1: Introduction
7: Interlude
9: Epilogue
10: References
Concept/motivation
The idea of The Mechanical Forest came after reflecting on the artistic results from The E(c)lect(r)ic Guitar concert (01.10.20). While studying the footage of that concert, my conclusion was that I wanted to work more with scenic elements in a performance, such as gesture, movement, and video.
Movement, scenic elements.
I was inspired to bring gestures and movement into the performance by studying compositions such as Coded Error by the German Multimedia composer Alexander Schubert (Schubert, A. 2017). This piece of music instructs the performers to consider themselves a robot or a puppet, to give the audience an impression of the performers being digital glitches.
I wanted to merge the way I, as a guitarist, would play a rock concert, with the way I play improvised music (or composed music within the broad genres of jazz or improvised based contemporary music).
The music in The E(c)lect(r)ic Guitar was mostly improvised within a given framework(1). A lot of the music ended up sounding ambient, as we were exploring different timbre. At this time in my research, I was fascinated with building atmospheric soundscapes, which was why I often ended up creating this type of ambient music. I had arranged the concert so that I would play in duos with some of the people I had worked with during the first year of my research project. I had been drawn towards musicians who produced music using electro acoustic instruments, resampling, and MAX. When I played with these musicians, I was inspired and challenged by the fact that they produced sounds that was different from what I was able to create.
As I discussed in the previous chapter concerning the Streamlined Patch and Dag Egil Njaa, I found it challenging to play with an entity without any identity (the computer/Dag Egil Njaa). I heard the sound, but it could just as well be a recording. There was nothing that indicated that this was a human being improvising with me. We had to give him a visual identity as well.
This was the first time I ever included live video on stage, and I was intrigued by the potential. I missed, however, the feeling of real interaction with the video. I knew it was Dag Egil who was controlling it, but it felt like just another video playing in the background, and not as an musical instrument (which was what I wanted it to be). It was out of this experience that the idea of finding a way to control, play and interact with video samples.
Technological development
In The Mechanical Forest, I wanted to create an environment where we as a group can be individuals, and make musical and scenic choices that will create synergy effects for the whole group. Improvisational musical choices combined with composed music, movement, gestures, technology, and interactive videos, will produce something greater when it all works together. By using all these elements in the concert, I aimed to create an experience for the audience, as well as the musicians. At the core of this concept was my guitars.
Creating the Meta Guitars
Me and Dag Egil Njaa developed a patch in MAX[1] based on a desire to find a way I could play with audio-visual samples of myself.
The idea behind creating these videos was to give the samples an identity and stage presence as well as creating a visual element I could use in the performance.
In practical terms, this involved film and sound recording of myself, sound, and video processing tools, as well as tools for controlling the videos. All this was programmed in MAX.
We ended up using the R-IoT movement sensors, made by Bitalino and developed in IRCAM[2]. «The BITalino R-IoT module is the 7th generation of IRCAM's wireless sensor digitising unit, an essential tool linking motion sensing, gestural recognition and Live Performance Arts. (…)featuring a 3-axis accelerometer, a 3-axis gyroscope and a 3-axis magnetometer.»[3]
Dag Egil Njaa and I choose these sensors due to their small size and flexibility. I can use them to control video, sound and even lights, although in the first version of The Mechanical Forest, I only use them to control the videos.
The sensors communicate with MAX through Wi-FI, meaning that I have to set up a Wi-Fi system on stage. I’ve named the network «The Forest», adding to the idea of everything being connected. It took a lot of time to make the sensors stable. They kept loosing the signal for no apparent reason, leaving me frustrated and stressed. If I was supposed to perform with them, I needed to know that they could be trusted. One of my best friends, who happens to be an IT engineer[4], told me what the problem was. He explained that we had to set the router up to only be compatible with what is called a “b-net” (or 802.11b, to be precise), which is an old standard. However, this was the net the sensors used. To put it simple, we could say that we set up a router the way it would have been set up in 1999. After he had set up the router to this standard, I finally had a well-functioning system.
The reason for using these sensors was that it would add movement to my performance. It feels natural to use larger movements while wearing them on my wrist, as well as it enables me to use them at the same time as I play my guitar.
In the process of recording the videos, I am already at the concert. When I look into the camera, I know that I am staring at a future audience. I also must use big movements, and always think how the granular effect[5] can produce interesting images and sounds. I wanted these samples to look like they came from another world, and that they would act and play in a very different way than I was able to.
In the work, Repertoire (1967-1979), the composer Mauricio Kagel created 100 brief scenes without text or plot. This gives the audience a lot of room to interpret the actions performed. One of these scenes involves a person playing the guitar, wearing a pink veil which covers him completely. The guitar player walks in a strange and almost nightmarish way, while playing a chord sequence. This is an image I had in mind when I was creating the videos I use. The way my avatars move gives the videos a dream like character, which again affects the musicians on stage as well as the audience. I treat the videos as an instrument, I play them, more than I control them. This also means that I can always change them, record new videos and add new sounds and visual elements to them.
David Lynch talks about the cinema being a medium where the combination of different art forms creates something new, something that can only be said in cinema. (David Lynch Q & R) The same can be said about working with The Mechanical Forest; by combining different art forms, such as video, improvised and composed music, lights, sound art, scenography and movement, I can create something that can only be said in The Mechanical Forest. It provided a situation where I could explore my relationship to my guitar as an extension of my body.
The Body
The Meta Guitars was now a visual element I could use in my performances. But even though I used gestures to control the sensors, I wanted to go further with using movement in the performance. For this, I needed input from somebody who works with movement and the body.
I involved choreographer and dance artist Therese Øvstebø Markhus in the project. Together we worked on how we could find a way to incorporate movements in the music. During our workshops, her focus was to find ways we could use the movement we already performed when we play our instruments.
Loosing control over the body and the guitar.
As a choreographer, much of my work lies in letting the performers become aware of their own bodies, in order to create confidence in their own bodies. To create greater awareness, I give exercises inspired by somatic training. Working with gravity, relaxation and breathing is important, I believe this creates greater body awareness and dance enjoyment. (Markhus personal conversation. Translated from Norwegian)
Dance artist/choreographer Therese Markhus taught me about all the things my body (the skeleton as well as tendons) had to do to be able to stand up and play guitar. She gave me exercises where I would spend 5 minutes getting from a standing position to lay on the floor, while wearing a guitar. She talked about balance and confidence, and how to work with the guitar as an almost living being, at the same time as it is an object.
I had an idea for a piece with the guitar ensemble where I wanted to explore the relationship between control and the lack of it. A loud and distorted electric guitar is an instrument that can easily get out of hand due to feedback[6]. As a guitarist, you learn to control this and even use it artistically by how you position yourself to your amplifier, and by dampening the strings with your hands. I wanted to incorporate the composer Alexander Schubert’s idea of "the transportation of additional content through gestures» (2017. Interview A. Schubert. Musica Kaleidoskopea), meaning that I added movement and gestures to certain sounds. Schubert says: "It empowers the performer to be able to control all the different elements and thus enlarge or augment the performance space or the action-radius of what a solo performer can do. It’s picking up the movements of the performer and amplifying them.» (Zubin Kanga & Alexander Schubert 2016)
So, what happens when you let a movement used to play a certain phrase on the guitar get out of control? The movement starts in the right hand and spreads to the rest of the body. The guitar is now unattended, which again leads to feedback. We had to work a lot with Markhus to find a way for us to let go of the control, and to let our bodies shake as if we were in a trance.
In the piece, I wanted the other two guitarist to enter the stage when they heard a specific musical theme. They would enter the stage and lay down on the floor next to their guitars. After a short while, they would start exploring the instrument, creating more sound as they eventually put on their guitars. We then entered a rhythmic sequence which led to the trembling movement causing us to lose control over the instrument. This was an extreme version of the musical gesture we made while playing the sequence. The gesture conveyed the frantic mood of the piece, as well as helping us to accelerate the rhythmic pattern that would eventually end up in the trembling movement.
I found it to be a fascinating experience to let the three guitars be in charge of the music, which was produced, without the possibility for us to interfere. This concept of being in control and not being in control of a musical situation is relatable to playing improvised music in a group. The musical situation is not controlled by one individual alone. One has to trust the other players and their musical choices and have a sense of when to play and when to stand back and let other ideas flourish. The twist in this piece, however, was that at one point, we had to leave the musical choices to the guitars, until we managed to gain back control of our bodies and our instruments. This was something I found a bit difficult to accept, and I could not help to adjust the feedback slightly by moving myself a bit to a position which made the guitar feed back the way I wanted it to. So in other words, I did not manage to loose control completely. Maybe one could say that I let the artistic result conquer the conceptual idea?
The Composing Performer
Composers who operate in the area of The New discipline tend to describe themselves as Performing Composers. In his essay, From Demagogue, via narcissist, to the post-human condition (Reinholdsten. T. 2017), composer Trond Reinholdtsen talks about the fact that the reason why he often performs in his own pieces is that -it is practical, it is effective in a stressed rehearsal process, it is cheap, it saves an amount of «conceptual explanation» and one does’t must convince a musician or actor to believe in «the project». He also suspects that this is something that would apply to many of his colleagues. (Reinholdtsen T. 2017). This is an interesting take on the concept of the performing composer, and absolutely something I can relate to.
In The Mechanical Forest, one big challenge is to explain the concept and to find ways to transfer the new knowledge to my fellow musicians. There have been times where I almost wished I could perform the whole concert alone. I have often been concerned by the fact that the other musicians haven’t been through the same processes as I have, and I tend to sometimes act as if they have. This leads to confused performers and a frustrated artistic leader. This is something I must constantly work on.
During my research project I have struggled with the idea of me being a composer. It was not a role I wanted to have, and I probably saw it as a bigger problem than it was. I wanted to work with improvised music, but I realised that I also had visions of how the music was supposed to be. This meant that I had to find strategies to make it so, meaning that I ended up in the role of a composer of sorts. I don’t see myself as a Performing Composer, but I can relate to being a Composing Performer. The composing is something I do to be able to have the experience on stage which I seek. I have never written music without me being a part of it, it has never even struck me to do so. But the idea of being a Composing Performer is something I can use in my work. I might complicate the use of this term by the fact that being an improvising musician, there is no real division between being a composer and a performer, since one could say that the composing happens in real time. However, since this project also involves precomposed material, I do have a role as a composer in a more traditional sense.
The term composer is most often associated with the western art music field. There is a division of labour where the composer creates, and the performer interpret. Coming from a family with many classical trained musicians[7], I grew up with the notion of the composer being a superhuman, and as a musician, your job was to fulfil the artistic vision of the composer. It was not your place to question any of it; the music was already perfect. As I eventually drifted from learning classical piano[8] to learning to play the electric guitar on my own, I was entering a world with a different set of rules. There rules were simple: I could decide what I wanted to play and learn, and how I wanted to play it. I started a band, and we were creating music together.
When we work with composers in Kitchen Orchestra[9], it is expected that we bring our own musical voice to the table. Having said that, most of the composers we work with have a determined vision of how they want the music to sound, and how to achieve this. Sometimes the music is notated in detail, but in most projects, we work together to find ways for us to sound the way only we can.
This process is quite similar to when I work with popular music. The artist/composer has a vision for how the music should sound. When I am asked to either record or/and tour with them, they want the specific sound that I have. During the recording process, the artist and the producer work together with me to shape my contribution to the music.
As a guitarist, I like being challenged by other composers, but my choice of instrument is also strongly related to the idea of having your own voice as a musician. I have tremendous respect for musicians who work in the field of classical music, where the search for technical perfection is necessary to perform music the way it is expected. I like the craft of being a musician, and to carry out a job formed by another composer/songwriter. However, I am also drawn to the improvisational process and the search for my own voice, new ways of expression and new ideas. This is what drives me as a musician.
Guitaristic Composer Performer.
My guitar rig is flexible and always changing. It consists of several guitars[10], amplifiers[11] as well as an unknown number of effect pedals[12]. In addition to this, I sometimes add synthesisers to my rig[13]. All these elements are combined, depending on what sound I am after.
During the last two years of my research project, I have surrounded myself with practically all my equipment. I had multiple guitars, pedals, sensors (sometimes video cameras) and synthesizers, up and running at all times. When I entered my rehearsal studio in the morning, I pictured myself being a painter entering his or her atelier. At my disposal was all the colours, brushes and canvases I needed. It was messy (as the people who I share the studio with pointed out to me on several occasions), but it worked.
I can sit in my chair just looking at the pedals, imagining which to combine, and where I could use it in a performance. Sometimes a specific sound triggers an improvision or a composition. This is especially true when it comes to the extended instruments I have created in this project. They make me play in a specific way, they colour every musical situation I introduce them to. And they trigger ideas for both improvisation and composition.
Instead of treating the video projections and sensors as a complicated and technological element, I now see it as an instrument. It is my Meta Guitar. As soon as I started treating it as a guitar, it was a much easier task to operate them and to find ways of using them artistically. I had an idea of letting some of the other musicians operate the videos, as this would make it easier for me to focus on what I was playing on my guitar in musical interaction with the videos. However, when we tried this, I realised that I have a connection to the videos, and I have a certain aesthetic when it comes to how I want the Meta Guitar to sound and look.
From feature to synthesis.
In the first version of the Mechanical Forest, I tended to use the videos, The Broken guitar and movement as main features. The more I watched the recording of this concert, the more I realised that I had to find a way to integrate the instrument in the ensemble, to find a way to use it in interaction with the other musicians. I had to find the way for them to go from being a feature to an integrated part of the music; from feature to synthesis. I wanted to create a concert with improvised music where we as musicians also were able to use our bodies to amplify the performance.
At the time, all these elements were new to me, and I found them fascinating and intriguing. This led me to thinking that I had to make them a main feature every time I used them. After having worked more with these elements, as well as having watched and unfolded the produced material, I realised that I have to incorporate them in the whole musical environment. Earlier I stated that I see these elements as an extension of my guitar, but I realised that I did not play them as I would play my normal guitar. This was probably due to the fact that they were new and exciting, but also that I had not worked with them enough for me to find ways to use them in a natural musical way. This is one of my main focuses when I work towards the next version of the project.
Where do we go from here?
While planning the concert, I was using ecology and synergy as key words. I used these concepts as inspiration to find a way to think about improvisation. The idea was that if I gathered a group of improvisors and put them in the visual and sonic world of The Mechanical Forest, they would improvise and create the type of music and visual performance I was after.
In the beginning, I wanted the music to be as free as possible, with no composition at all, but I realised that for it to be the experience I was seeking, I had to establish an aesthetic. In retrospect, that process had already started long before I started to write lyrics and music to the performance. By defining how the video looked, the sounds I developed on my guitar, the synth sounds that Eva used, and the way we developed the piece with the three guitarists was a part of preplanning how I wanted it to sound and look.
Instead of holding on to the idea of ecology and synergy, I began composing new musical material that I could fit into the concept, as well as further developing the videos and other ways to use the motion sensors (1)
I can treat the Mechanical Forest as an open canvas where I can bring in different elements and ideas to create a world where I can live as musician, improvisor and human-being for an hour or so. It is a world where I can invite other people, as well as technological elements, to participate. I try not to be a dictator, but I am the creator of the world, so it will have aesthetic elements, improvisational strategies, conceptual ideas and composed material created by me.
In the Mechanical Forest project, I wanted to see if I could manage to create a concert with a scenic approach using both improvisation and composed music. I wanted to combine music and movement with scenic elements like videos and stage light to create a greater experience for the audience as well as us performers. By creating instruments like the Meta Guitar and The Broken guitar, I have given myself a way to incorporate movement into my performance in a way that feels natural to me.
Musicians involved in Mechanical Forest 1:
Eva Bjerga Haugen -vocals and synth.
Eva is a jazz vocalist, and in this project, we spent a lot of time improvising together in my rehearsal studio. We have worked on many other projects together, so I was very comfortable with working with her in this project.
Espen Eidem -Electric Guitar
Espen is a former guitar student of mine, he now runs his own studio. As a guitarist, he can be described as an indie rock guitarist with a sound that resembels that of the band Sonic Youth.
Hans Jacob Bjørheim - Electric Guitar
Hans Jacob is a metal guitarist, who was studying for a jazz degree during this project. He is a very technically skilled guitarist with a heavy sound.
