Gabriel Paiuk

Gabriel Paiuk | Conservatorium Den Haag, NL Day 2, 10 November, De Bijloke Rotonde, 11:00-11:30 Within Cinema 1: The Movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time-Image, Deleuze exposes cinema as a practice of thought. Cinema articulates perception, lived experience, and material components through particular strategies of formal organisation. These strategies are presented as rendering particular “regimes” of the image. A fundamental aspect of this proposition is that each regime yields a diverse status of the image, defines a particular mode of engagement with the visual. In chapter 6 of The Time-Image, Deleuze opposes the crystalline regime of the image to the organic one. Within the organic regime, images “assume the independence of its object . . . stand for a supposedly pre-existing reality” (Deleuze 2013, 131) and are articulated to convey a continuity external to themselves. This is the domain of the sensory-motor schemes, where images become components of trajectories and “oppositions within a field of forces” that define a “hodological space” (133). On the other hand, within the crystal regime of the image, the conveyance of an external continuity is interrupted. “It is now the description itself which constitutes the sole decomposed and multiplied object”; the image “stands for its object, replaces it, both creates and erases it” (131), drawing attention to the immanent and multiple conditions of its emergence. Rather than being determined by what they would refer to in themselves: “it is not a matter of knowing if these are exteriors or scenery” (131), it is the way they are articulated that defines its status. Translating this perspective to the domain of an artistic sound practice implies understanding how the status of sound would arise out of diverse regimes of sound. I aim to propose that Luigi Nono’s “No hay caminos, hey que caminar . . . Andrej Tarkovskij” for seven instrumental groups is an example of a work that sets up a crystalline regime of sound. As is the case in the realm of the images Deleuze refers to, it is not a matter of sounds being referential or mimetic to sounds outside the frame of the concert hall; instead, it pertains to how the sound’s status arises out of the logics of the organisation of the work. An organic regime sets up sounds as interrelated figures within an imaginary space, a “hodological” space where parameter variations define trajectories. The claim is that within “No hay caminos . . .” each component in the formal articulation of the piece does not participate in constituting a detached field of trajectories or figural relationships. Rather, the sequence of sound instances is articulated as to sensitise the listener to the multiple threads (affective, material, perceptual) that constitute our apprehension of these instances. Through a process of successive recontextualisations, our active grasp of sound is put into question. One fundamental example of how this strategy is deployed within this work is the way in which the spatiality of sound is dealt with. Rather than building up a plan of formal relationships that would render space as an imaginary field, contrasts are set up that expose the inherent spatial characteristics of every sound. By articulating this strategy, sound is exposed as a multiple instance, its status defined by intermingling conditions. This becomes a hint towards conceiving a practice that takes as its main aim the problematisation of the way listening unveils and our engagement with sound is constituted.

BACK TO INDEX

T H E D A R K

P R E C U R S O R

International Conference on Deleuze and Artistic Research

DARE 2015 | Orpheus Institute | Ghent | Belgium | 9-11 November 2015

O P E N - A C C E S S R I C H - M E D I A P R O C E E D I N G S

Edited by Paulo de Assis and Paolo Giudici

T H E D A R K

P R E C U R S O R

International Conference on Deleuze and Artistic Research

DARE 2015 | Orpheus Institute | Ghent | Belgium | 9-11 November 2015

O P E N - A C C E S S R I C H - M E D I A P R O C E E D I N G S

Edited by Paulo de Assis and Paolo Giudici

Conservatorium Den Haag, NL

Deleuze’s Cinema Studies as a Model for a Problematising Sound Practice

Day 2, 10 November, De Bijloke Rotonde, 11:00-11:30

Within Cinema 1: The Movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time-Image, Deleuze exposes cinema as a practice of thought. Cinema articulates perception, lived experience, and material components through particular strategies of formal organisation. These strategies are presented as rendering particular “regimes” of the image. A fundamental aspect of this proposition is that each regime yields a diverse status of the image, defines a particular mode of engagement with the visual.

In chapter 6 of The Time-Image, Deleuze opposes the crystalline regime of the image to the organic one. Within the organic regime, images “assume the independence of its object . . . stand for a supposedly pre-existing reality” (Deleuze 2013, 131) and are articulated to convey a continuity external to themselves. This is the domain of the sensory-motor schemes, where images become components of trajectories and “oppositions within a field of forces” that define a “hodological space” (133).

On the other hand, within the crystal regime of the image, the conveyance of an external continuity is interrupted. “It is now the description itself which constitutes the sole decomposed and multiplied object”; the image “stands for its object, replaces it, both creates and erases it” (131), drawing attention to the immanent and multiple conditions of its emergence. Rather than being determined by what they would refer to in themselves: “it is not a matter of knowing if these are exteriors or scenery” (131), it is the way they are articulated that defines its status. Translating this perspective to the domain of an artistic sound practice implies understanding how the status of sound would arise out of diverse regimes of sound.

I aim to propose that Luigi Nono’s “No hay caminos, hey que caminar . . . Andrej Tarkovskij” for seven instrumental groups is an example of a work that sets up a crystalline regime of sound. As is the case in the realm of the images Deleuze refers to, it is not a matter of sounds being referential or mimetic to sounds outside the frame of the concert hall; instead, it pertains to how the sound’s status arises out of the logics of the organisation of the work. An organic regime sets up sounds as interrelated figures within an imaginary space, a “hodological” space where parameter variations define trajectories. The claim is that within “No hay caminos . . .” each component in the formal articulation of the piece does not participate in constituting a detached field of trajectories or figural relationships. Rather, the sequence of sound instances is articulated as to sensitise the listener to the multiple threads (affective, material, perceptual) that constitute our apprehension of these instances. Through a process of successive recontextualisations, our active grasp of sound is put into question.

One fundamental example of how this strategy is deployed within this work is the way in which the spatiality of sound is dealt with. Rather than building up a plan of formal relationships that would render space as an imaginary field, contrasts are set up that expose the inherent spatial characteristics of every sound. By articulating this strategy, sound is exposed as a multiple instance, its status defined by intermingling conditions. This becomes a hint towards conceiving a practice that takes as its main aim the problematisation of the way listening unveils and our engagement with sound is constituted.

References
Deleuze, Gilles. 2013. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. London: Bloomsbury.

Gabriel Paiuk is a composer and sound artist from Argentina currently residing in the Netherlands, where he is a faculty member of the Institute of Sonology (The Hague). His works take the form of sound installations and performative works for instruments and particular loudspeaker setups and have been performed by ASKO ensemble, KNM Berlin, Slagwerk Den Haag, Francesco Dillon, Rank Ensemble, Modelo62, and Ensemble 306, among others. He was awarded the Gaudeamus composition prize in 2006 for his electronic work/sound installation Res Extensa. In 2009, he was director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Contemporary Music in Buenos Aires. In recent years he has articulated his compositional practice with theoretical research, leading to talks and workshops in contexts such as Master Artistic Research at KABK (The Hague), the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (University of Amsterdam), and the KASK School of Arts (Ghent), and to a publication in Organised Sound magazine (Cambridge University Press, UK).

Web: www.gabrielpaiuk.com. Email: gabriel@gabrielpaiuk.com

Tip

Tip

Gabriel Paiuk

Deleuze’s Cinema Studies as a Model for a Problematising Sound Practice