precept.concept.percept XIX.
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CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Throughout the program, participants are invited to situate their work in relation to the conceptual framework of the upcoming edition:
GROUNDING, COMPOSITION OF MIND, AND [EMANCIPATORY PRACTICES]
These terms function as interconnected fields of inquiry rather than as a prescriptive thematic brief. They provide a shared vocabulary through which participants may examine the conditions from which artistic practices emerge, the forms of perception and thought they organize, and the relations of agency, authorship, responsibility, and participation they produce.
The framework is intended to support multiple and potentially divergent artistic positions. Participants are not expected to illustrate the theme or arrive at a unified interpretation. Instead, they are invited to use it as a means of clarifying questions, testing assumptions, and situating their practices within wider artistic, historical, social, material, and philosophical contexts.
GROUNDING
Grounding directs attention toward the material, embodied, historical, institutional, technological, social, and environmental conditions from which artistic practice emerges.
In composition, grounding may concern the relation between an abstract musical idea and the medium through which it becomes perceptible: a body, instrument, voice, notation system, technology, ensemble, acoustic space, or performance situation. It may also involve the histories, traditions, institutions, and systems of transmission that shape what can be conceived, notated, rehearsed, and heard.
In performance, grounding may refer to the embodied and situated knowledge through which a work becomes actual. Technique, memory, attention, physical effort, listening, responsiveness, and collective coordination are not secondary mechanisms through which music is delivered; they are constitutive conditions of musical meaning.
Participants may consider:
COMPOSITION OF MIND
Composition of mind expands the concept of composition beyond the organization of sonic material. It invites reflection on how attention, perception, memory, imagination, expectation, decision-making, and modes of listening participate in the formation of musical experience.
From the perspective of the composer, composition may involve the organization not only of sounds and durations, but also of perceptual thresholds, cognitive relations, interpretative possibilities, and modes of attention.
From the perspective of the performer, interpretation depends on complex processes of anticipation, embodied memory, judgment, adaptation, and responsiveness. Performers compose relationships among notation, sound, gesture, time, space, and the actions of others while the work is being realized.
From the perspective of the listener, musical experience is formed through perception, expectation, recognition, uncertainty, association, and reflection. A composition may therefore be understood as organizing conditions under which attention and thought take place.
Participants may ask:
[EMANCIPATORY PRACTICES]
The formulation [emancipatory practices] invites critical inquiry into agency, authorship, hierarchy, participation, access, responsibility, and the distribution of artistic decision-making.
The brackets signal that emancipation is not treated as a stable category or an automatic property of experimental, participatory, or collaborative art. The term remains open to examination. Participants are encouraged to consider under which conditions an artistic process may enable new forms of action, listening, relation, or understanding—and under which conditions claims to emancipation may reproduce existing structures of authority.
Within composer–performer collaboration, this inquiry may concern who initiates decisions, whose knowledge is recognized, how responsibility is distributed, and how disagreement is negotiated. It may also address the relationship between compositional authority and interpretative agency, between notation and autonomy, or between institutional frameworks and the artistic practices they support.
Participants may consider:
Taken together, grounding, composition of mind, and [emancipatory practices] provide a framework for examining how musical works emerge, how they organize perception and relation, and how collaborative artistic practice may critically engage with the conditions of its own production.
DATES
MENTORS
ARTISTIC PREMISE
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
PROGRAM STRUCTURE
WHO THE RESIDENCY IS FOR
ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT
INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE
ANTICIPATED OUTCOMES
WHY PARTICIPATE?
APPLICATION
The precept.concept.percept program is produced by .abeceda Institute
.abeceda [Institute for Research in Art, Critical Thought and Philosophy], a public-benefit NGO and non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing contemporary artistic practices and critical inquiry. Through its innovative programmes, .abeceda has gained international recognition as one of the leading platforms for contemporary music and artistic research in the Adriatic region and across Europe: www.abeceda.io