C Silva Igor. Mixed music: New forms of interaction between instruments and electronics.
The contemporary compositional practice of mixed music, understood here as written music combining acoustic instruments with electronics, has a number of inherent problems. For example, the synchronization between the performer and the electronics, the complexity of digital interfaces and the need for an acoustic fusion between the two are some of the main issues discussed in academic research. This PhD project by Igor C. Silva aims to develop new systems that will provide simple, practical, and intuitive answers to the problems inherent in mixed music.
In order to find answers to the questions mentioned above, an extensive portfolio of new pieces/projects written for several different instrument combinations will be composed that can provide new insights into the problem-solving process and even partially circumvent the aforementioned problems. In a later phase, these works will be performed and recorded in order to test the validity or enforceability of the created processes. The overarching goal is to create new approaches through these original compositions and to systematize them in compositional and performative practice, with the expectation of contributing to the artistic and academic development of the mixed music genre.
Van Bergen Peter. Improvisation, interactivity and instability: Artistic transformations.
Unlike non-idiomatic improvisation with human improvisers, it is more difficult to create intense and surprising music when interacting with a computer. Also, the concept of improvisation as a musical dialogue is difficult for a computer to recognize. In this doctoral research, Peter van Bergen aims to translate his aesthetic views on musical improvisation and composition, as well as his musical experiences in interacting with human improvisers, into an environment where human musical improvisers and artificial improvisers (hard- & software personalities, computers) work together.
To this end, software for interactive and autonomous improvisation will be developed, in collaboration with programmer Johan van Kreij. These software tools can help to investigate the “true, unstable nature” of improvisation and composition and make it audible and visible in a practical context. The research should lead to new compositional improvisational work, unpredictable improvisations with their own aesthetic signature, a new personal instrumental and improvisational technique and syntax, texts describing artistic research, and theory on improvisation in relation to composition, computers, interactivity and instability.
Music and Technology
Music and Technology is the research group that focuses on integrating and applying computer technology in music. As such, it is not inherently constrained to either performance or creation. The profiles of its researchers are often hybrid in nature, combining knowledge in multiple artistic domains. However, the proposed projects are defined by one common denominator: technology. Although technology is an indispensable ingredient, our researchers have no intention to elevate it to an art form. On the contrary, they aim at adopting and integrating cutting-edge technological insights to generate a new artistic dimension.
This dimension is a vast place in which collisions of ideas give birth to new concepts, spanning from microtonal jazz to hybridised co-creation, from interactive installation art to generative mixed media performance. However, these collisions do not only create musical objectives. This research group is also characterised by its vast network of tentacles, connecting and interacting with virtually any art form. Subsequently, it embraces a universe without limitations, in which imagination serves as a guide towards the evolution of music in the 21st century.