Making music with a black box: re-evaluating the composer-performer relationship through an expanded accordion.
Luca Piovesan’s dissertation addresses composition as a dialogical and iterative process of co-creation, aiming to expose a tension in the dominant composer/performer framework in Western tradition (in which composers are seen as sole authors), and to reshape creative dynamics.
To challenge this model, Piovesan developed the Poliarmonica, an expanded instrument combining accordion, pedalboards, and computer processing. Acting as a black box in collaborations, it became a tool to investigate performers’ agency and new forms of collective creation. His autoethnographic study position the instrument as a site of creative agency and a mediator of roles.
Academic supervisor Maarten Stragier, artistic supervisor Claudio Jacomucci
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The concert at December 11 showcases three artistic projects born from Luca Piovesan’s PhD research. Central to the concert is Poliarmonica, an expanded accordion (with pedalboards and live electronics) developed over seven years to embody site-specificity, relationships, community, and ecological awareness. It serves as a lens into Piovesan’s doctoral inquiry on how such instruments can foster collaborative creation:
