PERFORMANCE TECHNOLOGY 2010 / TIMARA

expanding ideas. the thought of it sometimes terrifies me. i dont really like to expand on my own ideas. i usually hate my ideas.

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most of the time……………………………………………………….ǝɯıʇ ǝɥʇ ɟo ʇsoɯ

I can’t be so analytical. More open minded thoughts I feel will serve me better.

But once I get the negative side of creative brain shut down…. were do I go?

Expansion can also be an exciting process. One of my more favorite parts is figuring out which direction has the most potential to expand into.
I really liked the installation project. The only problem was, I felt that I did not produce enough interesting material to be played through my
interesting medium.

My thought process now will go from size to density to shape to interaction to public/private.
how many, how much, what.

I think i’ll go out and experiment. I really like my sound exciters. THey’re exciting. Cool. Simple.
my check list will go as follows:
1. Membrane Instruments (drums etc.)
2. Metals (cymbals, pipes, gongs!)
3. Wooden (2×4, random doors.)
4. WTF (anything else)

be exciting!!!!!! I’m alsso getting really pissed off at those little errror dots.

It can be difficult, but experimenting has really helped me. I now under stand that working really does get the creative juices flowing. Stimulus package.

for my brain.

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-bb

Recently I have found the means of refinement functioning as a vehicle for expansion. As I strive to simplify my work, purify or polish an idea, I find myself further fabricating something which is essentially (and hopefully) thorough. This sounds vague, but essentially it is through this act that I can begin to think about expansion, about assemblage and form. Because once an idea, well rounded and sufficient, is presented it bears its own relationship to life, and within the context of a creation can function exclusively. This makes my job easier, knowing the motivation/direction/subjection of a particular object, gesture or motive being examined.

I guess what all of this means for me is an attentiveness to the micro-levels of a piece. In doing so I find the process of expansion to be a more wisely guided procedure. I find there to be a lesser chance of getting stuck at a particular point in a piece or even feeling entirely apathetic towards its being.

http://youwillneverfind.us/performancetechnology/204install_one/

Due to my past couple months spent constantly traveling, I’ve found myself in a growing amount of public spaces which have been installed with some form of interactive, new-media based art.  Whether it is a commission in an airport, public park, or the more obvious museum, the amount of hidden projections with motion based interactivity that I have come in contact with has grown considerably (more than I ever thought, in fact).  Some of these have been advertisements (such as JFK’s Chase ad which features screens in a busy hallway with images being rearranged as people walk past them) while others funded by some kind of public arts grant.  It has been even more interesting to note people’s changing reactions to these enhanced spaces.  Once the magic of these interactive screens begins to dissolve, as all of people’s personal appliances and surfaces become motion-sensor and touchscreen based, what will keep people interested in works like these?

When speaking with media-design students working within this exponentially growing landscape, the answer that most teachers give them is to search for the public’s “handle.”  Everyone “handles” which grab their attention and would cause someone otherwise going about their day moving through a crowded walkway to stop and glance at something out of the ordinary, something interactive that has at once caught their attention.  In dealing with my future work in this class I hope to gain some sort of grasp of what an Oberlin students “handle” could be.  I think when installing my first project in the waterfountain I got an initial sense that messing with people’s urgent consuming habits, that is, the universal need to drink water, is an easy enough handle.  How to enhance that experience or change it for people beyond drawing some of their attention to it is still up to me and other interactive media-based artists.  I just hope to move beyond novelty to create something that can do more than divert attention and rather engross that person in their interaction with certain extra-realities.

-Nick

Where we are...

Interaction is something that I’ve always had to deal with when it comes to music. Yes… deal with. Interaction is how you speak with the listener. Imagine not knowing how to interact with your vocal cords. It would become significantly harder to communicate ideas with the ease and freedom that those with working thyroarytenoid muscles can. That is how I view playing the piano, or the didgeridoo. The better your brain is at interacting, the better you can communicate.

When I started taking TIMARA classes the spring of my freshman year, the first thing that I noticed was that my vocal cords were not working at all. I could not make the sounds that I heard in my own head. This is something that I had gotten very good at in the percussion world. If I wanted to create a sound on these instruments… I could! But, when it came to computers, I couldn’t make any sound I liked at all! I didn’t know how to express myself. I didn’t know how to interact with the computer. It was probably one of the most frustrating experiences I’ve encountered during my studies at Oberlin. Of course, that was long before I know about MAX/MSP…. Once I was introduced, I felt a strong sigh of relief.

I now know that the computer music universe thrives on interactivity. I feel that I live in a time where recent technological innovations have blown the hinges off any limitation when it comes to expressiveness on computers. You can interact in almost anyway imaginable. I’m excited to see where things go to from here.

There is a fuzzy line that separates instrumentality from interactivity.  I assert that an instrument is a tool created for musical performance (and used by a performer) that responds to the performer.  An instrument is interactive, but only to a select number of informed users.  In general, an instrument does not make musical decisions on its own, but requires the input of the performer in order to produce any sound or have any compositional direction.  Interactivity, on the other hand, is the audience’s ability to interact with the product of that instrument.  Even though a violin responds to bow pressure, fingerings, plucking, etc., it is not something that immediately comes to mind with “interactivity.”  If, however, someone listening to a violinist were able to control the timbre by adjusting the way they are moving their arms, that would be interactive.  The difference between instrumentality and interactivity is fundamentally an issue of purpose.  An instrument is a tool of performance, whereas interactivity is a tool of inclusion.  If the audience feels like it is taking a dynamic part in what they are experiencing (audiovisually or otherwise), then it feels much more important and is drawn into the piece much more strongly.

How a piece interacts with the audience is another matter of careful consideration.  While having direct, constant, and obvious correlations between stimuli and output of a piece can be highly entertaining for awhile, it really does not stimulate further curiosity or interest in the piece.  The best kind of interactivity is the kind that allows the user or audience to know that they are in fact a part of what is going on, though the audience does not know exactly how it is involved.  This way, the audience still feels a strong connection to their experience but has to wonder (i.e. interact cognitively) what stimulus produces what result.  Imagine a fusion between instrument and this kind of interactivity: the audience is the performer, but does not (and perhaps cannot) ever discover how to play the instrument—a piece that perhaps has some kind of predetermined development (electronics controlled by the passing of time) but has the more specific details completely left up to what happens with who is observing it (and hence interacting with it).  The method of the piece (either the code of the program generating all the output, or the hardware, or what have you) is set and predetermined, but the content of the piece is indeterminable—yet still fun and worthwhile due to its relationship to the performer-audience.

- Luke

A Heady Instrument

We try so hard to create the illusion of interactivity, to an extent that it becomes rather trivial. So much live electronic music exists simply to boast the intimacy of its interactions. These pieces hunger for the gawks and awes of an audience, entranced by the exhibition of techno-magistracy at hand. But stepping back from these copulative musings, one can’t help but identify the shallowness of this act, or at least yearn for something more.

To me, this is a problem of intent, or content for that matter.

When content becomes purely about interactivity the audience is further distanced from the performance. It’s at this point that the perception of a piece is masked in irrelevance.

I guess its important for my sake to not allow interactivity to soak into the content of a piece. I’d hope that my work be guided by something else; narrative, intuition – intent, really, not the esoteric and problematic relationships between performer and instrument. If anything I would hope to distract the audience from this relationship, to allow for a pure consumption of a piece. Because the buzz-word in composition of the last 20 years has been “gesture”, yet this term denotes, at best a lone point of singularity. Perceptually, I don’t find this interesting, and rather a distraction in restraint.

At my fault, I enjoy being barraged with a mass of perceptual activity at once, allowing free associations to take place. A piece with an x + y = z formula is unimaginative and should not be considered true interactivity. For once the audience grasps the connection the output is rendered cliche and predictable. So many pieces work on the basis of this function, and though their aesthetics may be captivating x + y = z for the sake of it doesn’t cut it for me.

somethingsomethingsomethingsomething

I am thinking about this, while I am making water wiggle with my sound exciters.

-david

This semester is really the first time I’ve ever thought to do something interactive; not often do I even work with people when making something, let alone let strangers participate in the process. I’m excited, but also wary. My idea for our first project is beginning to feel stale, even gimmicky, and I wonder about the “staying power” or lasting impact of [the] interactive installations [i have thought of]. I suppose interactive projects that involve technologies are very reflective of the time they are made, and I think this is both interesting and problematic. I wonder if things like motion control of other mediums (video, audio) will become as common and easy as throwing delay on a track. How can I ensure that my motion detection-video playback installation isn’t a gimmick? Does the motion detection really add anything to the content or experience? Sure, it’s kind of cool, but especially when you know the tricks, when you are familiar with Max, I wonder how quickly it loses its appeal. Thinking about this makes me more concerned about the functionality space it is installed in (will it be a public space/pedestrian movement? will it be a private space/intentional movement?).

On another and more optimistic note……all art creates some sort of dialogue with the viewer, I think. Perhaps interactive art only makes this dialogue more apparent and more balanced between the artist and the participant. Interactive art also gives the participant a chance to make sense of what they are experiencing- a condensed version of what living essentially is (making sense of our surroundings through thought and action):

Olafur Eliasson-MoMa

post script: http://vimeo.com/9821419

At this point I have become pretty comfortable giving up most of my privacy.  In fact, I think I have come to assume that many facets of my physical life will end up being disseminated digitally at some point to varying numbers of other people (whether or not anyone is actually paying attention).  As bizarre as this seems to be, it doesn’t quite interest me as much as the personal facts and statistics about me that are constantly being collected in Cookies and databases such as Google and Facebook.  The utterly inane details of my life: my school, email contacts, web history, sexuality are being coded along with everyone else into huge IT centers somewhere outside of my physical OR digital visibility.

Does this mean anything in terms of privacy? Clearly there are other humans analyzing this data for large-scale trends, but for the most part this data seems to be merely chewed up and spit out by code in order to target ad material towards me.  While I have literally never clicked on a targeted ad, the way that the adsense code reads into my emails and profile information astounds me in a way that I have begun to feel an odd connection with the ads.  However vile or offensively inaccurate some of the ads may be, the mirror they hold up to my public and “private” movement online is at least interesting as one would watch one of Golan Levin’s robotic eyeballs watching them.  How can technology continue to break down one’s (in my opinion inherently flawed) notion of their “privacy”  and reconstitute it in terms of capitalism?  How can Adsense more fully learn me until I don’t need to think of it’s artificial intelligence as quaint?  Will I ever care about privacy again? Did I care before the internet? I might’ve been too young to care by that point anyway.

While there are still some secrets left in my personal life, somehow I don’t think I’d care if they ended up on the internet….

Public/Private. Is this a ratio? A mathematical formula? I’m sure that if you could attach numbers to this, you would really have yourself figured out. I think I’m 1/200.

These two words can pertain to so much surrounding music and its performance. The conservatory is an interesting place for this concept. Each day hundreds of musicians cram themselves into this white Tolkienian fortress, each searching for their own space to practice. The learning atmosphere exists exclusively as a tête-à-tête between the musician and their instrument. Eavesdropping is frowned upon. Why?

Well, using the conversation analogy, I would say that practicing is more or less an argument with your instrument. It messes up, it won’t cooperate. Does anyone like being seen arguing in public? I believe its safe to say that nobody does. That is why practice rooms exist. I instantly think of Monty Python’s Argument Clinic sketch. You are showing up to purposefully argue. Each time you return with renewed passion; “This time I know what to do. I know how to counter the instrument’s argument!” Learning music can be a very tumultuous process and along the way the instrumentalist hopes reach an agreement with the instrument. It is frustrating to think that you could spend hundreds of hours of preparation for 1 single hour of performance will more than likely contain mistakes.

A funny thing that I notice frequently on the Oberlin Conservatory website is the exclamation of “150 practice rooms with windows!”

I think its comforting. Complete isolation is not conducive to a healthy learning environment. Perhaps the Conservatory hopes that for every 200 hours a student spends practicing, 1 is spent looking out the window.