Lecture for position as professor of artistic practices

March 7, 2024

Henrik Frisk - mail@henrikfrisk.com

About me

Musician and composer - electronic music and improvisation (saxophone and laptop)
Professor in music at KMH in Stockholm: artistic research and electroacoustic music composition
Current research interests include:
- artistic practices and interaction
- historical instruments and their practices
- spatialisation
- aesthetics and ethics

About me

Musician and composer - electronic music and improvisation (saxophone and laptop)
Artistic researcher
Professor in music at KMH in Stockholm: artistic research and electroacoustic music composition
Current research interests include:
- artistic practices and interaction
- historical instruments and their practice
- spatialisation
- aesthetics and ethics

Artistic research practices

Long process that develop over time
Less interested in the work concept and more in the co-existence of the work with others and with other technologies
Iterative processes: Allow output from one project to illuminate my continuations within that project
The work-in-movement and interaction-as-difference

In an adoption of Umberto Ecos famous essay "the open work" I created this term, in reality an expansion of the openness that Eco is discussing.

Current projects

Historically informed design of sound synthesis: A multidisciplinary, structured approach to the digitisation and exploration of electronic music heritage (KTH/KMH)
Information Retrieval in Embedded Systems for Audiovisual Artistic Processes (MDH/KMH)
Non-verbal communication of invisible information: New methods for communicating complex and inaccessible information through sound (KTH/KMH)
Sound, Space and Experience

Historically informed design of sound synthesis

Why?

Contemporary music/art suffers from an obsession of newness
Advantages, or knowledges of old practices may get lost
Interfaces of obsolete technologies may get lost

The focus

is not necessarily on how things were done in the past, but what the past looks like from where we stand now
is equally concerned with looking forward, beyond whatever material obstacles there may be

Dataton System 3000

Bruel & Kjaer signal generator

HP pulse generator

Pulse and signal generator

Reel to reel

With these simple units that emit simple signals much of what is created digitally in computers today can be created. But obviously in a way that is much more cumbersome. Each signal has to be recorded onto tape and the tape is cut and spliced manually.

I am currently in the middle of this process, now waiting for a broken tape recorder to be fixed. Once I get it I will start composing in this studio anticipating that it will tell me something about what affordances of this environment is compared to that of the modern, digital studio.

Surely, it will be different, but are there things that were more useful? Things that works better? One of the methods I will be using is that I record myself in the studio and speak out loud what I do, and how I do it. This in order to get a chance to understand what happens in the moment.

Part of the current studio

Current studio

Rain will evaporate (2022)

Rain will evaporate

Rain will evaporate is a composition with no end, a work-in-movement

Rain will evaporate (2022)

Rain (2023)

Source code (excerpt) for the faust process to excite the virtual tube

import("glassVase1.lib");

strike(g) = pm.strike(pos, sharpness, gn, g)
with {
  pos = hslider("pos", 0.5, 0, 1, 0.001);
  sharpness = hslider("sharpness", 0.5, 0, 1, 0.001);
  gn = hslider("ex_gain", 0.5, 0, 1, 0.001);
};

process = strike(gate) : glassVase1(exPos, 2, 0.2, 0.5)*gain <: _,_;

Rain (2023)

Pure data patch for playing the physical model

Ethics in artistic research

Although my interest in ethics and the engagement with the other through artistic practice, my work in this area has intensified in the last few years. The time is too short to get into to the details here, but the basic idea is based on the premise that free associations and free play are essential to creative practice, and it appears to be so both in terms of the level of creativity in the process, and to the quality of the outcome. In short, the level of play affects both. By play here I mean activities without a certain set goal.

Today most questions and relations are entangled with economy, which gives the free play a particular standing. On this background I have introduced ideas about how artistic practice can be part of a method with which different values may be proposed. Values that may offer an interesting opposition, or tension, to those proposed by the dominant capitalist structures. These are not necessarily 'better' but can help to reveal how a multiplicity of perspectives can be applied to questions of what it means to make good decisions and be a good human being.

The studies I have performed and will performed in this are are mainly conducted using stimulated recall on my own work as an improviser in various contexts.

How can you cultivate communities of practice in performative and mediated artistic research?

Collaborative practices and hybrid practice

Shared Listenings

IRL

to create a joint national research environment that will be rooted in both music art worlds and academia,
seeking to develop practice-based and reflexive forms of knowledge
should have a focus that contributes to artistic development
work in clusters with a thematic focus and in dialog with supervisors
initiatives for such groupings can come from both supervisors and doctoral students
will jointly create a portfolio of courses at doctoral level

What is your proposal for developing a research environment at SKH that relates to and realises our strategic plan?

1. Build on what is already in place and works - research and education

There is obviously no need to change what is already working so any of these proposals should be seen in that light: build on what is already in place.

About the strategy: I believe that a working strategically with a strategy is important. It needs to be embedded in the environment, in performance reviews, and assessments of all kinds. A strategy that is not used strategically is not constructive and may be destructive.

In an institution for higher education there needs to be a close connecting between education and research. The way this works at SKH is quite well described on the webpage. Yet, in© artistic education this has always been a challenge. In my previous jobs this has been a strong priority for me. Altering study programs and curriculum, extracurricular activities, allowing PhD:s to teach and develop their ideas with students, etc

My proposal would include a program for the further integration of research and teaching and education with a strong research basis. Though I'm sure this is already being done, this work needs to be ongoing.

2. Develop an ongoing discussion about who is the audience, the receiver, for the research, locally and generally

Locally, I mean for each researcher, and generally I mean in terms of part of an identity of SKH.

The wish to construct forums for dialogues and open forums must be rooted in a more overarching discussion on what it is that needs to be communicated, and with whom. IOW the first thing that needs to be achieved is a sense of understanding in each researcher and each research group what in their knowledge development may, and should be communicated. AR is very often pure research or basic research. As such, the demand to communicate with the world around us is not always a simple task. Who here reads and understands a paper in exploratory theoretical physics? The target audience is those that understand it and no one else.

The problem that is prevailing (historia om Johannes) is that researchers still do not refer to other peers. This is a problem: other artistic researchers are often the best audience for AR.

On the other hand, AR is not like other strands of research. It has implications for a wide range of other disciplines and areas of practice, because it is, by nature, transdisciplinary: it strives on other fields of knowledge, is inspired by other forms of practice and interfaces with a range of different fields. But, to better understand what the potential is for a particular piece of research in the society is still one of the key questions.

My proposal is to engage with the research environment at Uniarts to develop methods with which we can better understand with whom we best communicate.

3. For risk-taking to be possible there needs to be a healthy support system: good research is produced in safe environments

By healthy support I mean everything from student health, whistle blower functions, respectful environments in which structures of power are as transparent as possible, good quality systems that assesses the important aspects for the right reasons, and so forth. For researchers to "take risks, be courageous and forward-looking" (which is from the strategy) the research requires a certain foundation that provides security. Good research will have to take risks, and will sometimes fail. When that happens there needs to be support. Doing PhD research is incredibly strenuous and the candidate will go through phases of crisis that needs to be handled. If they are, the research will contribute greatly.

My proposal is to further develop a safe environment for research and researchers that allows for risk-taking and for new methods and theories to develop.

4. Attempt to develop a constructive balance between interaction and allowing time for ones own development

To meet the other, is central to activities the purpose of which it is to ensure that co-workers and students are allowed dialogue and reflection. The meeting is simply the necessary condition.

However, at all institutions I have worked in so far there has been the same problem: to figure out a sensible balance between structured events such as meetings, seminars, workshops, etc, and free time to just do research. How to solve this equation has, to my knowledge, not really been a vivid discussion. Though interaction and meetings, seminars and co-creation, are important activities, research also need time for its own development. Though there is no opposition here, this is not a dichotomy, it is important to remind ourselves that there needs to be a balance between collective knowledge development and individual work. This balance is tricky to find.

My proposal is to work towards a sensible balance between the various activities offered by the institution to allow room for individual AND collective practices.

5. Demonstrate that artistic research strengthens society

One important task is to communicate that artistic research results and artistic practice are imperative to the development of the entire society. The society needs a healthy development of research practices that offer an alternative to the scientific/technological/capitalist paradigm. The burden of proof, however, is on us. We need to develop the ways in which we communicate what it is AR may provide, what are our important results and what may they contribute to?

For the past three years I have worked on a Master's program called AIM. The main ambition is to prepare students to include their artistic knowledge in environments that may not always

The aim of the programme is to train musicians and composers in music, artistic practices and interdisciplinary methods for cross-border collaborations. The starting point for the concept of interdisciplinarity in this case is how artistic practice can be deepened, changed, developed and problematized through interdisciplinary collaborations, but also how other disciplines can be influenced, developed and broadened in the encounter with music. It will be performed in close collaboration with external partners.

This is intended within the confines of a master's program and will be more difficult to achieve in a bigger contest. Yet, the question - a variation of the one we encountered earlier - remains: who do we want to engage with?

What i propose is to start close interactions with institutions and companies that are related to Uniarts and engage them in the methods that are being used. This process will be guided by an ongoing discussion on the question of who we want to engage with, which will partly be answered by the contacts we engage with.

As a final note I think one important task of AR is not only to engage externally. I think it just as important to strive for a change of the academic structures by means of artistic methods. That, I believe, will contribute to a healthier environment for higher education.

Thank you for listening!

Question?