Perspectives on Artistic Research in Music

The increasing interest in artistic research, especially in music, is throwing open doors to exciting ideas about how we generate new musical knowledge and understanding. This book examines the wide array of factors at play in innovative practice and how by treating it as research we can make new ideas more widely accessible. Three key ideas propel the book. First, it argues that artistic research comes from inside the practice and exists in a space that accommodates both objective and subjective observation and analyses because the researcher is the practitioner. It is a space for dialogue between apparently opposing binaries: the composer and the performer, the past and the present, the fixed and the fluid, the intellectual and the intuitive, the abstract and the embodied, the prepared and the spontaneous, the enduring and the transitory, and so on. It is not so much constructed in a logical, sequential manner in the way of the scientific method of doing research but more as a “braided” space, woven from many disparate elements. Second, the book articulates the notion that artistic research in music has its own verification procedures that need to be brought into the academy, especially in terms of the moderation of non-traditional research outputs, including the description of the criteria for allocation of research points for the purposes of data collection, as well as real world relevance and industry engagement. Third, by way of numerous examples of original and creative music making, it demonstrates in practical terms how exploration and experimentation functions as legitimate academic research. Many of the case studies deliberately cross boundaries that were previously assumed to be rigid and definite in order to blaze new musical trails, creating new collaborations and synergies.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Section I - Theorizing Practice Based Artistic Research 1. Robert Burke and Andrys Onsman - Discordant Methodologies: Prioritising Performance in Artistic Research in Music 2. Deniz Peters - Six Propositions on Artistic Research 3. Stephen Emmerson - Is my Performance Research? 4. Robert Vincs - …that is the question: the nature and scope of the research question within practice-led artistic research 5. Michael Hooper - The Art of Scholarship Section II - Locating Artistic Research in Universities 6. Linda Barwick and Joseph Toltz - Quantifying the ineffable? The University of Sydney’s 2014 guidelines for non-traditional research outputs 7. Jenny Wilson - Equal, inferior or different? Research equivalence and university attitudes to artistic research 8. Glen Hodges - Keep Your Eye on the Prize Section III – Artistic Research in Music Practice 9. Zubin Kanga - ‘Building an instrument’ in the collaborative composition and performance of works for piano and live electronics 10. Thomas Reiner - Approaching music through language: a Lacanian perspective 11. Nick Haywood - Developing Key Concepts of Ensemble Performance 12. Cat Hope - The Decibel new music ensemble - artistic research in experimental music at the academy 13. Tim Dargaville - Speaking in Tongues”: An investigation into a compositional practice informed by intercultural exploration 14. Johanna Selleck - Creativity and the blues: a philosophical approach to practice and research 15. Andrys Onsman & Robert Burke - Disturbing Perspectives of Research in Music