GAPS2 - Global Art and Psychology Seminar "Creativity in music and the arts"

York, Graz, La Plata & Melbourne, 14.-16.09.2023

Deadline: 01.04.2023

Theme 
Creativity is a complex phenomenon that permeates our lives. Creative behaviors drive progress in academic research, business, education, and science but - perhaps more than in other fields - creativity is celebrated in a rich variety of artistic pursuits. These can include music, dance, the visual arts as well as theater, cinema, and the development of creative technologies. Here creativity is often seen taking the form of new and valuable ideas that transform into performance or observable artifacts. But whereas this wide spectrum of activity creates a fascinating landscape in which researchers can examine the creative process across a variety of artistic forms, the very concept of creativity may lose coherence. Can we examine the different creative processes in the arts without approaching the notion of creativity in excessively vague terms? Or is it precisely this conceptual ambiguity that can help us shed new light on the psychology of creativity and its relationship with artistic creation? The aim of GAPS2 is to foster collaborations between PhD students and early career researchers working in a range of different academic and artistic domains to critically engage with issues surrounding creativity from diverse epistemological standpoints, and explore the theoretical, empirical, and performative challenges that human creativity poses.

Conference topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • Empirical and theoretical approaches to artistic creativity
  • Relationships between artistic and general creativity
  • Technologies for creative practice in the arts
  • Links between artistic creativity and cultural diversity
  • Philosophy of creativity
  • Creativity in response to crises or limitations
  • Subjective evaluation of artistic novelty and value
  • Subconscious creative processes
  • Artistic creativity as a social act

Call for Papers
Submissions of abstracts for oral presentations will be accepted from the 15th of February 2023 until the 1st of April 2023. Authors of accepted abstracts will present in one of our four hubs (York, Graz, La Plata, Melbourne), or remotely (i.e., via Zoom). For environmental reasons we encourage all participants either to travel to a hub without flying or to contribute virtually. Abstracts should begin with a title and names and affiliations of the author(s). The main text should be structured with the following five headings:

  • Background
  • Aims 
  • Main contribution (or Methods and Results if the nature of the submission is empirical)
  • Discussion and conclusion
  • References

The total length of each submission, including title, authors, headings and references, must not exceed 1000 words. You will find the link to the submission portal on the following website: sites.google.com/view/gaps2/participation

Abstract submission deadline: 1st April 2023. Registration will be open in June 2023.

Organizing Committee

York
Andrea Schiavio (chair), Helena Daffern, Caroline Waddington-Jones & Tom Collins
Graz
Adrian Kempf (chair) & Richard Parncutt
La Plata
Isabel Cecilia Martínez (chair) & Joaquin Perez
Melbourne
Solange Glasser (chair) & Margaret Osborne

About GAPS
GAPS is about the arts and the people who create and appreciate them, from a psychological perspective. The arts include auditory arts (music, sound design), visual arts (painting, architecture), literature, drama, opera, digital arts, and so on. The conference is primarily intended for graduate students and postdocs. The first GAPS was also one of the first multi-hub academic conferences, happening in Graz, La Plata, Sydney, and Montreal. It was also a technical rehearsal for the bigger multi-hub “International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition” (ICMPC15), which was held in Graz, La Plata, Sydney, and Montreal in 2018.

Funding and Support
This conference is funded in part by a Stand-Alone Grant from the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) received by Andrea Schiavio: project number P 32460. Additional support comes from ESCOM, the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music.

 

Further information: