Liveness: live sampling and improvisation

I see live sampling as an extension of counterpoint in musical composition. For example, in Afterimages for bass flute and electronics, the software gathers its sounds from the soloist live during performance, transforming passages and folding them back into the performance. The “live or Memorex?” effect in these compositions exposes our sense of authenticity as an element of performance distinct from the sounds and sights on stage. It is intensified when all performers are improvising (including me manipulating live sampling software of my own design) as in this improvisation with jazz saxophone. Other quasi-intelligent “composed performance environments” Motet and Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Musiker take this a step farther as the software makes its own decisions in performance, and I have created Wiimote-based live sampling instruments for my laptop ensemble, the TAMU Laptet (shown at the beginning of this video, with me conducting the improvising students—note that these are first semester students). Improvisation is also at the heart of my live coding performance A Treatise on the Æsthetic of Efforte. A paper in this CMMR publication by Springer discusses the aesthetics of works like these and shows how they can be applied to more traditional forms of composition.

Intermedia collaboration

Collaborative works include Research Embodied (discussed further in this paper) incorporating live video processing, acting, and architecture, RUhere created with improvising poets, StillMotion for dance and photography, and Deck for dance. Every spring I work with students from a variety of disciplines (artistic and other) to create interactive intermedia art installations for public exhibit, like Musical Blocks.

Metacomposition: algorithmic and feedback systems

In the course of other projects, I discovered that some of my creations began to take on lives of their own, and the aesthetic implications therein are fascinating. My live sampling environment Motet becomes a different piece when all it hears is its own output (instead of a human soloist). Similarly, Elektro (discussed above) becomes Tappatappatappa using the same software as Elektro, just by completing a feedback loop to its audio input. I’ve presented my findings in this area at the International Computer Music Conference.

Organology and instrument design

Many of the works discussed above blur the lines among composition, performance, and instrument design. I see my approchto organology and instrument design in the same way as I show my students to think of circuit-bending and conceptual forms of hacking: to consider the natural properties of an instrument, situation, or software independently from the assumptions regarding their purpose or normal use. This acoustic étude for horn looks at the horn not as a chromatic instrument, but as a natural horn (bound to its harmonic series, slightly warped because of its design) with the ability to quickly shift from one harmonic series to another.

Deck for dance turns Foley art techniques into instruments for live performance that can build new meanings across sound and visuals because of common associations (via the household objects used as sound sources, their use inspired by the dance). In Research Embodied, we took the idea of site-specific performance as far as we could in a presidential library, so in order to highlight the sounds of consuming information, we turned books and a QWERTY keyboard into farily versatile musical instruments and even embraced the musical potential of footsteps in the heavily reverberant space. In a student theatrical production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we put accelerometers on the actors in order to allow their own naturally occurring actions to sculpt the music and sound around them. Finally, A Treatise on the Æsthetic of Efforte gives a nod to the underlying value of effort in steampunk art by making typing and mousing prominently audible in this live coding performance, in counterpoint with the piano’s sound.

Involving students in engaging the public

I have found it very effective to immerse my students in a community of artists curiously and bravely exploring the unfamiliar, always with a goal of public presentation. I regularly direct students in innovatively expressive sound design as discussed above regarding theatrical productions Prelude and  Midsummer and my intermedia performance course. Research Embodied also involved students deeply in the creation and performance processes and led them to win third prize in an international symposium for the performance in a presidential library, and I took on the project Deck to develop a new live performance workstation to facilitate student collaborations.

The ZenMan Improvisations concert demonstrates well how I create new works along with my students, and engage them with inspiring and prominent artists.  Every spring, our students create interactive intermedia art installations (like Musical Blocks) for the Viz-A-GoGo showcase of digital art by students. This year, we launched the TAMU Fresh Minds Festival, which brought hundreds of visual music submissions worldwide for several hundred TAMU students to co-curate en mass a competition and performance as part of their core curriculum arts credit experience. I’ve written about this pedagogical approach with theatre arts designer Autum Casey in the International Journal of Art, Culture, and Design Technologies.