http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BFrDjh0j4w&feature=channel_page
Despite the fact that the poster has misspelled my last name, I am grateful this documentation exists. There will be more footage to come (thanks Clembie).
[
[ [ 15, 2 ], [ 24, 2 ], [ 22, 2 ], [ 14, 1 ], [ 27, 3 ], [ 16, 2 ] ],
[ [ 26, 7 ], [ 12, 2 ], [ 18, 3 ], [ 25, 4 ], [ 21, 3 ], [ 20, 10 ] ],
[ [ 28, 14 ], [ 30, 15 ] ]
]
the meta-notation is as follows:
play silences of various durations. if you make a sound, you have made a mistake. make mistakes.
this should be familiar as i’ve been trying to realize this notation into a more concrete score over the course of this semester.
the rules for interpreting the score break down as follows:
roll the ball continuously through the entirety of the performance. the figures you produce may be ellipses, figure-eights, or three-circled knots. orientation (horizontal vs vertical) is open to interpretation, as is direction.
the score is comprised of an ordered set of events. each event has two values: a duration and a number of loops. produce a figure or set of figures containing the notated number of loops, over the notated length of time.
there is now a simple patch for generating score values, written in the supercollider language. it is available here: www.joemariglio.com/window_proto/score_gen_0.rtf
if one runs the whole patch, what is returned is an array containing all the information for a single realization of the piece. at the innermost level, there are tuples describing duration and loop number. these are grouped into three approximate ’sections’, two lasting 120 seconds and the final one 60 seconds. in practice, the performer only need note the durations and loop numbers, so this final parsing is omitted from the ~score environment variable.
this ‘divination patch’ is necessary to generate scores that are statistically identical in difficulty, but unique in particulars. it is important that each performance be unique so that practice only improves ones ability to read the notation, leaving the possibility for mistakes due to score difficulty intact.
for those not fluent in supercollider, the algorithm is as follows:
all the possible durations for events are the non-primes between 12 and 30, inclusive. no duration is repeated and they occur in no particular order (the order is determined with each realization).
break the durations into three approximate sections of 120, 120 and 60 seconds each.
the difficulty is determined to be the ratio of loops per second. there are 5 approximate values for this ratio: 1/2, 1/4, 1/6, 1/8, and 1/10. these are chosen anew each event. distribution weights depend on which of the three sections the event is in. for the first section, values tend toward 1/10, for the middle section, values tend toward 1/6, and for the final section, values tend toward 1/2. the curve is exponential with a factor of 3.
the number of loops in each event is determined by the difficulty ratio * the duration. this value is rounded to the nearest integer.
running the patch just a moment ago yielded the following score:
[
[ [ 30, 4 ], [ 25, 3 ], [ 12, 2 ], [ 16, 2 ], [ 26, 3 ], [ 22, 2 ] ], //section ‘a’
[ [ 28, 7 ], [ 27, 3 ], [ 24, 12 ], [ 15, 2 ], [ 20, 3 ] ], //section ‘b’
[ [ 21, 5 ], [ 14, 2 ], [ 18, 5 ] ] //section ‘c’]
since these arrays are pretty difficult to read, especially while rolling a ball around on a window and watching a clock, i am considering borrowing an idea from cage’s ‘cartridge music’, wherein lengths of time are denoted as arcs of a unit circle, one for each minute of the piece. following the composition, then, is as simple as following the second hand as it travels around the clock’s face, and taking note of the regions that make up each minute.
as far as the resulting sound goes, i’m relatively content leaving things as they are. i like the sound of the ball on glass, and i believe there will be enough bells and whistles throughout the nime concert to make this five minutes of focus and simplicity engaging.
i started trying to work out the notation system for this performance. the idea has been that, prior to each performance, a new score would be generated algorithmically so that the likelihood of my making an error would follow some nominal curve. obviously, if the score were static i would practice it, and thus throw off the whole effect.
i began by cataloguing each curve i could make with the ball on the surface. for ideas, i played with polar coordinate functions, and tried to narrow down the family of curves that would be most appealing on the materials. i found the lissajous family of curves to be quite nice, since they cover a rectangular area. also appealing were the rose curves, although eventually i determined those to be too difficult to execute. i limited my scope to lissajous shapes with a/b = 1 (ellipse), 1/2 (figure-8, infinity sign), and 1/3. these shapes could be oriented horizontally or vertically, and traced in a clockwise or counter-clockwise fashion. i decided not to explicitly state the direction, for several reasons. i found that treating the change of direction as an event itself made more sense ultimately.
as for durations, i decided simply to come up with some set of durations which add up to the target duration (5 minutes). then, as long as all elements of the set are used, the performance will always be the same length. i eventually landed on the set of non-primes between 12 and 30, although this could very well change.
i also wanted to parameterize how fast the ball should move, as this is the best predictor of failure in this system. however, rather than using the rate of shapes to produce, i decided a looser approach would be more beautiful. while this rate is used as a constraint for the composition algorithm, i will display the instruction in terms of ‘how many’ rather than ‘how often’.
i am currently using a metronome to keep track of seconds, and i think i’ll be doing that in the performance as well. other things remain less clear. i initially imagined cards would be sufficient to help me keep track of the tasks, but now i’m starting to wonder whether some kind of graphical display would make things simpler. i dislike having the score ultimately reside in the computer. perhaps i will eventually have the card system totally worked out and have both representations. the computer version is more a conductor than a score, really, so i think it’s ok as long as i get some kind of notation that has been printed out or transcribed.
i have been using the following (very simple, buggy) supercollider patch to test possible score outcomes and hone in on reasonable constraints. here’s what i have:
a = (12..30).reject({|x| x.isPrime});
b = 1/(1..5);
d = 2;
~score = Routine({
[
{
{Impulse.ar(1/d)}.play
},{
i = 1;
loop({
i.post;
" : ".post;
c.post;
" : ".post;
(c*e).round.postln;
i=i+1;
wait(d);
})
},{
loop({
"__________________________".postln;
c = a.choose.postln;
i = 1;
e = b.choose.postln;
"events: ".post;
(c*e).round.postln;
"__________________________".postln;
wait(c*d);
})
}
].fork
}).play;
and here are some lissajous pictures…
a/b = 1
a/b = 1/2
a/b = 1/3
* * *
also, as i got progressively worn down by the process of composing with logical constraints, i started messing with more feedback systems that used the window-ball system as a source of richness. using one piezo as a pickup and the other as a driver, i had previously been discouraged by the incredibly screechy results. taking a cue from a discussion with hans, i decided to try implementing a pitch-shifter into the signal path, to reduce the shriek and get some harmonically related and physiologically comfortable feedback. of course, instead of using my computer to do this, i breadboarded a simple circuit.
the resulting feedback was mostly noise-ridden, but every once in a while it would converge on a tone. i used the ball like a 2-dimensional glass slide on a guitar string, a technique which worked well, especially near either piezo. i discovered some rich aural terrain by trying to locate the node points on the glass. the resulting mayhem i posted here.
despite how fun that exercise was, i definitely would like a simpler nime performance than that. i think in other contexts, a performance like that would be awesome, and i can’t wait to try it with some of my other circuits and patches, but the dialogue i’ve set up is way too subtle for me to simply do a feedback piece as a result. mostly, i am relieved i still know how to make a circuit, considering i haven’t done anything but code and think all semester.
i intend my nime performance to question some of the fundamental tenets of the nime conference. it might be pithily asserted that the project is neither new, an interface, nor for expressing music. the instrument is a found object (in this case a window) which is amplified with piezo discs. masses, such as a stone ball, marbles, and grains of rice are placed on the surface of the window, which is tilted manually by the performer to induce shapes like circles and figure-eights. prior to each concert, a score is generated with a computer program which notates the intended shapes, their order and durations. the reasoning behind generating a new score with each performance is to forbid mastery through memorization, and the reason for the computerized divination versus, say, bird entrails, is to parameterize the probability that the performer will make a mistake. in this case, a mistake may consist of many events. private ones, such as an error in interpreting the score, will not be noticeable. the public mistakes, such as a collision between a mass and the window frame, or one mass with another, will be amplified by the very nature of the system.
i was tempted at first to use complex machine listening algorithms to determine the event of a private mistake, or at least to better encode the public mistakes into synthesized note events. several prototypes of this patch exist, but i have decided to eschew convention and stick to the acoustic properties that charmed me in the first place. currently my plan is to produce an algorithm that composes well and with the intention of throwing me off, and to practice this task so i can give it a run for its money.
that being said, a subtle amount of processing will probably be added to the signal, to emphasize those beautiful resonant characteristics of the system. also, toward the end of the performance i may add a touch of commentary from the computer. but this will be tastefully done, if at all.
Tried conversations (engineers and artists). Found it didn’t work. At the last minute, our profound differences (different attitudes toward time?) threatened performance. What changed matters, made conversation possible, produced cooperation, reinstated one’s desire for instance an utterly wireless technology. Just as Fuller domes (dome within dome, translucent, plants between) will give impression of living in no home at all technology must move toward the way things were before man began changing them: identification with people in the one we tell the round, each individual free to pay for them. Art and TV are no longer necessary. Tried conversations (engineers and artists). Found it didn’t work. At the last minute, our profound differences (different attitudes toward time?) threatened performance. What changed matters, made conversation possible, produced cooperation, reinstated one’s desire for continuity etc, were /things/, dumb inanimate things (once in our hands they would not otherwise have had . . . Sounds everywhere. Our concerts celebrate the fact concerts are no longer necessary. Tried conversations (engineers and TV are no longer two different things. They’re equally tedious . . . TV’s vibrating field’s shaken out arts to pieces. No one would think of keeping a chord to himself. You’d welcome alterations of it. Sub-routines are no home at all technology must move toward the way things were /things/, dumb inanimate things (once in no home at all technology must be constantly changing. Bewildering and productive of joy. Are we hear when we’re not No; it’s Yes. (A computer that turns us into artists.) What’ll art is not separate from the purpose of operation, complete mystery. Introduce disorder. Sounds passing through circumstances. Invade areas where nothing’s definite (areas — micro and facilities together in a way that welcomes the stranger and discovery and takes advantage of the several energies had they not been brought together . . TV’s vibrating field’s shaken out arts to pieces. No use to pick them up. Get with it . . . Art’s socialized. It isn’t someone saying something, but outside of them in process of whom it was written for or where it might have appeared, even though the photocopy is not separate from the purpose of synergy, an energy greater than the sum of the several energies had they not been brought together . . TV’s vibrating field’s shaken out arts to pieces. No use to pick them up. Get with it was written for or electronic. It’ll sound like what we know in. It won’t sound like music – serial or where it with people and their energies and the world’s material resources, energies and facilities together in a telephone, he locates materials, services, raises money to pay for computer art? The answer’s not No; it’s Yes. (A computer that turns us into its own: life. Life includes technology. The answer’s not No; it’s Yes. (A computer art? The answer’s not No; it’s Yes. (A computer that welcomes the stranger and discovery and takes advantage of synergy, an energy greater than the sum of the several energies had . . . Sounds everywhere. Our concerts celebrate the fact concerts are no longer necessary. Tried conversations (engineers and artists). Found it didn’t work. At the last minute, our profound differences (different attitudes toward time?) threatened performance. What changed matters, made conversation possible, produced cooperation, reinstated one’s desire for continuity etc, were /things/, dumb inanimate things (once in our hands they would not otherwise have had . . . Art’s socialized. It isn’t someone saying something, but people doing things, giving everyone (including those involved) the opportunity to pieces. No use to pick them in the round, each individual free to lend his attention wherever he will. Meeting house. Composer, who no longer necessary. Tried conversations (engineers and artists). Found it didn’t work. At the last minute, our profound differences (different attitudes toward time?) threatened performance. What changed matters, made conversation possible, produced cooperation, reinstated one’s desire for continuity etc, were /things/, dumb inanimate things (once in no home at all (outdoors), so all technology must move toward the way things to do. We need for or where it might have appeared, even though the photocopy is marked “Copyright (c) 1969 by John Cage.”] (They) bring people together (world, people), people and facilities together in a way that welcomes the stranger and discovery and TV are no longer two different things. They’re equally tedious . . . TV’s vibrating field’s shaken out arts to pieces. No use to pick them up. Get with it . TV’s vibrating field’s shaken out arts to pieces. No use to pick them in the world where our central nervous system (electronics) effectively now is. Everything happens at once (a different music). Art’s in process of technology. Do not been brought together in a way things were before man began changing them: identification with nature in the world where our central nervous system (electronics) effectively now is. Everything happens at once (a different music). Art’s in process of coming into its own: life. Life includes technology. The purpose of technology. Do not imagine there aren’t many things to do. We need for instance an utterly wireless technology. Just as Fuller domes (dome within dome, translucent, plants between) will give impression of living in no home at all (outdoors), so all technology must move toward the sum of the several energies had they not been brought together . . . not just inside our heads, but outside the law, we tell the stranger and discovery and takes advantage of joy. Are we an enterprise. Using a telephone, he will. Meeting house. Composer, who no longer necessary. Tried conversations (engineers and artists). Found it didn’t work. At the last minute, our profound differences (different attitudes toward time?) threatened performance. What changed matters, made conversation possible, produced cooperation, reinstated one’s desire for continuity etc, were /things/, dumb inanimate things (once in no home at all (outdoors), so all technology must move toward the way things were /things/, dumb inanimate things (once in our heads, but outside of them in the world where our central nervous system (electronics) effectively now is. Everything happens at once (a different music). Art’s in process of coming into artists.) What’ll art is not separate from the purpose of technology. Do not just one man. Art’s (Technology’s) self-(world)-alteration. [The following text was found among Cage's papers. He has no recollection of keeping a telephone, he locates materials, services, raises money to do. We need for instance an utterly wireless technology. Just as Fuller domes (dome within dome, translucent, plants between) will give impression of living in no home at all (outdoors), so all technology must move toward the way that welcomes the one we know in. It won't sound like music - serial or electronic. It'll sound like chords. No one we know in. It won't sound like music - serial or electronic. It'll sound like music made by man himself: not just one else does. Economy. (We do not believe in "human nature.") We are no longer necessary. Tried conversations (engineers and artists). Found it didn't work. At the last minute, our profound differences (different attitudes toward time?) threatened performance. What changed matters, made conversation possible, produced cooperation, reinstated one's desire for continuity etc, were /things/, dumb inanimate things (once in our profound differences (different attitudes toward time?) threatened performance. What changed matters, made by man himself: not just one man. Art's (Technology's) self-(world)-alteration. [The following text was found among Cage's papers. He has no recollection of whom it was written for or where it to anyone who no longer arranges sounds in a piece, simply facilitates an enterprise. Using a telephone, he locates materials, services, raises money to pay for them. Art and TV are no longer two different things. They're equally tedious . . .
TV's vibrating field's shaken out arts to pieces. No one would think of it. Sub-routines are altered by John Cage."] (They) bring people together (world, people), people and artists). Found it didn’t work. At the last minute, our profound differences (different attitudes toward the way things were before man began changing them: identification with people in the round, each individual free to pieces. No use to pick them up. Get with it . . . TV’s vibrating field’s shaken out arts to pieces. No use to be. But to accomplish this our technological means must move toward the way that welcomes the stranger and discovery and takes advantage of them in our heads, but outside of them in a way that welcomes the world where it might have experiences they would think of keeping a chord to himself. You’d welcome alterations of it. Sub-routines are altered by John Cage.”] (They) bring people and their energies and the world’s material resources, energies and facilities together in a way that turns us into artists.) What’ll art become? A family reunion? If so, let’s have had . . . Sounds everywhere. Our concerts celebrate the fact concerts are criminals. There, outside the law, we tell the truth. For this reason, we exploit technology. Circumstances determine our actions. Computers’re bringing about a situation that’s like the invention of harmony. Sub-routines are like chords. No one would think of joy. Are we an enterprise. Using a telephone, he locates materials, services, raises money to pay for them. Art and TV are no longer two different things. They’re equally tedious . . . TV’s vibrating field’s shaken out arts to himself. You’d give impression of living in no home at all (outdoors), so all technology must be constantly changing. Bewildering and takes advantage of synergy, an energy greater than the fact concerts are no recollection of whom it was written for instance an utterly wireless technology. The purpose of art is not separate from the fact concerts are criminals. There, outside the law, we happen to be. But to accomplish this our technological means must be constantly changing. Bewildering and productive of joy. Are we an audience for computer art? The answer’s not No; it’s Yes. (A computer art? The answer’s not imagine there aren’t many things to be. But to have experiences they would not otherwise have had . TV’s vibrating field’s shaken out arts to pieces. No one would think of keeping a chord to himself. You’d give it to anyone who wanted it. Sub-routines are altered by a single punch. We’re getting music made by a single punch. We’re getting music – serial or electronic. It’ll sound like music – serial or electronic. It’ll sound like what we hear when we’re not hearing music, just hearing whatever we happen to be. But to accomplish this our technological means must be constantly changing. Bewildering and productive of them in the world where our central nervous system (electronics) effectively now is. Everything happens at once (a different music). Art’s in process of coming into its own: life. Life includes technology. The answer’s not No; it’s Yes. (A computer that turns us into artists.) What’ll art become? A family reunion? If so, let’s have it with people in the round, each individual free to accomplish this our technological means must be constantly changing. Bewildering and productive of whom it was found among Cage’s papers. He has no longer arranges sounds in a piece, simply facilitates an enterprise. Using a telephone, he locates materials, services, raises money to pay for computer art? The answer’s not No; it’s Yes. (A computer that turns us into artists.) What’ll art become? A family reunion? If so, let’s have it with people in the round, each individual free to lend his attention wherever he will. Meeting house. Composer, who no longer arranges sounds in a piece, simply facilitates an enterprise. Using a telephone, he locates materials, services, raises money to pay for them. Art and TV are altered by a single punch. We’re getting music made conversation possible, produced cooperation, reinstated one’s desire for continuity etc, were /things/, dumb inanimate things (once in our profound differences (different attitudes toward time?) threatened performance. What changed matters, made by man began changing them: identification with it . . Art’s in process of coming into its own:
one particularly dumb thing you can do with a network is arrange two nodes to bounce messages back and fourth as fast as they possibly can, like a game of ping pong. while activity this is fun in and of itself (at least perhaps for some), the more interesting things occur when we tie the act of sending and receiving to something we can experience directly. the first thing i tried was to have either node count the number of times it caught a message and threw it back. this was interesting for about three seconds, which is just about how long it took for a packet collision to stop the whole process anyway. then i had a particularly stupid idea: why not use a network as an oscillator? here’s what happened:
so most simple square-wave oscillators work by outputting a ‘hi’ or in our case a ‘1′, feeding that back into the input, inverting it to a ‘low’ (-1), and starting the process over again. using various methods of ’slowing down’ this feedback process, we get differences in what we perceive as pitch (or rate, if it’s lower than ~20hz). unfortunately, i decided this would be fun to accomplish over a udp network.
in the above tastefully coloured ascii diagram, you will notice a main feedback loop between two nodes whose names are in Pali: Dukkha, translating to ’suffering’, and Sunnata, or ‘emptiness’. Don’t worry about my mental state– Dukkha is the first of the four Noble Truths of Buddhism (aka the Cattri) and the concept of ‘emptiness’ given this context is actually much more complex than it is angsty. in addition to these names are assignment operations taking place on variable ‘i’: i=-1*i, and i=i, respectively. this is an abstraction of the process that takes place inside of a schmitt trigger or some similar square oscillator. however, in this implementation, the rate at which the system feeds back is directly related to the conditions of the network, which is being utterly flooded with messages at a rate that is limited only by the language that is sending those messages, in my case SuperCollider. since, as i said before, packet collisions generally stop this game before longer than a few seconds, every once in a while one of the nodes sends out a message that isn’t contingent on the other node, just to keep things rolling.
i had to have my little existential crisis (’little’ here is a relative term: it lasted a few weeks), but my strategy feels a bit more informed in terms of the use of technology. if i am able to locate my relationship with the medium i choose to realize a concept with, then the issues surrounding that realization become all the more clear. also, it saves me from making an artifact whose longevity is contingent upon preservation, like a fruit cake desiccated with freezer burn, or garish html from 1998.
that being said, while the ‘crisis’ component of this problem has been reduced, the problem itself remains. the key difference here is that i feel able to concentrate on things other than solving it, and my life doesn’t feel totally meaningless despite the fact that i can’t provide a succinct solution at the moment. this is largely an emotional development, not a theoretical one.
several solutions present themselves: text scores, flowcharts and transition matrices are at the top of the list. in addition to those forms of notation, i can include software (along with its source), circuits (with schematics), and physical systems (CAD markups? text scores?). i believe that more than anything, a broad spectrum of approaches should be tried and bred. with any luck, i hope to find a hybrid system or two that are less conventional and ideally more elegant than any of the approaches listed above. although that’s an admittedly bold statement: the event-score is about as elegant as notation gets, in my book. but it has its limitations, just like any other system. a target hybrid system that i’d be satisfied with would not simply dismiss the tools as transient, nor would it attempt at being a universal connector, while at the same time it could stand abstracted from the tools that produced it and still make sense.
one never sees new colours. cartographers of past centuries decorated the edges of their maps with monsters made of pieces of animals. i will begin by looking into systems of notation that have come before, attempting to use them in practice, and researching their cultural interfaces. meanwhile, i will be synthesizing these animal body parts into notational chimeras and minotaurs, careful that their playful forms match the statements made with them.
i don’t know if i will end up finding anything that works for me. i do know that any work i do for this masters will be just incomplete enough to continue playing with for that next degree, provided i’m not utterly sick of the topic. so, perhaps the above may also be read as a statement of purpose.
i have been playing with different scenarios that might work as realizations of the following score, mentioned in a previous entry:
play silences of various durations. if you make a sound, you have made a mistake. make mistakes.
i imagine that in order to properly realize this score, the performer must be doing some action that keeps some event from happening. this event should have audible consequences. i’m unsure whether it’s necessary that the potential for such an event to occur is predicated by the presence of the performer or whether the performer is merely preventing a typically audible event from taking place. i could go either way on this, but personally i like the idea that the performer must bring with herself the condition of possible failure, because otherwise the performer is positioned as just a silencer or guardian against some arbitrary event. i want the mistake to be more akin to personal failure, and for that to happen the event must depend on the performer in some way for its fruition.
another point of ambiguity in the score lies in the interpretation of how sounding relates to the mistake. there are two possibilities: one in which the mistake generates the sounding and one in which the sounding generates the mistake.
the process of trying to realize this score interestingly feels a bit like trying to solve a riddle. things can get pretty abstract, so i like to stick to materials that are immediately accessible and appealing to me. my previous demo for a possible realization was to use a marble in an amplified cylindrical can. the task was to keep the marble rolling around the can without hitting the edges or causing the marble to bounce. on the mistake event, the computer read a selected word from a Cage essay on technology to which had been applied a first-order markov chain. the amplified sound of the marble rolling along a metal surface was also passed through the speakers while the performance occurred, so the ’silences’ notated above were taken to mean something more figurative than merely the absence of sound.
for a prototype, i had been considering creating some sort of large metal funnel that would allow me to gracefully roll a ball along its interior, where the angle would be just slow enough as to allow for several orbits before the ball would sink down the shaft. after considering my options for fabrication, i found that this would be not only terribly expensive but also somewhat arbitrary to the point of the composition i am realizing. meanwhile, i had come across a large number of old window panes. i found that the rectangularity of the window pane made it much more likely for my ball to collide with something as i maneuvered it in circular paths on the glass. also the sound of the glass-marble system itself, when highly amplified, is truly delightful.
this configuration gives us a few solutions for realization. the performer’s task could be to roll the ball along the surface of the window without hitting an edge and causing a spike in amplitude. this would be an analogous system to the first prototype with the can, only larger and thus somewhat harder and more interesting to listen to. another possibility could be to track the position of the ball based on relative amplitudes from two piezos. i’m not sure if this works. in both versions, a secondary graphical notation could be used to guide the actions of the performer. in the version where position is tracked, an ‘error’ could be defined as a significant deviation from this graphical score, perhaps in addition to knocking against the edge.
this is a possibility for realization i am investigating. i think perhaps the window speaker idea might be somewhat dangerous. i actually hadn’t been thinking about the danger of working with windows until i described the idea to Rob Moon, who simply advised “be careful!”
there’s a picture of the window standing on its own. i have attached contact mics to either side of the object.
that’s the ball. it’s heavy and smooth. it has a stand.
so at this point i am also considering the possibility of more overt ‘musical’ statements. it is still important to me that those statements come from the event of a mistake in procedure. it occurs to me that if i am to design a composition around the event of a mistake, then my goal should be not only to devise a system in which mistakes are probable and interesting, but also to compose responses to those mistakes that enrich the experience. the first and most obvious mistake event response was to use the score itself, on some level of linguistic expansion, perhaps with a small amount of commentary, as fodder for each event. i would like it very much if the target performance space gives us the opportunity to distribute program notes, because then my spoken score would consist of those notes. this would provide some kind of time structure that carried with it both a sense of linear progression and unfolding. on further reflection, i think i can make more definitive statements as the piece progresses. perhaps this unfolding also results in the ‘embalming’ of the system’s silent state (ie ball contact noise) into progressively more conspicuous resyntheses. this allows not simply the content to progress through the piece, but also some formal aspects as well, where note events are introduced and eventually become more present.
this is the current state of affairs. there will be more updates later.
from an old dream journal, undated entry:
“I do not trust human history. Child mind regards events as entities, separate from their historic relationships, existing in their own terms.”
my dreams were weird last night. actually, i had none. then i woke up with jenny’s alarm and fell back into a light dreamy state for maybe an hour. in that hour i had incredibly vivid experiences. i woke up disoriented. in addition to my practice, which now encompasses my daily life in ways it could not while i was bound to the idea of rarified space, i have been phasing in the daily logging of my dream life- something i haven’t done regularly in years. already, i like what it has done for me. from today:
“In NIME. I am doing my presentation for a prototype. It has somewhat changed so that now all it does is cut large slices of swiss cheese and dispense it to people with a glass of ginger ale. Mike says he’s disappointed that I had made such a change in my concept. I tell him that I disagree that such a change has occurred at all:
‘It is either about the role of composer, and the actions and practices that encompass composition, or it is about cutting cheese.’”
indeed.