiMâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s principal topics. The majority of these are linked with cross-referenced musical examples that are available on the DVD that accompanies the Anthology. Furthermore, the entries within the Anthology are not meant as definitive accounts of topics and their associated practices; they offer instead a series of insights into different kinds of practice that can be compared and contrasted, in order to invite the reader into the same experimental space that ORCiM is engaged in exploring.

Experimental Systems: Future Knowledge in Artistic Research  Schwab, Michael, ed. Experimental Systems: Future Knowledge in Artistic Research. Leuven University Press (Orpheus Institute Series), 2013.

We don’t know what we don’t know. This makes it difficult to imagine research that will produce truly new knowledge. In the sciences, the experimental approach has proved its worth in generating what subsequently requires understanding. Can the emergent field of artistic research be inspired by recent thinking about the history and workings of science? How can artists engage with experimentation to extend artistic values and deliver future knowledge? In this book fourteen contemporary artists, musicians, and theorists engage with Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s widely studied theory of experimental systems in an effort to determine how experimentation can productively be put to work in the arts. An interview with Rheinberger himself probes research as a potentially shared space between the otherwise different activities of art and science. Table of Contents Introduction Michael Schwab A Theory of Experimentation in Art? Reading Kubler’s History of Art after Rheinberger’s Experimental Systems Stefanie Stallschus Electric Pictures: Snapshots of an Exploration Hannes Rickli Material Experiments:“Phenomeno-Technology” in the Art of the New Materialists Susanne Witzgall Whatever Remains, However Improbable: British Experimental Music and Experimental Systems Virginia Anderson Of Arnold Schoenberg’s Klavierstück op. 33a, “a Game of Chess,” and the Emergence of New Epistemic Things Darla M. Crispin Research Organs as Experimental Systems: Constructivist Notions of Experimentation in Artistic Research Peter Peters A Laboratory View of Art Gabriele Gramelsberger Artistic Experiments and Artistic Research Elke Bippus Toward a Practice of Novel Epistemic Artefacts Stephen A. R. Scrivener Artistic Practices and Epistemic Things Henk Borgdorff Epistemic Complexity and Experimental Systems in Music Performance Paulo de Assis

Criticism and Experimental Systems Paolo Giudici Epistemic Events Neal White Forming and Being Informed Hans-Jörg Rheinberger in Conversation with Michael Schwab

On Calendar Variations  Coessens, Kathleen, and Anne Douglas. On Calendar Variations. Schotland: Woodend Barn, 2011.

This small book offers a visual and verbal reflection on the process of artistic practice and the ephemeral traces left by these. It is part of the Exhibition Calendar Variations, held at the Woodend Barn Arts Centre, Banchory, Scotland in April 2011. It explores improvisation and variation in life and in art. A poetic score of Allan Kaprow (Fluxus) was the experimental material of Calendar Variations. The exploration of the notion of variation resulted in a dynamic visual art creation in Scotland, at the Gray's School of Art, Robert Gordon University, which happened at the same time as the musical experimental project ‘Unexpected Variations' in Belgium, at the Orpheus Research Centre in Music, Ghent.

Productive Tensions: Co-Creative Practices in Music  Brooks, William, and Catherine Laws, eds. Productive Tensions: Co-Creative Practices in Music. Leuven University Press (Orpheus Institute Series), expected publication date: 2014.

The practicalities and specifics of the relationships between composers and performers have always been more varied than the labels might imply. Sometimes, of course, the roles remain entirely distinct, with a composer writing for a generalised notion of what a pianist, a string quartet, an orchestra, and so on, can or might do. The composer delivers the piece, fully notated, and the performers produce a realisation. However, beyond this model there lies a range of other practices, in which the creative roles are less wholly distinct and collaboration of different kinds comes into play. To date there is still very little study of what happens in the various modes of composer-performer interactions. This book focuses primarily on artistic research projects that tackle a range of significant questions. These include: 

what is the role and function of experimentation in co-creative practices?

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how is musical material generated, analysed, developed and refined in such processes?

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what are the implications for the locus of creativity, authority and ownership? 18

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how are artistic roles defined, negotiated and renegotiated (implicitly and explicitly) before, throughout and after the process of creation?

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what is the relationship between artist process and product; does an experimental, collaborative process lead to a different kind of artistic outcome in any way?

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what is the role of notation in the co-creative process?

The volume comprises papers developed from the conference Research into Co-creative Practices in Music, convened jointly by ORCiM and the Music Department of the University of York (held at the University of York, 15–16 March 2010). It includes a DVD of relevant practice. Table of Contents In Concert: Collaborations and Collaborators Claire MacDonald “It’s good to talk...” Collaboration as creative process Paul Roe Between breathing in and breathing out: the interval in co-creation Anne Douglas Negotiating the musical work: interpretation and construction in composer-performer collaborations Stefan Östersjö Down with “Top-down”: Hierarchy and fusion in combined art works Chris Preissing KVSwalk: An experiment with embodiment in live electronic music Juan Parra "I could show you all I know": Elements of co-creativity in a music theatre context Catherine Laws On reflection and reflexivity in collaborative performance Kathleen Coessens

Sounding Cartograms: Visible Invisible Traces of Urban Trajectories  Eysermans, Ann, and Kathleen Coessens. Sounding Cartograms: Visible Invisible Traces of Urban Trajectories. Netherlands: FreeMusketeers, 2012.

The exploration of subjective and intersubjective sensorial experiences of urban trajectories nourished the artistic creation Sounding Cartograms. Two rather invisible layers of urban ecology became our foci: railways and sewerage (waste water). Both systems are evident signs of human presence and offer permanent visual, auditory, olfactory and haptic experiences. By tracing these systems consciously, we wanted to experiment with the sensorial richness of these urban environmental elements. Ann Eysermans experimented with the different layers of rail networks and trains, creating cartographies which can be performed musically. Kathleen Coessens explored 19

the sensorial aspects of urban waste water and drains and constructed an artistic sensory cartography of the sewers. A dialogue unfolds.

Sound & Score: Essays on Sound, Score and Notation  de Assis, Paulo, William Brooks, and Kathleen Coessens, eds. Sound & Score: Essays on Sound, Score and Notation. Leuven University Press (Orpheus Institute Series), 2013.

Sound & Score brings together artistic-research expertise from prominent international voices exploring the intimate relations between sound and score, and the artistic possibilities that this relationship yields for performers, composers and listeners. Considering “notation” as the totality of words, signs and symbols encountered on the road to a concrete performance of music, this book aims at embracing different styles and periods in a comprehensive understanding of the complex relations between invisible sound and mute notation, between aural perception and visual representation, between the concreteness of sound and the iconic essence of notation. Three main perspectives structure this volume: a conceptual approach that offers contributions from different fields of enquiry (history, musicology, semiotics), a practical one that takes the skilled body as its point of departure (written by performers), and finally an experimental perspective that challenges state-of-the-art practices, including transdisciplinary approaches in the crossroads to visual arts and dance. Table of Contents Prelude Paulo de Assis. Part I: SCORE AND IDEA What I say and What I do: The Role of Composers’ Own Performances of Their Scores in Answering Our Research questions about their works and how we should interpret them Jeremy Cox “The Mysterious Whether Seen as Inspiration or as Alchemy”—Some Thoughts on the Limitations of Notation Paul Roberts Artistic Practice, Methodology, and Subjectivity: The “I Can” as Practical Possibility and Original Consciousness Andreas Georg Stascheit From Territories to Transformations: Anton Webern’s Piano Variations Op. 27 as a Case Study for Research in-and-through Musical Practice Darla Crispin Interlude I. Exploring Musical Integrity and Experimentation. Kathleen Coessens. Part II: MAPPING THE INTERFACE Poem as Score: Finding New Melodies for Unnotated Troubadour Songs Robin T. Bier

Sound Drifts: The Phenomenon of Stylistic Change in the Interpretation of Fixed Texts Anna Scott Pression Revised: Anatomy of Sound, Notated Energy, and Performance Practice Tanja Orning The In(visible) Sound Miguelangel Clerc Interlude II. The Score on Shifting Grounds Kathleen Coessens Part III: EXTENDING THE BOUNDARIES The Beginning of Happiness: Approaching Scores in Graphic and Text Notation Virginia Anderson Closing the Gap between Sound and Score in the Performance of Electroacoustic Music Gregorio García Karman Notational Perspective and Comprovisation Sandeep Bhagwati Interlude III.The Score beyond Music Kathleen Coessens Part IV: CHOREOGRAPHIES OF SOUND A Physical Interpretation of a Score in a Listening Attitude Susanne Jaresand and Maria Calissendorff Score as Relationship: From Scores to Score Spaces to Scorescapes Yolande Harris Drawing and the Score Anne Douglas Postlude. Kathleen Coessens

The Practice of Practising  Laws, Catherine, ed. Alessandro Cervino, Catherine Laws, Maria Lettberg and Tânia Lisboa. The Practice of Practising. University Press Leuven (Subseries Orpheus Research Center in Music), 2011.

The process of practising is intrinsic to musical creativity. Practising may primarily be thought of as technical, but it is often also musically meaningful, including elements of interpretation, improvisation and/or composition. The practice room can be a space in which to explore a field of creative possibilities; a place to experiment and to refine ideas. Furthermore, practice is generally private or shared only with collaborators; safe and playful, in contrast to the decisive moment of exposure to the ears of the public. To date, the literature on practice has been primarily pedagogical and psychological. Little attention is paid to the significance of practice, and especially to the role of embodied experience—of understanding gained through doing—in the forming of musical ideas. The Practice of Practising is primarily concerned with considering practising as a practice in itself; a collection of experimental processes that determines musical creativity and significance. The volume comprises four diverse case studies, in relation to 21

music by J. S. Bach, Elliott Carter, Alfred Schnittke and Morton Feldman, presenting both solo and ensemble perspectives. Beyond the specific, contextualized insights, each study also tackles more broadly relevant issues, particularly the relationships and divergences between embodied and verbalised knowledge, intention and action, and the habitualized and the unpredictable. Table of Contents Preface Catherine Laws and Tânia Lisboa A self-study of learning the Prelude from Bach’s Suite No. 6 for cello solo: Comparing words and actions. Tânia Lisboa, Roger Chaffin, Topher Logan Performer’s harmony: towards a performance of Elliott Carter’s Piano Sonata. Alessandro Cervino Morton Feldman’s Late Piano Music: Experimentalism in Practice Catherine Laws Alfred Schnittke’s Piano Trio: Learning and Performing. Maria Lettberg

To Perform Kagel’s Tactil and Unter Strom  Vaes, Luk. To Perform Kagel’s Tactil and Unter Strom. University Press Leuven (Orpheus Institute Series), expected publication date: 2014.

The scores to Mauricio Kagel’s Unter Strom (1969) and Tactil (1970) were left unfinished, so they can only be performed today after a process of reconstruction. As both pieces were “made” by drawing extensively on a very particular composer-performer relationship, integrating “Instrumental Theatre” and the handling of “experimental sound producers”, the methodological basis for any attempt at reviving such works cannot be limited to investigating archival materials and historical recordings, but must entail the original performers’ experiences. This multimedia package supervised by Luk Vaes, comprises the completed scores of both pieces, a DVD with performances as well as video material showing processes such as the transfer of knowledge from the surviving historical performers and step-by-step manuals to build some of the instruments that had to be reconstructed in order to perform the music, and a book in which the experiences of the reconstruction processes are relayed, including the contexts of the compositions, the issues, methods and solutions that lead to the completion of the pieces, and the necessary skills and understandings for performing Tactil and Unter Strom. The package is issued by Leuven University Press, in collaboration with Mode Records and Edition C.F. Peters.

Multimedia and Recordings

100 Dollar Guitar Project. 65 guitarists, 1 Guitar (CD)  Bridge Records, USA BRIDGE 9381A/B, 2012, compact disc. http://www.100dollarguitar.com/

The composition Life is too precious... of Juan Parra Cancino, for guitar and electronics, was composed for the ‘100 Dollar Guitar’ project, as part of Kathleen Coessens’s ‘A Day in My Life’ Experimentation project. It is recorded on the CD 100 Dollar Guitar Project. 65 guitarists, 1 Guitar. Life is too precious... is an experiment on sonification of Kathleen Coessens’s poem "A day in my life". Each paragraph carries a particular atmosphere, that I aimed to recreate using the 100 dollar guitar and a self-programmed spatialization environment. The title bridges between the original poem and the words of Harry Partch, who served as a lighthouse throughout the process.

Calendar Variations (video)  Coessens, Kathleen, and Anne Douglas, On Calendar Variations Woodend Barn/Orpheus Institute. YouTube video, published by kcoessen on June 30, 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-5bsqJJHBs.

Creation of a video on the artistic work Calendar Variations which was exhibited at Malmö from 25/11/2011 – 2/12/2011 (Re)thinking improvisation. International sessions on artistic research in music. Contribution to the lecture-exhibition Improvisation and embodied knowledge, with Anne Douglas. Lund University (Inter Arts Center & Malmö Academy of music), Malmö.

Chambre 119: Translations, Versions and Interactions (video)  Laws, Catherine and Edward Jessen, Chambre 119 (2009). YouTube video, uploaded by Edward Jessen on January 13, 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPoe8Oo3P9o.  Jessen, Edward, Chambre 119. Vimeo video, uploaded by RCM CMM, 2010. https://vimeo.com/7452393

Chambre 119, for piano, amplified voice, toy piano, and CD, was written by the composer Edward Jessen for Catherine Laws in 2009. The piece formed part of a performer-led, experimental, collaborative project (entitled Piano and Other Things) that generated new pieces for an “expanded” solo context, combining piano performance with other visual and/or sonic elements. Subsequently Jessen created a second version of the piece, a filmic variation that translates aspects of the original into the new context, deploying the “presence” of the performer somewhat differently.

Disjointed (video) William Brooks (composer), Damien Harron and Catherine Laws (performers)  Brooks, William and Catherine Laws, Disjointed.mp4. Vimeo video, uploaded by Catherine Laws, August 2013. http://vimeo.com/70437876

Disjointed applies the taxonomy of musical gesture developed by Godøy and Leman to the hand and arm movements of two performers. The “music” is in the actions; sound is an ancillary result, and, indeed, the instrumentation and exact sounds are left undetermined. The notation is apparently “musical,” although extensive modifications to conventional symbols require a lengthy commentary. A very conventional form is chosen, in part to invite close listening (seeing?) by the audience, in part to test the aesthetic viability of the approach. The conclusion is that this inversion of compositional precedent (actions first, sounds later)—which is consistent with work in other fields, such as “action” painting—is indeed useful and suggestive. Three additional movements are planned. This video is part of the project ‘Sounded gestures and enacted sound’.

Sounding Cartograms: Audible Inaudible Traces of Urban Trajectories (DVD)  Sounding Cartograms: Audible Inaudible Traces of Urban Trajectories. Directed by Eysermans, Ann, and Kathleen Coessens. Antwerp, Champ d'Action, expected publication date: 2013. DVD.

Strandlines (CD)  Östersjö, Stefan, Strandlines (works for guitar and electronics by Karpen, Olofsson, Mangs and Frisk), dB Productions DBP 140, 2011, compact disc.

This CD is a collection of works for guitar and electronics that all, in different ways, emerge from close collaboration between the performer (ORCiM researcher Stefan Östersjö) and the composers. There is an outspoken experimentation in these projects with the roles of the composer and of the 25

performer as well as with the cultural tools that are associated with the respective practices.

Von der Aare zum Amazonas: Music by Ernst Widmer and Valery Voronov (CD)  Gloor, Valentin, Emmy Henz-Diémand and Hilmar Dagobert Koitka, Von der Aare zum Amazonas, Klangfarben Boswil Nr. 13, 2011, compact disc.

Two cultural emigrants virtually meet in Switzerland: Ernst Widmer (19271990), a highly respected Brazilian composer with Swiss roots, who searched for tropical cultural richness in Salvador da Bahia - and Valery Voronov (*1970), a composer from Belarus, who studied in Switzerland and Germany. Poetry from Silja Walter, Rainer Maria Rilke and Anna Akhmatova brings them together in a concert project brought on stage in the "Künsterhaus Boswil", one of the most important Swiss institutions for cultural exchange. While Ernst Widmer uses some improvisational techniques mainly in parts of his piano works, Valery Voronovs composition style for voice is highly experimental. The used vocal techniques were partly developed in a workshop with the performer.

To Perform Kagel’s Tactil and Unter Strom (DVD)  Vaes, Luk, To Perform Kagel’s Tactil and Unter Strom, Seth Josel and Jona Kesteleyn (performers), Leuven University Press (Orpheus Institute Series) / Mode Records and Edition C.F. Peters, expected publication date: 2014.

The scores to Mauricio Kagel’s Unter Strom (1969) and Tactil (1970) were left unfinished, so they can only be performed today after a process of reconstruction. As both pieces were “made” by drawing extensively on a very particular composer-performer relationship, integrating “Instrumental Theatre” and the handling of “experimental sound producers”, the methodological basis for any attempt at reviving such works cannot be limited to investigating archival materials and historical recordings, but must entail the original performers’ experiences. This multimedia package supervised by Luk Vaes, is comprised of the completed scores of both pieces, a DVD with performances as well as video material showing processes such as the transfer of knowledge from the surviving historical performers and step-by-step manuals to build some of the instruments that had to be reconstructed in order to perform the music, and a book in which the experiences of the reconstruction processes are relayed, including the contexts of the compositions, the issues, methods and solutions that lead to the completion of the pieces, and the necessary skills and understandings for performing Tactil and Unter Strom. The package is issued by Leuven University Press, in collaboration with Mode Records and Edition C.F. Peters. 26

Articles ( in journals and proceedings)

Allotropes of Advocacy: A Model for Categorizing Interpretational Strategies Used by Performers in Generating Persuasive Performances  Crispin, Darla (co-authored with Jeremy Cox) “Allotropes of Advocacy: a model for categorizing interpretational strategies used by performers in generating persuasive performances” in: Music and Practice Online (March 2013).

What makes a performance persuasive? Many factors affect this question, including one’s view of music’s nature. Belief in music’s capacity to carry meaning underpins the philosophy and practice of Artistic Research. The issue of persuasive performance therefore assumes additional dimensions when one considers the extent to which the performer’s contribution confers meaning over and above that already latent in a composition. Starting from the premise that the concept of advocacy provides a useful frame for structuring the zone of permissible originality surrounding performance, and using an experimental model derived from chemistry, the authors develop the matrix-based model. The model underlines the multiplicity of forms – the “allotropes of advocacy” – that a conscientious performer’s persuasiveness may take.

An Artistic Logic of Practice: The Case of the Performer  Coessens Kathleen. “An artistic logic of practice: the case of the performer.” in: The International Journal of the Arts in Society, vol. 6 (2011). ISSN 1833-1866.

Starting from the habitus in Aristotle’s, Mauss’ and Bourdieu’s writings, this notion is stretched towards the artistic realm of music practice as an “artistic expert habitus”. As the artist moves inside an artistic domain or community with its own passed on and handed down action and interpretation patterns, he or she will consciously and unconsciously, in implicit and explicit ways, take in the techniques, interpretational styles and different knowledges concerning the artistic domain. The acquired schemata structure perception, thought, action and communication that can be adapted and recoordinated in specific situations, or can be used as a background for new, idiosyncratic and/or experimental actions.

Bubbles of Strings and Scales: A Plea for the Foam of Music  Verstockt Serge and Kathleen Coessens. “Bubbles of Strings and Scales – A Plea for the Foam of Music” in: World New Music Magazine, 09/2012 (2012): 6-17.

There is a need for a pluralistic view of music in a globalising world, from inside, outside and aside. No one can ignore the sounds and music(s) that invade and shape our daily life nor the continuous experimental quest of musicians. As sound and music are intertwined with the cultural and ideological experiences and processes of the contemporary world, they escape traditional cultural and ideological classification. Our analysis is that Music 28

with a capital ‘M‘ can no longer ignore the multiple — experimental and exploratory — musics with a small ‘m‘, and neither can it ignore the prevailing tools of culture. We definitely argue for the recognition of the multiplicity of strings, scales and spheres in the music arts.

Experiential Knowledge and Improvisation: Variations on Movement, Motion, Emotion  Douglas, Anne and Coessens Kathleen. “Experiential Knowledge and Improvisation: Variations on movement, motion, emotion” in: ADCHE (Jounal of Art, Design & Communication in Higher Education), Special Issue 'Experiential knowledge and multi sensory communication', vol 10 (2) (2012): 179-198. ISSN 1474-273X.

Improvisation is a way of knowing that is experiential, pivotal to the body’s movement and growth in the world. It allows us to manage constraint and freedom in a rich world of possibility. We trace a trajectory from improvisation in life to improvisation in art. The set up of improvisation in precise ways in the fields of anthropology, ecology, visual art and music, reveals how improvisation and experiential — or should we say experimental — knowledge are profoundly interconnected. We draw upon the notions of improvisation developed by anthropologists Ingold and Hallam and on Dewey’s analysis of art as experience. The article concludes with an evaluation of how the techniques and processes of improvisation from the case examples may be useful ways to shed light on the workings of experiential knowledge.

Exploring Multi-Temporalities: An Orchestration of Luigi Nono's ‘…..sofferte onde serene...’  Assis, Paulo de. “Exploring multi-temporalities: An orchestration of Luigi Nono's …..sofferte onde serene...” in: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Performance Science, Vienna, August 28.-31. (2013): 777–782.

Referring to the author’s transcription of a piano work by Luigi Nono for orchestra (Assis 2013), this paper aims to: (1) investigate how collaborative creative practices engender new avenues for composers and performers; (2) to establish new layers of collaborative performing activity on top of pieces already originally conceived collaboratively; (3) develop new approaches and concrete tools for the performance of multi-temporal music. In a broader perspective, this post-compositional project makes a strong case for sensory and aesthetic "experimentation" (as proposed and argued by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 1972) as opposed to traditional approaches based on "interpretation" or "instrumentation".

From Emulation to Instigation: Revising the Notion of the Etude as Compositional Form in Live Computer Music  Cancino, Juan Parra."From emulation to Instigation: revising the notion of the étude as compositional form in Live computer music" in: Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) (2013).

Using the notion of the musical etude as “a composition designed to improve technique of an instrumental performer by isolating specific difficulties and concentrating his or her efforts on their mastery”, Flux|Pattern is a series of musical etudes aimed to pick up and refocus the inherent artistic-research elements found on the collaborative work developed by the author in a research project where the role of the computer and its performer was challenged, explored and developed to achieve the same level of musical nuance, expressiveness and responsibilities as traditional instruments in a chamber music setting.

Gilles Deleuze Meets Helmut Lachenmann: The Conditions of Creation and the Haecceity of Music Material 

Assis, Paulo de. “Gilles Deleuze meets Helmut Lachenmann: The conditions of creation and the haecceity of music material” in: Filigrane nº 13 (‘Deleuze et la musique’) (2011): 63–86. Available online at http://www.revue-filigrane.org

This article explores the concept of “haecceity” (Gilles Deleuze) and the compositional underlying ideas of Helmut Lachenmann. It aims at establishing (previously unconnected) connections between the philosophy of Deleuze and the concrete compositional practice of Lachenmann. The link to experimentation lies in the profound meaning of the concept of "haecceity": the radical "thisness" of a thing, the quality in a thing of being here and now or such as it is, its concrete objective reality. Such "things" — be it a musical figure or a philosophical concept — can only be considered immanently, as experiential phenomena given to us in specific frameworks of exposition (as Rheinberger's "experimental systems").

Humans, Heroes and Artists, (re)-Creating the Unexpected Situation 

Coessens, Kathleen. "Humans, heroes and artists, (re)creating the unexpected situation" in: Journal for Critical Studies in Improvisation — Etudes Critiques en Improvisation (2012). Available online at http://www.criticalimprov.com/article/view/2140

This article explores the tensions between improvisation in everyday life and in the arts: between “urgent action” and “play,” between determined and created situations. Improvisatory acts in everyday life are the result of unexpected situations, where the encounter between self and environment suddenly disrupts the banal rituals of life. Over time, experience and 30

knowledge teach us ways to cope with unexpectedness, and to “improvise” better. In music, improvisation is often a matter of choice. The unexpected situation is created, set up, purposively, like an experiment to happen. The musician knows he/she will “improvise” the next hour but doesn't know the outcome.

In re: ‘Experimental Analysis’  Brooks, William. “In re: Experimental Analysis.” in: Contemporary Music Review: in press (publication expected 2014).

Analysis of a composition from the 1950s is paired with analysis of a short composition by John Cage, in an investigation into the extent to which notation determines the premises for analysis and hence the mode for reception. The implementation of experimental compositional procedures invites (and perhaps requires) implementation of experimental analytical procedures: in this case, an analysis grounded in observation and distinction rather than judgment and synthesis. The article probes the extent and kinds of information available from such an analysis; in particular, it attempts to set reasonable methods by which one can apply a concept of “right” that is not based in aesthetics.

In re: ‘Experimental Music’  Brooks, William. “In re: ‘Experimental Music’.” in: Contemporary Music Review 31 (1) (2013): 37–62. doi:10.1080/07494467.2012.712282.

John Cage is universally associated with the phrase experimental music. But what did that phrase mean, for Cage and for Cage’s predecessors? I begin with Cage and Lejaren Hiller, both writing important texts on “experimental music” in 1959. From there, I trace the phrase backwards, eventually reaching Émile Zola, Gertrude Stein, and William James. A final section traces the phrase forward to Cage and Hiller’s collaboration on HPSCHD (1969).

(Non)-Discursive Space of the Body: In-between Discipline and Play in Visual and Performing Arts  Loureiro, Aline Veiga and Kathleen Coessens.“(Non)-Discursive Space of the Body: In-between Discipline and Play in Visual and Performing Arts” in: Fourth Annual International Conference on Visual and Performing Arts 3-6 June 2013, Athens, Greece Edited by Gregory T. Papanikos, 2013 forthcoming.

The present paper explores the creative space in-between pre-existing vocabularies and unknown encounters with improvisation. We propose to inhabit this space through the performing body and its various modes of communicating within and beyond discourses. At one side, Michel Serres (2002) develops the notion of a body open to infinite possibilities and freedom; on the other side, Foucault (1975) proposes a bodily object tamed by 31

social impositions and constraints. Looking from the perspective of artistic practice — specifically dance, we argue that creativity can be traced inbetween these two situations: were the body presents itself both as subject and object, experimenting with a dynamic exchange of roles, continuously negotiating between pre-given discourses and authenticity.

On the Art of Research in the Arts: Tracing Praxis and Reflection  Coessens Kathleen. “On the art of research in the arts - Tracing praxis and reflection” in: ARJ – Art Research Journal/Revista de Pesquisa em Arte, Bresil (2013, forthcoming)

How can an “art of research in the arts” develop, acknowledging two difficulties. The first is public: practices are embedded in cultural expectations of art and research that contradict each other. Are there “aesthetic laws or structures” like “scientific laws or structures”? Is experimentation in the sciences different from that in the arts? How to acknowledge for the “objective” in the “subjective” and vice versa? The second is more private: the difficulty of articulating the tacit knowledge of the artist. Using the metaphors of visual tools, binoculars, prisms and mirror rooms, this article will explore the dialectical relation between praxis and reflection as an exercise of difficult equilibrium for the artist.

Progress, Protest, and Impossible Music  Brooks, William. “Progress, Protest, and Impossible Music.” in: Contemporary Music Review 29: 4 (August 2010): 405–411.

A contextual analysis of three compositions—“One anti-personnel type-CBU bomb . . .” by Philip Corner, “Majority” by Charles Ives, and Lecture on the Weather by John Cage—reveals that each is “impossible.” Each manifests its impossibility in a different domain: moral, physical and perceptual. But the three scores were each resituated by comments made by the composers, independent of the scores; and these comments make these “experimental” works viable as expressions of aspiration rather than mere achievements.

Reinterpreting Michael Musgrave and Bernard D. Sherman's Performing Brahms: Early Evidence of Performance Style  Scott, Anna. "Reinterpreting Michael Musgrave and Bernard D. Sherman's Performing Brahms: Early Evidence of Performance Style" in: New Sound 37 (2012): 75-79. Available online at http://www.newsound.org.rs/eng/content.php?clanak_casopis_broj=37

Part review, part reinterpretation, this article places Michael Musgrave and Bernard D. Sherman’s brilliant 2003 compendium of essays entitled Performing Brahms: Early Evidence of Performance Style, within the context 32

of today’s burgeoning field of practice-led research into historical Brahms performance. In spite of ever-expanding interest in historically-informed performance practices, the piano music of Johannes Brahms continues to endure a degree of negligence. While this volume goes a long way towards the editors’ stated goal of reinvigoration of Brahmsian performance, some of the contributors’ suspicious attitudes towards late 19th/early 20th century performance styles are also laid bare—leaving modern performers more aware than ever of the historical evidence, yet too afraid to experiment with it at their instruments. Performing Brahms remains both the most authoritative volume of collected writings on the subject, and a potent reminder that today’s Brahmsian pianist-researcher must continue to paddle upstream when trying to approach a more historically and experimentally informed style of Brahms performance.

[Review] Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage, by Kenneth Silverman  Brooks, William. “[Review] Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage, by Kenneth Silverman.” in: American Music 30 (1) (October 2012): 113–115. doi:10.5406/americanmusic.30.1.0113.

Kenneth Silverman is claimed to have written the first authoritative biography of the quintessential “experimental” composer, John Cage. This review contests that claim, arguing not merely that the publication fails in several conventional regards, but that experimental music suggests the possibility of an experimental, non-linear history in which “interpretation” and “fact” are invited to interpenetrate.

[Review] Off the Record: Performing Practices in Romantic Piano Playing by Neal Peres Da Costa  Scott, Anna. "Review of Off the Record: Performing Practices in Romantic Piano Playing by Neal Peres Da Costa (Oxford University Press, 2012)” in: Context: A Journal of Music Research 37 (2012): 145–149.

Accompanied by an easily navigated companion website, Neal Peres Da Costa's Off the Record takes its place among the extraordinarily few resources available to pianists interested in bridging the gap between modern “authentic” reconstructions of Romantic pianism, and Romantic pianism as it was captured in the earliest years of recorded sound technologies. Here, the author has meticulously cross-examined both textual and recorded evidence of nineteenth-century performance style, offering a compelling argument against orthodox readings of historical texts of any kind. However while Da Costa asserts that he is interested in unraveling Romantic repertoires as an open-ended field of new possibilities, one wonders if he has gone quite far enough. In his own excerpted performances found on the accompanying website, Da Costa seems unwilling to experiment with the most extreme and destabilizing elements of late-Romantic pianism such as truncation, 33

improvisation and extreme large-scale tempo modification; preferring instead to insert more palatable elements such as dislocation, arpeggiation and local rhythmic alteration into otherwise thoroughly modern performances. As such, Off the Record leaves the door open to pianists interested in applying historical evidence experimentally: whereby the most destabilizing elements of recorded nineteenth-century pianism are encouraged to unfurl nineteenthcentury repertoires to truly unknown ends, while elucidating the persistent gaps between what modern historical performers know and what they ultimately do.

Sensory Fluidity: Dialogues of Imagination in Art  Coessens Kathleen. “Sensory Fluidity: Dialogues of imagination in art” in: Essays in Philosophy, specific issue 'Aesthetics and the Senses' (ed. Cynthia Freeland) July 2012, vol 13 Issue 2 (2012): 453-470.

How do artists share, translate, reveal their imagination by using different semiotic systems; how can the audience partake in this imagination receiving only images, words, notation, sounds? Starting from artwork of the novelist Italo Calvino and the composers Helmut Lachenmann and György Kurtag, this article addresses the relation among imagination, perception, remembrance and expression. I will argue that imagination relies upon sensory fluidity. This allows us (1) to integrate sensorial experiences from different perceptual origins — synaesthesia, (2) to link past, present and future by way of sensorial and embodied patterns of remembrance — embodied sedimentation, and (3) to share intersubjective patterns of affect and effect, bridging idiosyncratic and universal human experiences.

The Resistance of the Turkish Makam and the Habitus of the Performer  Östersjö, Stefan. “The resistance of the Turkish Makam and the Habitus of the performer.” in: Contemporary Music Review, Vol 32, Issue 1 (2013) London, Routledge.

This paper discusses the relation between embodied knowing and experimentation, taking a CD project with the Turkish electronic music composer and improviser Erdem Helvacioglu and the guitarist Stefan Östersjö as point of departure. The specific focus is on the resistance of the materials, such as the instruments and the modalities of the Turkish makam on the one hand and, one the other hand, the dual relation to the performer’s habitus as both ”critique” and ”resonance” in the process of musical experimentation.

Visual Praxis: Moving the Body, the World and the Self  Coessens, Kathleen. “Visual praxis: moving the body, the world and the self.” in: Applied Semiotics/ Sémiotique Appliquée, Issue: Translating Culture / Traduire la culture, Volume: 9, N° in volume: 24 (2010): 112–43, ISBN-ISSN: 1204-6140. Available online at http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/french/assa/ASSA-No24/index.html

This article explores the complexity of meaning-making processes in visual experiences. No situation of visual praxis has a fixed semiotic preconception, but opens up a semiotic potential — a multiplicity of points of view, interpretations, different articulations — which will/can be actualized depending on background beliefs, culture, expectations and sensory input. Visual praxis encounters different dispositions, cultural as well as personal. When actualized, semiosis always involves open processes of interpretation and reflection — or re-interpretation — that reach beyond time and place of the situation. The encounter between the viewer and the viewed opens different ways of semiotic practices which allow for experimental possibilities of interpretation.

Where am I: Body and Mind Reviewed in the Context of Situatedness and Virtuality  Coessens Kathleen. “Where am I ― body and mind reviewed in the context of situatedness and virtuality” in: The International Journal for Interdisciplinary Social Sciences. Volume 5, Issue 11 (2011): 65-74.

Changing practices and discourses on space, place and situatedness take not only place in the world but are present in the home. The notions of global and local, virtual and real, embodied and imaginary, private and public, nearness and distance are merging and defy every univocal description. How do humans cope with the contrast between, at the one hand, the finiteness and situatedness of the human being, and, at the other hand, the participation in multiple and multi-modal processes of ‘virtual’ spaces? I argue that experience in a virtual space starts from an experimental attitude in which humans try out their own known embodied and cultural practices in unprecedented environments.

Book chapters

Artistic Research and Music Scholarship: Musings and Models from a Continental European Perspective  Crispin, Darla. “Artistic Research and Music Scholarship: Musings and Models from a Continental European Perspective” In Practice-as-Research in Music, edited by Mine Dack. Ashgate: 2013 forthcoming.

The emergence of practice-as-research as a distinctive field within musical study has necessitated a re-evaluation by performers, composers and those who study their work of just what might be the respective boundaries of artistic practice, artistically-motivated enquiry and practice-oriented research. This has led to new conceptions of artistic identity, both within and beyond higher education study, and to the need for a more flexible, inclusive framework for the activities. Wherever these processes begin to establish themselves, the resultant refreshment of consciousness amongst artists leads to fresh questions concerning the role of their artistic production in the world. It can also prompt often-difficult reflections upon how this impacts upon their artistic identity. This chapter will address such issues, showing how they have emerged within the European debate about the nature and validity of practice-as-research and proposing a series of models that might be a useful tool in structuring this debate.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place  Schwab, Michael. “Between a Rock and a Hard Place.” In Intellectual Birdhouse: Artistic Practice as Research, edited by Florian Dombois, Ute Meta Bauer, Claudia Mareis, and Michael Schwab, 229–47. London: Koenig Books, 2012.

Using the author's work from a research project on self-experimentation, the chapter suggests that artistic research operates in a space before or in suspense of identification, where even a research object's status as “art work”, “design” or “scientific object” is unclear. Referring to Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's work on “experimental systems,” the chapter proposes to radically re-think our understanding of “artistic research” and to question the disciplinary boundaries that limit the role artistic research could play in a wider epistemic context. The text suggests that artistic research may produce what it calls “proto-objects” which have the potential to develop into different discursive contexts where 'art' is only one amongst many possible context. An ideal proto-object may be conceived as hybrid thing that adds epistemic value to different partially contradictory contexts making it difficult to reconstruct what that object is from any single perspective.

Inside Outside: Towards an Expanded Notion of Musical Gesture  Östersjö, Stefan and Thuy Nguyen. “Inside Outside: towards an expanded notion of musical gesture” In Sound Music and the Moving-Thinking Body. Cambridge University Press, 2013.

This book chapter outlines the artistic method in the experiments carried out by the Swedish/Vietnamese group The Six Tones and the choreographer Marie Fahlin in the development of works that merge the practices of choreographer and composer in musical works in which the compositional material is movement and sound conceived as one, as, speaking with RolfInge Godøy, as gestural-sonorous objects. The text also discusses a gender perspective on the analysis of musical gesture and how this led to the making of the installation-performance work titled Inside/Outside.

Integrating the Exposition into Music-Composition Research  Roels, Hans. “Integrating the Exposition into Music-Composition Research” In The Exposition of Artistic Research, edited by Michael Schwab and Henk Borgdorff. Leiden University Press, (in press 2013).

In this book chapter a research mode for music-composition research is proposed where unfinished sketches are presented to a selected audience. These composed 'open sketches' focus on artistic problems and new possibilities. The creation of these sketches requires both a neutralizing distance and artistic composition skills. To investigate expressive and communicative issues seriously in music-composition research, a central role for the audience is inevitable. By having these 'open sketches' performed and by explaining the context, the artist-researcher, together with the selected audience can create an experimental space that enables close interaction between the composer’s intentions, the composer’s music, and the perceptions of the audience. This 'open sketch' mode has the potential to communicate in a transparent way about composition problems and its active involvement of an audience can help the researcher to distinguish between finding information and practices that are personally enriching and others that add new insights for a community of people.

(Re-)searching Artists in Artistic Research: Creating Fertile Ground for Experimentation at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent  Coessens, Kathleen, Darla Crispina and Luk Vaes. “(Re-)searching artists in artistic research – creating fertile ground for experimentation” In Research and Research Education in Music Performance and Pedagogy, edited by Scott Harrison. Dordrecht: Springer, (in press 2013).

Can artistic research escape the obligatory, hierarchical pathway: 'practice – discourse – knowledge'? By exploring the processes of artistic research at the Orpheus Institute in Ghent, Belgium, we advocate the potential benefits of an artistic and epistemic articulation of the musician's practice that stresses the 'context of discovery' over the 'context of justification', experimentation over explanation. We consider experimentation to be intrinsic to the processes of music creation and the development of artistic identity and expertise and we shall argue for the primacy of an experimental attitude in artistic research and 38

practice. Experimental relationships take place not only inside artistic practices, but also at the interactional plane where the sensorial, creative and aesthetic world of the artist meets the world of science, research and explicit communication.

Scaling Parnassus in Running Shoes: From the Personal to the Transpersonal in Artistic Research  Crispin, Darla. “Scaling Parnassus in Running Shoes: From the Personal to the Transpersonal in Artistic Research” In The Exposition of Artistic Research, edited by Michael Schwab and Henk Borgdorff. Leiden University Press, (in press 2013).

The developing field of artistic research has been noteworthy for the willingness of many of its practitioners to embrace interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary approaches to their research questions as a means of generating a widely relevant discourse. One of the promising ways for artistic research in music to address its questions is through the medium of the “exposition”, in which the processes of deconstruction and reintegration that exemplify many artistic research projects, and that actually shadows the working processes of many musicians, can be modified for their research purposes, allowing them a rationale for presenting their works in new formats that are congruent with their work as artists. This “exposition” about “musical exposition” will explore some of the possibilities through very specific examples involving fingering experiments developed in work on solo piano music of the Second Viennese School.

The Agile Musical Mind: The Musician's act of creation  Coessens Kathleen.”The Agile Musical Mind - The Musician's act of creation” In Creativity and The Agile Mind: A Multidisciplinary Study to a Multifaceted Phenomenon, edited by T. Veale, K. Feyaerts, C. Forceville. (series Application of Cognitive Linguistics, ACL). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2013. ISBN: 978-3- 11-029529-0. Available online at http://www.degruyter.com/view/product/184570

The musical act is diverse and complex because of its specific relation to the body (kinesthetic and bodily acts), the object (the instrument), the space (sound and acoustics), the time (rhythm and process), the notation (semioticsymbolic systems) and the “other” (composer, performer, listener/public). Moreover, it is in se an embodied (ineffable) act, without linguistic or verbal translation. Two theories on creativity and innovation from the field of cognitive linguistics, the Optimal Innovation hypothesis (Rachel Giora) and the Blending theory (Turner & Fauconnier), will clarify the integration of different spaces in music and its complexity in original instances. In music creativity, the musician blends in experimental ways perceptual and kinesthetic linkages, auditory expectations, semiotic notations and dynamic processes, emotions and formal rules. 39

To Submit or not to Submit: Negotiating Artistic Research in the Academic World  Coessens Kathleen. “To submit or not to submit – negotiating artistic research in the academic world”, In Evaluating Research in the Arts, edited by Walter Ysebaert and Binke Van Kerkhoven. UAP, Brussels, 2013 forthcoming.

This chapter explores that potential of artistic research as a member of the broader research culture and focus more specifically on the - for artists somewhat alien - practice of academic publishing. It will question the artistic research's possibilities and problems of sharing that family resemblance of the broader family of research cultures. After unravelling the notion of a research culture, some resemblances, affinities and links with other domains of research and potentially familiar journals will be discussed. While artistic research is deeply embedded in artistic practice and can only be the fruit of such creative practice and its reflection, the conclusion will assert that, because of these peculiarities, it has a unique research content and reflection that is worth disseminating in broader contexts of research cultures challenging and fertilising both the own and other disciplines' repertoire of both practice and knowledge, experiment and theory.

Compositions and Arrangements

3 sonification pieces for the project ‘Sounding drawing’ Composer: Juan Parra Cancino 2012 Available online at http://www.timeofencounter.org/sounding-drawing-2/

These pieces were created as an experiment and comment on the possible strategies available to translate visual information into sound when the material and output is already represented as binary code in the digital domain. In order to do this, the composer changed the initial provided images into different image formats to generate ASCII and binary code and later force it to be rendered as sound using a self-made program. The output of these experiments were later organised in time in a more conventional compositional fashion. These pieces were made for the project ‘Sounding drawing’, conducted by Kathleen Coessens and Anne Douglas.

Deleuzabelli Variations Composer: Paulo de Assis 2010  Assis, Paulo de. “Deleuzabelli Variations for ensemble (two pianos, violin, cello, guitar, voice, live-electronics and video) after Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations op. 120”. Premiered at the Handelsbeurs Ghent, 15.09.2010

Disjointed Composer: William Brooks 2011  Brooks, William. “Disjointed. Two movements (‘Prelude’ and ‘Canon’) for pianist and percussionist.” Lebanon NH: Frog Peak Music, 2013.

Disjointed applies the taxonomy of musical gesture developed by Godøy and 42

Leman to the hand and arm movements of two performers. The “music” is in the actions; sound is an ancillary result, and, indeed, the instrumentation and exact sounds are left undetermined. The notation is apparently “musical,” although extensive modifications to conventional symbols require a lengthy commentary. A very conventional form is chosen, in part to invite close listening (seeing?) by the audience, in part to test the aesthetic viability of the approach. The conclusion is that this inversion of compositional precedent (actions first, sounds later)—which is consistent with work in other fields, such as “action” painting—is indeed useful and suggestive. Three additional movements are planned.

Eigengang Composer: Hans Roels 2011-12 Score and recording available online at : http://home.base.be/hanstine/hans/works-eng.htm#eigengang1

This composition is written for 3 pianists playing one piano. These performers play five layers or voices which have their own independent character, tempo and style. To emphasize the timbre differences between the voices, several extended piano techniques are used. The driving force in composing Eigengang was to create a work for an intimate ensemble -performers very close to each other- where each voice has enough space to develop its own personality. The synchronization between the voices with their own tempi and character happens without a chronometer, metronome or conductor. Thanks to the physical proximity of the performers, a complex synchronization with visual and auditory cues was possible. The movements of one performer, his score and the instrument on which he is playing, are situated within the visual and aural field of the other performers. Eigengang is part of a series of compositions in which new synchronization systems are explored.

Everlasting Voices Composer: William Brooks 2012  Brooks, William. “Everlasting Voices. Composition for bass clarinet, actor, and fixed media.” Lebanon NH: Frog Peak Music, forthcoming.

William Butler Yeats’s experiments with poetic declamation, which extended across a twenty-year period at the turn of the twentieth century, are investigated and reapplied to a text drawn from Yeats’s memoirs, poems, and letters, and also from letters by Maud Gonne. An autoharp (retuned with quarter-tones) substitutes for the “psaltery” that Yeats had built; the actor (female) presents the text in a manner which ranges from the quotidian to the 43

highly stylized; the clarinet realizes the kind of wordless melody to which Yeats arguably aspired. The whole is presented against an electroacoustic tapestry that is constructed from snippets of text and clarinet and autoharp samples. Performances to date have been preceded by a lecture that summarizes both Yeats’s practice (an early paradigm for “artistic research”) and its reapplication in the composition, and a summary of that lecture will constitute an appendix to the score.

Flux|Pattern # 1-3 (for soloists and two computers) Composer: Juan Parra Cancino 2010 Score available online at http://www.juanparrac.com/page7/page11/page11.html

A series of études developed in collaboration with Henry Vega and soloists of the Orpheus Research Centre in Music (ORCiM) as part of the 'Tracking physicality and embodied musicality in computer music' project. This research-through-practice project will aim to determine what has been learned by the two computer performers in terms of musical and technical performance development and will explore (both as duo as well as in combination with selected instrumental performers) what salient elements of the unique setting can be further develop. These musical “etudes” will focus on the exploration of aspects of "traditional instrumentality", and how these can be contrasted with performance and musical elements unique to electronic media.

Improvisation fixe sur une image Composer: Bart Vanhecke 2012

My research on the systematisation of atonality and dissonance in amotivic serial composition resulted in the adaptation of my personal serial technique. The electro-acoustic composition Improvisation fixe sur une image (2012) is based on a bass flute improvisation on the first of the “more atonal” series of my adapted technique in order to explore the possibilities of such series and to assess the difference with my previous series. It was meant to experience the intuitive embodied effect the new series might have on me during the process of composition. The composition process of Improvisation fixe sur une image can therefore be seen as an example of what I call experimentation through art. The recording of Improvisation fixe sur une image will be available on the CD accompanying the Sourcebook on Artistic Experimentation in Music (See section Books) 44

KVSwalk Composer: Juan Parra 2010

Coming from the possibility of interpreting the notion of embodiment at different levels (the physical relationship of the performer with his instrument, the assimilation and transformation of non musical ideas into sonic and visual manifestations (sonification and visualization as embodiment), KVSwalk aims to research the possibilities and limitations of physicality and embodied musicality in computer music performance.

Life is too precious… Composer: Juan Parra 2012

Life is too precious... is an experiment on sonification of Kathleen Coessens’s poem "A day in my life". Each paragraph carries a particular atmosphere, that I aimed to recreate using the 100 dollar guitar and a self-programmed spatialization environment. The title bridges between the original poem and the words of Harry Partch, who served as a lighthouse throughout the process.

Multiple Paths (Ommaggio a Nono) Composer: Juan Parra Cancino 2013 Available online at http://www.juanparrac.com/page7/page11/page11.html

‘Multiple paths (Ommaggio a Nono)' for networked ensemble and live electronics Focusing on the manipulation of time and space structure in Luigi Nono's A Pierre Dell’azzurro silenzio, inquietum, a più cori (1985, Doublebass Fl. in G, Doublebass Cl. in B flat and Live Electronics) and Post-prae-ludium no. 1 'per Donau' (1987, Tuba and live electronics), I attempt to shed some light on the architectonic metaphors that we can find in Nono's works, how they manifest through performance, and how the salient elements can be identified and re-presented in a new composition. Multiple Paths (Ommaggio a Nono), a creation developed in collaboration with Brice Soniano and Chris Chaffe, seeks to represent some of the ideas of Luigi Nono about the merge of physical and poetic space transformation over time, and expose them through the active manipulation in performance of this musical dimension. The notion of temporality and atemporality is emphasised in the piece by the virtual nature of part of the ensemble. 45

In this composition, the notion of transformation of the physical space over time can be presented in its full performative dimension through a dedicated instrument/controller. The development towards the final version Multiple Paths (Ommagio a Nono) for 8 instruments and computer performer is set by a series of encounters with different musicians that (will) have contributed to different aspects of the piece. Whenever this contributions are crystallised in performance, the title of the final piece will be used, indicating the subset of performers.

Rasch1-8: Schumann’s Somathemes Composer: Paulo de Assis 2012

Rasch1-8: Schumann’s Somathemes, for piano, tape, live-electronic and dataprojector is an experimental performance — a critical reading of Robert Schumann’s Kreisleriana op.16 (1838) through the lens of Roland Barthes writings on this piece, particularly his original concept of “somatheme”. In addition to the music of Robert Schumann, recorded voices, projected texts and images bring the listener to a state of “inner resonance” with the body of the music played on stage, making Barthes’ “second text” ("l’affolement des coups") more perceptible.

Scar3 No+ Sch3 Composer: Paulo de Assis 2013

Conceived as an "assemblage" of works by three composers, texts about them and images related to them, this experimental performance questions what one thinks to know about the "original" works. For what instrument were these pieces composed? What is the role of extra-musical elements in the conception and performance of them? What is the transformative power exerted over them by reflective procedures (such as texts about them and concepts generated from them)? It included three sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti, ".....sofferte onde serene..." by Luigi Nono, and three pieces from Kreisleriana op. 16 by Schumann. The video materials were shot in Venice and Ghent, while the audio materials were prepared after recordings of texts by Roland Barthes about Schumann and music.

The walk to the tarn Composer: William Brooks 2013  Brooks, William. “The walk to the tarn. Composition for piano two hands.” Lebanon NH: Frog Peak Music, forthcoming.

This brief etude extends the study of musical gesture that motivated Disjointed. In this case, the gestures are specifically pianistic and are drawn from the pedagogical approaches of Abby Whiteside and Rosina Lhévinne. The left hand “walks”—transforming itself gradually from Whiteside to Lhévinne—while the right hand manifests physical obstacles: a road, a rock, a gate. Eventually the tarn is reached, in a brief fantasia, and the walk resumes. As with Disjointed, musical notation had to be reconceived to accommodate the shift in compositional foundations. The hand positions and fingerings were conceived and notated first, with pitch following later. An extensive commentary provides both technical and background information.

Tracce Composer: William Brooks 2013  Brooks, William. “Tracce. Composition for four singers (SATB) and amplification.” Lebanon NH: Frog Peak Music, forthcoming.

This work builds upon and extends the research into declamation that was begun in Everlasting Voices. J. M. Synge cultivated a poetic style that was colloquial and direct, suggesting Irish peasantry rather than the cultivated upper classes. He applied this style in translating several sonnets of Petrarch in 1909. In its original Italian, one of the most celebrated of these (sonnet 310) begins “Zefiro torna,” and there are celebrated settings of it by Monteverdi and by Marenzio before him. Tracce attempts to fuse a colloquial, semi-spoken delivery of Synge’s text with traces (“tracce”) of Monterverdi’s madrigal (both textual and musical). The question is whether the two worlds—high/low, Italian/Irish, Renaissance/Modern—can coexist or, indeed, even be mutually supportive.

Version for orchestra and 3 spatialized instrumental groups of Luigi Nono’s ‘.....sofferte onde serene...’ Composer: Luigi Nono and Paulo de Assis (trans.)

already originally conceived collaboratively; (3) develop new approaches and concrete tools for the performance of multi-temporal music. In a broader perspective, this post-compositional project makes a strong case for sensory and aesthetic "experimentation" (as proposed and argued by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, 1972) as opposed to traditional approaches based on "interpretation" or "instrumentation".

Presentations (available online)

Researching Performance, Performing Research Kathleen Coessens, Contribution leader panelgroup presentation: “Researching performance, performing research” 14-17/07/2011, CMPCP, Performance Studies Network International Conference. Cambridge University, UK. Available online at http://www.cmpcp.ac.uk/online%20resource%20Saturday/ PSN2011_Coessens1.pdf

Starting from the consideration that experimentation is inherent to artistic practice and to the processes of music making, we will define artistic experimentation broadly as encompassing the actions that an artist undertakes in developing and constantly renewing personal artistic identity and expertise. Exploring this field has the potential to give greater insight into how art unfolds, and opens new possibilities for artistic practice and reception. “Researching performance” starts from the hypothesis that no performance attains its full potential without a thorough investigation of the artistic act. “Performing research” means that the outcome of the artistic investigation is a manifestation based on critical and self-reflective evaluations and decisions. Our hypothesis is that experimentation is one important key to creative performance.

Sounded Gestures and Enacted Sounds Laws, Catherine (ORCiM/ University of York), William Brooks (ORCiM/ University of York), Damien Harron (Leeds College of Music). July 2011, Performance Studies Network/ Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice conference, Cambridge University. Available online at http://www.cmpcp.ac.uk/conferences_PSN2011_Friday.html

A pianist moves her arm (vertically). A percussionist moves his arm (laterally). Both produce sound (perhaps). A viewer (auditor) finds one gesture “musical” or “expressive”, another gesture “theatrical”. From whence do these judgments come? Are they irrelevant to the experience of “music” or an intrinsic part of it? Under what circumstances might the “music” be ancillary to the gesture, rather than the reverse (as is conventional)? These and related questions motivate ‘Sounded gestures and enacted sounds’, a practice-led project investigating the relationships between physical and sonic gesture and between embodied knowledge and musical meaning. By means of a process which moves from systematic gathering and analysis of data, through collaborative performance exploration, to composition (of gesture, not of sound) a team of three (composer, percussionist and pianist) develop an understanding of embodied gesture and musical meaning that is realized in composition and performance, as well as in analytical and descriptive discourse.

Other

Charles E. Ives: Symphony No. 4. (Critical edition full score)  Brooks, William, ed., with Wayne Shirley, James Sinclair, Kenneth Singleton. 2011. Charles E. Ives: Symphony No. 4. Critical edition full score/CD-ROM. Milwaukee, WI: Associated Music Publishers, Inc.; distributed by Hal Leonard.

Fifty years after its composition, Ives’s masterpiece received its first performance. It’s taken another forty-five years for a proper scholarly edition to be created. Ives’s experimental processes, especially in the rhythmic domain, require us to rethink the notion of “urtext” and of a “performing” edition. The four movements differ hugely and embody different problems; each was edited separately using an appropriate strategy.

Designing Environments for Life (Three Postcards) Kathleen Coessens, Participation and artistic work (Three postcards with philosophical texts by Kathleen Coessens) Presented during exhibition 'Designing Environments for Life' at the Dundee Contemporary Arts Visual Research Centre, 15th January - 30th January 2010.

The Designing Environments for Life exhibition provides evidence, traces, of an exploration in 2009 between anthropologists, artists and designers in rethinking the concept of “environment”. Their exploration sought to situate the experience of living in the world with the systems and processes that shape it. The result was a demand for “open-ended design” with a focus on improvisation and experimentation rather than prefigured solutions.

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