MetamusicX

PI: Paulo de Assis (paulo.deassis@orpheusinstituut.be)

MetamusicX is a research cluster of interconnected research projects that collectively address the transformation of musical practices in an era of unprecedented technological, cultural, and societal change. Our central research question is:

The cluster investigates both emerging opportunities arising from advanced digital technologies (such as AI and blockchain) and rethinks inherited musical objects and performative practices — not through conventional interpretation or hermeneutics, but through research-based experimentation, reconfiguring past and present practices into new modes of knowledge production.

Methodologically, MetamusicX embraces a plurality of approaches that span from future-oriented innovation to critical engagement with historically received materials. Weaving together performance, composition, digital and multimedia art, assemblage theory and posthuman philosophies, MetamusicX overcomes traditional knowledge compartmentations. Its agile combination of disciplinary, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary modes of research exemplify what scholars increasingly recognize as X-disciplinarity — a fluid approach that transcends fixed categorical boundaries in knowledge production.

MetamusicX includes the following projects that mutually inform and amplify each other:

ERC Advanced Grant: Posthuman Music (2025–2030), led by Paulo de Assis, explores the transformative impact of Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain technologies on music creativity. It investigates the notion of Posthuman Music as a future-oriented perspective that brings together human and non-human creative agencies. The project develops new concepts and crafts innovative creative tools aimed at generating new modes of sonic expression. This flagship project includes two doctoral researchers (NN) and two postdoctoral positions (Adam Lukawski; Martin Zeilinger).

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship: REPaMS (2025–2027), led by Diego Castro Magas, investigates Radically Embodied Performance as Musical Structure. The project examines how the radical embodiment of performing hyper-complex musical scores from late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century avant-garde composers generates new modes of musical knowledge. By engaging with the extreme physical, cognitive, and expressive demands of this repertoire, REPaMS explores how bodily experience and performative mastery become constitutive elements of musical structure itself, rather than mere interpretative vehicles.

MusicExperiment21 (continuation) extends Paulo de Assis’s first ERC Grant, advancing experimental thought and experimental methodologies in artistic research that treat musical works as open-ended processes rather than fixed objects. This ongoing work continues to generate innovative approaches to historically informed creativity. This research area includes one doctoral student (Emil Gryesten).

Three doctoral researchers contribute specialized investigations that engage with posthuman music from diverse perspectives, including explorations of non-Western musical practices, non-human agencies, and multicultural sonic spaces. Their work enriches the cluster’s theoretical and practical horizons. They are: Alicia Reyes, Ilpo Jauhiainen and Emil Gryesten.

Through this multi-project structure, MetamusicX creates a dynamic research environment where major funded initiatives, emerging theories, doctoral investigations, and future proposals interact productively. The cluster embodies Orpheus Instituut’s commitment to forward-thinking artistic research that addresses the most pressing questions facing music in the second quarter of the twenty-first century.