User:Eastwood/research writing/ThesisProposal4

Graduate Proposal : Draft 4 (Final?)

What do you want to make?

I want to develop a performance and installation practice that asks whether embracing the precarious, and fragile position of improvisation can allow for greater human agency. My work will attempt to disrupt standard music making methods, and tools through improvisation, networks, and custom software instruments. For my final work I wish to perform a multi instrumental work that embraces the unstable nature of improvisation in software and music. I wish to put stress on my training in jazz improvisation through experimentation with custom built algorithmic instruments, as a exploration into whether improvisation can be a force for resistance against systems of standardisation.

Why do you want to make it?

Improvisation interests me because of its immediacy, and its possibility for the unexpected. It is an act that we are not openly encouraged to explore, and the fields that perpetuate the practice are often closed and specific. In saying this however, daily events too are imbued with improvisational methods but are largely imposed upon by cultural, social, political and economic systems. Furthermore we are not openly encouraged to engage in an improvisational practice, as it doesn't align with many ubiquitous systems within society, like capitalism, nor many our generally patriarchal methods of thinking.

Mattin proposes the quality of fragility within the improvisational method, and suggests its essentially in an improvisational music making process. To extend this idea, I believe that by integrating improvisation beyond its standard realms, it can allow anyone as an improviser to break a standard cycle. By embracing the fragility of improvisation and collaboration we can engage differently with systems in new and exciting ways, and resist the forces of standardisation and blind progress.

Music has a long history of improvisation, its roots likely formed by it. Yet too, music has a long history of standardsiation. Much like language, tools were developed for its archival and dissemination in the two pronged intention of wider adoption, and control. Only at very distinct times in our history can we see spikes of an improvised mainstream (Baroque, Blues, Jazz), which since has dwindled into a relatively fringe practice. Outside of music, one could suggest that improvisational practices exist within the DIY and Open Source software scene (to name two), which were born out of empowerment, and in many ways, resistance.

Relation to larger context

In society we are not openly encouraged to perform outside of the frameworks provided to us through law, education, culture, and consumption. Improvisation allows us to take a system and play with it, allowing new angles into their functions, possibilities, and sometimes exposing their true nature. The act of improvisation too is different to random acts, although chance is graciously embraced, as it it reinforces responsibility. In an improvisational act, the improviser is taking risks to explore possibilities fully accepting failure and the responsibilities of the consequences. Unlike a compositional method, perfection is not an option, nor is it aspirational. The spontaneous exploration of a system, or network of systems, its deconstruction, augmentation or abstinence is at the core of improvisational motivation.

The improvised practice is not embraced within the frameworks of our wider society, which is built upon the motivations of knowledge, progress, product, rules, roles and regulation. Although these ideas are ripe for an improvisational method, not ignoring that their most progressive attributions have likely been thanks to it, today we are confined by a large and abstract soft oppression by systematic standardisation.

How do you plan to make it?

I have developed algorithmic software instruments in various software languages which are controlled using MIDI controllers, audio analysis, and hacked traditional musical instruments. I improvise on my saxophone along with this semi-autonomous computer orchestra, prompting the instruments to regenerate the melodic or rhythmic patterns. I imagine that this work could take the form of a generative installation, a performance piece, album, and a book of man versus machine transcriptions of the new language that will have generated from this practice based research.