Chapter VI
Contribution
& Future Development
Contribution
The exploration of chaotic processes in relation to music has a rich history, dating back to the early days of cybernetics and arguably before. Each of the artists discussed in this reflection, sculpt their own original sonic universes, unfolding in accordance to chaotic forms of logic. My own practice is no exception. I have come to realize that chaotic music is not so much concerned with any particular sound, but rather with the frictions and tensions underpinning the production of sounds.
The instruments that are developed are concerned with the modulation of signals rather than the specific sound qualities of individual signals. One example is the development of the Flip-Sample-Hold Eurorack module, combining sample-and-hold circuits with a sequencer circuit. This combined functionality opens up new avenues for the voltages to interfere within various parts of the larger modular synthesizer, resulting in fascinating forms of nonlinear feedback. Chaos deals with ongoing processes, and it is within this unpredictable flux of formation that meaning and beauty emerges.
In a recent survey of feedback musicians, the following statement caught my attention:
"Feedback is concurrently a technical concept and a technique that is weighted with the ability to convey messages that are outside the performer’s intentions. Feedback provides the notion of distributed or shared agency and there is a sense that the practice is “fundamentally different from a lot of previous music.”
T. Magnussen et. al (2022)
I wholeheartedly agree. My research aims to contribute to the effort of uncovering where these differences are found; how they impact my artistic practice; and how to help enrich the discourse around musical practices that engage with chaotic processes. Chaotic music is not so much formed through intentions, as it is concerned with initiating processes of formation, which then become the playground where sonic expressions are discovered. Engaging with these processes requires a focused attention to emerging sonic behaviors. Chaos, being unpredictable, abides by its own internal logic, creating a situation that is nearly comprehensible, yet perpetually out of grasp. Musical patterns shimmer like a mirage that fades upon inspection, only to reappear further up ahead. The mirage proves to be a constructive metaphor to examine the complex correspondences regarding the perception and reception of chaotic processes. It challenges notions of either control or indifference, and instead, advocates an engagement in wonder. Wonder embraces the unpredictability of chaos, and opens up to the discovery of unique sonic expressions that can only be experienced once.
Chaotic music is discovered, not created.
These discoveries are shared, not shown.
Both of these statements have significant consequences that affect my practice. The concept of discovery can be likened to the practice of field recording, where the chaotic process plays the role of a sonic field, which the performer then enters and explores. The outcomes of these explorations are never known in advance, affecting the relationship between the performer and the audience. Concerts can be likened to guided sonic tours, as playing with chaotic instruments reveals an unforeseen wealth of sonic behaviors, which both the performer and the audience encounter as a shared experience.
The separation between disciplines such as instrument designer, composer, and performer becomes arbitrary as they clump together to form something different, encompassing each element and placing these elements into new perspectives. The instruments create their own compositions, while their design comes about through compositional considerations. Playing with these instruments feels like a duet, as the instrument playfully responds to performative gestures. As an art practice, the works do not come about as a closing in on a final form; instead, the works open up to embrace a vast complexity that confounds understanding.
There is a crucial difference between the notions of difficulty and complexity. When things get difficult, they require a doubling down on a commitment to face the difficulty head-on. For example, learning to play a difficult piece of music requires many hours of dedicated rehearsals. Eventually, the piece becomes ingrained within gestural memory, and the difficulty can be overcome. However, a very different strategy is required when things are complex and exceed comprehension. This strategy involves many hours of dedicated exploration as a means to develop an intuitive understanding of the complexity. The full depth of the complexity is never fully appreciated, yet, over time, a sense of familiarity is built up, a familiarity that remains fragile. A core aspect of my practice revolves around risk-taking, and engaging with responsive processes that only react according to an unknowable rationale. Through my work, processes are initiated that intentionally run amok, followed by a chase, fueled by a thirst to explore the emergent sonic expressions that are found in its wake.
Through my research, I have been fortunate to meet with many contemporaries in my field, some of whom I have been fortunate enough to meet, discuss chaos in many different ways. While there are countless varieties of chaotic processes to explore, they all share common features that play vital roles: unpredictability, complexity, and emergence. Through my works and writing, I aim to enrich this discourse, providing new prisms through which to shine a diffracted light on this growing field.
Wondering Further Ahead
After four years, this Ph.D. in artistic research is concluding, allowing me to look ahead at the future and think about territories that could be further explored in upcoming years. Of course, there are many ways in which this research could be continued, but for the purposes of this reflection component, my focus will land on the following three facets: play, space, and the experimental practice.
Play
Developing a collection of three instruments in a four-year period has its disadvantages. First, it takes time to figure out where to start. Eventually, when things are set in motion, another question takes over: the question of when to stop. Building instruments can become an all consuming practice. It is always possible to point to aspects that could be altered, improved, or changed. One of the most difficult challenges is deciding when to stop soldering or coding, to then switch over to playing as the main mode of engagement with the instrument. Through play, the instrument transforms from a network of technological nodes into a vehicle of art production. The functions become secondary to the sonorous affects produced by their functioning. At this stage, the performative touch takes shape, bridging attentive listening with gesture and play.
Many instruments are taught through repetition, yet chaotic instruments instigate differences and variations. However, this does not mean that play can not be developed. What is recognized through practice is not so much the recurrence of particular sounds, but instead a sense of potential. This sense tells me when to act and when to back away; when a sonic behavior is about to collapse, and when it is robust enough to be pushed ever closer to the edge. In a practice that celebrates exploration, skills such as edge-finding, deep listening, and curiosity are developed through play. In the coming months, I look forward to spending ever more time with the instruments, playing them in varying circumstances, in studio sessions, onstage, and alongside other performers. It will be informative to see how my playing will change over time, and how this will affect the sonic vocabulary of the instruments in return.
Space
The instruments that have been developed are each closed to their environments and operate with only a limited number of audio channels. The exploration of space and spatiality has not been a primary focus within this research, and this leaves a lot of room for future investigation. It would be especially interesting to treat space and spatiality not as a final stage of sonic placement, but instead, as a process that is integrated into the nonlinear feedback loops that make up the whole system. One approach would be to take a cue from Agostino DiScipio and allow the instrument to become open to its environment, incorporating entire acoustic architectures into the instrumental ecosystem. But there might be other approaches as well, for example, by treating each speaker or transducer as a voice of its own; or to create a spatial experience by setting up correspondences among multiple instruments, each reacting to the other through a chaotic form of logic.
Experimental Practice
When playing with instruments centered around chaos, concerts turn into experiments. Each performance yields an unexpected outcome, unknown in advance by performers and audiences alike. This encounter with the unknown is different in degree from many improvisational practices, due to the unpredictable nature of the chaotic elements at play. However, this difference is often difficult to make out in concert situations. The stage is most often still presented as a place where trained musicians showcase their virtuosic skills, not as a kind of laboratory where an encounter with the unknown takes place. There is still much work to be done in developing strategies to share genuinely experimental practices with audiences. This requires: a re-thinking of what it means to perform; what it means to be on stage; renegotiating the relationships between performer and audience; and nurturing an aesthetic that is based on wonder and curiosity. These developments may result in a cultural practice celebrating singular and unique events that discover sonic expressions that only occur once in their specific configurations.