Niek Hilkmann, Trimester 1, 2012

So Far, So Good

Description

I will try not to waste words on idle chitchat. I believe this talk should be mainly about our prototyping lessons and how I experienced these in relation to myself and the rest of the seminar, in particular Richard Wright’s lectures. Let me start with pointing out that one of my basic motivations for joining the institute was that I did no longer want to simply perform music on a conventional music stage and produce a record every once in a while. The reason for this is that life is short, I have too much to tell and I do not seem to get my point across. So I was in search of new ways to convey my stories to an audience, through different means and in new places. Both coding and film seemed interesting places to look for this. As far as the coding part goes this ended up in the Yoshimi! HTML 5.0 Remix Experience. This is the first HTML page I ever built and it consists of a certain amount of music players playing randomly up to a certain point and resetting themselves to another certain point, thus creating some sort of randomly generated remixes of my own songs. I could try to defend this outing by relating it to the way music is currently mediated through the web and how listeners are practically able to play scrabble with soundbites. We certainly discussed texts who could generate excellent feedback for this. However, this is not what I want do. The longer I partook in the coding lessons the more obvious it became to me that I am not a coder and I lack the discipline and patience for this role. When I say role I mean this in the most litteral sense; coding for me would involve some sort of role-playing and doesn’t feel natural at all. Talking about this project in that vein produces the same effect. This feeling has creeped up on me more than once during the last couple of months. Besides learning how to code I have partaken in literary conventions, started following lessons in algorithmic composition, joined three bands, thought up three other (even an orchestra), began making a documentary and | traveled without any particular reason or goal. In the end, I decided there is only one outcome to this slight identity crisis. In the next trimester I want to stop thinking about what CAN be done, for I have done this long enough. Instead I will focus on what I WANT to tell. This means no more self-generating HTML or other interactive database-projects, but storytelling with a clear emphasis on narrative. I will stop trying to make the lost visible in an abstract way and producing an object through that, like in these two attempts: Appetite For Destruction & Schatjes . I will become a storyteller.