I am writing a more humanly readable summary/expansion on some of these issues. I hope to have that article posted in the next few weeks, but in the meantime, for an alternative, complementary, critical take on the concert, see Melanie L. Marshall’s article on the ImproTech concert. I am indebted to @drmelmarshall, @tperkis, @piesaac, @jeffalbert and @weefuzzy for their twitterverse interactions that shaped my responses.

Twitter transcript (unedited)

Concert: Brooklyn, May 2012

Some thoughts from a technomusical concert coming up…

1. remind me to tell you about Joel Ryan’s story about politicking in computer music

2. wow. it’s like what turntableists did like three decades ago. #culturalborders

3. it’s the third time in two months I think, if you take away the electronics, there’s really fine ensemble there

4. funny how the iconoclasm and high mindedness is expressed by the uniformity of brand logos

5. almost feels more like a product demonstration than a concert performance #cantputmyfingeronit

6. Wasn’t this was more absurd/playful/questioning when Kagel did it?

7. How does one develops virtuosity w/ a trackpad/qwerty/lcd combo? Is virtuosity an impossibility?

8. Is it possible to develop a musical practice w/out a common practice notion of instramentalism?

9. What are the power implications of the sweaty saxophonist vs the effortless laptop?

10. Why is this more worthy of my attention in comparison to a NAMM show performance?

11. What would we do without cycles of fifth?

12. That really was terrible.

13. How often have you heard live electronic performance where you didn’t perceive the electronics as (primarily) reactive? #notacriticism

14. Why the ubiquity of the ramp envelope (the swell) in electronics? Are we fearful of sudden hits and cut outs?

15. …or does it perform the western romantic notion of the orchestra, with the centrality of the bowed strings?

16. While trip-hop and glitchcore explore the frayed edges of the artificial, why is so much Computer Music stuck w/ this?

17. …does the ‘natural’ (or the fear of the artificial) haunt the CM enterprise?

18. reminded of Park’s First Law of Live Electronics

19. is, say, a cello (always) already designed w/ the possibility of virtuosity? What does that mean for trackpads/qwerty/footswitches?

20. I am reminded of Richard’s talk about the need to spend time practicing—forging a kind of virtuosity and familiarity.

21. Anyone else feeling overfamiliar w/ the vocabulary of live video processing (in high art)?

22. …what is video processing? Is it a reductive, sculptural medium? Is it painterly?

23. …Is the emphasis on transformation, invention, or the magnification of what is already in the image?

24. Why don’t we hear the juxtaposition of the unamplified and the electronic more often? Again, is it the fear of the artificial?

25. Ask @tomerbe to tell you a story about GEL et al. and Bob Moog at ICMC

26. apologies for the lack of tweets, but that last performance was… fantastic. I could listen to RM all night.

27. The problem w/ percussion in European concert music is that you can _hear_ the (limits of its) notation (abstraction/schema).

28. this sounds like the CM we did when I was at the conservatory almost 15 years ago. Why the relative stasis in practice/sound?

29. …it would be wrong for me to repeat Bob Ostertag’s question… so I won’t

30. Reminded of Zappa’s rhetorical question of why anyone would want to see someon on stage press the PLAY button.

31. …also reminded of the old joke about the rock band that discovers their hit song by observing that it’s sh*t but at least it’s different

32. what is the effect when such simplistic notions of interaction are presented w/in the context of a shiny futuristic technotopia?

33. Problematic: I think this is great, and then realize that I have, as a listener, phased out the electronics.

34. In an improvisation, if a player is doing something systematic, detailed, & compelling, are you not obliged to meet them in that space?

35. Not convinced. Didn’t Ikue do this in the 90s w/ far more sophistication and humor?

36. Problematic musically, but I’m fascinated by this piece from an engineering standpoint. #theConstructorIsIn

37. Final thoughts: I only walk out of two performances, & I didn’t make my CM concert face, so that’s a lot better than most.

38. I always take my hat off to GEL. His post-Voyager pieces almost make me listen & forget my engineer’s hat.

38. See @drmelmarshall’s observations about gender. There’s a strong (perhaps self-defining) gender/race/class dynamic of CM.

39. …the dynamic is so strong that perhaps the only way you can continue to practice Computer Music is by ignoring the ideological…

40. …or perhaps the only people who continue practicing CM are those who are unaware of the ideological implications…

40. …or, more worrying, subscribe to certain gender/class/race ideologies.

41. …computers in so much CM the computer becomes assistive technology for the composer; further centralizing autocratic power…

42. …and power of definition.

addendum to tweet 29: Ostertag’s question. http://bobostertag.com/writings-articles-computer-music-sucks.htm #computermusic #politics #technology

43. following for a conversation w/ @drmelmarshall: is the anti-performance, anti-virtuosity stance of CM laptopiteers because…

44. …they identify as composer w/in the composer-performer hierarchy? To ‘perform’ in this context would be to identify w/ lower caste.

45. …studied anti-virtuosity similar to the ‘all mind’ of certain class of (white, male, bourgeois) academics as described by bell hooks.

Conference: New York, May 2012

Random thoughts from a technomusical conference coming up…

1. GEL: “creative machines” #expressiontoremember

2. GEL: improvisation ~ “process of social transformation”

3. I want to know more about imbuing machines w/ “integral subjectivity”. Let you know when I get a chance to corner GEL.

4. Never realized how much Richard’s playing resembles Sun Ra’s. #makingconnextions #aha

5. is this relational schema correct? tech knowledgepractical usemusical knowledge #epistemology #technoscience #music #culture

6. …do not (musical) technical objects (always) already (materially) embody musical knowledge?

7. …is not musical knowledge (always) already performed by the technical (in its construction, etc.)?

8. Is knowledge something that can be bound? Is it useful to think of (technical) knowledge in terms of intention?

9. …practice of close-reading & reverse-engineering suggests the link between intention and knowledge is a distraction, or fuzzy at best.

10. why the distrust of the regular beat?

11. Polish notation! #geeklove

12. reminds me of the ‘Free Jazz Bass Player’ simulator that I hacked in an afternoon. #isComputerMusicBeyondParody

13. Can musical be reduced to a series of BANGs. It’s not even a data type. #Max

14. Before asking the question of whether machines can improvise, should we ask if we can determine if we ourselves can improvise?

15. machine agency live on stage during a conference about machine agency. #revoltoftechnics

16. Is it useful to study #improvisation by drawing boundaries around it? thru definition? #ontology

17. …or would it be more illuminating to study #improvisation by its effects?

18. Ah, John Searle’s critique of hard AI. @weefuzzy will get this.

19. Is an algorithm an abstraction or representation of what a computer does, rather than (necessarily) what it _actually_ might be doing?

20. But Searle’s objection was partly a critique of lazy sizeism; there is no reason to believe that complexity/scale leads to intelligence?

21. Does no one else understand Searle’s critique?

22. Is the Western #Subject (as theorized/critiqued by #Foucault) holding us back in understanding the improvisative? #subjectivity

23. … #improvisation may offer alternative notions of #freedom, or relations, say, that have radical implications for the subject.

24. Searle’s critique actually nullifies the second stance: improvisation as an emergent property of a complex of algorithms. #duh

25. Do you ever see a paper title and wonder if they will address the ‘why we did this #research’ question? #academia #music

26. Apropos of nothing, the last transcription I did was Taylor’s Jitney… cured me of the need to do more perhaps.

27. Ever imagine if your, say, bugle or snare drum would be playable if it had even 1/10 of the latency of digital devices?

28. If gestures are the focal point of interaction/creation, why does one have to link it to novel sounds? #unaskedquestion

29. Pointless. #goingoutforair

30. 1 more thing: Searle’s critique was specifically of Hard AI’s dependence on simple, deterministic algorithms…

31. …it does not necessarily follow that it applies to other forms of computing (embodied robotics, neural networks, analog computation).

32. why the prefix ‘augmented’? what distinguishes it from, say, ‘cyber’? #nomenclature #artscatchphrases

33. Is #improvisation a tool? or is it a practice? process? method?

34. old question: is the notion of #mistake, flaw, right/wrong useful in discussing #improvisation?

35. Computer Music loves is acronyms & initialisms. #tradition #nomenclature #linguisticdetritus

36. …which I parodied w/ AMM (Automatic Morricone Machine-temporal morphologies) & io 0.0.1 bets++ (not an acronym). #linguisticdetritus

37. Interesting: first instance of a presentation dealing (pragmatically) w/ the issue of machine latency. #time #computation

38. …something that Bruce, @franzschroeder & I spent a lot of time, effort & (I hope) ingenuity addressing w/ io 0.0.1 beta++. #latency

39. Reminded of Risset’s advice about the importance of a Panic Button. #computermusic #liveelectronics

40. Why is on-screen feedback so important for these new #instruments? We don’t need flashing lights on the fingerboard. #interface

41. …despite our training, can we not trust our ears & bodies w/ these technologies? #instrument #technology #interface

42. …or is this an instance in which system #latency prevents reliable aural or tactile #feedback? #instrument #technique

43. Ask Joel Ryan to give you the incredibly detailed, rigorous meditation of The Slider.

44. Much of this is the realization of things we were klugily _attempting_ w/ archaic technology (8bit microcontrollers, MIDI) 10 yr ago…

45. …& would we have continued down that path had we known the results as they are realized now? #whatwasourmotivation #technodreams

46. Why are our technodreams just that little bit out of reach? Why are systems just one ‘feature’ short of what we desire?

47. …generally guitarists, say, do not wish if only the guitar frets spacing were wider in the middle register it would be perfect.

48. … #virtuosity becomes a #negotiation between the #technical, #physical & #physiological, not wishing extra limbs or laws of physics.

49. fascinating. people talk about Max (not the ‘program’, or ‘computer’) as the name of an entity. #linguisticdetritus #technics

50. Structured programming is not possible with Max. #discuss

51. In the middle of all this technomusical talk/presentation, get a real desire to hear @uitti2bows play. #realmusicianship

52. old joke: mathematicians’ results r precise, but study toy problems. engineers study real-world problems, but their results r approx…

53. …computer musicians, being neither engineer nor mathematician, study toy problems & fudge their results

54. yrs ago, Murray Campbell & I had a plan 2 present an entirely fabricated, counterfeit project, SimJazz: the desktop bebop simulator.

55. …some of that survives in the blurb at //www.busterandfriends.com/amm/ …anyway, maybe it’s time to revive that. #beyondparody

56. I live by my volume pedal, and I’d like to say that foot pedals definitely are _not_ and easy option. #feelstronglyaboutthis

57. interactive systems w/in a compositional frame? feels like @DoctorNerve or Clarence Barlow should be referenced in this presentation.

58. said this before: clamshell of laptop is designed to closeout the rest of the world. fine as your mobile office, but not as performance…

59. …Nic Collins said it’s like playing battleships. #laptop #music #performance #narcissism

60. borrow an expression from @matanaroberts: robotrane

61. anyone remember Matt Ingalls’ work with improvising automata? #youshoudlookthisupifyoudontknowit

62. fwiw, here’re my (old) experiments w/ generating #rhythm: //www.busterandfriends.com/hz/ #musicaltime #algorithm #robotics #automata

63. wonder if (notational) abstractions (quarter notes, triplets etc) are useful algorithmically. Perhaps there r computational shortcuts.

64. …perhaps we don’t generate rhythm w/ that notational abstraction. Maybe that abstraction is after the fact.

65. 1st presentation in which the entity is called ‘computer’ not Max? (‘computer’ is gendered male btw) #identity #gender #computermusic

66. presentation about this piece from last night: http://twitter.com/hanearlpark/status/202958935127359489

67. Reminds me of the AI music research based on #Jackendoff & #Lerdahl work on music cognition.

68. I remember Miller Puckette’s demonstration of tempo tracking in the mid 90s…

69. …algorithms are much more sophisticated now, but what we are doing w/ them seem not so different. #whathappened #technodreamsoftimespast

70. why are our dreams so durable? why the stasis in Computer Music? Ostertag’s question still haunts my mind. #technodreams

71. Is Rowe’s neat #dichotomy of the #instrument/player paradigm damaging 2 our ability 2 see alternative relations? #technology #music

72. thesis: instruments are not #neutral, they shape music. would it be wrong to respond w/ #duh

73. …but why frame this relation in negative terms? ‘constrain’

74. …#instruments are bound because we identify it, but is our #relationship constrained? #interface #cyborgs #music #virtuosity #technique

75. I’m done for today. #goingoutforair #goingtoseethesun

76. you know the discrepancy between an abstract & presentation that makes you think: this guy knows how to write grant app? #notacriticism

Conference: New York, May 2012

missed the morning session 2day which did sound more interesting (on paper). More random thoughts from a technomusical comference coming up…

0. …intermittent 3G connection, so this may not be exactly a live tweet…

1. Even the goofiest techno neologisms sound impressive w/ a French pronunciation. eg. acoumatique. #linguisticdetritus #randomactsofpoetry

2. Tenney’s Monster haunts the practice of Computer Music. #radicalreductionism #parameterization

3. isn’t a million miles away from Ikue Mori’s work (but that, as Ostertag pointed out, is not CM). #disciplinaryboundaries #policingborders

4. does #parameterization usefully describe musical processes? practices? in motion? #empiricism #reductionism

5. …what gets lost thru such #radicalreductionism? what gets lost from theorizing & constructing #music as discreet parameters? #empiricism

6. …I too struggle w/ Tenney’s Monster: it is attractive/compelling/‘intuitive’… but I fear what it may be bulldozing over alt. conceptions.

7. …what happens when such #radicalreductionism meets a practice such as #improvisation? #empiricism #parameterization

8. …under the #radicalreductionist gaze, what happens to a #practice that may embrace (& fueled by) unresolved #complexity & #contradiction?

9. Anyway, isn’t this what Barlow’s been doing for over two decades? #culturalamnesia

10. probabilistic behavior does solve the Infinite Slider problem, but I am unconvinced that musical performance is usefully parametric.

11. convinced that the listener & player components cannot be separate. #machinemusicianship #machinelistening #analysis #abstraction

12. …in real-time performance: listening does not create a reduction/analysis from which data is fed to the playing. #machinelistening

13. …as an improviser, u don’t translate input stream to a (notational) reduction before generating/modifying output… #machinelistening

14. …I/O is more closely tied together. or better, I/O is meshed in a complex, not-easily-reduced form. #improvisation #machinemusicianship

15. …almost like CM researchers took the simple beginners exercises as the model for how #improvisers practice their craft. #colonialism

16. Almost tempted to ask: why are you doing this? #nothelpful

17. didn’t get to ask my question: how is such a reduction/compression/cataloging of input data musical?

18. this afternoon, unlike yesterday, the entity is referred to as ‘we’ and ‘the system’. #nomenclature #machineidentity

19. …although a questioner referred to the entity as ‘he’. #gender #technology

20. #colonialism #appropriation #authorship had enough #goingouforair

21. Make a Computer Music Noise Here. #isComputerMusicBeyondParody

btw, if my live tweets stop, it’s prob. because my battery died. #doesanyonehaveausbchargerhandy

22. as a institutionally unaffiliated, part-time geek, I’m finding the CM tribes’ behavior fascinating. #amateuranthropology

23. this presentation is excellent. real scientist, real research. #myinnernerdishappy

24. “musicogenic seizure” #termtoremember #linguisticdetritus

25. trust a scientist to remind us how to do old fashioned algorithmic composition. #culturalamnesia

26. the researchers from the biggest Big Computer Music institute are amateurs compared to this guy. #realalgorithms #illuminatinguseoftech

27. …my faith in technomusical enterprises is revived. reminds me of my first fascinating encounter w/ algorithmic musicking.

28. now back to the rest :-/

29. idle thought: is it possible to use the same tech behind analog synth modeling to simulated analog computers?

30. fascinating idea: the theory of a #music is not understandable w/out physical practice. #raga

31. …but what happens when a system which makes sense physically is translated into a probability table? #embodiment #mind #body

32. it’s Break Like The Wind: Laptopiteers’ Edition #isComputerMusicBeyondParody

Concert: New York, May 2012

no live tweets from the concert tonight. Not enough power (well, strictly speaking, that should be energy s…ce pow…r is t… asu… t… ar… … ft…

final thought: when I started constructing improvising automata, I felt I was at the end of a long, illustrious but dying tradition…

…but now people seem to see themselves at the start of a wave. #whatishappening

anyway, re: the music, this would be much better w/out the computers. #neoludditism

Progetto rumoristico, destrutturato, ad elevato tasso di provocazione e insieme di ispirazione ed ascolto “altri”, io 0.0.1 beta ++ salta il preambolo ed esiste d’emblée nelle iperacide note della distorta chitarra di Han-Earl Park che di getto aprono le lievitanti turbolenze di un trio minacciosamente sensibile (o viceversa) e forte, peraltro, di una piuttosto enfatica auto-presentazione “Sul palco: due uomini, una donna e un artefatto, un mélange sospeso di hardware industriale, militare e domestico. Gli umani reggono oggetti lucidi e graziosi, ma il marchingegno si regge solitario; e mentre la donna e gli uomini producono suono (vibrando l’aria) toccando e diteggiando i graziosi oggetti, l’artefatto suona senza esser toccato affatto. Esso e gli umani improvvisano insieme, rispondendo alle reciproche gestualità musicali”.

Le corde tese di Park imbastiscono un plateau scabro ma di lungo e persistente respiro, vivente nelle articolazioni e nella tessitura della sua fisica elettroacustica; mentre sul versante “meccanico” dell’instrumentarium i modi performanti di Franziska Schroeder arricchiscono l’altra metà del sax (a fianco delle Matana Roberts, Alexandra Grimal, Ingrid Laubrock etc.) di una voce sperimentante e nuda, in sintonia e insieme dissonanza con i flussi paralleli e convergenti del free-player purosangue Bruce Coates, e il tutto si dipana entro uno svolgimento a canovaccio libero e istantaneo, lungo il suo deviante svolgimento interrogandosi (senza eccessivo paradosso) se l’autentica “alienità” sia rispettivamente appannaggio della cosa o, piuttosto e viceversa, dell’ “umano”.

E ancora così prosegue la sofisticata presentazione (peraltro abbastanza sinergica agli intendimenti dei tre): “io non ha inclinazione melodica e non ha addestramento narrativo per prevalere: vi è, però, un definito sentimento di connessione in ciò che Park chiama: gestualità non-periodiche, che nondimeno evocano periodicità”.

Ennesimo esempio di post-avanguardia “desiderante” (com’era in voga insinuare nell’era della sperimentazione più politicizzata—almeno negli intenti), io 0.0.1 beta ++ vive di ascolto trasmissivo e di performance aperta, che si abbevera nell’istantaneità, e nell’interplay sdogana il segno ed il polso strutturante dell’aleatorietà.

Insomma, l’avanguardia è tornata: non che fosse mai stata davvero latitante, ma gli interrogativi sonori, lacerati e critici, del trio pongono come oggetto radicale la disumanizzazione progressiva e le implicazioni del sempre più preponderante avvento della macchina, forse retrodatando le intenzioni alle prime decadi del secolo scorso e alle relative allarmistiche dottrine, ma riprendendole lungo le forme acutamente nervose e l’attenzione creativa dei medianici e cyborghiani performers e del loro interplay attrattivamente imperfetto. [Original article…]

Translation by Leofranc Holford-Strevens and Melanie L. Marshall:

A noisy, unstructured project, with a high level of provocation and at the same time of inspiration and listening to ‘other’, io 0.0.1 beta ++ skips the preamble and inhabits straightaway in the hyperacid notes of Han-Earl Park’s distorted guitar, which on one go open the fermenting turbulence of a menacingly perceptible trio (or vice versa), yet strong in a rather emphatic self-presentation: “On the stage: two men, a woman, and an artifact, a freestanding mélange of industrial, military, and domestic hardware. The humans hold graceful, polished objects, but the domed assemblage stands alone. And while the woman and men make sound (vibrate the air) holding and fingering the graceful objects, the artifact makes sounds without being touched at all. io and the humans improvise together, listening to each other, responding to each other’s musical gestures.”

The tight strings of Park improvise a rugged plateau but of long-term and lasting, living in the articulation and in the range of his electroacoustic physics, while on the ‘mechanical’ side of the instrumentarium the performing styles of Franziska Schroeder enrich the other half of the sax (alongside Matana Roberts, Alexandra Grimal, Ingrid Laubrock etc.) with a naked and experimental voice, together in harmony and dissonance with parallel and converging streams of the thoroughbred free-player Bruce Coates, and everything unfolds within a free and instantaneous improvisation, throughout its deviant development inquiring (without excessive paradox) whether authentic ‘otherness’ is the prerogative of the matter or, rather and viceversa of, the ‘human’.

And so the sophisticated presentation continues (quite synergistic with the intentions of the three): “io is not melodically inclined and has no narrative training to overcome; there is, though, a definite feeling of connection, in what Park calls ‘non-periodic gestures that nonetheless evoke periodicity.’”

Yet another example of ‘desiring’ post-avant-garde (as it was fashionable to suggest in the era of more politicized experimentation—at least intended as such), io 0.0.1 beta++ experiences a transmissive listening and open performance, which drinks in instantaneity and in the interplay displays the sign and the structuring pulse of the aleatory.

In short, the avant-garde is back: not that it ever really went away, but the questioning sounds, mangled and critical, of the trio set out as a radical object progressive dehumanization and the implications of the ever more dominant advent of the machine, perhaps backdating its intentions to the first decades of the last century and its alarmist theories, but taking them up through the acutely nervous forms and creative attention of medium-like and cyborgian performers and their charmingly imperfect interplay.

Incidentally, this review quotes from Sara Roberts’ liner notes.

[More info on the recording…] [All reviews…]

‘io 0.0.1 beta++’ (SLAMCD 531) is available from SLAM Productions. [Details…]

personnel: io 0.0.1 beta++ (itself), Han-earl Park (guitar), Bruce Coates (alto and sopranino saxophones) and Franziska Schroeder (soprano saxophone).

© 2011 Han-earl Park.
℗ 2011 SLAM Productions.