This accessible page is a derivative of https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2938321/3620165 which it is meant to support and not replace.
Audio description: A sound file of my improvisation piece Fracas, from 2021, an early example of using a graph-modelling approach to select sound material, as short sequences that appear in networks, where the relationality becomes part of the musical organisation. Fracas has a duration of 17 minutes and clearly shifts through maps of different material-relations.
Click on https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2938321/3620165#tool-3625349 to listen to the audio.
Selective Retention
In his book The Wandering Mind, Michael C. Corballis reflects on the ‘default-mode networks’ of our minds and how the essence of creativity takes place through ‘blind variation’, a transition from a set path to something unknown, where what we do stumble across is recognised and labelled as a ‘selective retention’ (Corballis 2015). His idea of wandering is not concerned with a specific problem-solving goal but rather with something more uncharted or exploratory. Similarly, composing music can be understood as moving through stages of ongoing transformation. It starts at a certain point, and then ventures along different paths. The relationship between these points can be constantly changing and shaped by the interaction with past points of connection. What stands out are the retentive moments that occur during that process.
Looking at the space of creative possibilities as domains that can be navigated through brings about the question of how we go from one to another and what their relations consist of. This allows for developing strategies that reflect the use of these connections (and possibility spaces) within the works that employ them. For example, instead of understanding ‘wandering’ as a way to allocate a target, it could also be seen as a way of development, as a selection of choices, as presenting a path through a field of options where the path itself becomes something that provides value. Each path chosen is not just a means to an end but an integral part of what is defined, found, and attributed to a certain work. Singularities, unexpected turns, and the unique events encountered are what attribute the approaches described here with distinct character and creative interest.
Image description: An abstract diagram depicts a possible path through a configuration.
Click on https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2938321/3620165#tool-3624992 to see the image.
Network Experiences
Discussing the peculiarities of networks and relational data, Anna Munster reminds us how their passage can be felt and experienced where:
“relationality is the experience of passing a vague edging with, against, between, away from—that actualizes the related things. [..] To take the edge seriously means to also value the force of relation—its capacity to change the things in relation at the very moment change itself relationally occurs.” (2013: 41)
She further remarks that ‘experience-as-network begins with human knowledge as always already distributed, “loosely joined” or “concatenated” in the transitions and relations between knowers, known, and knowing’ (41). Her perspective suggests that relationality is not a static link between entities but an active, evolving process. This ‘vague edging with, against, between, away from’ illustrates the multitude of ways in which elements within a network can operate. More than being connected, it is about how these connections form, dissolve, and reform, always affecting the entities involved. Her view emphasises the relational but also demonstrates how chaotic, fragile, and dissipative they may be. Relationships are not passive; they can alter the elements they connect and also bring about failure and dead ends. Meaning is distributed across endpoints and reconfigured through the interactions and relationships between them.