maskings: research context

maskings is practice research that is centred within the field of jazz and improvised music studies. It is part of a broader project called how the vibraphone can be a mouth which explores the development and locations of personal sound in improvised vibraphone practice, through a series of recorded improvised works where I use vibraphone, audio processing, and electronics.

The primary concern of maskings is language; how practice research describes itself. With the three maskings, I am interrogating the language of the practice research abstract. The role of the abstract is to succinctly reveal the scope, challenge, methods, outcomes, and insights of the research.

In the first masking, the artistic practice is mediated through a codifed language that masks the expression of the art work. Through interrogating the act of writing the academic abstract, the idea of the "mask" was revealed. For practice research in music, the process is not often communicated in music, but words about music — a "mask"; yet words are often not adequate to the task of articulating the research insights, which may be located within the artistic practice itself.

the second masking draws on concepts from Africana surrealism¹ and creative critical writing to express the practice, the art, and the research: using text, hypertext, audio, and video in a multi-modal approach. The use of hypertext allows for the abstract to be related with other parts of the broader project (notably, body (#as_the_tex_t), soul: ba(red), and The People).

Finally, as a practitioner, it is possible to create music that seeks to reveal the challenge of research through sound. This is presented in the third masking, which places the keyboard and the programmed drums in the foreground, subsuming the vibraphone. This reflects the dominant characterisations of the vibraphone as either a form of piano or as a drum.

To the first masking >>