INSAM Journal of Contemporary Music, Art and Technology 5 (II/2020)

The fifth issue of INSAM Journal of Contemporary Music, Art and Technology is the second one we are preparing and publishing in the Covid-19 pandemic. And while the theme for the previous issue was conceived in a world unburdened with what has preoccupied our minds and lives in 2020, the theme for this one is directly shaped by it. During the Spring, when we were taken aback by the governmental measures and the fear of the “invisible enemy” (the use of militant vocabulary is rather prominent in the discourse surrounding the virus), the uncertainty for the future grew strong. However, at that time, we could not predict the longevity, brevity and consequences of the pandemic – in December we are still not certain, but we are getting tired. This is why I would like to thank all the authors for working with us in these trying times, unpacking what can only be a beginning of ‘a global crisis’ during the Summer and Autumn of 2020. The main theme of the issue, Music, Art, and Technology in the Time of Global Crisis, strives to capture this period through the lens of workers in art, music, and academia around the world, focusing on the role and place of arts and technology in our/their relocated institutional realities

Overhearing: An Attuning Approach to Noise in Danish Hospitals

Denmark is building new and improved super hospitals, based on a vision of improving overall quality by switching the focus from hospitals for treatment to hospitals for healing, guided by research in the field of evidence-based design and healing architecture. Users mention noise as one of the main stressors and research has discovered that noise levels in hospitals continue to rise. Noise has therefore become a central point of concern, recommending strategies to reduce measurable and perceived noise levels.However, these strategies do not support the need to feel like an integral part of the shared hospital environment, which is also a key element in creating healing environments linked to a reductionist framework underlying the field. This framework regards broad concepts such as noise and silence as objects with quantifiable properties, and assumes that these properties can be understood independently of the perceiver as a bodily and situated subject. The aim of this dissertation is accordingly to develop an alternative framework capable of accommodating the multi-sensory, affective and atmospheric conditions that influence the experience of noise, with a view to complementing the existing approaches in the field.  Consequently, the dissertation develops an ecological framework capable of accommodating these issues, established by viewing sound and listening through the lens of atmospheres. The attuning approach highlights the reciprocal relationship between the way in which atmospheres condition shared rhythms that shape us, but also the way in which we can tune them in different ways. In the context of sound and listening, this creates the potential of ecological overhearing as an atmospheric mode of listening capable of reconfiguring habitual background and foregrounding relationships. Attuning strategies should thus provide opportunities for diverse acoustic situations and possibilities for active choice-making to meet different and shifting needs through an enactive approach in order to enhance empowerment and ecological overhearing. Embedding diverse enactive sound installations and interactive sound technology in hospitals can facilitate such zones of overhearing. These zones become places for ruptures that strengthen the possibilities for engaging in counter-attunements of existing negative atmospheres. In this way, zones of overhearing not only provide continual sense of presence without demanding full attention, but also create ample opportunities for the restoration of  attention.The dissertation takes an experimental practice-based approach through artistic- and constructive design-research and comprises six peer-reviewed papers (Part IV), framed by a general overview article (Parts I-III) that develops the theoretical and methodological foundation for the papers, and provides a synthesis and discussion of their main findings. The practice-based work is founded on a range of experiments, but focuses on two main experiments: Light, Landscape & Voices and KidKit, and the way in which they elicit sensitivities within the topic of investigation. This contribution also concerns the concrete development of installations through the experiments. These installations are in themselves manifestations of and challenges to hypotheses about the topic I aim to address.

The ontology of generative music listening

Ph.D ThesisGenerative music, manifesting a perpetually new music which transcends the temporal limitations of both live and recorded music, presents us with continuously new possibilities and perspectives which in turn enable new modes of being. As specific compositional choices are automated, the sonic possibility space thus becomes the operative creative field. The new concern with structural possibilities as they come to presence yields a new listening ontology. Brian Eno’s specific manifestation of generative music has evolved along a distinctly technological trajectory of creativity. Through his own liminal position between popular and avant garde musical cultures, his ambient aesthetic has found a new mode of expression and materialization. The music is environmentally utilized as an absent presence rather than as an object of focus, and this position is preserved and mirrored textually in this inquiry; the music is not directly treated as an object of scrutiny but rather informs the text as a background, ambient presence. The experience of listening to generative music carries with it the possibility of transcending the duality of the subject–object relationship and its impedance of the transformative power of the aesthetic experience in its traditional aesthetic conception. Generative music thus inherently evades both traditional methods of analysis and traditional modes of aesthetic commentary. As the music foregrounds the moment in which reception occurs, while simultaneously existing as a background presence, it elicits a transformation in the way in which we perceive and conceptually order the sound, the environment, and our subsequent relation between the two. Generative music itself becomes a structure through which one can engage with a new way of being through listening, one in which we apprehend our creative capacity through being receptive to alterity. In this way, listening itself has an ontology, one which can only be revealed through new forms of textual engagement. Ontologically, Heidegger provides the language to explore a music that reorients us at the level of being. Phenomenologically, he examines and reveals the structures of being which manifest our earth and world, our very possibilities of and for being, and these structures are precisely those which are technologically represented in generative music. Aesthetically, Heidegger views the artwork as almost a generative system in itself—one which sets truth to work as it manifests a dynamic between revealing and concealing. Art and technology, and thus poiesis and techne respectively, are examined as orientations of being which have an ideal configuration for Heidegger that manifests at the level of thought. Thus, Heidegger’s specific philosophic configuration which is pre-eminently concerned with ontological structures and coming to presence provides a structure through which generative music can emerge and find resonance. Heidegger’s philosophy evolves and unfolds in new generative iterations through his student Hans Georg Gadamer, who extends the hermeneutic nature of being to include the process of mediation. This enables an exploration of the temporality of the moment of the aesthetic encounter—a point of convergence at which the perceiver or listener undergoes self-transcendence through entering the unifying and structuring force of play. Play manifests sonically in generative music, during which the preexisting temporal and subjective structures are reconfigured and transformed through technological mediation. Similarly, Emmanuel Levinas reveals new variations on Heidegger’s ontology as he explores notions of alterity and the ways in which these are formative of our subjectivity. As he delineates the moment of encounter with the Other, we recognize its constitutive elements as they play out technologically within the generative music listening encounter. As the notion of infinity is played out sonically through each passing generative iteration, it manifests a constant overflowing of itself in both thought and presence. This process arises through a dynamic movement between interiority and exteriority, in which an internal desire for the Other is ignited and perpetuated by the external, radical Other. This simultaneously internal and external encounter with alterity situates a fundamentally radical passivity, one which reflects our ontological situation which comes to be mirrored in the technological, generative manifestation of the same structural relations. The philosophical approach of the present inquiry is not a commentary on generative music; it is a demonstration of its genesis—embodying the generative motion between being and becoming which comprises generative music, rather than engaging with traditional textual commentary about music. Between the textual presence and musical absence, a space arises in which music can emerge not as an object but as a way of being into which we enter. In this way, the subject–object structure of traditional aesthetics is transcended in a move toward a new aesthetic which encompasses the larger truth at issue—that the process of configuration, combination, juxtaposition and subsequent emergence is the very point of the genesis of meaning, or the origin of truth. Thus, generative music embodies not only a technological but also a textual path to this moment in which we engage with the origins of our own ontological possibilitie

Systems, contexts, relations: an alternative genealogy of conceptual art.

Recent scholarship has revisited conceptual art in light of its ongoing influence on contemporary art, arguing against earlier accounts of the practice which gave a restricted account of its scope and stressed its historical foreclosure. Yet conceptual art remains both historically and theoretically underspecified, its multiple and often conflicting genealogies have not all been convincingly traced. This thesis argues for the importance of a systems genealogy of conceptual art—culminating in a distinctive mode of systematic conceptual art—as a primary determinant of the conceptual genealogy of contemporary art. It claims that from the perspective of post-postmodern, relational and context art, the contemporary significance of conceptual art can best be understood in light of its “systematic” mode. The distinctiveness of contemporary art, and the problems associated with its uncertain critical character, have to be understood in relation to the unresolved problems raised by conceptual art and the implications that these have held for art’s post-conceptual trajectory. Consequently, the thesis reconsiders the nascence, emergence, consolidation and putative historical supersession of conceptual art from the perspective of the present. The significance of the historical problem of postformalism is reemphasised and the nascence of conceptual art located in relation to it. A neglected historical category of systems art is recovered and its significance for the emergence of conceptual art demonstrated. The consolidation of conceptual art is reconsidered by distinguishing its multiple modes. Here, a “systematic” mode of conceptual art is argued to be of greater current critical importance than the more established “analytic” mode. Finally, the supersession of conceptual art is revisited from the perspective of the present in order to demonstrate that contemporary context and relational practices recover problems first articulated by systematic conceptual art. It is from systematic conceptual art that relational and context art inherit their focus on the social relations and the social context of art. By recovering the systems genealogy and systematic mode of conceptual art we provide a richer conceptual genealogy of contemporary art

Almost Human: The Study of Physical Processes and the Performance of a Prosthetic Digital Spine

Almost Human is an investigation of interdisciplinary performance through music that looks to the self to try to further understand subjective performance practices in expression, gesture and sonic output. This text presents experimental methods of examining and creating music through kinaesthetic and electronic-assisted means within instrumental, dance and interactive works. The extraction of affective, performative and sonic properties from these works aids in unlocking the relationship between the choreographic, physical and conceptual object. The first part of the text explores and illustrates multimodal approaches to analysing, capturing, measuring and archiving the moving musician and dancer in an assortment of performative settings. It focuses on a series of works for solo cello, as well as interdisciplinary pieces which positions movement and embodied expressivity at the forefront of the discussion. The second part is dedicated to the aesthetic, conceptual and utilitarian content of a new interactive work for cellist/mover, and a prosthetic digital spine. Here, relationships are combined to showcase the permeability of the body, as well as its expressive content. The conceptual object, The Spine, serves as a generator to help expand musical and artistic possibilities. Its inclusion in the work aids in refocusing my relationship to movement and sound for creation and performance, but also aesthetically, it adds to the growing canon of experimental ventures in conceptualising expressivity. Beyond the text, the portfolio of Almost Human includes an auditory and visual chronicle of the process between the years 2012-14, which is used to assist the reader in further understanding the performative practice and findings

INSAM Journal of Contemporary Music, Art and Technology 10 (I/2023)

Having in mind the foundational idea not only of our Journal but also the INSAM Institute itself, the main theme of this issue is titled “Technological Aspects of Contemporary Artistic and Scientific Research”. This theme was recognized as important, timely, and necessary by a number of authors coming from various disciplines. The (Inter)Views section brings us three diverse pieces; the issue is opened by Aida Adžović’s interview with the legendary Slovene act Laibach regarding their performance of the Wir sing das Volk project at the Sarajevo National Theater on May 9, 2023. Following this, Marija Mitrović prepared an interview with media artist Leon Eckard, concerning this artist’s views on contemporary art and the interaction between technology and human sensitivity. An essay by Alexander Liebermann on the early 20th-century composer Erwin Schulhoff, whose search for a unique personal voice could be encouraging in any given period, closes this rubric. The Main theme section contains seven scientific articles. In the first one, Filipa Magalhães, Inês Filipe, Mariana Silva and Henrique Carvalho explore the process and details of technological and artistic challenges of reviving the music theater work FE...DE...RI...CO... (1987) by Constança Capdeville. The second article, written by Milan Milojković, is dedicated to the analysis of historical composer Vojislav Vučković and his ChatGPT-generated doppelganger and opera. The fictional narrative woven around the actual historical figure served as an example of the current possibilities of AI in the domain of musicological work. In the next paper, Luís Arandas, Miguel Carvalhais and Mick Grierson expand on their work on the film Irreplaceable Biography, which was created via language-guided generative models in audiovisual production. Thomas Moore focuses on the Belgium-based Nadar Ensemble and discusses the ways in which the performers of the ensemble understand the concept of the integrated concert and distinguish themselves from it, specifying the broadening of performers’ competencies and responsibilities. In her paper, Dana Papachristou contributes to the discussion on the politics of connectivity based on the examination of three projects: the online project Xenakis Networked Performance Marathon 2022, 2023Eleusis Mystery 91_Magnetic Dance in Elefsina European Capital of Culture, and Spaces of Reflection offline PirateBox network in the 10th Berlin Biennale. The penultimate article in the section is written by Kenrick Ho and presents us with the author’s composition Flou for solo violin through the prism of the relationship between (historically present) algorithmic processes, the composer, and the performer. Finally, Rijad Kaniža adds to the critical discourse on the reshaping of the musical experience via technology and the understanding of said technology using the example of musique concrète. In the final Review section, Bakir Memišević gives an overview of the 13th International Symposium “Music in Society” that was held in Sarajevo in December 2022

Machines That Learn: Aesthetics of Adaptive Behaviors in Agent-based Art

Since the post-war era, artists have been exploring the use of embodied, artificial agents. This artistic activity runs parallel to research in computer science, in domains such as Cybernetics, Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life. This thesis offers an account of a particular facet of this broader work — namely, a study of the artistic practice of agent-based, adaptive computational artistic installations that make use of Machine Learning methods. Machine Learning is a sub-field of the computer science area of Artificial Intelligence that employs mathematical models to classify and make predictions based on data or experience rather than on logical rules. These artworks that integrate Machine Learning into their structures raise a number of important questions: (1) What new forms of aesthetic experience do Machine Learning methods enable or make possible when utilized outside of their intended context, and are instead carried over into artistic works? (2) What characterizes the practice of using adaptive computational methods in agent-based artworks? And finally, (3) what kind of worldview are these works fostering? To address these questions, I examine the history of Machine Learning in both art and science, illustrating how artists and engineers alike have made use of these methods historically. I also analyze the defining scientific characteristics of Machine Learning through a practitioner’s lens, concretely articulating how properties of Machine Learning interplay in media artworks that behave and evolve in real time. I later develop a framework for understanding machine behaviors based on the morphological aspects of the temporal unfolding of agent behaviors as a tool for comprehending both adaptive and non-adaptive behaviors in works of art. Finally, I expose how adaptive technologies suggest a new worldview for art that accounts for the performative engagement of agents adapting to one another, which implies a certain way of losing control in the face of the indeterminacy and the unintelligibility of alien agencies and their behaviors

Proceedings of the 21st International Congress of Aesthetics, Possible Worlds of Contemporary Aesthetics Aesthetics Between History, Geography and Media

The Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade and the Society for Aesthetics of Architecture and Visual Arts of Serbia (DEAVUS) are proud to be able to organize the 21st ICA Congress on “Possible Worlds of Contemporary Aesthetics: Aesthetics Between History, Geography and Media”. We are proud to announce that we received over 500 submissions from 56 countries, which makes this Congress the greatest gathering of aestheticians in this region in the last 40 years. The ICA 2019 Belgrade aims to map out contemporary aesthetics practices in a vivid dialogue of aestheticians, philosophers, art theorists, architecture theorists, culture theorists, media theorists, artists, media entrepreneurs, architects, cultural activists and researchers in the fields of humanities and social sciences. More precisely, the goal is to map the possible worlds of contemporary aesthetics in Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa and Australia. The idea is to show, interpret and map the unity and diverseness in aesthetic thought, expression, research, and philosophies on our shared planet. Our goal is to promote a dialogue concerning aesthetics in those parts of the world that have not been involved with the work of the International Association for Aesthetics to this day. Global dialogue, understanding and cooperation are what we aim to achieve. That said, the 21st ICA is the first Congress to highlight the aesthetic issues of marginalised regions that have not been fully involved in the work of the IAA. This will be accomplished, among others, via thematic round tables discussing contemporary aesthetics in East Africa and South America. Today, aesthetics is recognized as an important philosophical, theoretical and even scientific discipline that aims at interpreting the complexity of phenomena in our contemporary world. People rather talk about possible worlds or possible aesthetic regimes rather than a unique and consistent philosophical, scientific or theoretical discipline

21st International Congress of Aesthetics, Possible Worlds of Contemporary Aesthetics Aesthetics Between History, Geography and Media, Book of Abstracts

The Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade and the Society for Aesthetics of Architecture and Visual Arts of Serbia (DEAVUS) are proud to be able to organize the 21st ICA Congress on “Possible Worlds of Contemporary Aesthetics: Aesthetics Between History, Geography and Media”. We are proud to announce that we received over 500 submissions from 56 countries, which makes this Congress the greatest gathering of aestheticians in this region in the last 40 years. The ICA 2019 Belgrade aims to map out contemporary aesthetics practices in a vivid dialogue of aestheticians, philosophers, art theorists, architecture theorists, culture theorists, media theorists, artists, media entrepreneurs, architects, cultural activists and researchers in the fields of humanities and social sciences. More precisely, the goal is to map the possible worlds of contemporary aesthetics in Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa and Australia. The idea is to show, interpret and map the unity and diverseness in aesthetic thought, expression, research, and philosophies on our shared planet. Our goal is to promote a dialogue concerning aesthetics in those parts of the world that have not been involved with the work of the International Association for Aesthetics to this day. Global dialogue, understanding and cooperation are what we aim to achieve. That said, the 21st ICA is the first Congress to highlight the aesthetic issues of marginalised regions that have not been fully involved in the work of the IAA. This will be accomplished, among others, via thematic round tables discussing contemporary aesthetics in East Africa and South America. Today, aesthetics is recognized as an important philosophical, theoretical and even scientific discipline that aims at interpreting the complexity of phenomena in our contemporary world. People rather talk about possible worlds or possible aesthetic regimes rather than a unique and consistent philosophical, scientific or theoretical discipline