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Artistic Experimentation in Music

An Anthology

Edited by: Darla Crispin & Bob Gilmore

With contributions from: Paulo de Assis (ORCiM), Richard Barrett (Institute of Sonology, The Hague),

Tom Beghin (McGill University), William Brooks (University of York, ORCiM), Nicholas G. Brown

(University of East Anglia), Marcel Cobussen (University of Leiden), Kathleen Coessens (Vrije

Universiteit Brussel, ORCiM); Paul Craenen (Director Musica, Impulse Centre for Music), Darla Crispin

(Norwegian Academy of Music), Stephen Emmerson (Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith

University, Brisbane), Henrik Frisk (Malmö Academy of Music), Bob Gilmore (ORCiM), Valentin Gloor

(ORCiM), Yolande Harris (Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media – DXARTS), University of

Washington, Seattle), Mieko Kanno (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland), Andrew Lawrence-King

(Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, Royal Danish Academy of Music, Copenhagen,

University of Western Australia), Catherine Laws (University of York, ORCiM), Stefan Östersjö

(ORCiM), Juan Parra (ORCiM), Larry Polansky (University of California, Santa Cruz), Stephen Preston,

Godfried-Willem Raes (Logos Foundation, Ghent), Hans Roels (ORCiM), Michael Schwab (ORCiM,

Royal College of Art, London, Zurich University of the Arts), Anna Scott (ORCiM), Steve Tromans

(Middlesex University), Luk Vaes (ORCiM), Bart Vanhecke (KU Leuven, ORCiM)

© 2014 by Leuven University Press / Presses Universitaires de Louvain / Universitaire Pers Leuven,

Minderbroedersstraat 4, B-3000 Leuven (Belgium)

ISBN 978 94 6270 013 0

D / 2014 / 1869 / 57

Distributed by Leuven University Press

http://upers.kuleuven.be/nl/book/9789462700130

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Reprint from Artistic Experimentation in Music - ISBN 978 94 6270 013 0 - © Leuven University Press, 2014

http://upers.kuleuven.be/nl/book/9789462700130

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ARTISTIC EXPERIMENTATION IN MUSIC:

AN ANTHOLOGY

Orpheus_AE_corr.indd 1 9/09/14 17:51


Artistic Experimentation in MusicAn AnthologyEdited by Darla Crispin and Bob Gilmore

Leuven University Press



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Table of Contents

9 IntroductionDarla Crispin and Bob Gilmore

17 Section I Towards an Understanding of Experimentation in Artistic Practice

23 Five Maps of the Experimental WorldBob Gilmore

31 The Exposition of Practice as Research as Experimental SystemsMichael Schwab

41 Epistemic Complexity and Experimental Systems in Music PerformancePaulo de Assis

55 Experimental Art as ResearchGodfried-Willem Raes

61 Tiny Moments of Experimentation: Kairos in the Liminal Space of PerformanceKathleen Coessens

69 The Web of Artistic Practice: A Background for ExperimentationKathleen Coessens

83 Towards an Ethical-Political Role for Artistic ResearchMarcel Cobussen

91 A New Path to Music: Experimental Exploration and Expression of an Aesthetic UniverseBart Vanhecke

105 From Experimentation to CONSTRUCTIONRichard Barrett

111 Artistic Research and Experimental Systems: The Rheinberger Questionnaire and Study Day - A ReportMichael Schwab



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125 Section II The Role of the Body: Tacit and Creative Dimensions of Artistic Experimentation

131 Embodiment and Gesture in Performance: Practice-led PerspectivesCatherine Laws

143 Order Matters: A Thought on How to Practise Mieko Kanno

149 Association-Based Experimentation as an Artistic Research MethodValentin Gloor

153 Association and Selection: Toward a New Flexibility in the Form and Content of the LiederabendValentin Gloor

157 Il palpitar del core: The Heart-Beat of the “First Opera”Andrew Lawrence-King

167 Techno-Intuition: Experiments with Sound in the EnvironmentYolande Harris

Table of Contents



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175 Section III Experimenting with Materials in the Processes of Music-Making

181 what if?Larry Polansky

185 Historical Precedents for Artistic Research in Music: The Case of William Butler YeatsWilliam Brooks

197 Cageian Interpenetration and the Nature–Artifice DistinctionSteve Tromans

203 Revisiting Luigi Nono’s Suffered, Serene WavesPaulo de Assis

215 On Kagel’s Experimental Sound Producers: An Illustrated Interview with a Historical PerformerLuk Vaes

225 Composing as a Way of Doing PhilosophyNicholas G. Brown

231 Cycles of Experimentation and the Creative Process of Music CompositionHans Roels

241 Changing Sounds, Changing Meanings: How Artistic Experimentation Opens Up the Field of Brahms Performance PracticeAnna Scott

251 Experiments in Time: Music-Research with Jazz Standards in the Professional ContextSteve Tromans

261 Ecosonics: Music and Birdsong, Ends and BeginningsStephen Preston

Table of Contents



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269 Section IV Sound and Space: Environments and Interactions

275 Speaking and Singing in Different Rooms: Conceptuality and Variation in Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting in a RoomPaul Craenen

281 Experiment in PracticeCatherine Laws

291 The Virtual Haydn: An Experiment in Recording, Performing, and PublishingTom Beghin

307 On Life Is Too Precious: Blending Musical and Research Goals through ExperimentationJuan Parra Cancino

315 Interview with Agostino Di ScipioHans Roels

323 Kairos in the Flow of Musical IntuitionKathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö

333 Habitus and the Resistance of CultureKathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö

349 Repetition, Resonance, and DiscernmentKathleen Coessens, Henrik Frisk and Stefan Östersjö.

365 Intuition, Hexis, and Resistance in Musical ExperimentationKathleen Coessens and Stefan Östersjö

373 Appendix 1: Glossary Anna Scott

383 Appendix 2: Contents of CD

387 Appendix 3: Online materials

389 Appendix 4: Resources for Artistic Experimentation

391 Index

395 Notes on Contributors

Table of Contents



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Speaking and Singing in Different Rooms

Conceptuality and Variation in Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting in a Room1

Paul CraenenDirector Musica, Impulse Centre for Music

I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but, more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have.

The words above are the beginning of one of the most striking works in the history of experimental music.2 In the first recording, from 1969,3 Alvin Lucier speaks the words slowly, occasionally interrupted by a hesitation (Lucier has a

1 Translated from Dutch by Helen White. 2 It should be noted that Lucier’s score only offers this text as a suggestion; any other text may be used

instead. 3 Lucier has continued to make other versions, each recorded in a different room and with a different

duration. All audio examples in this article refer to a new version of I am Sitting in a Room, made by the author. An extract from the original recording (1969) with Lucier's voice has been used as input for 18 new feedback cycles. Lucier's original recording appeared as an addition to the magazine Source: Music of the Avant-Garde (vol, 7), edited by Larry Austin and Douglas Kahn. The recording may be accessed on ubuweb: http://www.ubu.com/sound/source.html (accessed July 1 2013). Sound examples for this article can be accessed at http://www.orpheusinstituut.be/en/anthology-repository.



Paul Craenen

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stutter). Immediately afterwards, we hear exactly what Lucier’s voice describes. The same words are heard again, but there is an audible difference in sound colour and an increase in the background noise. The difference in colour is caused by the resonance characteristics of the room in which the original recording is played and simultaneously re-recorded. The same process is then repeated many times. In each new recording, the resonances thicken and the room’s own frequencies are increasingly emphasised.4 Thus the intelligibility of the words slowly erodes to make way for clusters of feedback tones. After about a dozen recording cycles, the voice is completely erased. What remains is a soundscape of ringing, resonant drones whose phrasing provides the only vague memory of the words spoken.

conceptual process Music

I Am Sitting in a Room is one of the rare examples in twentieth-century music of a work worthy of the label “conceptual music.” In the definition provided by Sol LeWitt, a conceptual artwork is characterised by an idea or concept that determines all the aspects of that artwork. The concept “becomes a machine that makes the art” (LeWitt [1967] 2002, 846).

As a young man, Steve Reich took a similar approach in his much-cited article “Music as a Gradual Process” (1968) (and it is no coincidence that it dates from the same period as I Am Sitting in a Room). In this article Reich defines “process music” as work in which “the process” determines all the musical relationships, both at micro-level and in terms of the overall form (he offers the principle of the canon as an example). By analogy to the machine-like nature of LeWitt’s description of a concept, Reich considers the musical process to be an autono-mous, impersonal phenomenon: “once the process is set up and loaded it runs by itself ” (Reich [1968] 2002, 34).5 The composer’s role is limited to defining the process and determining the starting conditions. In doing so the composer places him- or herself outside musical time.

Nonetheless, the comparison between process music and conceptual visual art is not totally successful. In LeWitt’s view, the concept is the most funda-mental element of the artwork, with the actual implementation or craftsman-ship being of secondary importance. In most process music however, the per-formers’ musicianship is a crucial element in the communicative process of the piece (Pendulum Music is an exception in that respect).

I Am Sitting in a Room occupies a special position in this comparison between conceptual art and process music. Lucier’s concept is convincing in its own right, to such an extent that even today artists are coming up with alternative

4 Besides the room’s own frequencies, the spatial positioning characteristics of the recording and the playback equipment also play a role.

5 A good example of this is another famous feedback piece, Steve Reich’s Pendulum Music (1968). Three performers are needed at the beginning of the piece to hold up microphones and then release them at the same time. After that the microphones swing by themselves above the speakers and the performers’ task is finished.




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performance practices and thinking up translations into other media.6 The concept of I Am Sitting in a Room can be considered a discovery, a formula that can be applied to different contexts. The strength of Lucier’s original version lies in the wording of the concept that also forms the basic acoustic material with which the concept is implemented. Lucier links semantics back to acous-tics, thus creating an intriguing combination of layers—a feedback loop at a second level. Moreover, the words are spoken by a voice, and this voice has per-sonality. In Lucier’s case, it also has a very particular characteristic: his speech defect forms an integral part of the piece’s rhythm and gives his words (and especially the final sentence) a very human significance.

Despite the simplicity of the technological setting and the almost playful method, Lucier manages to create a rich listening experience. Conceptual, acoustic, and personal registers end up thoroughly intertwined. The sound process unfolds slowly and regularly, and yet one can observe constantly shift-ing interactions and complexities. In the following paragraphs, I will use a chronology of the listening experience to look for musical principles that can explain the successful structure of I Am Sitting in a Room.

a voice With variations

Let us begin by examining a few acoustic characteristics in the initial phase of I Am Sitting in a Room. Although the feedback process results in a very grad-ual transformation, it happens in clearly audible steps. Each time the feedback cycle is restarted, new resonances are added, and their overall characteristics remain the same for the whole cycle. Hence it is not a gradually evolving pro-cess, but a series of step-like changes in cycles (recordings) that can be distin-guished, each lasting about a minute and a half. Successive cycles sound quite similar to each other; the second cycle sounds almost identical to the first. And yet each recording unmistakeably possesses its own acoustic identity or quality. After several cycles, the introduction of the new identity is something the lis-tener begins to look forward to. The slowness and regularity of the cycle thus creates a strong pattern of expectation and gives the listener the time to listen consciously to differences with previously heard versions.

The effect of the feedback loops corresponds to a universal principle of musical variation. To give as generic a definition as possible, the principle can be described as: “something is changing while simultaneously something is staying the same.” The most important thing here is the “while.” Think of the “theme with variations” in classical music: the melodic, harmonic, and/or rhythmic structure of the music can be heard throughout the variations, how-ever complex they become. Variations on a theme are experienced as changes against a background of characteristics that remain stable and recognisable.

6 Some of the many examples that can be found on the web: Residuum, 2005. I am sitting in a room. http://archive.org/details/residuum-i_am_sitting_in_a_room_mp3. Accessed on 12/09/2013; Kirkegaard, Jacob: 4 Rooms, 2006. http://boomkat.com/cds/22750-jacob-kirkegaard-4-rooms. Accessed on 12/09/2013; [Laboratuar] performance, research and project lab, 2007. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8Q-4adwVck. Accessed on 12/09/2013.



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From a purely acoustic perspective, the only direct relationship in I Am Sitting in a Room is between a recording being played back and the previous record-ing. In that respect, it would be more accurate to speak of single variations or transformations that, step by step, take the sound result further and further away from the initial recording. But through this alone, it will already be clear how strongly semantics and acoustics influence each other in the listening experience. If we define the experience of thematic variation as an interaction between stable and unstable elements, the words can be considered the stable factor during the first recording cycles. After all, the voice continues to say the same thing, whereas the audible change is located in the new resonance that surrounds the voice in each new recording. “I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now . . .” sounds different every time, but the mean-ing of the words remains the same. Semantic intelligibility becomes a memory aid for auditory memory, the thematic core that allows us to trace the acoustic variations.

In the first iteration of Lucier’s voice, all our attention is turned to the mes-sage it communicates. In the following cycles the voice is still clearly intelli-gible, which turns the repetition of the same words, again and again, into a mantra with a certain level of redundancy and slowness. This gives listeners the chance to shift their attention from the meaning of the words to the character of the voice, the phrasing, and the accumulating resonance.

After the initial phase, everything seems to speed up. The feedback reso-nances start to become more and more independent, breaking free from the spoken words. What was initially “acoustically” audible as a secondary param-eter emancipates itself into a new phenomenon that nestles irresistibly in the ear. It is as though a conflict were arising between Lucier’s voice and the room in which he is sitting.

It is clear that this experience of heightened dynamics cannot be attributed to an acceleration of the cycle or an external intervention by the composer in the feedback process, but instead is caused by subjective and perceptual fac-tors. As the feedback tones come into their own, they demand more and more attention, and at the same time the intelligibility of the words is put under pressure. Gradually we reach the threshold of the minimum information needed to continue understanding the words in their own right. The listener is challenged to fill in mentally what is missing on the basis of previous itera-tions. The fading voice activates the listener’s memory and elicits involvement. Someone who has not heard the first six cycles will be unable to understand the voice as early as the seventh cycle of the original Lucier recording; how-ever, a listener who has been following from the beginning will continue to be able to hear the original words through the contours of rhythm, phrasing, and dynamics.

This brings us back to the principle of musical variation we mentioned earlier. Talking about a musical “theme with variations” is only relevant if a thematic core is retained throughout the variations. Recognisability is gradually put to the test in I Am Sitting in a Room. The stability we initially found in the semantics and the voice is progressively undermined. Increasing complexity and even a




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certain form of drama are the result. Lucier’s voice, on the point of being com-pletely swallowed up by the resonances of the room, also confronts the listener with a challenge to his or her own hearing. This is typical for Lucier’s work in general: on the surface, it seems to be about acoustic phenomena investigated with an almost scientific interest. But in the end it is primarily the act of listen-ing that comes to the fore.

Once intelligibility is lost, developments seem to slow down again. It is as if the conflict between two modes of perception has been resolved and a new stability can be heard. The room’s own frequencies have now forced their way to the forefront. By definition, these inherent frequencies stay the same (since the room in which the recordings are made stays the same), leading to a clearly audible relationship between, let’s say, the eighth and seventeenth cycles in terms of the frequencies present and the pitches that can be heard.

An important reversal has occurred. Each cycle continues to generate new resonances that can be experienced as sound variations, but the stable core around which they crystallise is no longer the voice or the words that could be heard in the first recording. In the first recording the characteristics of the room were hardly present at all, whereas the voice was absolutely central. In the course of the feedback process, this relationship is reversed step by step. The new relationship indicates something that grows, a tonality of the room that manifests itself ever more prominently. Hence we can no longer speak of vari-ations that refer back to a shared sound pattern in the past, but to the audible emergence of a future that had already been announced in the semantic sense, but was not yet borne out by acoustic reality at the beginning of the piece.

FroM speaKing to singing

In the final phase of I Am Sitting in a Room, the voice has been completely erased and all the silences between what once were words have been filled with spatial resonances. Now attention can be devoted fully to the play of feedback tones, the way they alternate with one another and how in each new recording they shift, stretch, or intensify a little, or sometimes even make way for a new note. Only the rhythm and dynamics still vaguely remind us of the original phrasing of the voice.

It is only when we look back over our shoulder that it becomes clear what rad-ical events have played out. The gradual nature of the feedback process means that each new recording can be heard as merely a minor variation on the one before. With each recording something is added, but much has also been lost along the way, almost without our noticing. The first loss was the articulation of the words, then the timbre of the voice, then the recognisability of the words, then the phrasing, until finally a sound situation was reached in which even the human origin of the sound has evaporated. However it is not so clear where, as listeners, we lost all these qualities. We do not remember any ruptures because our attention was always attracted by new details and, moreover, our memory was trying to fill in the gaps the whole time.



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I am Sitting in a Room demonstrates how experience with variations and rela-tionships is based on quantifiable acoustic or musical information and also constantly engages the listener’s memory and consciousness. The stable, rec-ognisable core around which variations can crystallise may be of an acoustic nature, it may be the meaning of a word, or it may be something even more abstract, something that could be described as a “concept” that does not corre-spond to (acoustic) reality. This conceptual origin gives the listener an awareness that turns out to be crucial to his or her listening experience and appreciation. Somewhere in the listening process, the listener loses language in its concrete, sounding form. He or she is caught up in a singing, resonating soundscape, all the while not entirely forgetting what is going on. For what also convinces us, step by step, when listening to I Am Sitting in a Room, is the success of the concept. As acoustic sensation, semantic frame of reference, and conceptual awareness affect one another more and more deeply, the listener’s “under-standing” ultimately becomes a triumph of the imagination.

There is a timeless, archaic theme concealed within this work, a theme that is not about acoustics but rather is about the metamorphosis of the voice. A speaking, stuttering voice emerges from the chrysalis of the piece as a voice that sings and resonates. This voice is not electronic and neither is it a second-ary characteristic of something (the room) or someone (Alvin Lucier). It is a voice of its own, a voice full of life directed towards a future, growing identity. This is what makes the listener listen, and continue to listen to what is yet to come.

References

Lewitt, Sol. (1967) 2002. “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art.” in Art in Theory, 1900-2000, edited by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, 846–49. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. First published in Artforum 5 (10): 79–83.

Reich, Steve. (1968) 2002. “Music as a Gradual Process.” In Writings on Music, 1965–2000, edited by Paul Hillier, 34–36. New York: Oxford University Press. First published in Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials by James K. Monte and Marcia Tucker (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art).



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