Chapter II
Context
Live Electronics
Out of all of the sonic aspects of music, my main interests are focused on spectromorphologies and sonic behaviors. To clarify, when my instruments change from one frequency to another, my listening is not so much directed at the specific pitch material involved but very much at the particular transformations involved, as the first frequency dissolves and the next emerges. Away from pitch, rhythm, or timbre, my interests focus firmly towards speech similarity and spectromorphology, creating a kind of sonorous prosody created from nonlinear systems. For me, deciphering the prosody of sounds points to the considerations of where noise ends and signal begins and vice versa. Such a signal could be a burst of noise, as well as a clear pitch, instilling a kind of ambiguity between signal and noise. These considerations become especially ambiguous at the very moment that a tipping point within a chaotic process is breached. Existing hierachical structures in the sound unravel, while new structures emerge and come to the forefront. These moments could be seen as a form of pre-music, a duration in which the syntax and vocabulary of the sound is undergoing processes of formation.
As stated in the introduction to this reflection component, my practice is situated in the field of live electronics. However, live electronics itself, should be viewed as an umbrella term, encompassing a wide variety of activities. Many artists working within the field of live electronics either specialize in the performance of electronic music instruments that are designed and built by others, or they are themselves designing and building instruments but leave the performance aspect behind. My own practice encompasses both realms of activities. While most of the artists discussed in this chapter and throughout the reflection component also integrate this broad scope of activities, others will either lean more toward one activity or the other. They are included in this field guide as they inform my practice and exemplify the variety of practitioners within the field.
Live Electronics, as a term, takes two important steps to draw up some delineations. First, there is the aspect of liveness, which further points to the concert as the environment of conduct. Even though much of the actual work within my practice is developed in the studio or workshop (conceptualization, designing, building, practicing, rehearsing, recording, documenting, etc.), eventually, the results of this work are to be shared in real-time, with an audience present. This step, the translation from the privacy of the studio to the public character of the performance venue, points to a range of considerations affecting artistic decisions.
Conceptually, chaotic processes defy prediction. There are always unforeseen aspects that can disrupt and change the direction of the behaviors. This means that the only way to uncover chaotic behaviors is to experience them in real-time. The instruments that are developed as part of the research are synonymous with these chaotic processes. As the noise artist and researcher Jessica Rylan exclaims in Tara Rogers book, Pink Noises:
“[...] the analog circuit is real-time, it’s really happening! And the sound it produces is the same as the electricity producing it.”
T. Rodgers, J. Rylan (2010, 143)
The sounds that are produced by the instruments are not just inspired by chaos, the production process of the sounds is itself chaotic. This is an important delineation within my practice. A recording, documentation, or any capture of the sonic output of the instruments, freezes the underlying processes and are therefore no longer chaotic. And as a result, my compositional scores are used as a means to structure ongoing processes rather than to fixate their outcomes. Fundamentally they are used to nurture formation rather than to impose form. Each concert is therefore a unique event, and the music that is sounding during this event can only be experienced once. A recording or capture of any one of these concerts, has to be seen as a reduction, and since chaos is so sensitive to conditions, this reduction can never be considered precise enough to replace the concert but should rather be seen as a separate work that is in itself non-chaotic.
Portability and structural soundness are areas of concern, as instruments need to be robust enough to be transported from the studio to the stage where they need to be reliably operational. Considering the chaotic nature of the instruments that are developed as part of the research, this reliability points to the technical aspects of the work, not necessarily the artistic aspects. This means that the instruments predictably perform their unpredictable, chaotic logic. Within my work, the notion of "chaos through malfunction" is not of interest, instead, complexity is derived through nonlinear feedback loops. Through this particular approach, a vast breadth of sonic behavior emerges from only a handful of ingredients, making it possible to create portable instruments that are sonically versatile.
The use of at least some form of electronics is rather ubiquitous in many contemporary sonic practices, so even though it does help in a small way to delineate my practice, it will be necessary to give some concrete points of reference, to serve as an illustration of the specific approaches that inform my practice. STEIM, the former Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music, has been a formative institution that continues to have a momentous impact on my thinking regarding the integration of electronics in performative music practices. During its five decades of active operation, STEIM always operated at the forefront of the latest developments in technology, yet they always maintained a particular criticality towards the various directions music technology ventured into. More specifically, this critique has always been grounded in a performative understanding of musical practice, focused on elements such as touch, tactility, timing, effort, and gesture. As a consequence, most of the instruments developed at STEIM were tailor-made by, and for, the many artists that came over to visit during their residencies. This resulted in exceptionally personal sonic vocabularies; played through sensorial interfaces; uniquely adapted to the performers' gestures; custom-made to be taken to the stage.
The particular variant of live electronics that best exemplifies my practice is one where instrument design becomes an integral part of the process of art production. The instrument itself, including the processes involved in its development, becomes a thoroughly entangled node within a network of other intertwined activities. These nodes are where conceptual, compositional, and performative questions can be addressed.
One artist that has impacted my outlook on the field of live electronics, is the former artistic director of STEIM and live electronics artist Michel Waisvisz, and in particular his work with the Crackle Synthesizer. The main concept behind this instrument is as simple as it is versatile, an electrical circuit that is only fully connected through touch, requiring the conductance of the skin of the performer's body to complete the flow of electrons from positive to ground. The act of play is elevated to a point where the human merges with the technology, the one literally completing the other.
“Some time in the early-sixties I started touching the inside of my fathers short-wave radio receivers. Before that with my brother René I had given ‘concerts’ at home by placing our fingers on circuit boards of transistor radios that were ‘wrongly’, but usefully, interconnected with wires. The little electrical shocks were nice and the changes in the sound were exciting and magic mind-openers. Through touch I was able to start playing with short wave sounds in a way that would later become ‘sound music’.”
The human skin works as a variable resistor within the circuit that drives the production of sound. Environmental properties such as moisture and heat, but also internal properties such as nervousness and stress, have an impact on the moisture of the hand and will have a real effect on the operation of the instrument. Each time the fingertips touch the conductive pads on the instrument, it will respond in new and unexpected ways. The crackling, peeping, and squeaking soundworld of the instrument reflects the unpredictability of their operation.
Cybersonics
“We use many circuits from Norbert Weiner's book on Cybernetics: The Science of Control and Communication in Animals and Machines. We recorded and amplified the electronic activity and endlessly processed it. Since they were all mathematical equations they seemed to have a kind of order and organic rightness. Entropy and information theory contributed ideas on probability and randomness, which we had to use since that was the only thing our circuits were capable of. We thought of our circuits as characters in a script and used the unfolding of pitches as they came out of the circuit [...]. Each circuit we built had lifespans of their own [...] and once they died we never could revive them. We always were innocent with a sense of wonder and awe of the beauty coming from the circuits [...]. We were in a very receptive state like that of a child, working with our eyes and minds open, paying attention to the potential of each circuit and we were simply amazed at what great things came out of those circuits.”
B. Baron (1997)
There are many approaches to create chaotic processes in live electronic music, but a common aspect of most of them is the aspect of recursion or feedback. The use of feedback mechanisms is a core concept in cybernetics. Composers and instrument designers like Gordon Mumma, Bebe, and Louis Barron have been heavily inspired by the field of cybernetics since the Fifties and Sixties, exploring the use of feedback as a rich source of emergent sonic behaviors. Contemporary artists such as Toshimaru Nakamura, still explore those same principles today.
Cybersonics, a term coined by Gordon Mumma, takes its inspiration from cybernetic feedback processes but lets go of the insistence on predefined goals. The art of steering becomes the art of letting go of the steering wheel altogether. In the Nineteen-Sixties, it was particularly this latter approach that inspired composers and instrument builders to develop new perspectives on what it means to compose.
“[...] cybersonics departed from cybernetics in several significant ways. First of all, the goal-oriented view of systems became itself a means to another end: what mattered was not what the system ultimately accomplished but what it produced in the attempt. The music, in other words, was a side effect.”
In the piece, Rainforest IV, developed by live-electronics pioneer David Tudor, a feedback network is established where sounds are diffused through a range of objects equipped with transducers. After the installation is complete, the composer is no longer in control of the sonic behaviors that emanate throughout the space. Taken together, the music takes the form of a densely layered wall of sound, or rather, a jungle in which all kinds of electronic chirps, moans, and groans stack up and appear to mimic the calls and responses inherent in the natural rainforest, hence the title.
“[...] the visitors’ experience of Rainforest IV would be similar to how an exhibition of sculpture would be encountered; as in sound art, the emphasis was on the listeners’ perception of sounds in space, rather than a succession of sounds occurring in time, as heard from a single position.”
Once things are set in motion, the artist focuses on what the machine has to say, rather than inserting their own voice and opinion.
“[...] when the sound appears to be live in the space, then it's free, it seems to flow by itself and not to be caused by some specific intention, especially of an intellectual nature. If you put yourself in a situation of unpredictability and then find that it's completely possible to accept it, then you become an observer. Then you see that the sound can be free.”
Within my own practice, I deliberately avoid language that indicates hierarchy (control, mastery), and instead, use terms implying level-playing grounds (confluence, exploration). Given this terminology, it is fair to ask how this confluence functions and what informs the exploration. Here, the metaphor of a conversation is fruitful as an exchange. In any meaningful conversation, it is vital to keep an open mind, willing to recognize what the other expresses. Attentive listening ensures that qualities are noticed and considered. All of the works that have been made as part of my research can be viewed as being cybernetic, or rather, cybersonic in nature. Each of them engage in an exploration of intermingled feedback loops in an attempt to grasp or learn how to appreciate what the emerging sonic expressions bring to the table.
Theoretical Frameworks
One major turning point in my research was the realization of the importance of the connection between time and chaos, especially relating to musical perception. In normative and stable situations, there is a tendency to plan ahead and envision the future. Chaos obstructs this tendency due to its inherent unpredictable nature. The path toward the future becomes sensitively dependent on what happens in the present. Making sense of this observation required an investigation of various philosophies that relate to the notion of time and duration.
The French philosopher Henri Bergson is a central figure in the philosophy of time perception. He recognized the difference between the mathematical passing time, counted by clocks, and the experience of time enveloped in duration. Duration consists of multiplicities of events and is continually in motion: “That which I call my present is my attitude with regard to the immediate future.” It is within duration that music is encountered and experienced. Much of my understanding of Bergsonian concepts of time comes through reading the works of the feminist philosopher Elizabeth Grosz, who establishes a framework of thought that views the future as an open canvas marked by change and difference. Grosz herself is influenced by the concepts of Darwinian evolution, which she describes as “a durational unfolding, as the elaboration of difference.”
Time is perpetually on the move, and as such, the world, according to the physicist Carlo Rovelli, is best described as processes of becoming: “Thinking of the world as a collection of events, of processes, is the way that allows us to better grasp, comprehend and describe it.” This notion is reminiscent of the process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead: “[...] the flux of things is one ultimate generalization around which we must weave our philosophical system.” Living within this flux leads to many encounters with novel experiences. The philosopher George Herbert Mead writes, "Time can only arise through the ordering of passage by these unique events.” As chaotic processes play out in time, they tend to result in many unexpected, unique events, causing a re-evaluation of the past that has led up to the surprise.
From here, chaos can be examined as an engine for wonder, as the philosopher Anders Schinkel writes: “Wonder, I propose, is a mode of consciousness in which we experience that which we perceive or are contemplating as in some way strange, beyond our understanding, yet worthy of our attention for its own sake, and in which our attention takes the form of an open, receptive stance.” Out of the chaos that underpins my practice, strange yet mesmerizing sonic expressions emerge. Engaging with these processes leads to a state of wonder, focusing attention on the open future. As this attention flows back into the chaos, a feedback loop is closed, encapsulating myself to become a part of the chaos itself, or as the literary critic N. Katherine Hayles writes: “[...] feedback can also loop through observers, drawing them in to become part of the system being observed.” Chaos calls for a rethinking of aesthetics, celebrating the beauty of ongoing processes and the astonishment of facing the unfolding of events toward the unknown. The anthropologist Tim Ingold provides such an aesthetic: “Beauty, then, lies in the act of playing itself.”
While the research draws much inspiration from philosophy, anthropology, musicology, science, and various other sources, it should be noted that all of these lines of thought are read diffractively through the lens of my artistic practice. In the following section, I will outline the landscape of digital, analog, and acoustic approaches by introducing a selection of other artists and composers working in the field of chaotic music to contextualize my artistic research and practice further.
“Waisvisz introduced a completely new musical- electronic principle: the Cracklebox. He made use of a property of electronic circuits that was usually considered undesirable: instability. This phenomenon is typically combated against, but Waisvisz instead wanted to advance it by connecting the appropriate points in an electronic circuit with touchable surfaces.”
R. Spekle, M. Waisvisz (STEIM, a reconstruction)
The Crackle instruments (including the infamous, portable Crackle Box, pictured above) can be seen as an outcome inspired by the act of circuit bending, a term coined by Reed Ghazala, who pioneered this unconventional approach to electronic art. Circuit bending involves the modification or rewiring of existing electronic equipment in order to tease out novel behaviors, introducing extra components that cause instabilities, leading to a reimagining of the possibility space of what the equipment has to offer. When working with low voltage, battery-powered electronics, the circuits can be touched, opening up new pathways for the electricity to scourge through the components. The Crackle instruments are, in some sense, a mature version of this approach, providing easily accessible conductive surfaces, already primed for maximum impact on the underlying circuit. As for many other aspiring designers of electronic instruments, the playful act of circuit bending functions as a gateway into the world of resistors, capacitors, and transistors.
“By now I had written on the wall of the workshop: 'If you can't open it, you don't own it;' so I opened the back where I could reach the print board and started connecting wires into the circuit.”
“If you can’t open it, you don’t own it.” It is a statement that encapsulates the adventurous approach to live electronics that Waisvisz employed throughout his career and is likewise much revered in the world of DIY, bending, hacking, and making. There is a connection between the hands-on act of making, creating, and tinkering, and the sense of personal ownership that is vital to my practice and research: to leave distinct artistic fingerprints and marks within all levels of the processes that encompass the works. Indeed, the seemingly insignificant choice of using a slightly different resistor value as mentioned earlier may lead to a difference in the scale of operation of a particular part of an instrument, leading to a renegotiation of its function within the larger eco-system of the instrument as a whole. This could lead to an altered sonic vocabulary; novel gestural engagements; and ultimately a shift in the compositional potential that can be mined through performances.
In my own work, there is a tendency to avoid methods of influencing my instruments that are in themselves already chaotic. In the example of the Crackle Synthesizer, there is a chaotic circuit that is then influenced by means of skin conduction. Yet the conductivity of the skin is dependent on a wide range of factors. Humidity, sweat, pressure, and even anxiety, all factor into the amount of influence the touch of a finger has on the circuit. The resulting sonic behaviors are then not solely dependent on the circuit, but also, for instance, on the question of whether or not it has rained earlier in the day. My artistic interest is geared towards the exploration of the chaotic qualities of the circuits and systems unaffected by other, surrounding chaotic systems. This also means that none of the instruments have microphone inputs, as again this opens the door to situations in which the complexity of the sonic behaviors arise out of a situation that is already complex, in and of itself. My interest lies in the investigation of complexity emerging from simple ingredients. My performative strategies reflect this attitude, and as a result, rarely more than one parameter is ever changed simultaneously, and more often than not, the changes that are made are minor adjustments rather than wild gestures. There are often periods of time in which the instruments are playing out their chaotic logic without any performative interference at all. The only time wild gestures occur is when a severe musical transition is desired, scrambling the behaviors of the instrument until it self-balances once again in a new configuration.
Approaches toward the design of new electronic music instruments vary greatly from one artist or designer to the next. While some artists specialize and aim their focus on either digital or analog technologies including augmenting existing acoustic instruments, my own approach is non-puristic and pragmatic, evaluating the qualities that are found in the different methods and building bridges to connect them where needed. This approach is informed by my formal education in music technology, where the students were often collaborating on projects that required some kind of integration of different technologies. During the classes on system design, for example, emphasis was placed on establishing various forms of communication among the technologies that were employed. Apart from the pragmatic standpoint of using each technology for what it is best at, there is also an aesthetically informed reason to shy away from a more puristic practice. The sonic behaviors that emerge through a blend of technologies have a tendency to mask the processes that underpin their origins. It becomes increasingly difficult to unpack the sounds into their constituent parts. In my personal experience, this translates to a form of listening that is no longer concerned with the production of sound but rather with the sonic expression that the sound evokes.
Many artists working with nonlinear feedback develop performance strategies in which they place their involvement on an equal footing with the systems at play. Some even fully resign their own agency, allowing the systems to take the lead instead. These systems are described in schematic diagrams, often functioning as a score for the performance, although it does not indicate either sonic qualities or performative instructions, but rather, it shows how the various elements that make up the piece are connected.
Installation View of Rainforest IV performance, 1981, Neuberger Museum, Purchase, Photo by Phil Edelstein.
Explorative Cybernetics
Imagine a ship, sailing across a body of water. Sharp winds and menacing currents push and pull against the sails and bow. Factors that need to be taken into account to keep the ship on course. This situation is an archetypical example of a challenge that is overcome through the techniques of communication and control described by early cybernetics.
What direction is the wind coming from?
How are the currents flowing, and to what extent are they displacing the ship?
This information is used to adjust the positions of the rudder and sails, counteracting the forces of displacement. The feedback between measurement and steering will keep the ship on course.
What happens as we imagine a voyage into the unknown, an expedition to explore undiscovered waters?
What happens if our goal is to get lost?
The wind still blows as fiercely as ever and the currents still tug against the ship. The measurements keep coming in, but instead of counteracting these forces, we may as well be swept along with them, following the trajectories of the whirlwinds and whirlpools. Instead of steering towards a fixed, final destination, we can use this information to prevent our vessel from succumbing to the waves or breaking away from trajectories that might pull us back to more familiar waters.
The goal is the exploration of novelty and novelty is always elsewhere, always on the move. Whatever this ship is drifting towards, we are inescapably along for the ride. We become one with our vessel, bound to it, seamlessly absorbing the ebb and flow of the waves that carry the ship along. Its vulnerability is tied to our sense of risk. Its omnidirectional exploration feeds our sense of wonder.
It is not so much a form of surrendering to the elements, signifying resolute obedience to whatever might occur, but it is rather about becoming an integral part of the system, a significant cog in the wheels of the processes that are at play.
Example
Practically speaking, there have been situations where minor changes have been considered within the software KiCad, which is used for the circuit board design of my instruments. A particular resistor value might be swapped from a 100Ω to a 110Ω resistance, for instance. It is easy enough to implement, but it becomes much more interesting to imagine how this small adjustment permeates through the larger eco-system of the whole circuit board; how that circuit operates within the instrument; how the instrument responds to performative gestures; and how these new responses elicit changes in compositional strategies. While it is simple, even calculable, to evaluate the difference in operation on small, local scales, the same can not be said for the impact on the artistic work as a whole.
Detail of a schematic designed in KiCad
This observation, which in the terminology of chaos theory could be thought of as having a "sensitivity to conditions," applies to many facets of my practice. A useful analogy to clarify this sensitivity would be to think about the ripples that form in a pond if a small pebble is thrown into its center. The ripples gradually spread out to eventually reach the shores of the pond, even though the initial splash was very localized. The analogy gets stranger if one would imagine these ripples gaining momentum as they continue to spread, and as the ripples hit the shore, they are reflected back to start interfering with the oncoming waves. Very soon, it will be impossible to retrace the ebb and flow of the water as everything is completely reconfigured. As un-intuitive as this analogy may appear, in the context of chaos, these kinds of amplified ripple effects are commonly referred to as the Butterfly Effect.
Whether the work takes place in the analog domain of circuit design or within the digital realm of code development in the audio programming language, SuperCollider, there is always a need to thoroughly test any changes and adjustments within the full context of the performance setup.
Example of code written in SuperCollider.
Examining the transition between two of the pitches more closely reveals a complex intermediate noise region in which the first pitch collapses, and the new pitch, harmonically related to the first one, emerges out of the noise.
Dynamics Noisiness Pitch Hz
A pp High Complex x
B mf Decreasing Forming 660
C f Low Yes 660
D f Low Yes 660
E ff Increasing Complex x
F mf High Complex [855, 1430]
G p High Complex [855, 1430]
H p High Complex [855, 1430]
I p Low Yes 855
J p High Complex 435
K ff Deceasing Forming [435, 466]
L f Low Yes 446
M p Increasing Complex x