PhD in Arts and cultural heritage for innovative, advanced and international practice-based projects

PhD Studentship

ARTS AND CULTURAL HERITAGE FOR INNOVATIVE, ADVANCED AND INTERNATIONAL PRACTICE-BASED PROJECTS
DOT24AFKLM
XL CYCLE A.A. 2024/2025

The general purpose of the program is to enhance the artistic and pedagogical experience understood as the experience of creating, performing, or enjoying, perceiving, listening and seeing art.
Central to the PhD programme is the notion of practice-based research. Artistic practice in academia is not a novelty, as not new is the fact that traditionally doctoral studies are separated into arts-based and academic. Here, the originality of this PhD programme lies in the fact that it brings together two of the three approaches identified by Borgdorff (2006) called Research for the arts and Research in the arts (the third kind, Research of the arts, being the academic musicological historical approach).

The “Arts and Cultural Heritage for Innovative, Advanced and International Practice-based Projects” programme is precisely intended as a mixture of applied research - the ‘for', because it investigates specific aspects of artistic activity mixed with science and technology approaches, thus finding new materials, new tools and new technique for the art - and the ‘in' approach, where there is little or no separation between the subject and the object, the researcher and the practitioner, the researcher and the user, the scientific/technological/artistic subject of research, and the scientific/techonological/artistic outcome of study (its emanation, which could be a technological result, or an artistic result.
The reasons of this innovative program lie in the idea that studying and implementing connections between the human and the phygital allows the increase of new expressive abilities, not only in the artistic fields such as music, cinema, performance practices, sound art, etc. but also and more specifically with special attention to situations and people who have less or reduces expressive abilities.

The results of the specific PhD projects will help enjoying more deeply artworks, artistic situations, and everything that involve new technologies in the broad field of art that can allow to surpass any limitation (sensorial, physical, psychological). The expected results will bring new empowerment in the fields of entertainment, sport, medicine, education.
The programme is developed around strategic research topics and design research topics for the arts, aimed at enhancing the artistic and cultural heritage in connection with the digital world, the phygital.

Application areas range from performance to education; therefore, the program plans to provide also a solid foundation in musicology and pedagogy. Awareness of the inclusion paradigm will also be promoted so that research actions promote accessibility, participation and learning for all.
The partnerships set up in the programme offer a stimulating environment with access to cutting-edge technology, experts in the performing arts and highly developed technological environments such as the ambisonic dome that will be built in the space housing the researchers (Canneti Auditorium).

The program is organized into two curricula:

Curriculum A
HYPER-INSTRUMENTS, GESTURE AND FEED(BACK) EXPRESSIVENESS IN THE ARTS
This project area will push the boundaries of human, robotic, virtual environments and concepts of gesture and feedback in applied artistic creativity. It investigates how we can reduce distances among traditionally separate communicative archetypes in music, visual art, dance, etc., and in so doing create new lutheries and tools that can bring new empowerment, enhance human creative potential, improve artistic self-perception and proprioception, create new knowledge of the past.
Research activities and questions will be centred around, yet will be not limited to, the following areas, including: how feedback (be it in motion, visual, auditory activities) impacts the artistic experience; how mapping and modelling of feedback can help studying and creating virtual experiences; how can we recreate artistic experiences of the distant past or more recent past in art (music, visual art, architecture, sound art, sculpture, literature performing art, etc.) through new tools, interfaces, devices in order to enable us investigate, analyse and preserve this culture; how minimal gestures or limited gestures in physical, cognitive, or sensitive domains can impact life and artistic experiences; how enhanced instruments or prostheses can improve those limitations; how can we create hyper instruments and tools that can help people with different abilities or with inabilities to express their creativity; how the use of hyper-instruments impacts learning instrumental and cross-curricular musical skills and the development of musical conducts of exploration, interpretation and creation.

Curriculum B
MULTIMODAL FEED(BACK) IN PHYGITAL SPACES
This curriculum aims to study space and spatialization in its multi-dimensional and multi-modal representation, in its material and immaterial dimensions (physical, perceptual and digital).
Areas of study will include but not limited to real spaces, such as historic places and spaces for music performance, museums, architectural spaces, open spaces, natural spaces, abandoned spaces, reconverted spaces, augmented spaces (material spaces and places plus augmented reality), virtual spaces, cinematic spaces (cinema, videogames etc.), social space and the internet of everything (big / small / hidden / black - data) and of course also the combination of the above.
The general framework of this subject area is sound and visual phygital spaces. Typical research paths may touch on topics such as: the study and implementation of perceptual experiences and complex systems in robotics that listen, perceive and create in a particular space; how the sensory organs of touch, sight, smell, hearing, sight, work separately or in combination of feedback in different phygital spaces and their multi-sensory feedback declinations; physicality and perception of space in performance - in early, classical, avant-garde, experimental music, traditional, popular, ethnic, oral music, etc.; recreation of traditional artistic experiences in space for virtual experiences.

Download the Call for Admission HERE

Download the Application form for PhD HERE