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• 1 media/Moxsonic image.png 2024-03-18T09:33:42-07:00 March 27 165 Response & Critique of Material image_header 2024-03-26T07:23:58-07:00

  Moxsonic Festival 2024

  Wednesday 3/13 - Sarah Belle Reid & Ryan Gaston discussion

  As the kickoff of the 2024 Moxsonic festival, this presentation was an excellent designated entry point into the eclectic sonic marathon of alternative thinking electronic expressions that would ensue for the duration of the weekend. The general structure of this open-form colloquium included the composition Vessel and the Ableton process related to it's creation, the design, functionality and application of the MIGSI interface, efficient and multipurpose patch creation in Max, and a series of student questions that extended the dialogue into a plethora of various investigations. Arising from this 2+ hour experience were two particular ideological discourses that peaked my interest; a) process or the 'basic scaffolding' of their combined creative approach and b) their perception of meaningfulness in the comprehensive musical process. Rooting the compositional process in a series of explorative improvisations establishes this scaffolding as an architectural foundation which promotes curiosity as the driver for an interest-based selection process, as opposed to limited procedural methods stemming from restrictive objects such as melody, rhythm, harmony and other traditional structures. Embracing the 'unpredictability of aleatoric processes' moves the compositional process away from a detached macroscopic level, reducing creation to user-controlled computer output, and towards an intimate microscopic domain where the interactions of sounds produce unpredictabilities that result in 'sufficiently strange and unexpected things.' In this way, a procedure unfolds between two agents that are equally engaged in a dynamic process of sonic fabricating within an active feedback system. This unfolding procedure directly reflects the aspects of what both Reid and Gaston find to be 'meaningful' phenomenon in their musical process. What is signified is not a semantic implication but rather an 'intentional action on the part of the performer' that orients physical gesturing toward purposeful designations. Falling within a very broad scope of definition, meaningfulness subsists as the potentialities between sound generation and performer interactions that enable aspects of information to be extracted from the instrument as potentially useful data and allots the performer to harvest potentially latent information. 

  Thursday 3/14 - John Thompson 'x 8 o 8'

  Walking towards the stage with an unassuming saunter, John Thompson quietly began powering up his work station with an introverted guise before turning on the projector which would reveal his forthcoming performance; lines of continuous coding language with virtual zero resemblance to a musical instrument of any kind. After a swift moment of preparation, Thompson began typing into his keyboard and with an almost jarring spontaneity the sounds of what I recognized as a gamelan sample began to generate from the speakers. Within the span of roughly 90 seconds there were bird sounds arising, an electronic drum kit began establishing a discernible groove and a plethora of retro 1980's east coast style DJ samples began to trigger, all forming a dynamic collage of text engendered sonic activities. After an investigation, I was informed that Thompson was using a program called Tidal Cycle, with Super Collider as the backend auditory source, an open source coding environment utilizing algorithmic patterns for flexible sequences of sounds, notes, parameters, and all kinds of information.
  This methodological procedure, fashioned exclusively for live computer music, constructs a hyper-reactive improvisational landscape for the performer to inquisitively traverse as desired and defies the notion that electronic music performance necessarily relies upon compositional determinism. Although an explicitly predetermined set of parameters is organized into the coded script, the rapid substitution of selected audio content and extemporaneous arbitration relieves the constraints of linear movement that so often inhibits transliminal performance potentialities. Operating within this uniquely dynamic setting discourages even the slightest deviation from the sonic unfolding which forces the performed to be holistically engaged and actively coupled with the performative act. The bedrock of this operational model is not absolute in it's essence but can fluctuate between alternating states of matter; it can become stable and foundational such as ice, it can become fluid and morphological such as liquid, or it can simply dissipate into a nothingness such as gas.

  Friday 3/15 - Alexandria Smith 'Towards a Feminist Protocol for Instrument Design'

  At the onset of this all too brief yet substantial presentation by Dr. Smith, she quickly acknowledged the particular selection of the word towards as an admonition to the non-finality of her research as a means to invite expansion and further growth in this area. The central theme of this presentation centers around how we, the larger collective body of sonic experimenters, can approach interface design in a historically approached way that provides representation to female figures who have either been silenced or erased, sadly sometimes both, from general representation and credential owing. Chela Sandoval’s “5 technologies” is a framework that Smith uses to begin formulating an established set of protocols to think critically about technological designs in music and acknowledging the females who are responsible for them. Through a critical process of unerasure, Smith challenges the traditional suppression of male dominated hegemonic structures which have produced both methodological and pedagogical procedures leading to the historical muting of female persons. To ethically progress contemporary practices in music technology, Smith seeks to investigate those who have been expunged from credibility due to gender. One of the most notable concepts put forth was the notion of 'extending the archives of the past' towards the present moment in order to construct a dialogic exchange between self and these historic figures. One of the more female leaning ideologies presented was the movement away from the opportunistic quid pro quo networking approach within creative circles and a movement towards friendship as a method of connectivity and learning. A great emphasis was placed on understanding that the things that we produce affect multiple generations behind and ahead of us which extends the impact of our influence simultaneously into the past and future. 

  Friday 3/15 - Chloe Liuyan Liu 'Culture Is The Body IV-Toward The Ground'

  As a response to humanity's unbridled technological evolution, Liu leads the listener away from the cybernetic prison of our hyper-digitized world and into a performative environment rooted in a physicality of 'animal energies' and a sonic landscape mimicking the sounds of organic nature through electronic processing. Structurally, this piece centers around foot stomping upon boards with bowed and struck percussion in combination with electronic triggering. The linearity of the piece moves in a wavering direction that does not conform to traditional form-organization but instead draws upon gestural response improvisation and physical cues exchanged between the performers through a conversation enacted in the body. There is an elegant balance between acoustic sounds and electronic audition that takes place at a calm yet advancing pace, unfolding each sonorous object with precision through a delicately selected temporal fashioning. Liu cites that this composition is informed by Tadashi Suzuki, a master of the theatrical arts, who developed a method of actor training that disrupted traditional theatre pedagogy and led to a global transformative shift within theatrical spaces. The act of stomping, which is sourced from the Suzuki training method, is a visceral mechanism aimed at re-establishing our 'communication with the ground' in order to remedy the fragmented connection to our bodies, and more broadly the earth, that our species increasingly experiences in the modern world. This physical action is not only a literal connectivity with our materiality but a symbolic act of moving the mind towards a more fundamental level, forcing our cognition towards what is beneath what we perceive as advancement. Perception, when directed towards the ground, embraces what becomes exposed in the act of stomping; the primal origins of which our technological advancements ridicule in the name of progress and the depreciated bodies that become secondary to the forthcoming machine supremacy. 

  Saturday 3/16 - Jeff Kaiser 'Electro Acoustic Music Informed Acoustic Improvisation'

  The assumption that an acoustic foundation is the necessary reference point in order to move towards an electronic domain has been thoroughly engrained within the physio-congnitive regiment of many music practitioners. With a blend of academic rigor and relieving humor, this video foregrounds a radical approach to disassemble the obstinacy of an 'analog must proceed digital' rationality. As an inversion to the conventional procedural framework, this transformative methodology repositions electronic music practices as the stimulus which foments acoustic music practices. After addressing this reversal of influence between systems, Kaiser shifts the focus away from engagement with external processes and towards the substratum of the individual's experience. The intrinsic relation between performer and performance tools gives rise to an investigation into the meaning of interactive; the self being configured by any given object in a 'dynamic refashioning through feedback loops.' It is within this space of exchange between body and machine that the essence of informed reveals its potency; not in supplying inspiration to conceive of familiar music structures (i.e. melody, harmony, rhythm) but that which compels the performer to embrace emergent peculiarities. The possibilities of new physical techniques become viable when the individual allows the electronic mediums to dictate sensorimotor choices through performative embodiment and the incorporation of biofeedback devices. Digital processing can therefore become the catalyst for corporeal evolution and yield physical technical affordances of electronic music environments that are inaccessible to acoustic music landscapes. This human-machine symbiosis decentralizes the individual's position of power as human controller to human receiver, where the bodily form assumes as the output of technological ordering, or what I deem as an anthromachina operandi. Ultimately, the reconfiguring of these dynamic systems transforms the performative reality of somatic mechanics and permits access to alternative cognitive expressions.