1,721,067 research outputs found
The curious nature of negotiating studio-based practice in PhD research
Full text linkThis short retrospective considers some of the important activities involved in negotiating practice in PhD research. By reflecting on my investigations into the embodied and somatic practices of moving in media-rich environments, I focus on my project Intimate Bodies and Technologies: A Concept for Live-Digital Dancing (Intimate Bodies) as a specific case in point. In my retrospective, I contemplate the often complex, changeable, and multi-layered processes of negotiation practice-based research, and discuss key topics such as methodology and knowledge as practice. Specifically, I reflect on some of the practicalities of exploring practice via a studio-based investigation and highlight a number of key discoveries that were encountered during the process. While the subject of Intimate Bodies is particular to the areas of dance performance and digital media, the methods and strategies developed are also applicable across a range of practical subjects. For example, the interconnections between practice and theory, as they played out in the studio context, highlighted some key landmark activities that necessitated a changed approach. This helped to define the emerging thesis and ultimately enabled me to explore the production of knowledge via practice. As such, some of the discoveries made pose interesting questions for the practice-based researcher
Navigating the unknown: a dramaturgical approach
No full textThis chapter provides some tools and methods based on my personal methodology as a working dramaturg within performance practice developed over 20 years as a full-time dramaturg. My experiences underpinning these tools and methods come predominantly from the field of new writing, dance and devising for the stage working in the UK and Ireland. In this chapter, I will share two approaches relevant to the practitioner researcher of interrogating their ideas and their own process through dramaturgical questions. The chapter will look at some tension that might arise in the transition from practice to practice-research
Cullithumpian Ensemble commissions
No full textDigiScore project was happy to support 2 commissions through our University of Concordia (Canada) partner Sandeep Bhagwati. These works were Tendons for Transformation by Kitty Xiao and Path/Fields by Ingrid Laubrock. Both of the digital scores shared a degree of openness which included structured improvisation where performers’ agency was welcomed as an interpretive approac
Working the Space: Augmenting Training for Practice-based Research
Full text linkThe worlds of practice and academic research produce powerful cultural identities: for this reason, practice-based research students must work hard to construct a space for themselves within these differing forces. The need to “work the space” in this way is a creative and constructive part of practice-based research but often not recognised or catered for in university doctoral training. In this chapter, I explore some of the national requirements for doctoral training in the UK. These indicate that cohort development is desirable for all students, but the model of training is geared to the teaching of research skills for individual researchers and weighted towards scientific processes and terms which are not necessarily applicable across disciplines. Drawing on work with art and design PhD candidates in a UK university, I offer alternative ways to go about group research training which build researchers’ understanding and construction of their space without eschewing engagement with more generic notions of research. These approaches draw on historic cultures of organising in art and design, employ critical and creative practices and challenge how we might see training, skills and being a researcher. From this I suggest a number of principles for how practice-based research training can happen that might also be applied beyond art and design
The Ethics of Creative AI
No full textCreative AI has had and will continue to have immense impact on creative communities and society more broadly. Along with the great power these techniques provide, come significant ethical responsibilities in their setup, use, and the output works themselves. This chapter sets out the key ethical issues relating to Creative AI: copyright, replacement of authors/artists, bias in datasets, artistic essence, dangerous creations, deepfakes, and physical safety, and looks toward a future where responsible use of Creative AI can help to promote human flourishing within the technosocial landscape. After Vallor (2016), it suggests key technomoral values of honesty, humility, empathy, care, civility and flexibility as those which virtuous creative practitioners will want to embed within any practice conducted using Creative AI techniques
Project-based Participatory Practice and Research: Reflections on Being ‘in the Field’
Full text linkPRACTICE BASED RESEARCH IN THE VISUAL ARTS : Exploring the systems of practice and the practices of research
No full textGuitaRPG
No full textGuitaRPG is a digital score created by musician Xavier Davenport using the Neoscore platform. It combines music with game-like elements, such as role-playing and skill acquisition. The performer navigates through different regions in the digital score, each with its own unique influences and colour palette. In each region, the performer must incorporate specific elements and guitar techniques to progress through the piece. The more regions the performer explores, the more complex the guitar techniques become. The player has control over the duration of their stay in each region, allowing for both macro and micro involvement. Macro involvement involves navigating the map to find specific materials, while micro involvement entails engaging with regions through playing techniques as they randomly appear. The visual materials change in density and colour, controlled by a weighted algorithm, creating a sense of exploration and improvisation for the performer. The project was realised using the Neoscore platform, with support from Andrew Yoon and Craig Vear, and was commissioned through the Digital Score project
Latent Spaces: A Creative Approach
Full text linkThis chapter explores the creative possibilities offered by latent spaces. Latent spaces are machine-learnt maps representing large media datasets such as images and sound. With a latent space, an artist can rapidly search for interesting places in the dataset and then generate new artefacts around and between data points. These unique artefacts were not in the original dataset, but they relate to it. Readers will find a detailed explanation of what latent spaces are and how they fit into a series of developments that have taken place in digital media processing techniques such as content-based search and feature extraction. We will encounter four examples of machine learning systems that provide latent spaces suitable for creative work. The first example is Music-VAE which creates a latent space of millions of musical fragments represented in the symbolic MIDI format. The second example is Latent Timbre Synthesis (LTS). Unlike Music-VAE, which works in a symbolic musical domain, LTS works directly with audio fragments. The third example is StyleGAN which creates a latent space of images which has specific properties allowing for style transfers. The final example is VQGAN + CLIP which is a text phrase-to-image system which uses fine-tuning techniques to iteratively generate images. Finally, we consider examples of artists working with each of the four systems along with reflections on their creative processes
Gesamtkomposition and the digital opera: A Sentimental Journey
Full text linkThis article discusses the concept of Gesamtkomposition as a means with which to consider the mutual affection of sensorial media and its operational significance at the point of composition. It analyses and reflects upon the nature of such a concept, and evaluates its application through a major practice-based research project. This central work – A Sentimental Journey [Vear, C. 2010–2011. Composition] – was created for a mixed ensemble of technologies, live musicians, autonomous laptops embedded with generative algorithms accessing fixed media libraries, and was performed to remote audiences located across the planet. The composer, as author of this article, analyses the intermedial relationships within this digital opera, using Elleström’s [2010. “The Modalities of Media: A Model for Understanding Intermedial Relations.” In Media Borders, Multimodality and Intermediality, edited by L. Elleström. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan] model of multimodality in order to articulate the complexity within the mutual affection of this polymedia composition and as a way of defining Gesamtkomposition. The final section presents an overview of select phenomenologies that contribute to a deeper understanding of the experience of Gesamtkomposition.
The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.This article discusses the concept of Gesamtkomposition as a means with which to consider the mutual affection of sensorial media and its operational significance at the point of composition. It analyses and reflects upon the nature of such a concept, and evaluates its application through a major practice-based research project. This central work – A Sentimental Journey [Vear, C. 2010–2011. Composition] – was created for a mixed ensemble of technologies, live musicians, autonomous laptops embedded with generative algorithms accessing fixed media libraries, and was performed to remote audiences located across the planet. The composer, as author of this article, analyses the intermedial relationships within this digital opera, using Elleström’s [2010. “The Modalities of Media: A Model for Understanding Intermedial Relations.” In Media Borders, Multimodality and Intermediality, edited by L. Elleström. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan] model of multimodality in order to articulate the complexity within the mutual affection of this polymedia composition and as a way of defining Gesamtkomposition. The final section presents an overview of select phenomenologies that contribute to a deeper understanding of the experience of Gesamtkomposition
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