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FINAL TERRAIN ESSAY – 16.06.2003 VICTOR LANCH 2108929P

Essay Question - “What lies between the notes?”

“Is music an expression of an idea or feeling, or is it an outcome of exploration into certain relationships in temporal, aural, visual or other spaces.” (Martin, Elisabeth, Pamphlet Architecture – “Architecture as a transition of music”, pp. 64)

Why do people listen to music, why do they even play music? Does the process of playing or listening to music offer a form of relaxation or a sense of expression that inevitably takes that person into a greater understanding of what music is? Is that journey of deeper musical expression a kind of emergent threshold that is reminiscent of great architectural spaces? Is this physical space a language that speaks of musical volumes – volumes which are triggered by the processes of contrastive expression, like feeling not seeing or sensing not listening?

What cognitive processes are then stimulated, listened or thought about music? People who play music believe that music is a powerful medium that one uses to express oneself.

“Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.” Miles Davis (http://photomatt.net/jazzquotes)

What is expression? It is the process of allowing oneself to depart the stillness of silence, so to enter the threshold of sound, that music "becomes". This is not an "endgame", it is an evolving process. It is this transition, during the creation of sound that the process that really defines the character and imprint of music happens. How is music actually created? Is it as easy as playing a piano or singing a tune? There are certain rules that govern the creation of music that make it aesthetically pleasing, but with things that require creativity, there will always be times where the individual will cross the boundary in an attempt to produce something that brings one to the silence of wonderment.

“Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.” Charlie Parker (http://photomatt.net/jazzquotes) Is “what lies between the notes” just really the subjective experience of the individual? Or is the ‘in-between’ or musical space governed by the characteristic and behavior of the surrounding notes? Do the notes represent the boundary which encapsulates ones’ expression? As Charlie Parker points out, where and when does an individual get taught how music is played within the invisible boundaries of constraints, and when is that defining moment of breaking the rules in music realized. If we look for example at Jimmy Hendrix, an individual who could not adequately read music notation and secondly played a right-handed guitar upside-down, because he was left-handed. Strange you might ask, but true. Born in the Woodstock era, Hendrix used his addiction to drugs as a medium and stimulus in the conception of his music. Interestingly, Hendrix was often ‘intoxicated’ whilst performing and playing some of the most brilliant and thought provoking guitarist solos that the world has heard. In many ways as Parker had exemplified, Hendrix ultimately lived and died by his music, in that his entire life was basically an experience of musical implications that was generated by thoughts associated to his deadly addiction. His experience as an addict was translated into an expression of many forms (pain, happiness, love, etc.). This expression, the ‘in-between’ was the stimulation for his music. His music was often an awkward rollercoaster of notes and disjointed chords that somehow amalgamated into something great. Each note he strummed reflected the notion of freedom. This sensation of freedom was felt by all – and conveyed the feeling of boundaries being broken. The expression, the ‘in-between’ in Hendrix’s music pushed the notion of ‘one must not only play what is written’ to a point where I believe that he proved that there was no need for rules in the creation of music, because music is everywhere in everyday life.

In hindsight, Hendrix’s expression was so relative, because his life had reflected an array of imperfections that was pertinent to any individual. As architectural theorist John Ruskin had once quoted “imperfection translates perfection” – and literally that’s how Hendrix was portrayed. Interestingly, Massumi’s analysis of former U.S. president Ronald Reagan had similarities in that he was recognized for his “polyps rather than his poise”, Massumi labeled this as a double dysfunction. Reagan’s instrument in persuasion was his ability to master the mime - Massumi defined the mime as an expressive instrument that ‘decomposed movement, cuts its continuity into a potentially infinite series of sub-movements punctuated by jerks.’ (Massumi, Brian, Parables for the Virtual, pp. 40)

Pertaining to architecture, the mime is the threshold it acts as the expressive element of connecting people into spaces where the cognitive experiences of feeling and sensing, differentiate the paths of where an individual moves. By this the threshold is the focal point of any architecture, in that it filters movement into spaces connected to other spaces – and within each possible space, presents another threshold. Each gesture in structure and body action ultimately creates this sense of ‘infinite potentiality’ as Massumi commented. In music, the threshold is essentially the dynamism of sound – fundamentally it is the rise and fall of noise, as noise is a by-product of sound. In hindsight, dynamics is difference – a difference that is achieved by modulation and contraction of frequency into pitch, of pitch into timbre and harmony, and the further contractions of melody, duration, rhythm, meter, are unproblematic, analytic; none of them can yet give sense to sound, because sound is what you make it. (Evens, Aden, Sound Ideas, pp. 177)

Another individual that defined music as a medium for expression was Beethoven, a classical pianist during the 18th and 19th Centuries. Extraordinarily, Beethoven was both blind and deaf, but despite his disabilities; Beethoven utilized the notion of vibrations as a technique of creating his musical masterpieces. Beethoven did this by playing the piano on the wooden floorboards of his dwelling, where he cleverly used the acoustics of the room to hear the different pitches and tones that his piano produced. Born practically blind, Beethoven only lost his sense of hearing when he began to grow older – making it doubly astonishing that the greatest compositions he ever wrote were written when he experimented with the notion of acoustics. In any case, the efforts of Hendrix and Beethoven were remarkable in that their musical intent was greatly manifested by their abilities to strive for expression in their music. Fundamentally, it is the exploration of expression that inevitably effectuates the learning process of music – ‘expression through improvisation identifies the individual.’

“Technique is the ability to translate your ideas into sound through your instrument.” Bill Evans (http://photomatt.net/jazzquotes)

Having explored the infinite possibilities of musical expression through two artists who used experimentation as a tool in the creation of music - what is the nature of musical expression within the individual? Parallels can be drawn between the "becoming" of infant experience and the process of musical composition. A musical score translates with every passing note an experience and exploration in life, and like a photo, every note inherits a power that allows it to define a second in an individuals’ intuition. What is then the understanding of the correlation between the lineages of expression and infancy and how can they be influenced by the other? To begin infants use expression as a form of language in order to translate their wants. In comparison, musicians use the musical language as a form of their own expression. Questions then arise - "How is the infant's ‘process of becoming’ analogous to the creation of music, in terms of expression as a language" and "Is music innate in humans?"

In the “The Interpersonal World of the Infant” Daniel N. Stern says that “infants from the time they are conceived to the first couple of months of their lives are actively forming a sense of an emergent self.” Primarily infants employ the sense of organization in the process of formation, in order to continually examine its sense of self. As Stern exemplified, this persistent searching for a sense of self that the infant endures is not by far achieved in this beginning period, but will eventually materialize with maturity. (Stern, Daniel N., The Interpersonal World of the Infant, pp. 38)

How do then infants acquire this sense of organization in the process of formation that Stern describes? They simply learn by seeking ‘sensory stimulation’, where the infant utilizes the fives senses that any human being would use to gather intelligence – seeing, smelling, feeling, tasting, and hearing. This initiation of sensory stimulation conjures up preemptory qualities that are a prerequisite to hypothesizing drives and motivational systems. Obtaining the senses of hypothesizing and motivating, trigger the first signs of innate individual tendencies, where the infant delineates distinct biases or preferences with regard to the sensations they seek and the perceptions they form. With Hendrix and Beethoven, experimentation with differing approaches in their creation of music, suggest that from birth onwards – the infant conditions itself to form and test hypotheses about what is occurring in the world. Likewise, musicians use hypothesizing as a language to discern the correct sound. Henceforth, infants and musicians constantly evaluate in the sense of asking, is this different from or the same as that?

Is musical ability innate in humans? Nothing can be proven if human beings inherit this ability in their genetic make-up from birth. It is implicative in that an infant exposed to the elements of music from the first months of its life tend to adhere to the social environment that music accommodates better than others who start later – but that theory isn’t necessarily full-proof as Hendrix and Beethoven were both late bloomers. However through their lives, delineations can be made that social implications during their life had a greater effect upon their nurturing into the elements of music rather than the notion of their genetic make-up. Hendrix for example was raised as a full-blooded Cherokee Indian in Canada, and only picked up music at seventeen – where during the 1960’s American culture of Blues and Rock and Roll was a pertinent influence. (http://www.hotshotdigital.com/WellAlwaysRemember/JimiHendrixBio.html)

Once that formative understanding of what is similar and what is different is defined, the infant’s mind will categorize the social world into conforming and contrasting patterns, events, sets and experiences. As Stern describes it, this ultimately leads to the infant’s discovery of ‘which features of an experience are invariant and which are variant – that is, which features “belong” to the experience.’ The infant will then apply these same processes to whatever sensations and perceptions are available, from the simplest to the most complex – that is, “thoughts about thoughts”. Likewise, musicians do the same with their own sensory perceptions in that they also use the simplest to the most complex – that is, “notes about notes”. (Stern, Daniel N., The Interpersonal World of the Infant, pp. 42)

What lies between these thoughts? How do infants’ configure their thinking processes in relation to the notion of music? Does the development of the infant’s thought process coincide and adhere with this notion of music? Interestingly as the infant rapidly matures with time, it develops its sensory stimulus into what Stern calls ‘amodal perception’. This innate capacity is somewhat extraordinary, because the infant uses this perceptive quality to take information received in one sensory modality and somehow translate it into another sensory modality. (Stern, Daniel N., The Interpersonal World of the Infant, pp. 51)

The notion of ‘amodal perception’ is fascinating, because when a musician is in the process of formulating a composition, the use of amodal perception begins by ‘hearing’ music. Using selections of music as an inspiration and influence, a break down and thorough analysis of the rules associated with a score, including harmony, pitch, counterpoint, theory of form, melody and tone is examined. The translation of hearing into feeling the musical composition is what really determines the quality of the music. Like in architecture, all music is driven by precedence, and in hindsight it is how well creativity can form a transition between hearing music and implicating it into a form that provokes an individual to feel and respond to it. Amodal perception is that emergent threshold where expression begins to be driven by cognition.

“Louis Kahn once described great architecture as that which starts with immeasurable, proceeds through the measurable, and returns to the immeasurable. He was describing a process by which the spark of genius in an idea is carried by way of investigation, drawing and construction into a finished piece of architecture.” (Martin, Elisabeth, Pamphlet Architecture – “Architecture as a transition of music”, pp. 16)

If music can indeed be able to provoke an individual to feel and respond to its language, then how does that individual arrive at that place of response? Infants primarily appear to experience the social world as ‘vitality affects’ before it is a world of formal acts. Moreover, infants’ form and act upon abstract representations of qualities of perception. These abstract representations that the infant experiences are not sights and sounds and touches and nameable objects, but rather shapes, intensities, and temporal patterns – the more “global” qualities of experience as Stern discusses. (Stern, Daniel N., The Interpersonal World of the Infant, pp. 57)

Do these abstract representations of various shapes, intensities and patterns then amalgamate to become one entity to form a language that infants use to communicate or more so express their individual preferences? Consequently enough, psychologists of infancy have delineated a connection that suggest that infants’ like adults respond to variations of visual, vocal and gestural expressions of emotional states that have been subtly adjusted rhythmically and dynamically in a patterned state (Dissanayake, Ellen, Aesthetic Incunabula, pp. 338) – meaning that as with music, infants experienced expressions that were varied in time, pitch, frequency and tone. With the use of terms like rhythm and dynamics, psychologist formed a lineage that the infancy language had a direct correlation to the performance arts, hence characterizing the ‘musicality’ of the infancy language.

If infancy language is linked to the performance arts – then aren’t all infants potentially artists in their own respects? If this is so, then it implies that all infants have an innate understanding of creativity, whether that be small or large, or in the interest of music or science. Hence, justifying the issue that an infant gathers its knowledge through experience and expression via its interaction with its environment – this integration between expression and environment becomes the human beings cultural construct, where inevitably language is formed. Infants use baby-talk, musicians use notes and architects use structure. Massumi saw ‘language the special preserve of the human’. (Massumi, Brian, Parables for the Virtual, pp. 40)

“It’s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It’s a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something I’ve never gotten the hang of. But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And that’s what jazz music is all about.” Stan Getz (http://photomatt.net/jazzquotes)

“Life is a lot like jazz . . . its best when you improvise. . .” George Gershwin (http://photomatt.net/jazzquotes)

If jazz as a musical language is seen as creative impromptu, then ‘baby-talk’ is doubly that. Moreover psychologist believe that artists’ in all media ‘deliberately perform operations that occur instinctively during a ritualized behavior: they simplify or formalize, repeat with variations, exaggerate, and elaborate in both space and time for the purpose of attracting attention and provoking and manipulating emotional response.’ (Dissanayake, Ellen, Aesthetic Incunabula, pp. 343)

This act of improvisation is termed ‘artification’ - a process that attracts attention and shapes and manipulates emotion. So with infants having the capabilities to recognize, attend to, and respond to regularization and simplification, repetition, exaggeration, and elaboration in vocal, visual and gestural modalities when interacting with adults, adults inversely must be able to react adequately to the modalities of infants as well. The use of expression by musicians is similar to the infants’ use of improvisation. Expression to musicians is the ‘in-between’ that divides each note, whereas improvisation is the ‘in-between’ that divides each thought.

We can already gather that improvisation pertains to a level of individual expression that is generated by ones’ own experience, ones’ thoughts and ones’ wisdom in the realm of musical intuition. Furthermore, one can outline lineages in that creative impromptu is often a result of other ideas, societal influences and also individual tendencies, in relation to ‘pleasure and displeasure (hedonic tone)’. (Stern, Daniel N., The Interpersonal World of the Infant, pp. 65)

Hedonic tone, as Freud prescribed was a progression of how individuals ‘affectively’ acquired a sense of perception. Perception was especially an important way of learning for infants, as it was a beginning to primary experiences. To be perceptive is to be discerning, observant and sensitive to surroundings. When an infant is sensitive it responds through expression, when a musician is sensitive one does likewise. Sensitivity to music is something that cannot be taught, it is the realm where perception and expression is harnessed and manifested accordingly by the individual in order to form a unifying element capable of implicating music.

In architecture, expression is appropriation in many ways - Kahn described the ‘spark of genius in an idea is carried by way of investigation, drawing and construction’. Architectural expression is a formulation of contrastive architectural languages, which through the individual is varied by perception, sensitivity and improvisation. The idea generated isn’t so much the importance, as we have seen through the analysis of Hendrix, Beethoven and Reagan, but it is the expression and its sub-variables of perception, sensitivity and improvisation that invariably define architecture.

“Musical expression is a matter of some subtlety, as the difference between a great performer and merely a good one is not often primarily a question of technical proficiency, nor even of dynamics or pace, but rather a question of touch or feeling, vague and subtle notions which point to something one cannot quite put one’s finger on, but which make all the difference.” (Evens, Aden, Sound Ideas, pp. 176)

Does this mean that expression is an immeasurable element? Yes, because music is a form of sound, and sound as an expressive form cannot be measured – because it involves the notion of perception. And perception as we have discussed above subjectively pertains to the individual itself. Meaning that the power of sound as an expressive element can either provoke an individual into entering a world influenced by expression - or on the other hand have no effect on another.

“Expression is the art of matching the notes to the room, of playing the audience as much as the score, of shaping the silent movement of air into sound.” (Evens, Aden, Sound Ideas, pp. 176)

By this statement, expression as an element of music, conjures up many other possibilities in relation to itself. Expression can be broken down and examined as individual elements, like sound and movement that are associated with music. Firstly sound as a separate entity stimulates many different variables and notions that manipulate the appearance of it. Meaning that sound can be perceived as a conglomeration of vibrations or noises that amalgamate at different intervals to form a sense of musical implication. Beethoven was a prime example of one who visualized sound as a ‘scale of vibrations’ that did not disappear in the acoustics of the room, but more so dissipated, echoing all the while in order to summon an embodiment of energy that formed compositions of expressive excellence.

With each passing sound, vibration or noise there is always a subtle difference. Just like a heartbeat, sound modulates and contracts at different intervals. How does the ability to manipulate sound in a way that it modulates and contracts in a given way push the boundaries of music, in order to reach a sense of perfection in expression? In hindsight, an individual has the ability by utilizing the instrument of choice – with Beethoven it was the piano, with Hendrix it was his guitar and vocal prowess. The instrument in music was a powerful tool in the production of sound as it allowed the individual to manipulate sound in any manner. In architecture, there is a progressive hierarchy of instruments or tools that are utilized. Progression is evident in that the ‘mind’ initiates the idea; the idea is translated onto paper via a writing instrument; then finalized through the computer; and then constructed through man and machinery. This progression of architectural implication adheres to the notion of modulation in music, where without this progression - architectural expression cannot be defined in its construct and structural language.

The instrument produced contractions of frequency into pitch, of pitch into melody and harmony. Each contraction gave a sense of depth, suggesting elements of duration, time, rhythm, syncopation and tone. When the sense of depth is recognized in sound production, expression can be perceived. Depth in sound quality implies sound has a sense of direction and clarity. With direction, the notion of movement is strongly suggested. Movement in many ways presents concepts of motion, transition and variation. Massumi best describes in his comment.

“Take movement. When a body is in motion, it does not coincide with itself. It coincides with its own transition: its own variation. The range of variations it can be implicated in is not present in any given movement, much less in any position it passes through. In motion, a body is in an immediate, unfolding relation to its own non-present potential to vary.” (Massumi, Brian, Parables for the Virtual, pp. 4)

Movement in music is suggestive of difference – when music is in motion, the difference between each sound presents a wave of rising and falling pressure, whose difference gives sound its character. This wave of contrasting sound pushes music forward, by continually contracting sound to a new clarity each time. Moreover the intensity of each contraction can further verify the clarity and character of movement produced by the musician.

In conclusion, music in all its forms is defined by the individual. It is the exploration of oneself through experience, improvisation and musical knowledge that one can truly exploit fully the expressive nature that music in all its beauty can accomplish.

“To play music expressively is to demonstrate sensitivity to this background, not only to read the audience, to hear the space around the instrument, but also to contract the silence between, beside, or behind notes, and to draw from this silence the appropriate contraction, just the right sounds. An instrument is a tool for shaping noise, contracting parts of it into perception, and a performer is always a sculptor, who works at once the contracted material and also the relaxed space around it.” (Evens, Aden, Sound Ideas, pp. 179)

Bibliography

� Martin, Elisabeth, Pamphlet Architecture – “Architecture as a transition of music”, New York, NY : Princeton Architectural Press, 2002, pp. 16-64

� Massumi, Brian, Parables for the Virtual – Movement, Affect, Sensation, Durham, N.C. : Duke University Press, 2002, pp. 4-40

� Evens, Aden, Sound Ideas, pp. 176-179

� Stern, Daniel N, The Interpersonal World of the Infant : a view from psychoanalysis and developmental psychology, New York : Basic Books, c1985, pp. 38-65

� Dissanayake, Ellen, Art and intimacy : how the arts began - Aesthetic Incunabula, Seattle, Wa : University of Washington Press, 2000, pp. 338-343

� http://www.hotshotdigital.com/WellAlwaysRemember/JimiHendrixBio.html

� http://photomatt.net/jazzquotes

Six Degrees of Separation

“Real time is more truly an engine, however, than a procession of images - it is expressed only in the concrete, plastic medium of duration. Time always expresses itself by producing, or more precisely, by drawing matter into a process of becoming-ever-different, and to the product of this becoming-ever-different - to this inbuilt wildness - we have given the name novelty.” Sandford Kwinter - Architectures of Time. Toward a Theory of the Event in Modernist Culture

Time - Duration - Production - Matter - Atom - Einstein - States - Mass - Solid - Liquid - Gas - Nerve - Erosion - Death - War - Good - Evil - Succuss - Failure - Architecture - Subjective - But yet very interesting - Why? - Thinking!

IngerSays: Interesting tha you seem to be talking in oppositions here?

Site where I've begun to find some quotes from legends of jazz, hoepfully this will help me find how I can relate this back to the readings that I've read! http://photomatt.net/jazzquotes

Images just to help me visualise the presentations of music as a notion of static movement, interesting they are all photo's capturing a second in history. Inger I think that flash pres. I showed last week (01/04/2003) sought are, made me more confused on where I was heading in this explorative essay, so I'm just gonna concentrate on a few particular images that have strength and depth in its meaning. So far I really like the overexposed guitar, the curved lights, the speedometer, and spurting witches-hat

IngerSays: so do I

“But: there are no pure signs of any sort, there is no absolute innocence in any communication, every explanation is a form of representation, every diagram is a representational form of some idea and some motivation toward that idea: nothing is unmediated, the map is not the territory”. Mark. Rakatansky

Re:The notes making up the score for a piece of music act as a progressive diagrammatic tool that utilise the visualisation of movement across the staff. Each individual note plays a pivotal role in representing the ideal of the composer. The importance of one note is instrumental in the formalisation of the pattern of the music, henceforth implicating feeling into the portrayal of the music. Notational terms like decrescendo, crescendo and staccato are variables that manipulate and contort the music in order to produce responsive adherence to the movement and atmosphere of the musical ideal.

“One trick for architecture is learn to play might be this: how to acknowledge and make legible, in the object, the inevitable cultural and ideological transmission of architecture while showing its potential to reconfigure that transmission – simultaneously showing that every act of transmission, like every act of character, is always a form of configuration, and that every act of configuration (or reconfiguration) is a form of transmission.” Mark. Rakatansky

Transmission in architecture is relative to modulation in music, assimilated to the constancy of architectural configuration, architecture in the evolution of transmission utilises the movement of light and time in its surroundings to maximise the coherence between the elements of configuration and transmission. In modulation, music also experiences one of its own transmissions in the manner of key change, this invariably means the music is played or vocalised to a pitch that is lower or higher – however it is a rule of thumb that modulations occur when the music reaches an ‘anti-climax’. When this occurs, the use of modulation often provides the musical sound with a sense of depth and excitement. In actual sense, when music modulates, the scale or configuration adheres to the same principle as it was before the process of modulation – henceforth it is channelled to the listener via a different pitch. This sounds extremely confusing doesn’t it ?

“Everything is a transaction, everything is a translation, every artefact, every object begins as notional form as it makes its way to its representation as material form”. – Mark. Rakatansky

Re: Intuition and inspiration are the two key aspects in the creation of music. Music is created by the mind, in the sense that it speaks the volumes of rhythm as sounds resonating within the brain. Once the rhythm is conceived as a notional process, the musician takes accounts of his progression – and translates the rhythm into notational form, where the music transforms from a notional/ conceptual model into a practical model, where its material form is representational in a universal language understood by the creator.

IngerSays: Would really help if you read the "sound ideas" article, I think I handed it out in week 3. Especially the ideas about sampling, performance and noise. Many musicians say that they perform "with their body" - that a good "translation" of the musical text somehow bypasses the brain and is memorised/relayed from the kinetic sense of the body. "Play it again with feeling" - you could look at the Stern article again, esp in relation to HedonicTone? and VitalityAffects?.

“One principle he learned is that believability is more important than realism” Mark. Rakatansky (Chuck Jones : A flurry of Drawings)

Re: In animation, the story board is very much like a brother of the score line in music. Basically they are a medium that is used to translate the visionary perception of the artist. The artist’s intention very much hinges on how clearly his ideas can be understood via this medium. That is why it is believability before realism in any case. In music believability is transpired by not the artist conceiving the score line, but by the musicians performing the score. Music is made more believable if it is played in perfect unison, meaning it is executed to perfection, timing, pitch, rhythm, just well bloody everything. The realism aspect of music is relative to the sound production and quality of the instruments used. For example in society today, a lot of music is electronically manufactured, the natural beauty of the double bass and drums of the 1950’s blues era or the percussive drums and cello of the 14th Century Classical era has now been replaced by the hypnotic rhythms of the bass and drum machines of the 21st Century.

IngerSays: Not really sure about some of this - I think a lot of Jazz musicians would have a lot to say about music being "executed to perfection" - a lot of Jazz is improv, never written down as such. Its then things that happen "in between the notes" that gives jazz its potency (although I have to admit I am more of a techno fan myself).

You say : "The realism aspect of music is relative to the sound production and quality of the instruments used. " - Again the "sound ideas" article talks about problems with digital sampling fidelity, a cd produces music more like a film - chopped into discrete "parcels" between which there is no "noise". check it out - if you don't have it let me know.

The tricky thing is to tie these with design practice, I think there is a rich field of associations beginning to develop though.

btw - I have inserted comments through your text incase you haven't scrolled up the page yet :).

IngerSays: There are some interesting references on LiveNess

Just references I thought I better paste down, b4 I lose them. Thanks for the help, so far - more reading. Oh yes, sorry for not attending class so far, no excuse I guess, just a lot of work from Design and TEch? 5

http://www.labiennaledivenezia.net/it/archi/7mostra/architetti/diller/open.htm#

"Don't mediate, Modulate" Massumi (check quote)

perception (self-perception) - and sense of aliveness.

******Sarah Thornton, Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital, Wesleyan Univ Pr, 1996, ISBN: 0819562971

http://www.utpjournals.com/product/md/433/liveness15.html Interesting things noted from the Philip Auslander’s reading! Philip Auslander’s project in Liveness is to consider the status of live performance in a society that is dominated by mass media and in which television is not one discourse among many but “an intrinsic and determining element of our cultural formation” (2). He asserts that liveness “must be examined not as a global, undifferentiated phenomenon but within specific cultural and social contexts” (3) and that, “historically, the live is actually an effect of mediatization, not the other way around” (51). Prior to the advent of media technology, the concept of “live” as a category had no meaning. Therefore, “like liveness itself, the desire for live experiences is a product of mediatization” (55). "

Auslander’s synoptic concerns go beyond pointing out the frequent inclusion of video clips in theatre productions or the near ubiquity of miking human voices in live productions. He is interested in showing that the alleged ontological differences between the live and the mediatized are specious. In building his argument, he returns often to Walter Benjamin’s thoughts on a popular desire for manufactured proximity in the midst of an environment of reproductions. The mediatized will often satisfy this desire better than the live. Auslander also argues against Peggy Phelan’s assertions about memory – supposedly the only way to “record” live performance – as a privileged site of disappearance, invisibility, and resistance.

Anticipating the argument that the incursion of technology into live performance is true of large-scale events (Broadway musicals, sports events, and rock concerts with huge simulcasts) but not necessarily of all theatre, Auslander focuses on “media epistemology” influencing everything from audience expectation of what is “realistic” in acting to character construction in solo performance pieces.

The chapter on rock music posits live performance as something that has always served to authenticate (and boost the sales of) the recordings that are the form’s true medium. “Authenticity” was important to the early audiences and artists of this genre predicated on “romantic ideology” (79), and the process of authentication allows rock’s “adherents to experience mass-produced objects as auratic” (83). The Milli Vanilli scandal (the discovery that the group awarded a Grammy in 1990 had not sung on their own album) revealed a new generation uninterested in the Romantic authenticity of “paying dues.” For youngsters happy to purchase simulations of simulations, it is the video that authenticates the recording, with live performance – to the extent that it can simulate the video – authenticating the latter. Unplugged, in Auslander’s schema, allows MTV to work “both sides of the generational street by placating rock’s older fans with simulations of authenticity while simultaneously ushering in the new paradigm for children of those fans” (110–11).

Interesting things noted from the DILLER+Scofidio reading! Long displaced from its position as the dominant voice of cultural expression, architecture has developed identity disorders driven by two parallel tendencies: technophobia and technophilia. The rhetoric at both extremes claims that "space is dead," "the city is dead," the notion of "the public is dead." Technophobes mourn these losses; technophiles revel in their extinction. But while technophobia and technophilia appear to be at ideological odds with one another, their oppositional framework often reveals flip sides of the same desires.

Both techno-extremes revere the notion of "liveness." "Live" is a broadcast term that means simply, now, at this very moment. Liveness holds with it the titillation of the uncut, the uncensored, the not fully controlled. Live turns the passive viewer receiving messages into an eyewitness. Live suggests the opposite of mediated. Mediated has negative overtones; it is associated with the compromised, the degenerated, the filtered, even the tampered with and doctored.

For technophobes, liveness in broadcast may be the last stronghold of authentic experience - seeing and/or hearing the event at the precise moment of its occurrence.

Live events on television such as the Gulf War or the 24-hour millennium celebration connected the world through an electronic weld. For technophiles, liveness is the index of technology's ability to simulate the real, in real time. Lag time, delay, search time, download time, response time, feedback time are all unwelcome distractions to liveness. Real-time is the speed of computational performance: the ability of the computer to respond to the immediacy of a command. Un-mediated means im-mediate. But, whether motivated by the desire to preserve the real or to fabricate it, liveness is synonymous with the real, and the real is an object of uncritical desire for both techno-extremes.

The work of our studio attempts to dismantle the qualitative distinctions between mediated and "real" experience that serve to separate architectural experience from that of contemporary media. We attempt to synthesize technology and architecture using bricks and pixels as irreducible units of construction.

2003/04/24 00:01 EST (via web):
IngerSays: Victor - you may be interested in this link http://www.dailyobjectivist.com/AC/musicperceptualcognition5.asp. Haven't read it all, I would read it pretty critically but it might throw up some other sorts of arguments for you.

Terrain Essay – REWORKED Draft – 11.05.2003 Victor Lanch 2108929P Essay question - “What lies between the notes?”

Hello Inger would I be able to get an opinion of what you think so far? This is a REWROKED DRAFT from the comments of DAve? and VAn?.

“Is music an expression of an idea or feeling, or is it an outcome of exploration into certain relationships in temporal, aural, visual or other spaces.” ( Martin, Elisabeth, Pamphlet Architecture – “Architecture as a transition of music”, pp. 64

Why do people listen to music, why do they even play music? Does the process of playing or listening to music offer a form of relaxation or a sense of expression that inevitably takes that person into a greater understanding of what music is? Firstly, what thoughts are generated when I think about what music is? Well, as an individual who has grown up playing music, I believe that music is a powerful medium that one uses to express oneself. It is when one allows himself to depart the stillness of silence, so he can enter the threshold of sound, which is what music indefinitely is. It is this transition process or rather the creation of sound that really defines the character and imprint of music. Well how is music actually created? Is it as easy as playing a piano or singing a tune? Let’s just say like all things in life, there are certain rules that govern the creation of music that make it aesthetically pleasing, but with things that require creativity, there will and always be times where the individual will cross the boundary, in an attempt to produce something that brings one to a silence of wonderment, not boredom. So does that bring one to believe that the notion of “what lies between the notes” is just really what the individual experiences. Is the ‘in-between’ or musical space governed by the characteristic and behavior of the surrounding notes? Do the notes represent the boundary which encapsulates ones’ expression?

As Charlie Parker had elaborated, where and when does an individual get taught how music is played within the invisible boundaries of constraints, and when is that defining moment of breaking the rules in music realized. If we look for example at Jimmy Hendrix, an individual who could not adequately read music notation and secondly played a right-handed guitar upside-down, because he was left-handed. Strange you might ask, but true. Born in the Woodstock era, Hendrix used his addiction to drugs as a medium and stimulus in the conception of his music. Interestingly, Hendrix was often ‘intoxicated’ whilst performing and playing some of the most brilliant and thought provoking guitarist solos that the world has heard. In many ways as Parker had exemplified, Hendrix ultimately lived and died by his music, in that his entire life was basically an experience of musical implications that was generated by thoughts associated to his deadly addiction. His experience as an addict was translated into an expression of many forms (pain, happiness, love, etc.). This expression, the ‘in-between’ was the stimulation for his music. His music was often an awkward rollercoaster of notes and disjointed chords that somehow amalgamated into something great. Each note he strummed reflected the notion of freedom. This sensation of freedom was felt by all – and conveyed the feeling of boundaries being broken. The expression, the ‘in-between’ in Hendrix’s music pushed the notion of ‘one must not only play what is written’ to a point where I believe that he proved that there was no need for rules in the creation of music, because music is everywhere in everyday life. Another individual that defined music as a medium for expression was Beethoven, a classical pianist during the 18th and 19th Centuries. Extraordinarily, Beethoven was both blind and deaf, but despite his disabilities; Beethoven utilized the notion of vibrations as a technique of creating his musical masterpieces. Beethoven did this by playing the piano on the wooden floorboards of his dwelling, where he cleverly used the acoustics of the room to hear the different pitches and tones that his piano produced. One must also remember that though Beethoven was born practically blind, he only lost his sense of hearing when he began to grow older – making it doubly astonishing that the greatest compositions that Beethoven ever conceived were written when he experimented with the notion of acoustics. I think in any case, both the efforts of Hendrix and Beethoven was remarkable in that their musical intent was greatly manifested by their abilities to strive for expression in their music. Fundamentally, it is the exploration of letting one express oneself freely, that one begins to learn the art of music – expression through improvisation identifies the individual. “Technique is the ability to translate your ideas into sound through your instrument.” Bill Evans ( http://photomatt.net/jazzquotes)

“To the person who uses music as a medium for the expression of ideas, feelings, images, or what have you; anything which facilitates this expression is properly using his instrument.” Bill Evans (http://photomatt.net/jazzquotes) Having vaguely explored the infinite possibilities of musical expression through two artists who used experimentation as a tool in the creation of music, one must attempt in determining the lineage between where musical tendencies birth and arise in individuals. Henceforth, it is important to understand the development of infants as a birthing process of musical composition. Why, because I believe that a score of music translates with every passing note an experience and exploration in life, and like a photo, every note inherits a power that allows it to define a second in an individuals’ intuition. How does one then attempt to understand the correlation between the lineages of expression and infancy and how each one can be influenced by the other? Well, to begin, infants use expression as a form of language in order to translate their wants. In comparison, musicians use the musical language as a form of their own expression. But how can a human being from the time of ones’ birth to ones’ death have this so-called musical ability? Is this musical ability innate, as in genetic or is it socially influenced or is it both, the ‘in-between’ as implied? In the analysis of the knowledge gathered from the readings of Daniel N. Stern and his book “The Interpersonal World of the Infant”, one has understood that infants from the time they are conceived to the first couple of months of their lives are ‘actively forming a sense of an emergent self.’ Primarily infants employ the sense of organization in the process of formation, in order to continually examine its sense of self. As Stern exemplified, this persistent searching for a sense of self that the infant endures is not by far achieved in this beginning period, but will eventually materialize with maturity. (Stern, Daniel N., The Interpersonal World of the Infant, pp. 38) How do then infants acquire this sense of organization in the process of formation that Stern describes, well they simply learn by seeking ‘sensory stimulation’, where basically the infant utilizes the fives senses that any human being would use to gather intelligence – seeing, smelling, feeling, tasting, and hearing. This initiation of sensory stimulation conjures up preemptory qualities that are a prerequisite to hypothesizing drives and motivational systems. Obtaining the senses of hypothesizing and motivating, trigger the first signs of innate individual tendencies, where the infant delineate distinct biases or preferences with regard to the sensations they seek and the perceptions they form. Having discussed how Hendrix and Beethoven experimented with different approaches in their creation of music, we can already begin to draw conclusions that suggest that from birth on – the infant conditions itself to form and test hypotheses about what is occurring in the world. Henceforth they constantly evaluate in the sense of asking, is this different from or the same as that? In saying that, I do not think that musical ability is definitely genetic or inherit from birth. But I do think it is implied in the sense that if an infant is exposed to the elements of music from the first months of its life, it tends to adhere to the social environment that music accommodates. An infant that is nurtured at a relatively early stage in any aspect of life will be more likely to succeed at a higher level later on in life. In the analysis of Hendrix and Beethoven, we can conclude that social implications during their life had a greater effect upon their nurturing into the elements of music rather than the notion of their genetic make-up. Once that formative understanding of what is similar and what is different is defined, the infant’s mind will categorize the social world into conforming and contrasting patterns, events, sets and experiences. As Stern describes it, this ultimately leads to the infant’s discovery of ‘which features of an experience are invariant and which are variant – that is, which features “belong” to the experience.’ The infant will then apply these same processes to whatever sensations and perceptions are available, from the simplest to the most complex – that is, “thoughts about thoughts”. Likewise, musicians do the same with their own sensory perceptions in that they also use the simplest to the most complex – that is, “notes about notes”. (Stern, Daniel N., The Interpersonal World of the Infant, pp. 42)

Well what lies between these thoughts then and how does one infant’s thinking relate possibly to the notion of music? Does the development of the infant’s thought process coincide and adhere with this notion of music? Interestingly as the infant rapidly matures with time, it develops its sensory stimulus into what Stern calls ‘amodal perception’. This innate capacity is somewhat extraordinary, because the infant uses this perceptive quality to take information received in one sensory modality and somehow translate it into another sensory modality. (Stern, Daniel N., The Interpersonal World of the Infant, pp. 51) The notion of ‘amodal perception’ is fascinating, because when a musician is in the process of formulating a composition, it basically uses this concept of amodal perception in that one begins by ‘hearing’ music. Using selections of music as an inspiration and influence, one then breaks down and thoroughly analyses the rules associated with a score, such including the harmony, pitch, counterpoint, theory of form, melody and tone. The translation of hearing into seeing and feeling the musical composition is one that really determines the quality of the music. Like in architecture, all music is driven by precedence, and in hindsight it is how well one creative mind can form a transition between hearing music and implicating it into a form that provokes an individual to feel and respond to it. “Louis Kahn once described great architecture as that which starts with immeasurable, proceeds through the measurable, and returns to the immeasurable. He was describing a process by which the spark of genius in an idea is carried by way of investigation, drawing and construction into a finished piece of architecture.” (Martin, Elisabeth, Pamphlet Architecture – “Architecture as a transition of music”, pp. 16)

If music can indeed be able to provoke an individual to feel and respond to its language, then how does that individual arrive at that place of response? Well infants primarily appear to experience the social world as ‘vitality affects’ before it is a world of formal acts. Moreover, infants’ form and act upon abstract representations of qualities of perception. These abstract representations that the infant experiences are not sights and sounds and touches and nameable objects, but rather shapes, intensities, and temporal patterns – the more “global” qualities of experience as Stern discusses. (Stern, Daniel N., The Interpersonal World of the Infant, pp. 57) Do these abstract representations of various shapes, intensities and patterns then amalgamate to become one entity to form a language that infants use to communicate or more so express their individual preferences? Consequently enough, psychologists of infancy have delineated a connection that suggest that infants’ like adults respond to variations of visual, vocal and gestural expressions of emotional states that have been subtly adjusted rhythmically and dynamically in a patterned state (Dissanayake, Ellen, Aesthetic Incunabula, pp. 338) – meaning that as with music, infants experienced expressions that were varied in time, pitch, frequency and tone. With the use of terms like rhythm and dynamics, psychologist formed a lineage that the infancy language had a direct correlation to the performance arts, hence characterizing the ‘musicality’ of the infancy language. If infancy language is linked to the performance arts – then aren’t all infants potentially artists in their own respects? If this is so, then it implies that all infants have an innate understanding of creativity, whether that be small or large, or in the interest of music or science. It just furthermore highlights the issue that, an infant gathers it knowledge through experience and expression via its interaction with its environment. “It’s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It’s a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something I’ve never gotten the hang of. But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And that’s what jazz music is all about.” Stan Getz (http://photomatt.net/jazzquotes) “Life is a lot like jazz. . . its best when you improvise. . .” George Gershwin (http://photomatt.net/jazzquotes) If jazz as a musical language is seen as creative impromptu, then ‘baby-talk’ is doubly that. Moreover psychologist believe that artists’ in all media ‘deliberately perform operations that occur instinctively during a ritualized behavior: they simplify or formalize, repeat with variations, exaggerate, and elaborate in both space and time for the purpose of attracting attention and provoking and manipulating emotional response.’ (Dissanayake, Ellen, Aesthetic Incunabula, pp. 343) This act of improvisation is termed ‘artification’ - a process that attracts attention and shapes and manipulates emotion. So with infants having the capabilities to recognize, attend to, and respond to regularization and simplification, repetition, exaggeration, and elaboration in vocal, visual and gestural modalities when interacting with adults , adults inversely must be able to react adequately to the modalities of infants as well. The use of expression by musicians is similarly to the infants use of improvisation. Expression to musicians is the ‘in-between’ that divides each note, whereas improvisation is the ‘in-between’ that divides each thought. We can already gather that improvisation pertains to a level of individual expression that is generated by ones’ own experience, ones’ thoughts and ones’ wisdom in the realm of musical intuition. Furthermore, one can outline lineages in that creative impromptu is often a result of other ideas, societal influences and also individual tendencies, in relation to ‘pleasure and displeasure (hedonic tone)’. (Stern, Daniel N., The Interpersonal World of the Infant, pp. 65) Hedonic tone, as Freud prescribed was a progression of how individuals ‘affectively’ acquired a sense of perception. Perception was especially an important way of learning for infants, as it was a beginning to primary experiences. To be perceptive is to be discerning, observant and in my opinion sensitive to your surroundings. When an infant is sensitive it responds through expression, when a musician is sensitive one does likewise. Sensitivity to music is something that cannot be taught, it is the realm of both perception and expression that can only be harnessed and manifested by the individual only when one can balance the elements of what music implicates. “Musical expression is a matter of some subtlety, as the difference between a great performer and a merely good one is not often primarily a question of technical proficiency, nor even of dynamics or pace, but rather a question of touch or feeling, vague and subtle notions which point to something one cannot quite put one’s finger on, but which make all the difference.” (Evens, Aden, Sound Ideas, pp. 176) Does this mean that expression is an immeasurable element? In my opinion I believe so, purely because music is a form of sound, and sound as an expressive form cannot be measured – because it involves the notion of perception. And perception as we have discussed above subjectively pertains to the individual itself. Meaning that the power of sound as an expressive element can either provoke oneself into entering a world influenced by expression - or on the other hand have no effect on another. ‘Expression is the art of matching the notes to the room, of playing the audience as much as the score, of shaping the silent movement of air into sound.’ (Evens, Aden, Sound Ideas, pp. 176) By this statement, expression as an element of music, conjures up many other possibilities in relation to itself. Expression can be broken down and examined as individual elements, like sound and movement that are associated with music. Firstly sound as a separate entity stimulates many different variables and notions that manipulate the appearance of it. Meaning that sound can be perceived by one as a conglomeration of vibrations or noises that amalgamate at different intervals to form a sense of musical implication. Beethoven was a prime example of one who visualized sound as a ‘scale of vibrations’ that did not disappear in the acoustics of the room, but more so dissipated, echoing all the while in order to summon an embodiment of energy that formed compositions of expressive excellence. With each passing sound, vibration or noise there is always a subtle difference. Just like a heartbeat, sound modulates and contracts at different intervals. But, how does one have the ability to be able to manipulate sound in such a way that it modulates and contracts in a given way, so that one can push the boundaries of music, in order to reach that sense of perfection in expression. In hindsight, one has that ability by utilizing the instrument of one’s choice – with Beethoven it was the piano, with Hendrix it was his guitar and vocal prowess. The instrument in music was a powerful tool in the production of sound as it allowed the individual to manipulate sound in any manner. The instrument produced contractions of frequency into pitch, of pitch into melody and harmony. Each contraction gave a sense of depth, suggesting elements of duration, time, rhythm, syncopation and tone. When the sense of depth is recognized in sound production, expression can be perceived. Depth in sound quality implies sound has a sense of direction and clarity. With direction, the notion of movement is strongly suggested. Movement in many ways presents concepts of motion, transition and variation. Massumi best describes in his comment. “Take movement. When a body is in motion, it does not coincide with itself. It coincides with its own transition: its own variation. The range of variations it can be implicated in is not present in any given movement, much less in any position it passes through. In motion, a body is in an immediate, unfolding relation to its own non-present potential to vary.” (Massumi, Brian, Parables of the Virtual – “Movement, Affect, Sensation”, pp. 4) Movement in music is suggestive of difference – when music is in motion, the difference between each sound presents a wave of rising and falling pressure, whose difference gives sound its character. This wave of contrasting sound pushes music forward, by continually contracting sound to a new clarity each time. Moreover the intensity of each contraction can further verify the clarity and character of movement produced by the musician. In conclusion, music in all its forms is defined by the individual. It is the exploration of oneself through experience, improvisation and musical knowledge that one can truly exploit fully the expressive nature that music in all its beauty can accomplish. “To play music expressively is to demonstrate sensitivity to this background, not only to read the audience, to hear the space around the instrument, but also to contract the silence between, beside, or behind notes, and to draw from this silence the appropriate contraction, just the right sounds. An instrument is a tool for shaping noise, contracting parts of it into perception, and a performer is always a sculptor, who works at once the contracted material and also the relaxed space around it.” (Evens, Aden, Sound Ideas, pp. 179)

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