Notes on Composition

In line with an exploratory and project-based (rather than an artwork or event based) approach to media art, Sāk vitt ok vītt of verǫld hverja concerns a pool comprising various kinds of (digital or physical) artefacts, data, creative methods, compositional stratagems, and poetic aspirations, that have all surfaced empirical field work and engagement with the landscape in an eclectic and maximalist manner. It is upon this pool and the affordances of its comprising materials that creative outcomes are produced and exhibited on occasion and contingently. ’Small’ outcomes (i.e., photos, videos, physical objects, audio documents, etc) that zoom in particular details of the landscape under scrutiny can be exhibited stand-alone. Multimedia Performances are improvised and contingent in spirit; they follow loosely delineated, but not strictly predetermined, trajectories. They are rather actualised in situ with respect to real world specifities (space, time/timing, audiences, equipment, etc) and selectively pivoting on different affordances at each distinct occasion. With the aid of DIY instrumentation, extracts from the pool are juxtaposed so as to resolve into hybrid media art events in front of a living audience. The film is an attempt to creatively document the overall endeavour, with the additional focus to bring forth narratives and materials that are left out the various multimedia performances (due to various pragmatic constraints). As such, it is meant to attain own artistic value but also to capture some important aspects of Sāk vitt ok vītt of verǫld hverja that are simply absent in performance settings. For instance, it is now possible to include lengthy interviews or to accelerate many more immersive views of the landscape. The film should not be thought of in strict documentary terms, nevertheless; but rather as an opportunity to further hybridise in new directions since it remains inherently impossible to account for the broad phenomenological/sensory and methodological multi-modality suggested herein with cinematic techniques alone.

Apparently, composition wears a variety of different faces in Sāk vitt ok vītt of verǫld hverja, each coming with its own technical and artistic challenges. The intellectual aid illustrated on the right is sometimes employed by the author to orientate himself insofar as aesthetic and structural affairs are concerned. Eclectic hybrids comprising different materials/methods can be thought of as in a constant state of reconcilation in between four broad media modalities in ever-opposing and mutually exclusive pairs: Datafied vs poetical / Abstract vs Narrational (the narrational herein also stands for representational/descriptive). The various tactics described in sāk vitt ok vītt of verǫld hverja result in artefacts and/or processes that pull towards some specific direction as indicated by the black arrows. For instance, raw scientific data displays would pull a hybrid entirely Datafied-wards, while excerpts from an interview entirely Narrational-wards. Photos, videos, or audio may apply composite forces anywhere towards the Abstract/Poetical/Narrational directions: e.g., abstract audio synthesis would probably push Abstract/Poetical, while straightforward landscape photography is most likely to pull entirely Narrational-wards. Juxtaposing material of sorts in some situated context results in dynamic and organic textures that oscillate across the entire complex.

This, in turn, may set out the aesthetic modalities illustrated on the diagram. Dramatic and Surreal concern what their names suggest, but with the former also having the additional meaning of gestural/expressive, and the latter also suggesting a metaphoric hue aiming at the mysterious alterity of things. The Posthuman one lies at the crux of Abstract-Datafied-Narrational, and suggests itself as a modality that zeroes in on the interconnectedness of things as what co-produces social activities and cultural manifestations. The Hypermedia modality concerns Datafied-Narrational-Poetical hybrids and suggests itself as a certain kind of poetic remmediation that exposes the materials and processes upon which it is itself conditioned1. Complex outcomes can be thought of as organic trajectories through alternating modalities of sorts, so that e.g., in a live performance and in some particular moment in time, it is the author’s task to either invest upon the dynamics that naturally surface a particular juxtaposition —sustaining and further articulating the resultant actualities (possibly through the introduction of similar kinds of material)— or to more or less abruptly shift the focus towards another direction. The specifics of how such hybrids are formed and towards which ends they may be channeled are to be decided in situ and largely intuitively. The film is edited having in mind that it should alternate through all various modalities in a harmonious/balanced manner.

This schema should not be taken literally, of course. It remains a gross and largely misleading over-simplification that fails do justice the complexities/subtleties of real-life materials, presentation media, performance practices, and compediums thereof. These always transcend strict schemata and ever afford entirely different modes of organisation. This diagram is merely an intellectual aid to help orientate oneself through the highly eclectic mixture of all kinds of artefacts and tactics that have surfaced empirical field work. It is occasionally the case that an altogether different compositional paradigm is rather pursued.

Future Work 

Having set out the hyper-constructive method and the particular ways it is made unfold in the case of a very broad (sub)arctic region, two pending questions emerge:

1. how to specialise, extrapolate, or differentiate the method so that it may extend to all sorts of other regions, and 
2. re-examine concerns of landscape-related artistic research, performance, and production through the hyper-constructive lenses.

Both questions require further field work in regions with diverse characters and in different creative/research contexts. A relevant project has been already concluded. It concerns a tiny region of very different geophysical, sociopolitical and geographical characteristics, a significant shorter timescale, and an one-of site-specific output; accordingly, it is a case that is very different —almost antithetical— to that of Sāk vitt ok vītt of verǫld hverja. A report on this project and a close scrutiny of how it specialises and extends this body of work is underway. There are concrete plans to conduct field work in a few other regions, too, with the aid of the author’s research team, once it becomes again possible to realise that kind of field work (given the ongoing covid-19 pandemic).

DIY Instrumentation

The DIY apparatus illustrated on the left (called 'THEBRICK' by the author) emerged as an ad hoc solution to facilitate different live performance scenarios —e.g., audiovisual, audio-only, video-only, multichannel audio, or other— that is, as the means to creatively explore the digital output the various field explorations have resolved into. Making and crafts as the means to conduct ethnographic/anthropological field work is fostered in some resources2; herein, however, it largely serves different purposes. It very loosely draws upon object-oriented inspired 'carpentry' (also see hljōþs biþk allar helgar kindir) and, much more importantly, upon speculative design strategies3. THEBRICK is a programmable device capable of live video, image, audio, data sonification, and text printouts. It surfaced not so much as a solution to presenting multimedia material that relates with the project; but, rather, as an experimental instrument that would further nonstandard compositional experimentation with them. As seen, it is rough-hewn, all-metallic, and featuring a cryptic interface with no indication whatsoever to suggest what it does or how it should be used. It bears the unmistakable marks of a largely critical/speculative approach to interaction design that celebrates adhocracy, post-optimality, and a certain degree of user-unfriendliness as qualities that are both to be sought for and brought forth4.

THEBRICK can be programmed to perform arbitrary tasks with respect to the available inputs, outputs, and hardware controls: eight audio outputs, two audio inputs, one video output, a roll-paper thermal printer, several knobs and buttons, and two LEDs. Up to 14 different printing routines may be triggered through a combination of buttons, resulting in paper strips of various lengths with raw scientific data or cooking recipes. The device may also select, play, and pause a series of precomposed video/image narratives. A number of toggle switches is used to alternate between eight different audio parts and their various subparts. Each of these them comes with its own interaction schema, so that through the available knobs it is possible to control synthesis parameters as appropriate (data sonification parameters, sound volume of reproduced recordings, etc). Note that while it is possible to freely alternate between the available parts, it is only possible to go sequentially forward through the available subparts. The device is not merely designed to allow for nonstandard ways to juxtapose audiovisual material, but also as the means to hinder some standard performance/interaction schemata. Performing with THEBRICK then becomes a dynamic and improvised process to manoeuvre the available digital artefacts and the available manipulations thereof in just a few possible fashions.

It, then, becomes possible to compose a wide range of contingent and multimedia micro-narratives with respect to the particular performance constraints at play. A few persistent configuration have, of course, surfaced creative experimentation. It should be clarified, however, that field exploration and probing has taken place while also designing, building, programming, and performing with THEBRICK. Making and using what is made mingle herein, and remain a dynamic and always unfinished affair. In this fashion, the author gropes for what is explored and, at the very same time, the technological means to explore it —in a rather reflexive manner. In other words, THEBRICK is the means to both improvise with the available material within certain creative constraints, as well as the means to aid define what exactly these constraints are, and what other kinds of material could additionally appear therein. The short video on the left demonstrates the author's performance set-up, comprising THEBRICK and an eclectic collection of 'things' that have been collected in the context of Sāk vitt ok vītt of verǫld hverja.

Discussion & Conclusions 

This research exposition announces the hyper-constructive method and accounts for its experimental implementation in a particular region. The method is elaborated upon as a maximal, materialist, and hybrid paradigm to explore geophysical structures and phenomena, animals, things of all sorts, cultural practices, and mobilities that occur within this area. The eventual aims are to produce art that is valid on its own sake, to generate non-theoretical/non-scientific ways of knowing a place and its associated human and other-than-human cultures and, maybe more importantly, to investigate a number of different fashions in which empirical landscape exploration, computational science, non-representational-theory, (digital) crafts, object-oriented ontology inspired tactics, and experimental arts may mingle, entwine, and compliment one another. 

To this end, it is important to distinguish between two braided constituents:

1. the multi-level process of inquiring a place with many different probes and in a maximalist fashion, and
2. related creative output, both as the means to present research outcomes and as a method of inquest that is epistemologically valid on its own terms.

Herein, both traits are necessarily simultaneous, incomplete, and realised in a fragmented fashion. It is both impossible and unnecessary to account for all possible species of objects/activities that occur in a place, much as it is to succinctly convey to an audience all that has been indeed probed. Anyhow, there is a deep intrinsic connection between the two: creative outcomes selectively employ and re-purpose what situated field work has resolved into, but at the very same time they are themselves perfectly valid means to explore, engage with, get to know, and make sense of the field. And vice versa: situated field work is the means to produce digital artefacts that fuel the production of artworks pivoting on their creative manipulation/composition, but can also be the very creative artefact in its own sake (e.g. found objects expositions, unprocessed sounds, food, scientific data, etc). The hyper-constructive project is intended as one wherein there is no meaningful distinction between the two: exploration does not necessarily precedes production, and the instrumentation/tactics to interrogate (raw) objects are no less (raw) objects to be probed themselves.

Under these premises, Sāk vitt ok vītt of verǫld hverja unconditionally and reflexively oscillates between different ways of knowing and sense-making, especially favouring ones that are non-hermeneutic, non-critical, post-phenomenological, and enactive. This points back to the underpinnings of the project as discussed in hljōþs biþk allar helgar kindir: object-oriented ontologies, actor network theory, critical posthumanism, non-represenational theory, techno-scientific mediation, and interdisciplinary research frameworks all compliment one another in that they contribute epistemic apparatuses and distinct lenses to accelerate a series of different ways to know a place. Sāk vitt ok vītt of verǫld hverja sees the Nordic landscape as the dynamic emergent outcome of more or less interrelated objects, activities and mobilities thereof —ones that remain always inaccessible and irreducible to the way they may appear to each one of those apparatuses alone. So why abide to any one in particular? Instead, it is attempted to engage with the region in all sorts of different (in)formal fashions and in an unconditionally maximalist and eclectic style. Accordingly, a series of traditional dichotomies (researcher and what is researched, probes and what is probed, exploration and its very outcome) are undermined by means of an immediate hands-on approach commencing on two very pragmatic points of departure:

1. reality always transcends theories and representations of it, and
2. a genuinely unconditional creative exploration of a place oughts not make sense in any formal epistemological fashion —it can, and should, contradict itself embracing all sorts of disparate artistic and epistemic tactics.

As is the case with certain strands in ethnography, what is explored and the particular ways of knowing/interpreting it are always (re)discovered and (re)produced in the give and take of real life5.

Having examined the individual apparatuses that aid to such a multi-modal exploration, and also providing an extensive audiovisual record to support the validity of such a claim, it is herein argued that Sāk vitt ok vītt of verǫld hverja concretely succeeds in delivering a certain kind of knowledge about the North Nordic region: an overly eclectic one that fears not contradict itself —being sometimes abstract/poetic, some others very literal or computational, and some others overly informal and reminiscent of a guerrilla-style ethnography. Above all, it is a kind of knowledge that cannot be communicated discursively or in just some phenomenological modality alone —it only emerges at the crux of several different media and several different ways of seeing, listening, or touching. Be it for the researcher/practitioner himself, an audience attending a multimedia performance or watching the movie, or a scholar studying this exposition, alternative ways of knowing the region in question naturally arise. Albeit knowledge of sorts is not at all quantifiable, representational, or discursive in spirit, it is claimed to be a perfectly valid and sound way to deliver evocative and poetic accounts of the North Nordic landscape.

Having reach the end of this page, the reader is adviced to proceed to either sāk vitt ok vītt of verǫld hverja, hljōþs biþk allar helgar kindir, or hvers fregniþ mik hvī freistiþ mīn?