The Limits of Control: Tradition, Experiment and the Imagination in Musical Performance

Eventvan 26 februari 2014 tot 27 februari 2014

ORCiM Seminar 2014

This two-day seminar seeks to explore the spaces between and beyond the limits of control in artistic experimentation, thus contributing to greater insight into how art unfolds and opening new possibilities for artistic creation, understanding and reception.

The sixth International ORCiM Seminar organised at the Orpheus Institute offers an opportunity for an international group of contributors to explore specific aspects of ORCiM's research focus: Artistic Experimentation in Music. The theme of this year's seminar is: The Limits of Control: Tradition, Experiment and the Imagination in Musical Performance.

This year’s seminar aims to explore various facets of the nature and limits of control in musical performance, as well as the territory that lies beyond those limits. We are interested in examining familiar binaries such as the artist/researcher, the composer/performer, and the audience/performer from fresh angles, as well as how concepts of fixity, extemporisation and improvisation might relate to, resist or elucidate the limits of control. We are less concerned about defining where these limits lie, but rather seek to explore them as open-ended questions. It may be interesting to not merely think of “the tradition” as equivalent to “control” and “the imagination” as equivalent to “experimentation”, as these notions can often be reversed. Questions of perception, embodiment, reception and psychology – from the perspective of the composer, performer and audience – are all highly relevant to these explorations.