Project assignment Theoretical reflection
I went in more depth with the Baradian term Intra-action and I designed and
experiment for experiencing it by listening to a performance in co-creation with the
bio/geophonic orchestra. In the interview made by Adam to Karen (2012) she points out that a
specific intra-action enacts an “agential cut”, which in contrast to the Cartesian cut (it does an
inherent distinction between subject and object), effecting a separation between “subject” and
“object” within the phenomenon.
For me, the best way to keep a balance between the theory and practice of this artistic research is
to produce artistic results by applying the findings and concepts that I have been working on as I did in Agape.
Personal reflection
What is logic, coherent, and make sense starts to depend very much on the shape
how is presented, and this is a new world for me. Conceptual art is maybe the perfect example
where this situation happens, and in my personal experience I am looking for a balance between
the traditional “technique training” as a classical musician and entering into
conceptual/experimental art.
Reading Haraway’s book
Staying with the Trouble (2016) I have found a very interesting example of collaboration
between species. She mentioned in her book, the pigeon blog project, which was a collaborative
endeavor between homing pigeons, artists, engineers and pigeon fanciers engaged in a
grassroots scientific data gathering initiative designed to collect and distribute information
about air quality conditions to the general public, which at the end, it involves living nonhumans
as well as beneficiaries.
I foresee my project as an opportunity to develop further and make more visible post-human ethics, and making constantly manifestations on the public space. As a citizenship, I feel the impulse to say something about my relationship to living non-human agents.
I become aware of a different comfort zone I had, which was following structures and goals
given by someone else related to an artistic vision.
during the bootcamps, I could experience to be on several
positions, namely: being leader, being more passive and follow the democratic will, or even
sometimes to defend my position and make it understandable and valid for the others, as the
case of the sound framing act we had on the intersection and traffic light sounds, but some
people did not want to do it.
Artistic reflection
My esthetic choice for this project has
been to have more space for silence, in my case, to keep a balance where the most important is
not my ego as a saxophonist, but the dynamics of co-creation with the bio/geophonic orchestra.
When I play saxophone together with non-humans I use mainly soft sounds, extended
techniques namely: multiphonics, slap tongue, glisando and bisbibliando. I use also double
staccato which is not considered extended one, but it works for making very fast articulations
of sound, similar as birds do. The mentioned sounds let hear and see the materiality of the
instrument in a special way, not imitable by other instrument, which for me this is very related
with the melodies of the birds, who have their own body as material for sound.
After my experiments and reflections, I imagine creating some door memories on the human
audience and even on the non-human ones, where we can communicate through music in a
harmonious way. And the songs of the birds will remain on the people that watch my
performance, staying after the performance in their memory and being recalled wherever they
are in the city and listening to a bird melody relating with the feeling of emphaty.
I have experienced some change also when I receive communications about inclusivity, I don’t think anymore as an anthropocentric inclusivity.
I felt that the birds expressed more activity when I was co-creating music with
them, and for my brain the reality becomes more musical and I found more harmony in the
soundscape compared when I am not playing saxophone on those public spaces.
From PA 6
The feedback of my coach was that I should present the term intra-action as part of introduction of my project. Then, I should expand the explanation of contradictory spaces, as I mentioned in the point 2.
Do a thinking together session with Bubla, Victoria... Karin van der Mole, Anja.
Is it possible to do a melodic composition based on rhytmic patterns from the plants? Because this is the parameter that has no shaping intermediate as the tones or digital instrument. How?
The ritualistic aspect of the performance as a path to develop. What are the scenic elements of the performance? This, I need to explore, research.
Can this performance be repeated in the same way? It can be repeated the structure and performative intentions, or actually I can create bowing, leaning and giving thanks to the tree has created a very positive reaction on the human audience. Then the fact that I did not explain specifically all the technical setting before of the performance it is interesting for me, because after we finish the sounds from the tree continues, then it is a beautiful moment to explain the human audience about how those sounds are being created.
BOK 18
To reflect
The dominant elements from soundscape
Biological response to loud sounds
How to stimulate audience to listen closely, to be more sensitive.
Nice melody, going from dominant to ppp and pppp in an iterative process.
Sounds from distance, play with that.
Find a dynamic way to go from dominant Forte to nuances almost not
Audible... and explore several ways of entanglement with the bio/geophonic orchestra.
Moreover, she proposes that matter exists as a phenomenon,
Karen Barad revisits the philosophical implications of niels bohr’s theories of quantum indeterminacy. I relate it with the indeterminacy of the soundscape.
The culture/nature divide Pag 5
Instant composition is totally in dialogue with how Barad uses the term “queer”.
Queer:strange, unusual, or not expected
Hauntology (a portmanteau of haunting and ontology, also spectral studies, spectralities, or the spectral turn) is a range of ideas referring to the return or persistence of elements from the social or cultural past, as in the manner of a ghost.
Diffraction: patterncaused by) a change in the direction of light, water, or soundwaves
That is, responsability is an iterative (re)opening Up to, an enabling of responsiveness.
Not through the realization of some existing possibility,
but through the iterative reworking of im/possibility. (related to the Score)
From PA 5
I realised I have no question in a clear way the supremacy of human until this point. So I decided for the next experiment to address this with some pre-recorded text, or sentences, which I use in the performance.
Because of the feedback from Period 1, I read about biomusicology, and I found my research links with it on the notion of what music and musicality mean. Since I am co-creating with non-humans and I consider their sounds as music. In the article by W. Tecumseh Fitch he refers to that.
Project assignment 7 Planning of experiments period 2
My methods are: literature and media review, experiments, critical reflection, thinking together with artists and participant observation.
Explain always that you mention terms such as: Intra-action, embodied listening, and give at least one author, references.
Why did you choose multiphonics and slap tongue?
From Bok 12 Experiments, conceptual art
I realized that Marcel Duchamp is related to my project because, he questionned what can be Art, and created the concept readymade where he took objects from mass production and decontextualized them, sometimes with a minimum intervention from him and claiming them as Art objects. In music, the biomusicologist (1991-) also claims that other non-human beings has musicality, so the music is seen as a biological property of living beings. However, John Cage was a pioneer on challenguing the concept of music on before(1950-).
From feedback of David L. Prepare the question how would I explain for people coming from a musical background that indeed non-human agents are co-creating with me? (This is something to include in a Toolkit for co-creation with non-humans).
From Bok 4 Theorizing Space
I started to see my potential performance in the heterotopian space. I was also a bit stuck about the position of my project, so my coach suggested me to go and create art with my initial idea, and then from there something new will come. On this sense I need to develop experiment No 3 and 6.
Experiments (Reflection on PA 3)
-Develop and do part 2 of experiment No. 3, probably including the device Plants Play.
May be with spoken text, and Plants Play
-Do potential beginning of the performance through brainstorming of analogies, based on patterns, branches of the trees, translated to rhythmic seeds. Wave in to the water, doooooo, wave, doooo, wave... expanding the wave through the sound in the air. Sensibility
What is a counternarrative? Does some musician write counternarratives in co-creation with living non-human agents?
From Bok 7 Public/Participative practices, Art Manifestation
I found the following notion very interesting. That usually in “famous” art or mainstream manifestation where the people have a we-feel, it is perceived as engaging the whole audience, and in the case of experimental art manifestation, where they are breaking, deconstructing and/or reinventing canons, then the experience is more directed to the individual than the group.
For my project I can relate with the second case. This is a handy idea to take into account when I will make an experiment involving audience. And it is also linked with the question by my coach, how do I promote engagement with my audience?
I found also very important, this notion proposed by Bruno Latour, the encounter with an artwork where can be a process of invitation to re-imaging reality, re-invent concepts or subjectivity which is not dictated but inspired.
From PA 4 Reflection of my project until that point
I realised that I have very good ideas about improving my project, but some of them stayed on the paper in the assignments. Thus, I need still create a list of weekly process that I should do or have into account. This in order to strenght weak point on my research. For example:
After some of the Boks and project assignments I feel that I can explore not only the
world of masterpieces written for my instrument but also combine my skills as a saxophonist
into a new dimension and new relations with more topics.
And the feedback from David was: important to delve into this shift for your research presentation assesment. Which I did not do it properly because I was not organized enough.
From Bok 5 Practiotioner to Researcher.
-Cleaning unnecesary ideas or topics and keep focus on the important matter of my project.
-Specific planning, find balance among all the activities
- Weekly Critical reflection, from the sources I get knowledge.
- Complementary writing proposed by Robin which aim to articulate the moments of insight in a way that those can be intelligible for a broader community and not only for experts in the specific field.
-List of insights together with complementary writing.
-Supporting my experiments with contexts of cartography, anthropology and dramaturgy, posthumanism and new materialism.
-Feed my general mental map of the research.
BOK 14 four kind of city: Monumental, situational, creative and common
Reflections
What do I know about anthropocentrism? references?
What do my audience know about anthropocentrism? Are they aware of it?
My tactic,
I believe that this is my path which at certain point I will earn a relevant amount of awareness and then I would have something that
will shine and inspire other people to question themselves.
BOK 13 Problematizing Participation
We could think that one efficient related context for participation is the emotional field. There
are also non-demonstrable participations as in the case you have a close relative and this being
has an accident or unfortunate event. Your level of reaction to this is totally different as the
same event happens to another being that you do not know or feel empathy. In the first case
you could in some cases even felt the suffering of your relative even before in a rational way,
as a reading the information in a text, or via a talking or seen it with your own eyes. In a second
case, when a person finds something very personal, that mobilizes emotional connection with
an artwork which even if it is an abstract piece, it leaves an open door to unexpected
associations and feelings. I consider those as subtle potential participatory acts.
Systematizing my research work
(I make a list of every relevant process I have been doing and after I pass through every feedback from Boks and PAs I set a list of must do weekly)
-Continue checking feedback from Boks and PA and add things to fix, improve, here
-I need to take point by point from Bok 5 and make sure that I am working on every point.
-re check feedback Bok 8 and do changes
-Articulate experiments with references in a better way. Start with second version of No 3.
- Interviews, to artists from a similar topic and/or references, posthumanism, new materialism, one activist or artivist?. Find who
From Bok 2 My project as an Artistic research, Cubussen's text
New research methods. brainstorming of analogies, automatic writing,
I started to questionning my research question, and I expressed that I couldn't find a most stable topic, how to articulate it.
I wrote that for me it is very important to find a clear relevance for the community, where I do my project. And I see this toward the imaginary value that humans have to living non-human agents. An important though that I present is how about human as a potential endanger specie because climate change, instead of "we" humans should save the planet.
From Bok 9 Timeline socially engage art.
I should work mainly:
Evolve my experiments, making them sharper, deeper and generating knowledge.
To speak about my project with confidence and citing well my references, using the right categories.
From Bok 10 My own literature resource
Creating a metaphorical and artistic
space where I co-create with non-human agencies without leading them but accompanying and
celebrating their life is for me an interesting starting point for questioning.
Feedback: This is a good start for my project, go to the sources: Barad, Braidotti and Latour.
BOK 17
My coach underlined those insights and concepts as very important:
Inviting and sensibilizing people for listening to the biophony and geophony as music as a strategy for developing empathy for other living beings.
I find that this state can be a good start for moving one step further towards changing the way we listen to biophony, geophony or a hybrid co-creation with a musician. This is related to embodied listening, and
this is relevant in my project because it is a fundamental action to communicate in a more harmonious way.
I would keep my sound register below of the singing birds that I find in the park and organize my sound to don’t disturb the biophony of the place I perform.
This makes me reflect how can I be more as a mediator, or messenger between human and non-human. (It is very important to start elaborating and conceptualizing what kind of ethics your work is showing you, and what kind of ethics a non-anthropocentric way of living can be).
From Feedback Assesment 2
I need to make a clear and well structured presentation, 15 minutes.
I need to expand my own references beside the Boks or given by feedback.
My approach to work with non-humans is appreciated by the assesors, however I should do more dialogue with the other artists working in similar issues. The historical context was not clear and I should make clear the relation with the past.
Most importantly the design of my experiments and development are not clear for the assesors.
1. The way this interaction is worked in music terms, the concrete aim of each experiment,
2. the role of the audience in the project,
3. the positioning of the project in the area of in situ music research have to be further considered and advanced.
Focus a lot on sharpening your experiments (clear aim and process through which this aim is worked) and the artistic part of his work.
This will reinforce: positioning as a musician working with nature, but also his self reflective skills and the way he is able to follow the needs of his work.
They believe that listening as a skill to train, is a valuable proposal both for musicians and audiences. Be an embassador of this aural attitude.
BOK 19 Text Co‐Creation Beyond Humans: The Arts of Multispecies Placemaking
Make clear Art based research or approach?
It is important to add Place listening by Speight,
The visual plan of my theoretical references is a guide for the following reflection.
My own critiques:
How to find the music co-creation balance or structure of power in this
practice (experiment 11)? or the listening practice with human participants using a specific technique, or who does develop some already?
BOK 15 Research notions: emergence, complexity and reflexivity
What connections can be drawn between causes with effects?
There is an experiment that I did in the park where I was co-creating with the birds and one
tree which I connected to the device Plantsplay. I recorded on video and after reflecting on this,
I missed clearer context during this performance. So, this was the cause and watching the
recording I decided to include in a new experiment voice sounds...
However, I feel that there is a long path to walk to make it very special. As a
performative and ritualistic practice earn value by repetition, giving it meaning every time and
believing on that. Then, the link I consider between cause and effect on this case is "as much
as I give to others, as much I receive ", like the karma principle.
From PA 1
As cited in the text by Falk Hübner’s example, in a similar way I will be documenting as a cycle of experiment and collaboration on the chosen place, gathering information from literature review and media related to my topic and reflecting about those experiments and the new data, such as: what resonate more with me? What does not work at all? How do the audience (when I decide to have) perceive the experience? I will document mostly by filming, audio recording and writing. Also, I will look for participatory activities with the inhabitants of the near area, or people attending by random to the place I chose.