About the Artistic Practice as Research Digital Showcase
The process of making music, whether improvising, composing, or interpreting, requires a myriad of decisions to be made – some practical, some creative, some philosophical. At some junctures, the musician is trying to create sounds in new ways, or to communicate and respond to their environment for specific effect. Or it may be an emotion at the fore – love, fear, distraction, enticement. Instruments themselves, whether acoustic or electonic, have within them habits/limits and potential extensions. Some musicians are interested in perfecting an idealised sound on their instrument, others in pushing outward toward unknown territory. Whatever perspective an individual musician takes, creative and practical decisions are made along the way with the objective of a particular sonic outcome. Music is played – and this play is our laboratory for creating sounds. It is our research lab to find out how to make the sound, how to project the concept, how to reinvent an idea.
The Artistic Practice as Research website is the sharing of this work – the annunciation of what we are doing in the laboratory. It is the sharing of the many experiments we undertake in order to come up with an artistic approach that will probe as deeply as we can, the question at hand. And as an experiment, it sometimes fails. Some musical compositions may not have their intended balance, some performances may not project a coherent idea; failure (or trial and error) must be a component of our work. But in failing, learning occurs – new concepts, revelations, perceptions. How do we interpret a Bach composition – written for a church organ in the cold German winter 300 years ago, on a piano in humid Brisbane when we are surrounded by computers, sound systems, lighting, auditoriums? How can we invent a new composition? Where do new musical ideas come from – our environment, inclusive of socio-economic and political states?
This website is an entry point into the how of making music from artist researchers currently engaged at Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University. These musings, interviews, analyses and investigations do not in themselves replace the final work of art. What they do is unpack and chronicle some of the inner workings of the musician, and the hours that are spent trying to zoom in on an idea to reveal something that language cannot.
Vanessa Tomlinson
February 2014
The Artistic Practice as Research website is the sharing of this work – the annunciation of what we are doing in the laboratory. It is the sharing of the many experiments we undertake in order to come up with an artistic approach that will probe as deeply as we can, the question at hand. And as an experiment, it sometimes fails. Some musical compositions may not have their intended balance, some performances may not project a coherent idea; failure (or trial and error) must be a component of our work. But in failing, learning occurs – new concepts, revelations, perceptions. How do we interpret a Bach composition – written for a church organ in the cold German winter 300 years ago, on a piano in humid Brisbane when we are surrounded by computers, sound systems, lighting, auditoriums? How can we invent a new composition? Where do new musical ideas come from – our environment, inclusive of socio-economic and political states?
This website is an entry point into the how of making music from artist researchers currently engaged at Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University. These musings, interviews, analyses and investigations do not in themselves replace the final work of art. What they do is unpack and chronicle some of the inner workings of the musician, and the hours that are spent trying to zoom in on an idea to reveal something that language cannot.
Vanessa Tomlinson
February 2014
