This artistic PhD project is a composer-performer oriented exploration of live electronics understood as modular musicking systems. The conceptual framework draws upon an understanding of agency that views musical instruments as real or virtual objects-in-time that come into existence through the act of musicking. The systems created and presented in the thesis are explored through various scenarios presented as patches that include compositions, performance systems, and strategies for musicking. The project seeks to gain knowledge about the co-evolutionary processes found within the acts of composing and performing with such systems. At the core of the research is an exploration of the field of tension between the relative stability and flexibility in the affordances of live electronic instruments. It presents strategies for the design of live electronic systems in order to obtain a balance between these two states, and to understand how instruments are adapted in relation to the artistic processes of composing and performing. The thesis addresses the following research questions: 1. In what ways are my live electronic setups adapted within the acts of composing and performing? 2. How do my live electronic instruments manifest the field of tension between stability and flexibility? 3. What type of strategies can be used to create a predictable field of affordances of live electronic instruments? Through artistic research methods of meletē, transcription, and re-composition, the project gains a deeper understanding of when, how, and why human and non-human agents co-evolve in musicking with live electronics. It presents four core systems developed and refined within the project: Paragraph – a live coding environment, Parsimonia – a modular digital musical instrument, the EMP Triangle – a serial and modular composition tool, and the Sinew0od feedback system – used as a foundation for three transcriptions. The artistic outcomes are further studied using qualitative methods for data collection and analysis. The main contribution of this thesis is a novel understanding of live electronic musicking as co-evolutionary acts of patching. These acts entail processes of making and breaking connections between human and non-human agencies, and through patching create, transform, and manipulate compositions and performance setups, in order to achieve metastable systems. Hereby, the thesis proposes a cybernetic understanding of musicking as a process, challenging the traditional notion of fixed musical works, blurring the lines between compositions, instruments, interpretations, and performances.

>> Systems

1. Paragraph

2. Parsimonia
3. EMP Triangle
4. Sinew0od

Patches >>

1. TCP/IP: NIME
2. TCP/IP: Sestina
3. TCP/IP: Reconciliation
4. Re-patching Bach
5. Triangular Progressions
6. Sinew0od for Bass Clarinet
7. Sinew0od for Halldorophone
8. Sinew0od for Buchla

Publications >>

1. Global Hyperorgan

2. Exploring Sinew0od

3. Live Coding the Global Hyperorgan

4. A New Morphology

Book >>

Modularity

As shown above, the abstract model of the system constitutes several modules. First, there can be one or more human or non-human players. Their function is to excite the resonant body and to set parameters of the feedback system and the feedback controller, and to adapt to the final output, according to the score.

Second, the system contains something to excite the instrument and the feedback system. Typically, this is an integrated part of an instrument (e.g. a mouthpiece, a bow, etc.).

Third, a crucial and defining part of Sinew0od is some kind of resonant body that becomes part of the feedback system. Usually, this is also an integrated part of an instrument, but it can also be a virtual, physical model, or an external acoustic resonator (as described in the Patch 8: Sinew0od for Buchla piece in the next chapter).

Fourth, the feedback system used has so far consisted of two small speakers (Philips SBA-1500) and one or several microphones that were fed back to those speakers using a small mixer or an audio interface. Those speakers were originally chosen because they were cheap, portable and relatively easy to attach to the instrument in the original version of the piece (the Paetzold Contrabass recorder). However, they turned out to have quite distinct sonic character when overdriven, which has since been regarded as an important quality of the system.

Fifth, there is a feedback controller with the function of governing the feedback, trying to steer it into more predictable territory. This has usually been achieved by both using an equalizer (e.g., the built-in EQ of the mixer, or similar digital filters in the computer), and by mixing in other prepared sounds into the feedback network. Usually, a custom Max patch was used for these prepared sounds, controlled by a switch pedal to move further as the piece goes on, and an analogue volume pedal to control the amount of the steering effect.

Finally, a written score describing interactions within the system is included. This might easily be misunderstood as less significant for the system, but as demonstrated in the patches section, the work identity of Sinew0od is largely dependent on these interactions.

Modularity

The system is modular in the sense that the different constituent agencies can be patched together in different ways. In its original iteration, the intention was to extend the contrabass recorder with new sonic affordances. However, as it turned out, the system had a much more profound effect on the instrument than expected. The system was altering the Paetzold's affordances in a radical way, where the interactions within the systems became multi-directional. As such, the system shows "no clear boundaries between neither player and instrument, nor system and piece" (Petersson & Ek, 2022). Thus, even though the piece comes with a set of instructions in the shape of a score, the system is also a score in itself. This score emerges through the metastability (Simondon, 2017) of the current patch. The patch for the original version of the piece is sketched in the image above.

Within this research project, the Sinew0od system has been revisited, reused, and repatched. By applying a cybernetic approach to this system, the musicians' cyborgean co-evolvement within it, as well as the adaptation processes of both the system itself and the ergodynamics of the performance, can be studied.

System 4: Sinew0od

The Sinew0od system was originally designed for a piece written for Paetzold contrabass recorder player Anna Petrini and live electronics, premiered at Casa da Musica in Porto in 2008. The electronics comprise a feedback network, modulated by the performer’s playing and by moving inside the system according to a score. The piece shows certain aspects of how a musical instrument can be radically altered by such an extension, not only in the timbral sense but also in how it needs adaptation and requires new playing techniques to be learned by the performer.

This video is an excerpt from the workshop with Anna Petrini, revisiting the system, and subject for a semi-structured interview (see Petersson & Ek, 2022 for an in-depth discussion on this workshop as well as more clips). Here, she demonstrates the Paetzold's agency to alter the feedback within the system.

The video above shows the original score for Sinew0od for Paetzold contrabass recorder. It was recorded and mixed by me for Anna Petrini's album Crepusculo, released on dB Productions, 2012.

Tip

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Modularity

Modularity

System 4: Sinew0od