http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4773-7299
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ABSTRACT
Electroacoustic music composer Tim Howle, Professor of Contemporary Music at the University of Kent and academic and filmmaker Dr. Nick Cope, have been engaged in an ongoing creative practice collaboration since 2002.
The collaboration has seen the production of a series of short films exploring notions of what it means to compose with sound and moving image in works where the sonic and visual are treated as commensurate partners. This work has been selected for festivals, conferences, concerts, installations and screenings internationally; published on DVD and through online audio-visual journals; and resulted in a number of papers, journal articles and a PhD addressing the working practices and research contexts of the collaborative output.
The collaboration is both cross-disciplinary and inter-departmental in nature and gives rise to much that can be reflected on with regards to creative media practice based research in the academy. This paper addresses the challenges, opportunities and contexts the collaboration has engaged in with a particular emphasis on the research components of the work, and how these have developed and continue, as a case study of creative practice research. It will look at the different disciplinary contexts the work has arisen from and how that has both helped the work in finding audiences and outlets, research outcomes, and to navigate and address departmental and institutional research frameworks, requirements and limitations.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the University of Hull, the University of Sunderland, the University of Kent and Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in supporting them in their work.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Dr. Nick Cope is Honorary Senior Research Fellow and former Head of Humanities & Social Sciences at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China; previously working for the Universities of Sunderland, Hull and Southampton Solent. He has been a practicing film, video and digital media artist since 1982, and completed a PhD by Existing Creative Published Work in October 2012. This locates a contemporary visual music practice within current and emerging critical and theoretical contexts and tracks back the history of this practice to initial screenings of work as part of the 1980s British Scratch video art movement, and later collaborations with electronic music pioneers Cabaret Voltaire and others. Collaborating with composer Professor Tim Howle since 2002, this work has been screened and presented and papers given relating to the collaboration at conferences, concerts, galleries and festivals, nationally and internationally. A personal website and archive is online at http://www.nickcopefilm.com
Tim Howle is Professor of Music at the University of Kent. He has also worked at the Universities of Hull where he led Music Technology for 5 years and at Oxford Brookes University where he set-up the Electronic Music Studios. He read music at Keele University, studying under Roger Marsh and Mike Vaughan completing a doctorate in composition in 1999. His work centres on electronic music including fixed media pieces, and also for performer and live electronics (Several pieces in collaboration with Jos Zwaanenburg) and pieces involving visual media (working with Nick Cope for many years). His work has been performed throughout the US, Asia and the EU. In a previous life, Tim played in post-punk bands doing over 1000 gigs.
ORCID
Nick Cope http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4773-7299
Notes
1. A Cinema for the Ears is a term and concept originally developed by Canadian composer Francis Dhomont (‘cinéma pour l’oreille’). See: Couture (Citation2005). See also http://nickcopefilm.com/2013/10/04/cinema-for-the-ear/ and https://vimeo.com/channels/cinemafortheear.
2. Amen: Survive the Coming Hard Times (Citation1984).
Screening: as part of ‘Without Brutality: 25 Years of the Art and Design Research Centre’ Sheffield International Documentary Festival, Showroom Cinema, Sheffield, July 2018.
Screening: as part of ‘The Problem of Perspective: Alternative Film and Video in Northern England’ a series of screenings illuminating a distinctly northern perspective on the history of artists’ moving image in England curated by Pavilion Arts, Leeds.
Brewery Arts Centre Kendal, LUX London, Showroom Cinema Sheffield and Hyde Park Picture House Leeds, January–March 2017. http://www.pavilion.org.uk/events/2016/perspective/
Amen: Survive the Coming Hard Time (Citation1984), Friendly Fires (Citation1985) and Suffer Bomb Disease (Citation1985).
Installation and Screening of Scratch video work; Invited Panel Discussion member: Art Sheffield International Arts Festival; Sheffield, UK, April – May 2016. http://www.artsheffield.org/2016/programme/156-arundel-street/
Review: http://i-d.vice.com/en_gb/article/how-sheffield-in-the-80s-became-a-hive-of-musical-and-artistic-experimentation Suffer Bomb Disease (Citation1985).
Installation as part of ‘Scratch’, Streetlevel Gallery, Glasgow, March 2009. http://www.rewind.ac.uk/rewind/index.php/Events [accessed 12.10.2017]
Screening: VRC: Scratch Video, Dundee Contemporary Arts, April 2008.
Both of these events were part of the AHRC funded ReWind: British Artists’ Video in the 1970s and 1980s archival project and publication. See: http://www.rewind.ac.uk/rewind/index.php/Welcome.
5. See: http://www.seeingsound.co.uk, http://www.gre.ac.uk/ach/events/soundimage and http://archives.electricspring.co.uk/About.
6. See: http://www.see-this-sound.at/en.html, http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/3343/23/SO4_Rationale.pdf and https://smdf2017.wordpress.com.
9. Davies defines Art as Performance as ‘a generative performance on the part of an artist – is distinct from the work that the depicted artist is creating, that work being the product of his performance.’ (Citation2004, p. ix). ‘Our properly appreciative interest in an artistic vehicle, and in the meanings articulated through that vehicle, requires that we attend to the performance whereby that vehicle was crafted and to the art-historical context in which the performance took place’ (ibid, p.101).
11. The ‘hit driven economy’ being practice solely driven by industrial parameters of broadcast media ratings of success.