Haptic Aurality: Listening in a Digital World

I will question modes of listening in network music performance environments, drawing on my experience as a performer listening in these scenarios. I will situate network listening, which I have previously examined as ‘haptic aurality’ (Schroeder, 2009, 2012, 2013) within the context of current music making, and will refer to changes in compositional practices that draw specific attention to listening. I will show that some of these compositional developments play a determining role in articulating a new discourse of listening. French composer Eric Satie’s concept of Furniture Music (in Duckworth, 2005), Pierre Schaeffer’s ideas on reduced listening (1966), Pauline Oliveros’ deep listening practices (2005) as well as digital music platforms all serve to show a development towards a proliferation in listening experiences. I expand this narrative to listening practices in network performance environments, and identify a specific bodily fragility in listening in and to the network. This fragile state of listening and de-centered kind of performative being allow me to draw parallels to the Japanese art form Butoh (Kasai, 1999, 2000; Kasai and Parsons, 2003) and Elaine Scarry’s metaphor of beauty (Scarry, 2001). My own performance experiences, set within the context of several critical texts, allow me to understand network[ed] listening as an ideal corporeal state, which offers a rethinking of linear conceptions of the other and a subject’s own relation with her world. Ultimately, network[ed] listening posits listening as a corporeal and multi-dimensional experience that is continuously being re-shaped by technological, socio-political and cultural concerns.

Revolting Arts or Spatial Democracy: Performances of popular arts during the Egyptian Revolution?

This paper investigates how spatial practices of Public art performance had transformed public space from being a congested traffic hub into an active and animated space for resistance that was equally accessible to different factions, social strata, media outlets and urban society, determined by popular culture and social responsibility. Tahrir Square was reproduced, in a process of “space adaptation” using Henri Lefebvre’s term, to accommodate forms of social organization and administration.205 Among the spatial patterns of activities detected and analyzed this paper focus on particular forms of mass practices of art and freedom of expression that succeeded to transform Tahrir square into performative space and commemorate its spatial events. It attempts to interrogate how the power of artistic interventions has recalled socio-cultural memory through spatial forms that have negotiated middle grounds between deeply segregated political and social groups in moments of utopian democracy. Through analytical surveys and decoding of media recordings of the events, direct interviews with involved actors and witnesses, this paper offers insight into the ways protesters lent their artistry capacity to the performance of resistance to become an act of spatial festivity or commemoration of events. The paper presents series of analytical maps tracing how the role of art has shifted significantly from traditional freedom of expression modes as narrative of resistance into more sophisticated spatial performative ones that take on a new spatial vibrancy and purpose.

Haptic Aurality – performing in a digital world

Paper accepted at 2015 ISIS in Utrecht. This presentation will examine the performative body from the viewpoint of the listening body in digital media platforms, and thus investigates the proposed conference issues which are at the intersections of ‘play’, ‘perform’ and ‘participate’.

Museum City - Improvisation and the narratives of space

This paper provides four viewpoints on the narratives of space, allowing us to think about possible relations between sites and sounds, reflecting on how places might tell stories, or how practitioners embed themselves in a place in order to shape cultural, social and/or political narratives through the use of sound. I propose four viewpoints that investigate the relationship between sites and sounds, where narratives are shaped and made through the exploration of specific sonic activities. These are:
- sonic activism
- sonic preservation
- sonic participatory action
- sonic narrative of space

I examine each of these ideas in turn before focusing in more detail on the final viewpoint, which provides the context for discussing and analysing a recent site-specific music improvisation project, entitled ‘Museum City’, a work that aligns closely with my proposal for a ‘sonic narrative of space’.
The work ‘Museum City’ by Pedro Rebelo, Franziska Schroeder, Ricardo Jacinto and André Cepeda specifically enables me to reflect on how derelict and/or transitional spaces might be re-examined through the use of sound, particularly through means of live music improvisation. The spaces examined as part ‘Museum City’ constitute either deserted sites or sites about to undergo changes in their architectural layout, their use and sonic make-up. The practice in ‘Museum City’ was born out of a performative engagement with[in] those sites, but specifically out of an intimate listening relationship by three improvisers situated within those spaces.
The theoretical grounding for this paper is situated within a wider context of practising and cognising musical spatiality, as proposed by Georgina Born (2013), particularly her proposition for three distinct lineages that provide an understanding of space in/and music. Born’s third lineage, which links more closely with practices of sound art and challenges a Euclidean orientation of pitch and timbre space, makes way for a heightened consideration of listening and ‘the place’ of sound. This lineage is particularly crucial for my discussion, since it positions music in relation to social experiences and the everyday, which the work ‘Museum City’ endeavoured to embrace.

Dublin 1916: theatre of revolt

In his essay, Anti-Object, Kengo Kuma proposes that architecture cannot and should not be understood as object alone but instead always as series of networks and connections, relationships within space and through form. Some of these relationships are tangible, others are invisible. Stan Allen and James Corner have also called for an architecture that is more performative and operative – ‘less concerned with what buildings look like and more concerned with what they do’ – as means of effecting a more intimate and promiscuous relationship between infrastructure, urbanism and buildings. According to Allen this expanding filed offers a reclamation of some of the areas ceded by architecture following disciplinary specialization:

‘Territory, communication and speed are properly infrastructural problems and architecture as a discipline has developed specific technical means to deal with these variables. Mapping, projection, calculation, notation and visualization are among architecture’s traditional tools for operating at the very large scale’.

The motorway may not look like it – partly because we are no longer accustomed to think about it as such – but it is a site for and of architecture, a territory where architecture can be critical and active. If the limits of the discipline have narrowed, then one of the functions of a school of architecture must be an attempt occupy those areas of the built environment where architecture is no longer, or has yet to reach. If this is a project about reclamation of a landscape, it is also a challenge to some of the boundaries that surround architecture and often confine it, as Kuma suggests, to the appreciation of isolated objects.

M:NI 2014-15
We tend to think of the motorway as a thing or an object, something that has a singular function. Historically this is how it has been seen, with engineers designing bridges and embankments and suchlike with zeal … These objects like the M3 Urban Motorway, Belfast’s own Westway, are beautiful of course, but they have caused considerable damage to the city they were inflicted upon.

Actually, it’s the fact that we have seen the motorway as a solid object that has caused this problem. The motorway actually is a fluid and dynamic thing, and it should be seen as such: in fact it’s not an organ at all but actually tissue – something that connects rather than is. Once we start to see the motorway as tissue, it opens up new propositions about what the motorway is, is used for and does. This new dynamic and connective view unlocks the stasis of the motorway as edifice, and allows adaptation to happen: adaptation to old contexts that were ignored by the planners, and adaptation to new contexts that have arisen because of or in spite of our best efforts.

Motorways as tissue are more than just infrastructures: they are landscapes. These landscapes can be seen as surfaces on which flows take place, not only of cars, buses and lorries, but also of the globalized goods carried and the lifestyles and mobilities enabled. Here the infinite speed of urban change of thought transcends the declared speed limit [70 mph] of the motorway, in that a consignment of bananas can cause soil erosion in Equador, or the delivery of a new iphone can unlock connections and ideas the world over.

So what is this new landscape to be like? It may be a parallax-shifting, cognitive looking glass; a drone scape of energy transformation; a collective farm, or maybe part of a hospital. But what’s for sure, is that it is never fixed nor static: it pulses like a heartbeat through that most bland of landscapes, the countryside. It transmits forces like a Caribbean hurricane creating surf on an Atlantic Storm Beach: alien forces that mutate and re-form these places screaming into new, unclear and unintended futures.

And this future is clear: the future is urban. In this small rural country, motorways as tissue have made the whole of it: countryside, mountain, sea and town, into one singular, homogenous and hyper-connected, generic city.

Goodbye, place. Hello, surface!

MNI: Motorway Notation Network

In his essay, Anti-Object, Kengo Kuma proposes that architecture cannot and should not be understood as object alone but instead always as series of networks and connections, relationships within space and through form. Some of these relationships are tangible, others are invisible. Stan Allen and James Corner have also called for an architecture that is more performative and operative – ‘less concerned with what buildings look like and more concerned with what they do’ – as means of effecting a more intimate and promiscuous relationship between infrastructure, urbanism and buildings. According to Allen this expanding filed offers a reclamation of some of the areas ceded by architecture following disciplinary specialization:

‘Territory, communication and speed are properly infrastructural problems and architecture as a discipline has developed specific technical means to deal with these variables. Mapping, projection, calculation, notation and visualization are among architecture’s traditional tools for operating at the very large scale’.

The motorway may not look like it – partly because we are no longer accustomed to think about it as such – but it is a site for and of architecture, a territory where architecture can be critical and active. If the limits of the discipline have narrowed, then one of the functions of a school of architecture must be an attempt occupy those areas of the built environment where architecture is no longer, or has yet to reach. If this is a project about reclamation of a landscape, it is also a challenge to some of the boundaries that surround architecture and often confine it, as Kuma suggests, to the appreciation of isolated objects.

M:NI 2014-15
We tend to think of the motorway as a thing or an object, something that has a singular function. Historically this is how it has been seen, with engineers designing bridges and embankments and suchlike with zeal … These objects like the M3 Urban Motorway, Belfast’s own Westway, are beautiful of course, but they have caused considerable damage to the city they were inflicted upon.

Actually, it’s the fact that we have seen the motorway as a solid object that has caused this problem. The motorway actually is a fluid and dynamic thing, and it should be seen as such: in fact it’s not an organ at all but actually tissue – something that connects rather than is. Once we start to see the motorway as tissue, it opens up new propositions about what the motorway is, is used for and does. This new dynamic and connective view unlocks the stasis of the motorway as edifice, and allows adaptation to happen: adaptation to old contexts that were ignored by the planners, and adaptation to new contexts that have arisen because of or in spite of our best efforts.

Motorways as tissue are more than just infrastructures: they are landscapes. These landscapes can be seen as surfaces on which flows take place, not only of cars, buses and lorries, but also of the globalized goods carried and the lifestyles and mobilities enabled. Here the infinite speed of urban change of thought transcends the declared speed limit [70 mph] of the motorway, in that a consignment of bananas can cause soil erosion in Equador, or the delivery of a new iphone can unlock connections and ideas the world over.

So what is this new landscape to be like? It may be a parallax-shifting, cognitive looking glass; a drone scape of energy transformation; a collective farm, or maybe part of a hospital. But what’s for sure, is that it is never fixed nor static: it pulses like a heartbeat through that most bland of landscapes, the countryside. It transmits forces like a Caribbean hurricane creating surf on an Atlantic Storm Beach: alien forces that mutate and re-form these places screaming into new, unclear and unintended futures.

And this future is clear: the future is urban. In this small rural country, motorways as tissue have made the whole of it: countryside, mountain, sea and town, into one singular, homogenous and hyper-connected, generic city.

Goodbye, place. Hello, surface!

Queering Memories of the Troubles: Performing LGBTQ testimonies in Northern Ireland

In Northern Ireland, decades of religious and political unrest led to the marginalization not only of rights but also the experiences and voices of those who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and/or Queer (LGBTQ). The peace process has arguably created space in which sexual minorities can voice their experiences and articulate counter-memories to those that tend to dominate ethno-nationalist commemorations of the conflict. This essay explores two productions of Northern Ireland’s first publicly funded gay theatre company, TheatreofplucK, led by artistic director Niall Rea: D.R.A.G (Divided, Radical and Gorgeous) was first performed in 2011 and explores the personal experiences of a Belfast drag queen in the form of personal testimonial monologue. The forthcoming (November 2015) performed archive installation, Tr<uble, by Shannon Yee, assembles true-life testimonies of the LGBTQ community in Northern Ireland during and after the Troubles. I will explore how performed and performative memories have the potential to ‘queer’ remembrance of the Troubles.

Nós há de morrer...óss tem de cantar! : música, memória e imaginação em Damão : trânsitos pós-coloniais

O presente trabalho inscreve-se no domínio da etnomusicologia, resulta da realização de trabalho de campo multissituado e propõe-se compreender a comunidade católica damanense residente em Damão (Índia) e no Reino Unido partindo do estudo da música adotada e praticada pelos seus membros. O repertório performativo analisado neste trabalho inclui música (religiosa e secular) e dança entendidas pelos damanenses como herdadas do antigo colonizador, música e dança anglo-saxónica e de Bollywood transmitida pelos meios de comunicação de massa atuais e, ainda, aquela que é veicularmente considerada pelos damanenses católicos como “a música damanense” ou “a música original de Damão” e à qual é aqui dado um enfoque especial: o mandó. Argumento que a compreensão deste repertório e dos diferentes significados de que se reveste nos permite também compreender a própria damanidade, cuja performance é caracterizada pelos mesmos princípios que definem a da música. Permite-nos, igualmente, entender o modo como os damanenses católicos vivem a sua condição de integração na Índia enquanto comunidade pós-colonial não-independente. Este trabalho procura contribuir, portanto, para a inscrição da realidade dos territórios poscoloniais integrados no quadro da teoria do poscolonialismo e reflete sobre o protagonismo da música na construção de lugares de memória e de imaginação tanto no território de origem (Damão) como na diáspora (Reino Unido).

A performance do silêncio na música contemporânea para oboé

O presente estudo tem como objectivo entender todo o universo anexo à performance do silêncio na música clássica contemporânea. Numa nova perspectiva: o estudo do impacto da ansiedade num músico que se observa e que observa a sua interação com o contexto artístico que o rodeia, são estudadas todas as variáveis com influência directa no acto de percepção e gestão dos momentos de ausência de som. Tendo por base os princípios da investigação qualitativa foi criado um modelo teórico de análise na área dos estudos em performance. Este modelo foi aplicado em dois recitais realizados na Universidade de Aveiro e num concerto do Remix Ensemble da Casa da Música do Porto. O uso de ferramentas de pesquisa: O teste do Cortisol e o uso do colete Vitaljacket®, permitiu observar comportamentos fisiológicos no performer e no público nunca antes relatados. Os principais resultados desta investigação permitem aferir a elevada complexidade do fenómeno perceptivo e performativo do silêncio na música contemporânea. A pesquisa realizada permitiu observar que o silêncio na música contemporânea acontece num contexto de elevada ambiguidade semântica e que a duração dada a este num concerto, está directamente dependente do quadro fisiológico observado no performer no momento do concerto. Foi ainda possível aferir que a repetição, numa data posterior, de um mesmo programa de concerto provoca uma acentuada descida dos níveis de ansiedade no performer e essa descida altera a forma como este gere, em concerto, os momentos de silêncio. As conclusões alcançadas em sede de investigação reforçam a pertinência deste estudo. São postas à prova concepções altamente empíricas sobre a performance dos silêncios em música contemporânea. As asserções formuladas têm impacto a nível pedagógico e didático. São apontadas direcções de investigação futura no sentido da valorização do estudo da gestão dos momentos de silêncio em performance.

Arbeits- und Lerntechniken - wie man sich perfekt organisiert

In der Schule unterrichtet man Einzelfächer wie Mathematik, Deutsch, Englisch, Physik, Kunst. Kein Fachlehrer fühlt sich für das übergreifende Thema "Lernen" zuständig. Die Naturtalente unter den Schülern können es eh - das Lernen. Die anderen wursteln sich durch, mit mehr Anstrengung als nötig wäre - oder sie scheitern. Für das Studium genügt Wursteln nicht, man braucht effiziente Arbeits- und Lerntechniken. Diese Ausarbeitung hilft bei der Selbstorganisation des Studiums.

Studieren lernen - Arbeits- und Lerntechniken, Prüfungen und Studienarbeit

Viele Studienanfänger haben in der Schule wissenschaftliches Arbeiten nicht gelernt (Kunz, 1986). In der Schule unterrichtet man zwar Einzelfächer wie Mathematik, Deutsch, Englisch, Physik oder Kunst. Kaum ein Fachlehrer fühlt sich jedoch für das übergreifende Thema „Lernen lernen“ zuständig. Die Naturtalente unter den Schülern können lernen. Die anderen wursteln sich durch, mit mehr Anstrengung als nötig wäre – oder sie scheitern. Für das Studium genügt Durchwursteln nicht, man braucht effiziente Lese- und Lerntechniken. Dieses Buch hilft bei der Selbstorganisation des Studiums und bei der Bewältigung des Lernstoffs. Als Studierender profitiert man, weil man dasselbe Ziel mit weniger Aufwand erreicht oder man mit demselben Aufwand mehr erreicht. Als Lehrender profitiert man, weil gut organisierte Studierende besser und schneller lernen. Das Studium ist eine eigenständige Lebensphase, es ist keine bloße Weiterführung der Schullaufbahn, ebenso wenig ist das Studium lediglich eine Vorbereitung auf das spätere Berufsleben. Studere (lateinisch) bedeutet „sich ernsthaft um etwas bemühen“. Studieren ist nicht passives Aufnehmen, sondern aktives Gestalten (Spoun & Domnik, 2004), und das in erheblich größerem Umfang als es die Schule erfordert. Das Studium bietet mehr Freiräume als die Schule und erfordert daher mehr Selbstdisziplin und die Fähigkeit zur Selbststrukturierung der Lernprozesse sowie mehr Eigeninitiative (Streblow & Schiefele, 2006). Lernen ist Arbeit. Ohne Mühe und Anstrengung geht es daher nicht. Mit falschen Lerntechniken führt aber auch Anstrengung nicht ans Ziel (Metzig & Schuster, 2006). Man benötigt für Erfolg in Prüfungen beides: Anstrengungsbereitschaft und gute Lerntechniken. Zudem muss man nicht nur den Lernstoff beherrschen, sondern auch die Prüfungen bestehen. Deshalb werden Prüfungen in einem eigenen Kapitel behandelt. Dabei wird auf schriftliche und mündliche Prüfungsleistungen eingegangen. Im Abschnitt zur mündlichen Prüfung werden vor allem Hinweise zu Antworttechniken und Gesprächsführung sowie Tipps zum Umgang mit Nervosität und Stress vor und in der Prüfung gegeben. Die Hinweise zur Erstellung von Studienarbeiten helfen bei der ersten eigenen Arbeiten, von der Themenwahl über die Recherche bis hin zu Gliederung und formalen Vorschriften. Des Weiteren werden Klausurprüfungen behandelt, von der Vorbereitung bis zu vermeidbaren Fehlern. Dazu gibt es bisher nur wenig einschlägige Literatur. Die Hinweise in Kapitel 4 gehen deshalb zu einem Großteil auf Gespräche mit anderen Dozenten der FH Bund zurück. Sie berücksichtigen zum Teil die spezifischen Bedingungen dieser Fachhochschule, sind zum größeren Teil aber allgemein auf alle Hochschulen anwendbar. Insgesamt ist dieses Buch ein Leitfaden, der hilft, die Anforderungen an Hochschulen zu bewältigen und das Studium erfolgreich zu meistern.

Studieren lernen : Arbeits- und Lerntechniken, Prüfungen und Studienarbeiten

Viele Studienanfänger haben in der Schule wissenschaftliches Arbeiten nicht gelernt (Kunz, 1986). In der Schule unterrichtet man Einzelfächer wie Mathematik, Deutsch, Englisch, Physik oder Kunst. Kaum ein Fachlehrer fühlt sich jedoch für das übergreifende Thema „Lernen lernen“ zuständig. Die Naturtalente unter den Schülern können lernen. Die anderen wursteln sich durch, mit mehr Anstrengung als nötig wäre – oder sie scheitern. Für das Studium genügt Durchwursteln nicht, man braucht effiziente Arbeits- und Lerntechniken. Dieses Buch hilft bei der Selbstorganisation des Studiums und bei der Bewältigung des Lernstoffs. Als Studierender profitiert man, weil man dasselbe Ziel mit weniger Aufwand erreicht oder man mit demselben Aufwand mehr erreicht. Als Lehrender profitiert man, weil gut organisierte Studierende besser und schneller lernen. Das Studium ist eine eigenständige Lebensphase, ist keine bloße Weiterführung der Schullaufbahn. Ebenso wenig ist das Studium lediglich eine Vorbereitung auf das spätere Berufsleben. Studere (lateinisch) bedeutet „sich ernsthaft um etwas bemühen“. Studieren ist nicht passives Aufnehmen, sondern aktives Gestalten und Arbeiten (Spoun & Domnik, 2004), und das in erheblich größerem Umfang als es die Schule erfordert. Das Studium bietet mehr Freiräume als die Schule und erfordert deshalb mehr Selbstdisziplin und die Fähigkeit zur Selbststrukturierung der Lernprozesse sowie mehr Eigeninitiative (Streblow & Schiefele, 2006). Aus diesem Grund fällt vielen Studierenden das Umsteigen von der Schule oder aus dem erlernten Beruf heraus in ein Studium zunächst schwer. Lernen ist Arbeit. Ohne eigene Anstrengung geht es daher nicht. Mit falschen Lerntechniken führt aber auch Anstrengung nicht ans Ziel (Metzig & Schuster, 2006). Man benötigt für den Studienerfolg beides: Anstrengung und Lerntechniken Man muss nicht nur den Lernstoff beherrschen, sondern auch Prüfungen bestehen. In Kapitel 4 wird auf schriftliche und mündliche Prüfungsleistungen sowie auf Studienarbeiten eingegangen. Schriftliche Prüfungen werden ausführlich behandelt, von der Vorbereitung bis zu vermeidbaren Fehlern. Hierzu gibt es bisher nur wenige konkrete Hinweise in der einschlägigen Literatur. Die Ausführungen gehen deshalb zu einem Großteil auf Gespräche mit Dozentenkollegen zurück. Sie berücksichtigen zum Teil die spezifischen Bedingungen der FH Bund, sind zum größeren Teil aber allgemein auf alle Hochschulen anwendbar. Im Abschnitt zu mündlichen Prüfungen werden Hinweise zu Antworttechniken und Gesprächsführung sowie Tipps zum Umgang mit Nervosität und Stress vor und in der Prüfung gegeben. Die Hinweise zur Erstellung von Studienarbeiten helfen bei den ersten eigenen Arbeiten, von der Themenwahl über die Recherche bis hin zu Gliederung und zu formalen Vorschriften.

Contributos da educação : (re)viver na prisão

Relatório de estágio de mestrado, Ciências da Educação (Educação Intercultural), Universidade de Lisboa, Instituto de Educação, 2011

Comoção : os ritmos afectivos do acontecimento teatral

Tese de doutoramento, Estudos Artísticos (Estudos de Teatro), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, 2014

O substrato idealista no programa de filosofia do ensino secundário e nas posteriores orientações

Relatório da prática de ensino supervisionada, Mestrado em Ensino de Filosofia no Secundário, Universidade de Lisboa, 2014