The Equalizer

The Equaliser is a research and educational project, close to practise, that aims to amplify artistic resonance and reduce mental dissonance in artistic processes among students at the School of Music in Piteå.

Upcoming artists, as well as established musicians can suffer deeply from different types of mental and emotional setbacks. Musical artists are at a big risk as their work life first offers a hard living in terms of intense and long working hours often in a competitive context. Apart from a complex work life, the performance and creative processes of artists can therefore be of a delicate balance between artistic flow and emotional blockings. In the long run conscious practices might motivate students to facilitate a sustainable career as artists. In the context of higher music education, it seems that the process of facilitating and boosting creative processes are not explored neither studied in a systematic way.

The Equalizer studies how musical artists can cope and master their emotional and mental dissonances in order to empower their creative and artistic processes and maintain wellbeing. The project acknowledges the DIY (Do It Yourself) culture and are therefore partly oriented toward current available democratized every day technology such as digital technology for amplifying, instrumenting, and manipulating artistic outcomes.

One part of the project is to investigate how and to what extent transformative technologies can develop and optimize artistic processes in a DIY culture within higher music education. Transformative technologies, such as apps, headsets and computer based systems for reading bodily biorhythms and optimizing performative outcomes, are filling personal curiosity and needs. This kind of biofeedback system could be of interest in supporting students knowing about their inner physiological as well as psychological states and their correlation to experienced wellbeing.

In up scaling, the goal is to facilitate Luleå University of Technology's artistic departments in supporting students wellbeing and self-actualization. Additionally, in a trans-disciplinary context we also aim to co-create cutting edge interactive learning tools that advances the sounding aspects in biofeedback applications within an artistic research context.