Re: [microsound] Re Positionality: tri.phonic triangulation of post-human glitch

[Mike Hansen <mikehansen@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

All art is working with the mistake/error or accident

On Friday, September 26, 2003, at 10:47 AM, tobias c. van Veen wrote:

>
>
>> Is it possible for a performer to improvise while at the same time
>> initiating processes prone to the generation of error, from within the
>> sealed of space of the laptop?  If so how does the element of failure 
>> make
>> itself known to the audience?  Are these performances actually based 
>> on
>> failure or is the glitch in these cases merely the surface effect of 
>> an
>> aesthetic based on error?  I'm thinking here of some of the beautiful,
>> wonderfully crafted subtle and careful performances I've heard in the 
>> past
>> few years.  It seems to me that in these performances there seems to 
>> be
>> very little element of risk, let alone error or failure.
>>
>> I'm interested to hear from anyone who considers error and failure to 
>> be
>> important structuring elements in their work.  How do you perform this
>> live? Do you think that you communicate these processes to the 
>> audience
>> successfully ?
>
>
> These questions are actually the basis of the tri.phonic project, an
> improvisational tripartite structure consisting of myself and Daniel 
> Gardner
> aka Frivolous as techno-turntablists and laptop performers, and VJ 
> Johnny
> Ranger providing improvised visuals. Our goal is to utilise each
> piece--software or hardware--as a kind of instrument. But just what
> "instrument" means in this context becomes highly subject to both the
> confinements of the software (Live v. Max patches, for example) and the
> hardware. We are currently attempting to develop our own software 
> patches
> that will allow the visual medium to be translated into sound, for the
> laptops to be controlled by apparatus other than mice (very interested 
> in
> the ease that JunXion from Steim.nl allows), and basically for the 
> machines
> to reciprocally re-feed datastreams into each other.
>
> But even such a Princeton U-style configuration, our choice of the
> dominating element is the intuition of improvisation. Although we are
> thinking of working with graphic scripts with time signatures, so as 
> to push
> towards a cohesive synchronicity, for festivals such as MEG and FCMM 
> here in
> Montreal, during our SAT 5-hour jam_sessions we simply reinterpret each
> other's movements. Into this mix we bring in guests--last night was 
> Andrew
> Duke and we've hosted a number of others including Deadbeat, Mitch 
> Akiyama,
> vitaminsforyou, etc. In all this mix, and not to be forgotten, is
> experimental turntable work, a melange of techniques blending cutting, 
> eqing
> and scratching with avant-garde techniques of line noise, platter
> scratching, resonant tones, and so forth. We often resample both the 
> laptops
> and the turntables into each other via a Pioneer DJM600 mixer; the 
> gesture
> here is one of the intuitive sonic moment, and certainly we have 
> capitalised
> upon moments where we have achieved a sonic combination where none of 
> us are
> even entirely sure of who is playing what.
>
> For me, this type of performance demonstrates that the "glitch" is 
> simply a
> name we've christened for the particular situation of the digital where
> binary logic _should_ but doesn't dominate process. The glitch IS what 
> it
> means to live: there are nothing other than glitches; glitches are what
> Lacan would call points of the real, or the event to-come, the 
> unexpected
> moment that can either be contextualized as positive or negative--and 
> it is
> this contextualization which is the mark of listening, of 
> appreciation, of
> the cultural markers and values we assign audio in a situation... but 
> even
> these markers give themselves over to something which is glitched from 
> its
> origin: the body, and the flesh. The frequencies of a Hecker insult 
> all the
> bioprogramming of a body unused to sustained 20 000 Hz. Last night I
> triangulated 19500 Hz & watched people look up in pain. Daniel walked 
> away
> from his laptop, saying: "I can't take this..." .. A glitch in the
> post-human-machinic combinatory?
>
> http://www.quadrantcrossing.org/triphonic
>
> tV
>
>
> tobias c. van Veen -----------
> http://www.quadrantcrossing.org
> http://www.thisistheonlyart.com
> ------------- tobias@xxxxxxxxxxx
> ---McGill Communications------
> ICQ: 18766209 | AIM: thesaibot
>
>
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