The Atlas is an artistic research project in the fields of contemporary art (curated after 2000) and concert music(conducted after 2000) focused on curating and conducting. The Atlas will generate an online platform, interdisciplinary activities, and a book, all realised through rigorous comparative analyses of curatorial and conductorial practices. The research examines their respective performative functions within the wider research context of curatorial and conducting practices in contemporary art and concert music. The theoretical framework encompasses concepts of interactive, inter-relational, and participant knowledge of both curatorial and conductorial practices. The Atlas seeks new modes of perceiving creative mechanisms between two distinct disciplines in order to test a hypothesis of invisible commonality and intersectional linkage in applied creative practice. The research questions and objectives will investigate how each inhabits, mirrors, and mimics the other with the objectives of sustaining the goal of understanding; practicing, and comparing their creative mechanisms. The Atlas bridges the territories of research and methods of practice by comparing the produced knowledge of clustered data collected during the research.

The Atlas explores original pathways in interdisciplinary presentation and performance research, focussed on revealing tacit mechanisms of curating and conducting. As an unprecedented survey of comparative explorations of methods, techniques, manner, and modalities of contemporary conducting and curating, it has a unique level of originality and innovation. It is important to recognize there has been no significant research directly linking and exploring the relationship between curating and conducting. Atlas’s primary staff involved in the project are designer|curator Basak Senova and composer|producer David Chisholm as the CORE team. They will work with the AGENTS (conductor Ilan Volkov; artist Isa Rosenberger; artist and composer Timo Tuhkanen; artist Bronwyn Lace; artist Yane Calovski; and artist Hristina Ivanoska) and the other teams to collaboratively research, critique, gather, analyse, write, and perform.

AR 721 Atlas (of Creative Mechanisms): [Curating-Conducting] (2022-2026)
Programme for Arts-based Research (PEEK), awarded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
Institute of Art Sciences and Art Education, University of Applied Arts Vienna
Project Leader: Assoc. Prof. Dr.  Basak Senova
Key Researcher: Dr. David Chisholm

Doi: 10.55776/AR721