Experimental Systems – 2016

The experimental approach of science applied to artistic research. We don’t know what we don’t know. This makes it difficult to imagine research that will produce truly new knowledge. In the sciences, the experimental approach has proved its worth in generating what subsequently requires understanding. Can the emergent field of artistic research be inspired by recent thinking about the history and workings of science? How can artists engage with experimentation to extend artistic values and deliver future knowledge? In this book fourteen contemporary artists, musicians, and theorists engage with Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s widely studied theory of experimental systems in an effort to determine how experimentation can productively be put to work in the arts. An interview with Rheinberger himself probes research as a potentially shared space between the otherwise different activities of art and science.

This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).

"Experimental Systems – 2016" was edited by Michael Schwab.

Michael Schwab is the editor-in-chief of the Journal for Artistic Research (JAR).

Yes, "Experimental Systems – 2016" is part of the "Orpheus Institute Series" series.

Throughout the Orpheus Institute’s various activities there is a clear focus on the development of a new research discipline in the arts, one that addresses questions and topics that are at the heart of musical practice, building on the unique expertise and perspectives of musicians and in constant dialogue with more established research disciplines.

Within this context, the Orpheus Institute launched an international Research Centre in 2007 that acts as a stable constituent within an ever-growing field of enquiry. The Orpheus Research Centre is a place where musical artists can fruitfully conduct individual and collaborative research on issues that are of concern to all involved in artistic practice. It is important that at the centre of the international Orpheus Institute network is a place, a building, a community. As the concepts and methodologies of artistic research in music have evolved, work at Orpheus Institute has found new structures. Since 2012, research has been consolidated into a number of groups focused on specific areas, each led by a principal investigator of substantial international reputation as a practicing musician. The work of Orpheus Institute is disseminated through events, publications and musical performances, and through its active animation of discussion within the sector.

This series of peer-reviewed publications —launched in 2013— encompasses monographs by Research Fellows and associates of the Orpheus Institute, compilations of lectures, texts, and performances from seminars and study days, and edited volumes on topics arising from work at the institute. Research can be presented in digital media as well as printed texts. As a whole, the series is meant to enhance and advance discourse in the field of artistic research in music and to generate future work in this emerging and vital area of study.

Editorial board

William Brooks (Chair, Series Editor), Peter Dejans, Jonathan Impett, Kathleen Coessens, Paulo de Assis, Heike Vermeire, Ed Crooks, Laura Cull, Aurelie Daems

Proposals

Proposals and enquiries can be sent to the series editor William Brooks.
Please make use of the submission form to present your manuscript or proposal to our board.
Authors interested in Open Access can consult the available funding options.

Links & Resources

Introduction
Michael Schwab

A Theory of Experimentation in Art? Reading Kubler's History of Art after Rheinberger's Experimental Systems

Stefanie Stallschus

Electrical Images: Snapshots of an Exploration
Hannes Rickli

Material Experiments: “Phenomeno-Technology” in the Art of the New Materialists
Susanne Witzgall

Whatever Remains, However Improbable: British Experimental Music and Experimental Systems
Virginia Anderson

Of Arnold Schoenberg's Klavierstück op. 33a, “a Game of Chess,” and the Emergence of New Epistemic Things
Darla M. Crispin

Research Organs as Experimental Systems: Constructivist Notions of Experimentation in Artistic Research
Peter Peters

A Laboratory View of Art
Gabriele Gramelsberger

Artistic Practices and Epistemic Things
Henk Borgdorff

Artistic Experiments as Research
Elke Bippus

Toward a Practice of Novel Epistemic Artefacts
Stephen A. R. Scrivener

Epistemic Complexity and Experimental Systems in Music Performance
Paulo de Assis

Criticism and Experimental Systems
Paolo Giudici

Epistemic Events
Neal White

Forming and Being Informed
Hans-Jörg Rheinberger in conversation with Michael Schwab

Personalia
Index