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•1: KA starts. Its midi tool is reading my notes and plays back some of the same notes in a computer game-like sound. A rudimental listening mode.
•2: The scratching sound is a fish game that is starts whenever the sound from Sidsels archive rises over a certain amplitude.
•3: I use its repeated computerlike notes to as an ostinato for my playing, which suddenly moves over to a more emotional place.
•4: KA is collecting material from Sidsels archive.
•5: It gets more busy. Both in terms of density an unclear tonality. Trio for computergame, Sidsel and my piano. I guess I use KAs somewhat predictable tonality to create a diverting polyphony.
Oh I wish I could lay off more often. Let the the machine play. Seems like I am trying to maintain some kind of progression that is not needed. The power structure demands me to take breaks to highlight KA as an equitable partner.
•6 Some darker sounds occur, like sounds from a factory far away. Sounds that belong to a machine. I start playing in a more minor and regular manner.
•7: The randomness of the machine is working perfectly to dissolve but also comment my escapade into lyricism. I really like this.
•8: We end up quite high in register. Like the lyricism- alarm finally went off.
KA takes the Coda.
Is this the best we have done so far?
Parallell Play
Parallel play (or parallel activity) is a term that was introduced by Mildred Parten in 1932 to refer to a developmental stage of social activity in which children play with toys like those the children around them are using but are absorbed in their own activity and usually play beside rather than with one another. Children in this stage may comment on what they are doing or imitate what another child does, but they rarely cooperate in a task or engage in dramatic play or formal games with others. This stage occurs after solitary and onlooker play and before associated and cooperative play when children engage in more complex social interactions. Preschool children of all ages engage in parallel play, particularly when using sand, water, blocks, and art materials; this type of play appears to serve as a bridge to more complex cooperative activities (www.encyclopaedia.com/children)
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Situations sometimes found in improvisation; like
...the one that occur once in a while, when the two of us had the same thought without knowing it, and these thoughts magically unfolded as sound at the same instant. That is interplay to me.
...the one that occur when I am struggling with finding a direction, and the other takes the lead, marches on as a visible flag post for me to follow. That is empathy to me.
...the one that occur when the sum of two different viewpoints become a new conglomerate of unheard timing, sounds, dynamics. The fine-tuned amount of contrasting each other that makes the sum really ambivalent and by this, interesting because the ambivalence implies many readings of the same material. That is interplay to me. That is empathy to me.
That is not happening here.
KA is set up with small loudspeakers and mechanical extensions inside a grand piano. Like here. To make it look like a duet I play another piano. Otherwise, this would easily be read as a my solo performance with some mechanical extensions inside the piano. And maybe it is? But I am looking for a duet. KA records me. These recordings are played back randomly triggering the mechanical extensions, and they are stored in an audio archive which is played back in different tempos and pitches. That is why it is getting denser when I play denser. My dynamics and those of the mechanical extensions of KA is not corresponding. It is like we are playing side by side, with some rudimental elements like density and timing bleeding from the machine to me and vice versa. KA records me, so there is an exchange there. I am somehow responding to its chewed audio-representation of me, and to the rhythmical representations of this material made by the mechanical extensions. It is like I am the only one responding. KA is just doing its thing, its math. Like a flaky ostinato that never stops. The whole situation feels very angular. It is difficult to obtain an empathic approach to responding to KA when it is not returned. The approach is of a more intellectual kind. I am responding because this is something that we are trying to do in this project; responding to KA that does not ask for a response or for empathy. Where does that lead me?
It occurred to me, that we are playing side by side, as the kids do before they start to intervene with each other in playing. The subtle exchange of emotion, temperature, timing and language is not there as in a more traditional playing or interplay. This is parallell play, like that in the sandbox. But could this also be interplay with some sort of empathy involved? When one child stops playing it often affects the other in a quite dramatic way, the other one also stops playing… These hidden gestures bleeding into the other “player” even when there are no visible interaction. This reminds me a little bit of playing beside KimAuto
With some interest in the other, but still no real living into the play of the other. We are maybe hiding more than we are showing for each other. It is an interesting form of collaboration that triggers other musical solutions, and that also could do so in a human to human improvisation. The situation lacks the “living into” the other. Can I ever live into a machine; and still if that is not possible, can I discover some other terrain in the trying?
Intellect versus intuition…
I am cold and calculated, and I cannot hear that I have a deep involvement in this.
I am putting in simple, limited material, because I know that I am getting much of the same in return. What I put in establishes the form, this is the way KA works now.
That is maybe a good exercise for me, but I mostly feel like an assertive and not playful performer.
When improvising with humans; sometimes one or more of the players is going out of the format. Then the others become aware of it and tries to keep the balance (or help destroying it); this situation does not occur here. It will not become a negotiation on form in the same way because if I am eclectic the machine adapts to the same material, and by that the same eclecticism. The machine can not deny, stop or object to how the music develops, because it does not hold a reaction of the opposite (yet, but this will maybe come in the next programming). I am unaccustomed to that situation. I have to predict what the form is going to be down the line as a consequence of my input. As Ivar also is talking about: I have to plan. This planning act shifts my improvisational focus from one of the body, seemingly with a link to my intuition, the apparatus that quickly suggest courses of action – towards the head and the intellect which moves much slower in finding solutions. It becomes more of a situation of intellectual planning and calculation, with less intuitive interference… Goodbye Intuition?
I will not leave my intuition when I improvise, but can this involvement of the intellect push or inform my intuition in the long run? Is this a feasible way to change my ingrown patterns?
Ok, so my sounds hold the responsibility of form and texture in the coming span of improvisation. That does not feel like a regular interplay, yet a quite displaced one where I have to grasp over more parametres and thoughts than I usually do when playing with a human. I am taking on a more intellectual approach because of the coldness and lack of inspiration from the machine. There might be a potential for learning awareness in longer spans of improvisation by doing this intellectual exercise of strictness and awareness. But still, I long for a situation where the machine can lead the way.
But maybe it can..?
When I stop there is a nice moment where one really hear what the machine is doing. I like the music that occurs there. That is interesting. Maybe the displaced power structure in this cooperation demands me to point in the direction of the machine for us to really hear its potential of making music and not just be an extension? Then it would be about leaving space for it in the right places, where KA is doing something interesting musically. It is difficult to know what that is, and it depends on me putting in some material in advance. If I leave too much space KA would do very little because I am doing very little. It is a catch 22 balancing act.
When I can smell a fine-tuned interplay, I involve deeper. My body engages, not just the head. When unexpected things happen, I am more awake. Then there is something at stake. The way the machine is responding now does not wake me up. It is like an ostinato. Predictable.
Until I stop it seems like I am just not taking care at all to listen to the machine.
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Energy…
My playing here is very rude, I am being empathic towards KimAuto here, thats for sure. I am playing with a machine, and this rudeness is possible without hurting someone. I think this assertiveness is a good musical option sometimes. The non-listening and the not taking care of the other.
The status of energy is of special interest. In general, in communicational systems, we deal with sequences which resemble stimulus-and-response rather that cause-and-effect. When one billiard ball strikes another, there is an energy transfer such that the motion of the second ball is energised by the impact of the first. In communicational systems, one the other hand, the energy of the response is usually provided by the respondent. If I kick a dog, his immediately sequential behaviour is energised by his metabolism, not by my kick. (Bateson, An ecology of mind, p.409).
In improvisation, the impact between instances is not direct. The response to another musical entry is not one-to-one. It is not about causal response; I can choose to do the opposite or something that is unrelated if that is what my intuitive or cognitive response to the musical stimulus commands. A causal response in improvisation often feels like a mimicking-game and not like music. The communication releases energy potentials, and that creates the response. But right now it seems like the energisation between me and KA is not there at all. When KA is in this random, mimicking or ostinato-like state, the energy feels somewhat drained from its output. We have heard it before. It is like a potential energy that got lost in the wait. It is never surprising. It is often a chewed up version of some material that we just heard. I would need the feeling if a counterpart or creature capable of objecting to me to get more involved in a conversation.
