Logic of Experimentation

Logic of Experimentation


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Rethinking Music Performance Through Artistic Research

Beyond interpretation: a proposal for experimental performance practices

Logic of Experimentation offers several innovative and groundbreaking perspectives on music performance, music ontology, research methodologies, and ethics of performance. It proposes new modes of thinking and exposing past musical works to contemporary audiences, arguing for a new kind of performer, emancipated from authoritative texts and traditions, whose creativity is propelled by intensive research and inventive imagination. Moving beyond the work concept, this book presents a new image of musical works, based upon the notions of strata, assemblage, and diagram, advancing innovative practice-based methodologies that integrate  archival and musicological research into the creative process leading to a performance. This volume appropriates concepts for music performance from post-structural philosophy, psychoanalytical theory, science and technology studies, epistemology, and semiotics, showing how transdisciplinarity is central to artistic research. An indispensable contribution to artistic research in music, Logic of Experimentation is compelling reading for music performers, composers, musicologists, philosophers, and artistic researchers alike.

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"This is a remarkable work, rich in ideas and provocative in its conclusions. Assis offers a transformative approach to music performance, which serves as a paradigmatic instance of artistic research. But he also provides the conceptual framework for a general ontology and epistemology of art, one that has implications well beyond the domain of music. This is a book that deserves the attention of researchers throughout the disciplines of the arts, humanities and social sciences."
Ronald Bogue - jar-online.net. 19/12/2019. https://doi.org/10.22501/jarnet.0023

With support from

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC grant agreement n° 313419.

  • Erc