Re: [microsound] Re: Alternative performance devices

[Michael Arnold Mages <marnoldm@xxxxxx>]

Hey Tad, sorry for the way long response...

On Thu, 29 May 2003, tad wrote:

> On 5/29/03 at 2:55 PM, Michael Arnold Mages <marnoldm@xxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > -- where (culturally speaking) the performers maintain a degree
> > of authority even in less structured or participatory listening
> > situations --
>
> Are you suggesting here there performers need to (re)assert this
> authority with the audience at each performance? Aren't there tacit
> roles that artist and audience enact in the performance of a particular
> genre? (Or flout in violation of...)

Hey Tad-

Actually more the opposite...  I think that activated participatory
listening is the way to go--that barriers between audience and
performer/composer (and the resultant corporate structures of sound
content dissemination that support these barriers and this
mystification--read record labels) are residue of an antique political
situation (aristocracy), and that we need new listening models that
reflect a more egalitarian situation...

To me things like great big video projection, opressively loud sound
levels, theatrical VanHalen-esque leaping around only serve this
separation, this mystification of the performer/artist. I think that the
performer has a responsibility to avoid domination of the audience, or to
make sure that avenues for participation in the performance exist--aside
from clapping at the end.  Trace is right.  The device can be a large part
of that theatre. My thinking was to make the gestural aspects of
computer-based performance more transparent to an audience, not to create
some absurd Goldberg contraption...

> > It is difficult to maintain visual contact with an audience
> > while staring intently at the screen.
>
> What do you see as the value of visual contact?

My background is electro-acoustic, so my perception of what a performance
situation is probably partly composed of detritus from music school and
jazz gigging, but I see computer use as a tight and affective
relationship between the user and the device.  Watching that is a bit like
watching someone play a video game, or sitting in a restaurant
eavesdropping on two people having an intimate conversation--I feel
separated from the tight feedback loop.  A concert pianist (maybe a better
example of similar performer-device interaction than guitar) performs
sideways, so the audience can see the motions of the player's hands, and
so the player can occasionally acknowledge the audience.  A jazzer makes a
lot of eye contact (esp. with the drummer and bassist) to set up the
groove (not quite so relevant in a microsound context) and with the
audience.  The eye contact with the performer gives me the feeling
(illusion?) that I am involved in the performance somehow, that I am
contributing in a small way to the outcome of the work.

> > Doesn't playing a laptop induce the same degree of
> > audience-performer separation, and the same performative
> > spectacle as playing a guitar?
>
> I'm not sure what you're saying here; it came after Wooten's comment
> about feeling disabled behind a drum kit.
>
> Are you saying that a laptop introduces the same "disabling" separation
> as the drum kit? And are you saying that a laptop performance is
> theatrically (I don't like "spectacle" in this context) equivalent to a
> guitar performance?

This is hard for me to answer, as I have never done a laptop performance.
I have used keys and breath-activated saxophone-like MIDI controllers with
a computer on stage. But the keyboard or controller was my focus, I only
went to the computer for a few adjustments... So I guess I am half
rhetoric, half questioning...

It seems to me that any instrument involves some separation between the
audience and the performer--they have one, the audience doesn't; they are
skilled in playing that instrument, the audience isn't (generalizing
here). That a drumitar is socially and politically (maybe not the best
word) separating like a guitar, drumkit, laptop... But maybe an
alternative type of controller could open up that tight
human-computer feedback loop for someone playing a laptop gig?

I think that performance practice is very interesting.  Microsound
performance seems like a combination of jazz and electro-acoustic (bigtime
personal prejudice talking here) because you're composing on the fly,
improvising, and pre-planned playing. And you are using tools created
to facilitate business and commerce to make art.  I just wonder if the
tool could be made more appropriate to the task--or if that is even
necessary?

Best,
Michael

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