Reflections after the first time I listened to it:
This piece doesn’t work.
At least four different sorts of sound material are occurring unrelated to each other and reveal neither a clear atmosphere nor a clear structure:
Quiet and lyrical material (rubbing a bamboo stick that is plugged between two strings) loud and energetic percussive sounds in the grand piano (KA)
harsh electronic sounds from my mixer
an often repeated melodic/rhythmical motive from KA (archive from Morten)
The volumes of my mixer feedbacks are changing; in the beginning they are much too loud, later they get quieter, which makes it sound not like an aesthetic choice, but like a technical mistake.
There are awkward pauses that seem to be not voluntary.
The piano motive stays separately.
The bamboo sound stays persistent in the picture.
After introducing soft material by rubbing a bamboo stick I react to KA’s first brutal sounding percussive hits with a new material (harsh electronics) to try to match it. If I would have continued to establish a lyrical atmosphere this would lead to a clear “parallel playing”. Reacting to KA and continuing the atmospheric bamboo sound seem to be undecided between parallel and interdependent playing.
When I listen to the piece a second time it (suddenly) happens unintentionally that I listen to it as it would be a composition. This changes my perception and my way of interpretation quite a lot. I understand it as if there would be an intention behind the music with pre-conceived decisions:
Why are the different sound worlds not clearly structured parallelly, why not clearly together? Why is there no convincing atmosphere maintained?
Why are there awkward pauses?
Why is the volume not coordinated?
By assuming that the piece is deliberately composed like this, what I’ve interpreted as a deficit during the first listening session is becoming interesting.
It is interesting when music is not clearly this or that (“parallel playing” or “togetherness”); when pauses appear at unexpected moments; when volume is not tasted.
I wonder if I could take this more in account during live playing. I wish not to devaluate “failed” situations while playing with KA. I wish to be able to consider them as a mysteriously good composition.
The path an improvisation takes is extremely dependent on how I assess what happens. If I succeed in seeing meaning in a musical situation, it inspires me and the playing sounds convincing. This can lead to very long pauses or to abrupt changes between juxtaposition and playing together or the use of extremely different volumes.
If I don't see any sense in a musical situation and if my own playing doesn't convince me, the music will most likely not sound strong or convincing. However, this is less due to what is played than to how I rate it. If it were possible to expand the range of what I consider "meaningful", my existence as an improvising musician might be simpler and more exciting.
The material seems to be consistent. It stays (with variations) in a clear defined area:
Noises, rhythms and pulses within layers of noises, hits (piano toys), different tempi inside sound layers and of hits, abrupt changes (loud sounding material of KA stops -> I continue quiet).
Mixer feedbacks are matching well KA’s backwards played material of inside piano sounds.
Hits by KA that appear through the whole piece are structuring the sound layers.
KA and I are working in the same area – there is no solo and accompaniment; the activities of both of us are completing each other.
I get the image of an organically working big machine. In the music there is both: the organic and the machine. Feedback of Morten, Sidsel and Ivar: Machine was breathing / friction / physical / machinery sounded exhausted.
Both actors (human and machine) were responsible for both qualities.
Could it be a goal to make the machine sounding human?
I like the music. Nevertheless, I don't have the feeling that this is a direction that I want to explore further, that attracts or challenges me. More or less by chance, KA has corresponded to an aesthetic that I like. But it doesn't go beyond that.
Again, the question arises what I want from the interaction with the machine, which I cannot easily answer.
For me, the most successful pieces in the interaction with KA to date have been the duo with Sidsel’s and the duo with Morten's archive. In both cases, I had the feeling that I was getting in touch with them via their archive. There was a sense of responsibility towards them and their material that was inspiring for the playing and gave it a meaning. Through the detour of interacting with the machine, I sought again the ethics
of interpersonal contact.
Improvisation is exchange, sleepwalking, chemical ingredients, irrational.
It is living. How am I supposed to do that with a non-living counterpart?
So far in the project my brain, my thinking, my concepts have been challenged, but not my ears.
Again and again I come across the fact that I would rather use the machine to realize sonic visions that I cannot realize without it:
FOR EXAMPLE: KA analyses the frequency spectrum I play, focuses a certain part of it, "freezes it" and returns it as a standing surface.
KA analyses the frequency spectrum I play, subtracts the physical from it and gives back the shadows, the side effects so to speak.
KA analyses my kind of interaction, counteracts it or returns it in potentiated form.
KA picks up the musical gesture, returns it, but uses synthesized sound itself (similar to Morten's first workshop with the “listener”).
Am I going in circles? Isn't that something that I said at the beginning of the project and that caused a lot of disagreement in our group:
"Somehow I think that the machine first has to learn everything we learned (musically) and after that it is able to challenge us."
I would put it differently now:
The machine should understand what I do, so that it becomes exciting to interact with it.
Should I walk the circle 2 or 3 more times and then maybe stand somewhere else at the end?
