Student projects in Music and Research
Get to know the students of the MA SP Music and Research and their research projects
The Music and Research programme is a unique opportunity for the development of my project. The methodological knowledge and skills I have gained have broadened my possibilities to reach new intellectual perspectives and to connect musical practice and reflection in a meaningful way. Exploring the frontiers offered by this interdisciplinary training programme allows me to find my own way through critical analysis and hybrid research having a direct impact on my artistic practice.
Dakota Wayne:
The Principle of Distance in Music
I use a model of artistic research where a theoretical background is developed, against which an aesthetic object is produced as an exemplification. This process forms a feedback loop between a theoretical portion, which precludes and informs the frame of the artwork, and a work of art, which demonstrates and clarifies the theory. The theoretical envelops and evaluates the artistic while the artistic motivates and practices the theory. With this method, I develop a concept of musical space focused on manipulating the literal and metaphorical distance between the listener and the musical work, moving in between what I have named the reflective and inflective domains of art. In a series of works, I attempt to highlight compositional tools for manipulating distance both immanent and external to musical material. Of special interest to this principle of distance is the role media play in creating this dual character of art that lives between reality and fiction.
Duration: 2023-25
Mentors: Dr. Christoph Haffter, Prof. Johannes Kreidler/ Sara Glojnarić, Prof. Svetlana Maraš, Prof. Dr. Michel Roth
Dakota about his research project
Mauricio Silva Orendain:
The Placticity of the Pipe. Microtonality as Sound Synthesis
The Experimentalorgel by Rieger at St. Martin’s Church in Kassel, Germany, inaugurated in 2021, shook my artistic career like nothing before. Its extremely flexible dynamic wind not only made me fall in love with its soundscapes but also opened new avenues for my musical development, inevitably leading me into the field of research. Two years after composing a piece for its inauguration, starting the new MA programme “Music & Research” fit like a glove, providing the guidance and inputs I needed to deepen my exploration and understand how my artistic practice had the potential to take on a strong research direction, and how to approach it, communicate it and benefit from it. My current project, titled "The Plasticity of the Pipe: Micro-transdimensional Counterpoint", analyses the sound development and sound decay of the organ pipe under dynamic wind, exploring the resulting counterpoint between pitch, intensity, timbre, and rhythm for both composition and performance. It places the Experimentalorgel in Kassel as the central object of study, through which, as an improviser, composer, and performer, I explore its sonic possibilities, analyze them, and structure these possibilities into compositions that I perform myself. By translating and adapting these musical ideas to other organs across Europe, I question how innovations in organ building can trigger new possibilities within a single pipe and how the organ as a whole can offer insights into complex acoustic phenomena that are impossible to imagine or experience without the physicality of the instrument and which give us new perspectives where to observe and understand Klangfarbe from.
Duration: 2023-25
Mentors: Johannes Keller, Prof. Dr. Martin Kirnbauer, Prof. Caspar Johannes Walter
Alejandro Sarriegui:
Experimental Percussion Instruments: an Artistic Research in Musical Interpretation
As a percussionist, I am interested in exploring the musical possibilities of non-conventional percussion instruments. These instruments often lack a substantial repertoire. Through the study case of Josef Anton Riedl's 'Paper-Music,' I discovered not only techniques for generating sounds with non-conventional generators but also a way to stimulate my creativity as a performer. Reconstructing the paper sound sculpture and reinterpreting Riedl's music provided a space for critical reflection on musical interpretation. Studying the historical performance practice of this music helped me develop a procedure for generating repertoire for non-conventional percussion instruments. This process of musical interpretation has transformed my artistic practice into one of creation. Through this reflexive reinterpretation, I have recreated pieces for Riedl's paper sound generators and the Swiss nicophone developed by Lunason.
Having started within the framework of the MA SP Music and Research, I will further pursue this project for my doctoral degree within the doctoral programme Musikwissen, a cooperation between the Basel Academy of Music and the University of Basel.
Duration: 2023-25
Mentors: Prof. Christian Dierstein, Prof. Dr. Anne-May Krüger
Rubén Bañuelos Preciado:
Disembodiment as a performative Spectrum
This research project develops a series of re-imaginations of a small percussion setup composed by me called Semilla. This particular setup, which highlights certain possible acoustic distortions and empathetic resonances between the instruments of said setup, gets expanded, abstracted, situated under various modifications. Each iteration corresponds to a research question on an artistic, acoustic, or technical degree. The answers to each of these questions feed into the construction of a new apparatus ultimately designed with the goal of harnessing the acoustic and artistic principles found on the original setup to unleash them into non-performative spheres as well as performative and hybrid mise-en-scènes. A looped procedure that renders itself out of its initial conditions and onto a constituted non-performativity.
Duration: 2024–26
Mentors: Prof. Christian Dierstein, Prof. Svetlana Maraš, Prof. Dr. Michel Roth
