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This paper explains and discusses the experience and process of a workshop held in Pristina, Kosovo, with the theme of Queer Urbanism. Six participants from different backgrounds were tasked to explain their personal stories relating to their city. Comparing historical antecedents from art and architecture while discussing various lines of queer theory, this workshop constituted a laboratory of methods and practices that weave through the possibilities that Queer Urbanism can generate.

The integration of contemporary artists' interventions into museum exhibitions and the artistic interpretation of heritage have become increasingly common practices over the last three decades of the 20th century. These creative perspectives often raise questions about dissonant, overlooked, or insufficiently researched heritage, making artistic research projects crucial when exploring the past. Simultaneously, museums, having long-established categories dictating how objects are collected, which reflect once-dominant value systems and attitudes towards knowledge, and with now traditional ways of presenting them to the public - although sometimes too sluggishly, have gradually shifted their focus from solely emphasizing the object to considering its broader context, from a concern for the material aspect to an interest in the immaterial aspect, from preservation for the sake of preservation to the interpretation and representation of heritage in response to social changes. This paper follows the life history of a specific museum object, tracing its journey from the usable to the museum context through the acquisition carried out by the Museum of the History of Yugoslavia in 2010. The paper explores the potential of artistic interpretation in revealing multiple layers of meaning and diverse narratives associated with a single object. By analyzing the video material created by artist Aleksandra Domanović, which presents this object within the museum exhibit, the study also delves into the broader scope of her work, essential for comprehending the entire process of interpretation. Considering that the subject in this case is a non-object, specifically a digital record, the paper addresses the challenges of modernizing the museum's approach to collection practices and the (im) possibility of exhibiting digital objects in the physical space of the museum.

This paper tells the story of Contracts of making, viewing and listening, a 17-minute film that has emerged as part of my ongoing doctoral study in Artistic Research in Film. Taking the Bengal Famine of 1943 as a site-event, the doctoral research focuses on investigating and experimenting with epistemologies and ontologies of expressions emanating from a space of subalternity, especially Dalits. Contracts of making, viewing and listening can be seen as an artistic intervention into Satyajit Ray’s Distant Thunder – made in 1973, the film tells the story of effects of the Famine in rural Bengal through the eyes of a Brahmin couple. The artistic intervention was geared towards both critically reading the film from the lens of Dalit consciousness, and to explore ways of writing that critique in the language of the film itself. By retracing the journey of Contracts of making, viewing and listening, this paper focuses on how research is performed in and through the medium of film in this intervention, its multiple conceptual/material contingencies, and ultimately what it proposes in the context of artistic research.

From genre to interdisciplinary and trans-medial artistic practice, “autotheory” has attracted great attention for formally distilling a troublesome contradiction of dualistic opposition between theory and practice in arts and attempting to solve it. In this paper, autotheory is understood as the joining of reflective thinking through the “collective self” and the reflective thinking of “theory”. Based on Lauren Fournier’s research, this paper investigates two kinds of art practices in contemporary Chinese art. The first developed from the art movements of the late 1970s to the late 1980s, when there was a rethinking of collective selfhood in Chinese art circles. This “collective self” in Chinese culture expands the parameters of autotheory’s individualized, autobiographical “self”, as described by Fournier. The second example of autotheory discussed in this paper explores contemporary Chinese feminist art. Due to its cultural background and historical trajectory, different dimensions of individualized autotheoretical practices have developed in feminist contemporary art in China in the new era. The case studies presented in this paper show the flexibility of autotheory as a methodology, the complex conditions it applies to, and the potential to generate theory from expanded notions of “self” in art practice.

This paper explores the iterative process of striving for artistic expressivity and developing crafting techniques in a porcelain-making project. The paper is about mitigating the tensions and flaws in porcelain bodies by trying out technical solutions while searching for genuine porcelaneous expressivity in artmaking. The paper presents examples of a working process of material-based art, from the first samples of material collapse to an exhibition of finished works in an art gallery, allowing the reader to see how faults and failures contribute to this development. The paper advocates that craft science and artistic research are closely integrated and intertwined.

INTRODUCTION: The subject of this paper is a phenomenological study of cognitively plausible relationships between gesture and sound mediated by technologies. In this discussion, the term ‘gesture’ indicates a movement of the body consciously performed and able to express or communicate something. The expression ‘cognitively plausible’ refers to an interactive sound response that is immediate, continuously varying and enactively coherent with the generating (sonified) gesture. OBJECTIVES: The objectives of this paper are two. The first is an artistic exploration of gesture sonifications in various contexts. The second is rather methodological, i.e., to provide a possible general paradigm for Artistic Research (AR). METHODS: More in detail, the AR phenomenological approach is modeled according to an Interaction Design (IxD) research paradigm.RESULTS: A number of case studies of gesture sonification are presented and discussed according to the above methodological framework.CONCLUSION: We claim that the introduction of such methodological framework was successful in terms of providing robust guidelines for our research and for a clear and structured presentation of its results.

From formatting and style manuals we may first learn from in secondary school to the submission instructions that academic journals put in place, students and seasoned scholars alike learn to navigate standard rules for academic writing. Since the turn towards reflexive citation practices and refusals of institutionalised order, we have a wealth of directions and interventions to write and think otherwise. Through this essay, I look at the loyalties to our respective disciplines that stubbornly remain intact, despite our creative efforts and theoretical interventions to reconstruct citational practices. I argue that the danger of disciplinarity—even its siblings cross-, multi-, and transdisciplinarity—is that it disciplines us into the scholarly order and production of knowledge that such alternative citation practices aim to challenge. I begin this essay with a look into anti-disciplinarity by way of Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s The Undercommons and the proposals for movements otherwise that Black critical thought, queer theory and performance studies offer us. Importantly, this essay is projected towards Axelle Karera’s provocation that “to be black and critical is necessarily to engage in disorderly conduct, to become ‘undisciplined’.” Following the introduction, the central part of this paper consists of visual documentation of an embodied practice that considers themes of disorderly conduct and becoming undisciplined. I revisit the ways in which I undiscipline the traditional literature review, methodology and contribution to knowledge. The visual documentation is composed of conceptual frameworks and materials, and a formal enquiry that draws from critical creative research and critical autoethnography. Through a combination of writing and abstract form-making, I explore how I make with the literature and scholars I cite.

This paper provides an overview of my practice-based doctoral research: Bearing Witness: Autoethnographic Animation and the Metabolism of Trauma, which uses a multimethod approach (cognitive focus, thematic analysis of qualitative data and artistic practice), to investigate autoethnographic animation’s capacity to moderate psychological trauma. Traumatic events such as child abuse, domestic violence and military conflict often present a major health challenge for survi­vors, with many experiencing significantly impaired function due to symptoms such as nightmares, emotional dysregulation, negative cognitions and dissociative states. The symptoms most commonly reported are intrusive memories-sensory-perceptu­al impressions that involuntarily intrude into consciousness, causing distress and a sense of reexperiencing the trauma. A number of cognitive studies have measured how these intrusions may be moderated through models that either interfere with imagery, simulate trauma, or change its narrative. My research uses interviews, thematic analysis and artistic practice to inves­tigate whether animation may similarly moderate intrusions through processes that utilise the medium’s visuospatial capacities and its potential for rescripting, or changing, the trauma narrative. The desire to use personal experience as data motivated my interest in autoethnography as a methodology for qualitative inquiry. Autoethnography is a reflexive approach that explores autobiographical stories and connects these to wider socio-cultural-polit­ical issues through writing, performance and other media. In this research I am using autoethnography to both address my lived experience of trauma and to moderate its symptoms through my animation practice.

The phenomenon of artistic research attracts considerable attention because of the growing integration between art, design and science. At the same time, it remains a challenging research subject that is interpreted differently by various scientists, designers and artists. This paper presents an attempt to investigate the relationship between artistic research and artistic practice, and the role of artistic research in artists’ books. It aims to present a brief history of artists’ books and show how various artists have captured the complex creative and artistic processes, results or stories behind the works of art. The article also discusses the problem and potential of representation in artists´ books and examines them as an effective mechanism for disseminating findings of artistic research. To present the multifaceted action behind a work of art implies challenges. The author’s own attempt to capture knowledge from artistic research was challenged while working on a book project and will be part of the discussion. Finally, the study will illustrate how artists’ books contribute to the process of capturing reflections of artistic research and make the manifestations accessible to people outside of the formal context of the lecture halls. Cover image: Newton, by William Blake (1795). The William Blake Archive, Public Domain

This paper aims to expose the problem of the actual musical epistemology, which remains in its hyper classification, and to draw a path to what Gutiérrez understands as epistemography, which is a possibility of emancipation for the research in performance or, in other words, an epistemological and methodological possibility to Artistic Research. For that, our main theoretical basis will be the works of the Science Information researcher, Antonio Garcia Gutiérrez (2007, 2020), and of the sociologist Boaventura de Souza Santos (2005, 2009). Starting with the presentation of the problems related to the classification and its consequences in the musical field, some strategies of declassification will be presented, showing a possible way to the development of Artistic Research.

This paper provides a case study of the artistic research project Confronting Realities – First Steps. Working on Cinematic Autosociobiographies conducted at the Film Academy Vienna/ mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, Austria as well as a reflection on the relationship between its research approaches, theory and criticism. Drawing from literary autosociobiographies of Ernaux (Les Années, 2008) and Éribon (Retour à Reims, 2009), the aim was to explore, describe and produce cinematic autosociobiographies - autobiographies in regard to and contextualized within the frame of social class and larger historical developments. Over the course of 10 months a multi-level project was designed and conducted to explore the format of cinematic autosociobiographies within the course “Research Project II” of MA and BA Students for Directing, Script Writing as well as Film and Media Studies. A group of 8 external performers from various backgrounds joined the project. The project was designed on four levels: Level (1) of Autosociobiographical Exploration that created three exploration groups with varying composition – 14 artist researchers/ film and acting students from Europe, refugee artists from Iran and Syria - to explore, make accessible and contextualize one’s sociobiography. Level (2) of Cinematic Forms and Techniques intended to develop narratives, cinematic techniques and formats of cinematic autosociobiographies - 2 short films were produced in that context that show the diversity of cinematic form and content on the levels of visuals, framing, audio, editing as well as in the narrative and the narrative development. Level (3) of Interdisciplinary and Theoretical Contextualization intended to build a strong interconnection between artistic, theoretical and interdisciplinary research about social class, cinematic forms and collaborative strategies of film production. Level (4) of Reflection and Evaluation intended to create a reflective framework, especially focusing on the collaborative aspect of filmmaking, ethical aspects of working with autosociobiographies and of researching/ creating in an intimate way in an academic environment. Cinematic autosociobiographies have shown to provide unique artistic research approaches and tools to convey collective movements, to find relations between different realities as well as creating ways of making them accessible. Further research is still needed and planned.

There is growing interest in developing creative applications for robots, specifically robots that provide entertainment, companionship, or motivation. Identifying the hallmarks of human creativity and discerning how these processes might be replicated or assisted by robots remain open questions. Transdisciplinary collaborations between artists and engineers can offer insights into how robots might foster creativity for human artists and open up new pathways for designing interactive systems. This paper presents an exploratory research project centered on drawing with robots. Using an arts-led, practice-based methodology, we developed custom hardware and software tools to support collaborative drawing with an industrial robot. A team of artists and engineers collaborated over a 6-month period to investigate the creative potential of collaborative drawing with a robot. The exploratory project focused on identifying creative and collaborative processes in the visual arts, and later on developing tools and features that would allow robots to participate meaningfully in these processes. The outcomes include a custom interface for controlling and programming robot motion (EMCAR) and custom tools for replicating experimental techniques used in visual art. We report on the artistic and technical outcomes and identify key features of process-led (as opposed to outcome-led) approaches for designing collaborative and creative systems. We also consider the value of embodied and tangible interaction for artists working collaboratively with computational systems. Transdisciplinary research can help researchers uncover new approaches for designing interfaces for interacting with machines.

In this paper we will deal with those theoretical aspects that illuminate the essential relationship between technology and art. This study gains significance, especially today, when we witness the universal and unstoppable acceleration of technological advancement, especially in the field of high technology, which also has become articulated as part of the cultural system with this universal technological euphoria. However, as we will see in this paper, the strong conceptual links between art and technology as social activities existed long before the technological boom emerged in the second half of the 20th century. That is why our goal in this paper is to highlight the key fact, in which technology and art, almost partnered, shared, and still share the same destiny space for man’s civilization development.

The research presented in this paper collects and analyses a set of documents disseminating discourse on artistic research in Flanders – the Northern, Dutch-speaking region of Belgium. In doing so, it identifies hegemonic constructions structuring the (im)possibility of fostering fruitful interlinkages between the often-dichotomised notions of ‘art’ and ‘science’. Hinged on the officialisation of the first Flemish doctoral degrees in the arts, the study points to earlier, ‘inclusive’ discourses on artistic research that allowed articulating a variety of activities and outcomes as ‘research’. The introduction of the PhD gave way to ‘exclusive’ discourses that restrict artistic research to the higher arts education context. Notably, these ‘exclusive discourses’ – often disseminated by higher art educators – are expressively critical of the research agenda. Highlighting its artificial origins in the Bologna Process, artistic research is normatively constructed as an infringement on the arts’ autonomy. Its potential is not denied altogether, however, but only touched upon in cryptonormative terms that reject current conditions without addressing what it should or could be.

The research presented in this paper collects and analyses a set of documents disseminating discourse on artistic research in Flanders – the Northern, Dutch-speaking region of Belgium. In doing so, it identifies hegemonic constructions structuring the (im)possibility of fostering fruitful interlinkages between the often-dichotomised notions of ‘art’ and ‘science’. Hinged on the officialisation of the first Flemish doctoral degrees in the arts, the study points to earlier, ‘inclusive’ discourses on artistic research that allowed articulating a variety of activities and outcomes as ‘research’. The introduction of the PhD gave way to ‘exclusive’ discourses that restrict artistic research to the higher arts education context. Notably, these ‘exclusive discourses’ – often disseminated by higher art educators – are expressively critical of the research agenda. Highlighting its artificial origins in the Bologna Process, artistic research is normatively constructed as an infringement on the arts’ autonomy. Its potential is not denied altogether, however, but only touched upon in cryptonormative terms that reject current conditions without addressing what it should or could be.

Today, most people spend their lives online: browsing social media, watching cat videos, etc. Some consider this a parallel activity—not part of their ‘real’ life. But the truth is that today those whose brains have been rewired through their interaction with these technologies are in fact constructing their reality through these systems of representation. One could argue that they seem so intimately attached to those images that even their reality seems post-produced (Steyerl, 2017). On the other hand, this new collective subjectivity offers new possibilities, as they promote the idea that today—as Joseph Beuys predicted—everyone can be an artist (2004), thus assigning a new role to internet shared images and their producers. The challenges that arise from these scenarios are: Can we embrace the creative potential of these apparently meaningless daily activities as the rich material for new collaborative narratives? Can we benefit from these collective productions to promote new bioethical discourses, or might this perhaps add another footstep towards a new becoming media? This paper will develop these arguments and present the results of the author’s formal artistic research based on open-source network technologies as the material-discursive tool for the articulation, promotion and distribution of collective singular intimate interspecies explorations in a 'new aesthetic' paradigm.

I will argue in this text that the very foundation of a transcendent interpretation of life is based on a hidden aggression of living beings against life itself. Nietzsche was probably the first who discovered the fact that “metaphysical believes” are finally grounded in a false image of thought, which avoids––not arbitrarily, but constitutively––to have a close look at the instinctive activities, operative in a body. In order to understand what is finally at stake for Nietzsche in the problem transcendence versus immanence, one therefore has to understand his new concept of the body. The body, not as a massive thing in itself, but a worldwide being, exposed to a multitude of forces, subconsciously operative in the cellar regions of a body as well as in the worldwide affections, a body is exposed to in its being-in-the-world. In the second part of my paper I will address the research-festival Philosophy on Stage#4, Nietzsche et cetera (Tanzquartier Wien 2015) as an example, in which philosophy is realized as an artistic research practice that gives back to philosophy its corporeality, materiality and fleshly sensibility by staging philosophy. A way of philosophising, which counters the classical ascetic image of thought and thus demands a new species of “artist-philosophers,” able and willing to demand, in line with Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, to “stay true to the earth”.

This paper approaches the two situations by being part of a conference on teaching cinematography and the real experience of shooting in a remote area in Africa with very few resources and conditions to do so. This article divides itself into two distinct moments: 1) one where an account of the teaching of cinematography is elaborated against the backdrop of the conclusions of the Teaching Cinematography Conference of 2017, of which the author was one of the organizers; and 2) a concrete case study of the author’s experience as a cinematographer for the film A Ilha dos Cães [The Island of Dogs], which premiered in theatres in Portugal in April 2017, and which corresponds precisely to an illustration of what the exercise of cinematography is today, in the European context. The articulation between these two cases allows us to understand how, while the essential nature of the relationship between artistic practice and teaching has not changed in the case of cinematography, a very significant set of transformations requires a rethinking of the methods and processes in which this relationship might be built.

This paper investigates the ways in which new sonic identities begin to emerge through a dialogue between cultures, artistic disciplines and technology. Musicians worldwide commonly shape their identity and forms of musical expression through the lens of the environment they grow up in. Ideas about desirable sonic aesthetics vary drastically across musical traditions and cultures globally. Whilst one musician may strive for a sound that is clear, pure and unaltered, another may strive for a distorted, inharmonic sound, for example. The article examines what happens when a musician from a given sonic tradition is exposed to and interacts with a diversely different approach to producing sound. It puts forward the case of an Australian double bass player with a long immersion into Tanzanian musical culture, carving out a personal approach to double bass playing via a synthesis of traditional western techniques, extended techniques influenced by Tanzanian sonic aesthetics, as well as mechanical preparations and electronic augmentation of the instrument. The combination of these diverse elements allows for the emergence of a distinctive sonic identity, illustrated by excerpts from three pieces composed and performed within this specific aesthetic framework. The article’s discussion on sonic identity formation holds relevance as an example case of artistic creation within the current globalised context, where finding the distinct quality of one’s expression needs to be negotiated through layers of transcultural and technological elements.

One particular approach in the context of Animal Computer Interaction (ACI) is auditory enrichment for captive wild animals. Here we describe our research and the methodology used to design musical instruments and interfaces aimed at providing auditory enrichment for grey parrots living in captivity. The paper is divided into three main phases: a project review and classification, sonic experiments at the parrot shelter and the design of musical instruments. The overview of recent projects that involve animals in the interaction and music-generation process highlights the costs and benefits of projects of this kind and provides insights into current technologies in this field and the musical talents of animals. Furthermore, we document a series of sonic experiments conducted at a parrot shelter to develop acoustically enriched environments through the use of musical instruments. These investigations were intended to provide a better understanding of how grey parrots communicate through sound, perceive and respond to auditory stimuli and possibly generate sound and music through the usage of technological devices. Based on the cognitive, physiological, and auditory abilities of grey parrots, and their intrinsic interest in sonic and physical interactions, we finally developed and tested various interactive instrument prototypes and here we present our design results for auditory enrichment in the context of ACI and artistic research.

This paper is an introductory study of the works by the Viennese-born composer Pia Palme, who characterised the community of Austrian female artists as a productive and particularly innovative one. Palme herself is part of this productive and lively scene, but her role in it is twofold, for she is well known not only as a performer and composer but also for her cultural, political, and feminist engagement. From 2007 to 2013, together with the vocalist Gina Mattiello, she organised e_may, a festival dedicated to commissioning and performing pieces by contemporary women composers. Both e_may’s international programme and Palme’s œuvre show that Pia Palme is an internationally oriented artist. Born and living in Vienna, she has been collaborating with artists from all over the world since the beginning of her artistic career. Without a doubt, the exploration of Pia Palme’s works and their specific position in the Austrian music scene relates to gender and women’s studies, as well as to Austrian music studies. Writing a portrayal of Pia Palme means exploring a specific female contribution to contemporary Austrian music. However, at the same time her œuvre raises questions about the terms “female” and “Austrian” themselves: How can these categories be understood? This article’s objective is therefore to illuminate, with the help of Pia Palme’s œuvre, what the label “woman composer” and “Austrian music” might mean in this specific context.

In this artistic research, I argue that a range of artistic practices is capable of addressing relevant issues in our material, specifically our urban, environment. In particular, conceptual interventions or non-theatrical performances, which are in most cases mundane everyday activities that require transformation through media to be understood as art. Yet, as human memory is susceptible, media is also required to provide proof of the action for archives or exhibitions, or simply as a memento of the artwork itself. Lens-based media, such as photography and video-recording, are in most cases the ideal form of documentation and distribution, while the actual performance is transferred to another genre of artistic practice and dissociated from the immediate experience of the moment.This paper introduces the enduring work of the author’s alter ego, The Urban Beautician, and defines her actions and documentation of this work within the framework of the conceptual and performance art scene. An assiduous assessment of her artistic ancestry is given and a catalogue of her endeavours, categorised by diverse subjects, arranged to isolate the themes and to connect the topics.

This paper is the result of an exercise of experimental re-writing and analogical thinking which had as an aim to open a new perspective on research in the arts. In terms of method, the different figures of love in Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse are forced to talk about the relationship of researcher and object of study. This analogy allows us to find quality parameters based on a scale of values different to the hegemonic ones in the academy (productivity, competitiveness, innovation). These new parameters might constitute a solid ontological basis to build a new politics of artistic research in the academy that allow a radical reconsideration of processes of artistic research.

Syllabus for a Course "The History of 20th Century Artistic Research" attempts to reconstruct (or rewrite!) the history or art in the 20th century from the perspective of artistic research. The paper should be understood as a functional proposal for an actual class, but it can also be seen as a statement both about what "artistic research" or "art-based research" could signify and how these notions might help us to look differently at the meeting place between art history, art practice and the humanities. 30.03.2015 | David Quigley (Stuttgart)