Singing in between the cracks: intracultural dialogues of sounding practices in virtual environments (Cantando F(r)estas)

• Grant number: 24/08516-0
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: June 01, 2025
• End date: May 31, 2028
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Theatre
• Principal Investigator: Ana Cristina Colla
• Grantee: Ana Cristina Colla
• Principal researcher abroad: Pieter-Jan Maes
• Institution abroad: Ghent University (UGent), Belgium
• Host Institution: Núcleo Interdisciplinar de Pesquisas Teatrais (LUME). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Christel Stalpaert ; Pieter Simoens ; Raquel Scotti Hirson ; Renato Ferracini ; Stéphan Olivier Schaub

Abstract

Artistic heritage plays a foundational role in the formation of cultural identities. Engaging with heritage necessarily implies taking an epistemic stance; adopting a particular attitude to knowledge of cultural objects and practices, and the transmission thereof. It becomes particularly challenging when heritage is intangible, involving embodied knowledge, oral and bodily histories that aren't easily preserved and shared. In the proposed project, we set up an interdisciplinary network around the embodied sounding practices of LUME Teatro (UNICAMP, BR) to develop novel and plural epistemological approaches to interaction with intangible heritage. We aim to explore the potential of advanced XR and AI technologies to develop a living archive built upon LUME's practices and the ethos that underlines engagement with them, which allows intracultural embodied interaction. Further, we explore how such a platform can mediate the development of decolonial, plural epistemologies within archival practices and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) processes. We aim to cross-fertilise these technologies with the embodied knowledge of the practitioners and researchers to reflect on how dramaturgical tactics can potentialize and facilitate navigational epistemes for people immersed in virtual living archives. The framework of the FWO-FAPESP program is an ideal possibility to bring together this unique combination of interdisciplinary knowledge to realise this project. (AU)