My name is Lauren Redhead and I am a composer living in Leeds, UK.
I am interested in new music and new aesthetics.
About Me
Through this site I will be lifestreaming about the new music scene here in Leeds and as far afield as my life and interests take me.
I will post concert details, reviews and opinions, links to other composers and genuine new musical activities, and recount my own experiences of all of these, and all hopefully without being too serious.
I have recently finished a PhD in composition at the University of Leeds. My supervisors were Prof. Derek Scott and Dr Martin Iddon, and my research is funded by the AHRC. The abstract for this is below. I have also worked with Dr Mic Spencer at the University of Leeds.
At the moment I teach university students both composition and musicology at a number of institutions in the north of England. I also work on artistic, music, and theatre projects, and write academic articles about the aesthetics and sociology of music. With the rest of my time I am training to be a British Sign Language interpreter, and I support Deaf students in further and higher education.
Much of my time is spent writing music. The rest of my time is spent writing about music, and sometimes performing music, as an organist and with the quasi-spontaneous ensemble projectisle.
PhD Abstract: Relational Aesthetics: A Practice-Led Investigation into their Ontological Basis
Aesthetics is to do with relations. Relational aesthetics can be considered to offer conclusions for how one thinks about the ontology of art, the nature of the relationship of artworks with space and time, appropriate analytical approaches to artworks, and the debate as to whether music can ‘do’ philosophy. By explaining the concept of relational aesthetics, and analysing whether it is an epistemological construct arising from existing artworks or an ontological construct from which artworks arise it is possible to show how practice-led research has an important contribution to make to the consideration of aesthetic problems. These aesthetic problems relate to the particular case of music and its consideration as a special or different case within the ontology of artworks themselves: considering the case of music from the starting points of practice and theory relational aesthetics can prove the music is not an exceptional case at all. The use of combination of poststructuralist analysis of existing (theoretical and musical) work and practice-led conceptual analysis allows further conclusions to be drawn regarding the ‘work’ itself, its ontology and definition, and other musical features such as quotation and borrowing, and the relationship with time and space. Existing thought, music, and philosophy, has a contribution to make to all of these discussions, but the inclusion of relational aesthetics in these individual investigations makes it possible to conclude that: the work does not exist; there can be supposed to be a work-function which creates the illusion of the work; time and space should be considered topologically different from the real line in order to correctly define them with respect to the work; quotation can be used as a material exemplar in all of these cases. Indeed, the historicity of material and its consequences for aesthetic and artistic autonomy is an important factor in the re-reading of all of the aspects of the work presented here. The practice-led component of this research has been an important aspect of the illustration and elucidation of my points. My practice-as-methodology approach allows me to do conceptual analysis through practice which crucially allows me to make conclusions without having arrived at them through language. The result of this investigation is the conclusion of the ontological basis of relations, with respect to the work of art, and the assertion that an experiential rather than creator-led approach to the art work is most appropriate when assessing works of music, and indeed all works of art.