Given a direct choice between reality and artifice, I believe I’m most likely to choose the former. This concept has underpinned much of my creative practice. Even when beat cutting / pasting was at the height of its popularity, I’d be stuck behind the drums all day trying to get a take..
Similarly, the desire to expose both process and the actual, visceral emotions behind it indicate why I’m so taken with improvisation.
This website, in its current form, only exists as an attempt for me to expose the ideas behind what I make, the underlying metaphysic if you will.
We all have things we are willing to trade away when it comes to our practice, control vs. time invested is a big one, particularly in the digital realm, where the means by which one produces work may be far from intuitive. Don’t want to learn DSP to implement an FIR filter? There are a host of ready made plugins that will fulfill this function admirably. As one’s needs become more esoteric, so does the need to do it oneself and so begins a journey. The only remaining issue then is how deep the rabbithole you want / are prepared to travel.
I’ve spent plenty of time learning new stuff to facilitate the production of sound work, maybe less than you, it’s hard to tell.
What feels to me like a huge parabola of (mostly) self-instruction is not only dwarfed when compared to the trajectories of others, it’s not even the point of it all. I have to remind myself occasionally that making stuff is the point and that learning should serve to facilitate such an outcome.
I’ve only ever thought myself to have one ‘talent’ or ‘gift’ (rather dislike both those words) and that’s the ability to persevere.
Rather than stop when most sensible people would and turn their attentions to things a little more wordly, I keep going until I’ve learnt that sticking, figured how to get that code to run, finished that piece etc.
Such tenacity is hardly inducive to seemless social integration, so you could ask (with some justification) what the point of such industry is? I certainly have (and will again, no doubt).
May I direct you to re-read the first sentence of this missive? I believe that’s the answer.
This isn’t rock’n'roll, pre-packaged and readily digestible.
The work is a pre-requisite and isn’t, of itself, something you can trade as a commodity.
Assiduous effort over a long period will get you there. There being a Utopia with only one guaranteed inhabitant.
And that’s the real.
This evening, as I was cooking the curry (not a colloquialism), I thought I’d put on a modern popular film. Its title is almost irrelevant.
The film quickly sets up an improbable premise set in a land of polarised emotions / relationships in the not too distant past. Are they actual eighties toys? Oh, the attention to detail! And bonanza, it’s got an alien in it. Roswell isn’t mentioned but it doesn’t need to be. Provide enough crass cultural references and we can all fill in the dots, a lovely way to pass the time I’m sure.
Were the director to have joined me at the point I switched it off, I’ve little doubt he’d tell me that his milieu is story-telling. You know how the argument goes; there are no new stories (science-fact), so it is beholden on the creatives amongst us to recycle and re-’envisage’ our current stock for the rest of eternity.
It is true that people who create non-static art cannot escape the arrow of time – for us humans, it flows in one direction. Thus, from a suitable perspective, we will be able to detect a beginning, a middle and an end to most works.
To infer from this that we’re all doomed to endlessly repeat the same forms, whatever our intentions, is simplistic and lazy. Our lives all follow that same shape – beginning, living, then dying. Were we to live them as per the dictates of our time’s ‘Entertainment’, there would be no self-determination within our own stories, no questions that we have to answer for ourselves.
As for me, I’d love to collaborate with someone who makes experimental film. Where does one go to meet such types?
There’s something thrilling about the immersion made possible through the confluence of sound and vision and it is in that spirit that I offer the rather circular experience of the above and below.
Given my preoccupation with using a computer to generate streams of data which I use to make music, it may seem a little perverse that my current chimera involves removing the laptop from my solo performance rig.
As discussed last week, I think the laptop functions beautifully as a barrier between the performer and their audience, one I’d like to try and remove.
Ideally, my gestures during a performance would all demonstrably alter the sonic outcome; there would not be those awkward moments where the audience perceive you’re doing something but that could be preparing to execute a block of code or it could be emailing the folks back home. It’s a moment where the discourse between the performer and the audience is derailed – the performer is having a private moment with the technology, the audience’s notions of mutual fidelity in the shared experience are shattered.
Or, at best, subsequent to the keyboard bashing, something then happens to the sound which justifies this temporary disconnect between performer and audience. If this event-to-be is suitably gratifying, everyone may feel placated. My concern is that the performer is then establishing an expectation; the next performer/laptop interaction may not result in such elan. Without direct access to the performer’s interface (and the ability to interpret what is happening there), it is impossible for the audience to fully make the connection between what they are seeing and what they are hearing.
Projecting the laptop’s desktop is one way to have everyone ‘feel more involved’ but one which I feel recognises the issue and simultaneously admits defeat, akin to a TV studio manager having to hold up a placard telling the audience when to laugh.
I have some new small things to add to my rig to aid me in this quest for performative laptop abandonment – they may feature here in future weeks..
What makes for an engaging electronic music performance? As is usual on this page, a universal response is not forthcoming but here’s where I’m at with it:
I remember getting freebie tickets to see the Orb at RAH in 1998. I wasn’t expecting a Damascene conversion to their style of performance but thought it’d worth seeing what all the fuss was about. We lasted barely ten minutes before departing, plenty long enough to learn that watching some blokes start pre-programmed sequences doesn’t do it for me, no matter how good the light show is. I need a kinaesthetic relationship to the making of the sound, the moment of its creation, something beyond filter sweeps and riding fx return faders.
I don’t think it’s merely a matter of the physical relationship to the music making coal face; I’ve yet to see a Monome performance that really hits the mark. With that interface-du-jour, the relationship between physical movement and sound is apparent. All too apparent; the lack of phrase dynamics and expression cannot be compensated for by the performer’s exaggerated gestures, no matter how earnest. And there’s those flashing lights again.
I do grant, however, that a clear parallel between movement and the resultant sounds bestows performative authenticity that is nigh impossible to determine when staring at the back of laptop.
The problem is, as a performer, I want to both create and manipulate the data itself in real time, not just when that data is triggered or a particular facet of its sonification.
There are new (and old) pieces of hardware that aren’t laptops that seem to facilitate such an outcome, but most of them are expensive and not wholly reconfigurable in the way the software I like is.
Still, speed and reliability are paramount in performances involving technology, an advantage that many discreet boxes have over laptops. I may yet have to trade away some power and flexibility to make further gains in these areas.
I shall report back here as changes in my live work flow take shape.