In June 2020, the Vienna Declaration shed light on the viability of artistic research with an identity of its own. In its introduction, it explicitly states the need to “guarantee and incorporate post-graduate studies based on practice, in higher arts education in all European countries, in order to further develop artistic research...”. For the time being, there is no culture of initial training in the theoretical and practical bases of artistic research in Spain. This leads to a lack of initial training in artistic education that is not made up for by the more specialized Master’s studies.
This monograph aims to bring the reader closer to international research linked to artistic research and scientific research articles within the artistic field of a transdisciplinary nature. It is the result of the contributions of international researchers to the 1st International Conference: Intersection of Art, Society and Technology in Musical Innovation, held from the 3rd to the 5th of September 2021 and organised by the University of Valladolid and the Katarina Gurska Institute for Artistic Research (IKG), the latter being a body dependent on the Katarina Gurska Foundation for Education and Culture. The event brought together leading researchers from the field of avant-garde artistic research, and musical research, inspiring minds of the 21st century who produce knowledge through researchers that focus on music as a transversal and interdisciplinary axis: art, space, perception, performance, health, education, and society, among others.
The book, in monograph format, brings us closer to different lines of research linked to the field of musical culture, connects with environments of the digital era, always from a transdisciplinary perspective, innovates in emerging pedagogies within the artistic field, and all this from the hand of prestigious professors, scientists, researchers and professionals from the world of music, who, with their relevant vision, enrich this book.
Based on these assumptions, the coordinators of this monograph thought of bringing together the most relevant researchers who participated in the International Congress and the result is as follows: In the first chapter, “Soundwalking: Between Art and Non-Art”, Marcel Cobussen presents an essay focusing on soundwalking as an art form that has developed for decades on the fringes of the academic art world. He addresses the resolution to the question “are there art forms in which both social and artistic-aesthetic requirements can be fulfilled?” The manuscript glimpses a strong focus on the artistic and aesthetic aspects of a product or process that may converge well with an equally strong focus on knowledge production and social relevance through Soundwalking.
In the second chapter, “Towards a New Paradigm for Music Research: Evidence from a Research Assemblage”, Pamela Burnard sets the focus on a new paradigm within music research, recognising the importance of exploring different creative processes within the musical field, undertaking new interdisciplinary research more in line with 21st century society and its needs, and encouraging a rethinking and reformulation of emerging processes of music research and innovation.
In the third chapter, “Exploring innovations within music Education Research”, Ana Lucía Frega and Julia Brook advocate the need to rethink the knowledge of different ways of developing various methods to contribute to the improvement of music education. They suggest how to promote innovation not always from the creation of new resources, but from the reassessment of all those elements we have in order to be able to address systematic, organisational and pedagogical changes within music education.
In the fourth chapter, “Narratives on the Musical Instrument. Musical Practice Between Action Theory and Media Theory”, Elena Ungeheuer analyses the academic-theoretical considerations on the use of musical instruments and the media-theoretical considerations on media transformations and how they affect the instruments. In the field of media education, she approaches the concept of metaverse linked to musical environments with unlimited connectivity.
In the fifth chapter, “Hypermusic: New Musical Practices at the Crooroads of Music, Art and Thought”, Paulo de Assis approaches the concept of hypermusic as a tool for the generation of new musical practices and the
connected deepening between art, philosophy and music. The importance of the article lies in understanding the potential of the concept of hypermusic as a challenge related to the role and function of musical creativity in our contemporary society. It theorises interpretative practices that will combine different modes of research, focusing especially on the emerging mode of practice-based research, which will contribute to the application of mixed methodologies within an artistic, aesthetic, and academic field of operations, and will enhance innovative approaches to performance and musical composition solidly anchored in research and critical thinking.
In the sixth chapter, “In search for Art’s Relevance for Itself: Artistic Research and the Aesthetic Regime of Art”, by Lucia D’Errico, we find anessay that focuses on the relationship with art, questioning whether art today is relevant for art itself. The article is based on three axes: the first refers to the analysis of the social, political, and technological conditions of the aesthetic regime, the second focuses on the individualisation and critique of current ways of being artists, and the third is linked to the proposal of artistic research as a reaction to neoliberal logics and as an advance towards a new understanding of the relevance of art itself.
In the seventh chapter, “Listener-Centred Sonification Practice As Transdisciplinary Experimental Artistic Engagement”, Jorge Boehringer, Marcin Pietruszewski, John M. Bowers, Bennet Hogg, Joseph Newbold,
Gerriet K. Sharma, Tim Shaw, and Paul Vickers present the Radical project, which is based on the research and practice of sonification as a transdisciplinary, listener-centred activity. The authors analyse sonification from the perspective of artistic and musical practice. Emphasis is placed on spatial listening, embodied experience and interaction with the environment and communication, resulting in a questioning of the methodology, objects andfoundations often assumed for sonification. The reader is invited to apply an ethnographic ear to a roundtable presentation that investigates new sound and music practices that converge in a rethinking of sonification as an engaged aesthetic activity that produces and entails new technical and
epistemic knowledge.
The monograph closes with the chapter “The Sciences and the Arts in Search of the New” by Hans-Jörg Rheinberger. It aims to show that the sciences and the arts, including music and sound research, operate
on a common ground. The sciences represent logic, while the arts embody intuition. In order to break this dichotomy, the article endeavours to challenge this one-sided image of the sciences from within and, in doing so, to show that each of the two fields, the sciences and the arts, have a part in the other. There is an element of the artistic in the sciences, as well as vice versa: there is also an irreducible element of the epistemic on the part of the arts.
The proposal presented in this monograph, made up of eight chapters, aims to bring the reader closer to new trends in artistic research as well as applied research and to make them reflect on music in different formats
and contexts.