A Future In The Past

Theodore Parker

A Future In the Past is a research project engaging with the application of methods from Historically Informed Performance and Media Archeology towards problems found in the practice of Live Electronic music. In doing so the project sought to expose lost discourses in the medium as viewed from the performer’s perspective. Three pieces by composer Udo Kasemets were chosen as case studies. All compositions were originally written and performed prior to the 1990’s boom in digital processing. Each case study explores themes related to Liveness, Audience Interaction, and Hyper Instruments. In developing the historical context for each work several strategies were undertaken. Kasemets’ archives were reviewed at the University of Toronto, performers of the original pieces were interviewed, and investigations into period specific instruments were conducted. Additionally, Kasemets’ own published writings were used to reference his aesthetic ambitions as well as for comparison with his contemporaries. Rehearsals were carried out with The Estonian Electronic Music Ensemble, where the historical data and performer experiences were combined to create an individual interpretation for each composition. These interpretations were then presented to an audience and alongside contemporary issues currently debated in Live Electronics

Methods

The methods undertaken in this research are adopted from the fields of Historically Informed Performance and Media Archeology. In order to grasp an embodied experience for understanding compositions of the past, it was decided that the best approach would be to adopt methods commonly used for researching early music. Three compositions from composer Udo Kasemets were used as separate case studies. Data was collected around a chosen composition by conducting interviews, archival research, investigations into period specific instruments, and a review of relevant articles discussing the aesthetic and/or ideologies surrounding to Live Electronic music from past time periods. This data was then applied to the rehearsals of Kasmets music, where the interpretations of his work were arrived at through a combination of historical data and the performer´s experiences.

For an approach in comparing between the historical period with contemporary discourses about Live Electronics, Media Archaeology was chosen. A new and blossoming field, Media Archeology researches both the technology and technological discourses of various eras in order to establish a broader understanding of how discourse has morphed, segmented, and disappeared over time. Deeply influenced by Michel Foucault, the field seeks to destabilize our contemporary narratives about technology and to provide new perspectives for analyzing culture. In the case of this project, this method is applied to compare both the influence of technology on our current condition, but also to gain a deeper understanding of how the conditions of Live Electronics came into being.

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