[PD] "computer music" WAS: Re: Pd at a livecoding event on the BBC

[Fernando Gadea]

Sory for the big delay, but I was really busy. I will try to answer in 
between lines:

Mathieu Bouchard escribió:
> On Tue, 8 Sep 2009, Fernando Gadea wrote:
>
>> So they say that good piano players play with the whole body (same 
>> for guitar or any physical instrument, I guess).
>
> Is it because it makes the music any better, or because what musicians 
> are after is not just the music but also the dance that a musician 
> makes with the instrument?
In a physical instrument the position of the body when playing modifies 
the dynamics of movements, so variations in the dynamics of movement 
produce also diferent dynamics of sound. If you press a key with a 
strong movement it will almost shurelly be different if you do it 
sitting on a chair, with your head and back aiming behind your 
gravitational center, that if you do it whith your body aiming foreward 
or if you do it standing on your feet. Your finger´s pressing movement 
will be affected, and also the strength with which you keep pressing 
after that. Being able to administrate this variations gives the 
musician a wider sound palette (Sorry, I am not shure if this is the 
word). This expands the expressive possibilities of the performer as he 
then is able to subjetively transfer the meanings he gives to his body 
movements to the sound dynamics. In the following text please note that 
it says "from the performer side" and "what music should express", not 
what it DOES express, neither from an objective view. I mean, I am 
trying not to take the subject to the interpretation from an 
observer-in-the-public point of view, and, I must say it again, this is 
not what everybody should do, but those that feel that they need to.

"...different performances of the
same piece can communicate different expressive inten-
tions. Most music performances involve expressive inten-
tions from the performer’s side, regarding what the mu-
sic should “express” to the listeners. Consequently, in-
terpretation involves assigning some kind of meaning to
the music. " (http://smc.afim-asso.org/smc05/papers/LucaMion/mapping.pdf)
>
>> Art is suposed to be a free environment, meaning that it should be 
>> guided or conditioned only by the artist.
>
> According to whom?
This subject is treated in aesthetic since the enlightement and 
romanticism, and maybe even before. You can read about this subject´s 
history (treated secondarily) in Simón Marchán Fiz´s "La estética en la 
cultura moderna", from chapter III till the end. Other related subject 
might be "Ludic Aesthetics". I don´t remember a more specific book. 
Marchan Fiz is related to the Frankfurt school. I don´t know how the 
freedom subject is treated by Analytic Aesthetics, but as a 
more-science-philosophy-related aesthetic perhaps it just does not treat 
it. Also in Post structuralist´s philosophy Freedom becomes an important 
subject that implies relationships with art, and of course in 
Existentialism, before that, so you might find usefull reading Heidegger 
or Sartre, or triyng to understand Foucault´s, Deleuze´s and Guattari´s 
art-related works. Furthermore, any statement about being required from 
the artist to give his own truth implies the concept of being the artist 
free. Anyway, as any definition of art is possible while it must be 
contextualized, I agree that we could talk of other kinds of art where 
freedom is not important or does not exist at all.
>> If you answer yes to the third, the probabilities are that your mind 
>> is twisted after years of taking drugs, and maybe it was already 
>> twisted before you studied art or started taking drugs. Sorry, I was 
>> joking...
>
> Drugs usually come relatively late in the picture. They don't tend to 
> make art more twisted, just more defective. They also don't have much 
> to do with being twisted.
I was just joking and being metaphoric and rethoric. Besides that, There 
have existed circunstances when drugs have been part of the creative 
environment and I wouldn´t agree that the results were defective. And I 
would say that "defective" is another relativable concept.
>
>> Of course in these three questions I was only having fun while being 
>> retoric, because relativity dismantles concepts as "making a 
>> difference", "quality", "being emotionally involved" and even 
>> "academic" or "popular" (history shows lots of examples that would 
>> complicate the difference between the last two).
>
> Dismantling and complicating are not the same thing. Being conscious 
> of the relativity doesn't make those concepts less important and it 
> doesn't break them. It just breaks down a lot of talk that uses those 
> concepts: that which is vague, makes undue assumptions, etc.
>
>> At the end, anything could be poetic, as it mostly depends on who we 
>> are at that right moment. It ends as a matter of self-perception.
>
> Right.
>
>> And as perception is not transferable, neither is poetic or aesthetic 
>> experience.
>
> Well, despite our frustrations with it, plain talking goes a long way 
> transferring a lot of perception, experience, and other ideas. Calling 
> perception non-transferable comes from either taking conversation as 
> so much for granted that it doesn't count in the picture, or being 
> very pessimistic about how well it can be effectively transferred.
I understand what you mean, but the fact is that perception is not fully 
transferable. If it was, there would be no difference between any 
sound/image and a description of it.
>
>> That gives us a lot of possibilities, none better than other, only 
>> differents.
>
> It's only all the same if you just don't care about the possibilities 
> (or if you are trying to be diplomatic). In practice, people get 
> involved in aesthetics because they are passionate about them, and 
> they judge a lot. There is no absoluteness, no central authority, but 
> there's still a lot of judgements and impressions of what is better 
> and what is worse, and that's a necessity.
Maybe yes, but what I am trying to say is that I believe that those 
discussions about better-worse are also relativables, and then they 
shouldn´t end in duality (unless it is stated that this duality is 
related to the speaker), because when they do it probably means that a 
part of the true will be left out, and maybe that´s not an implicit 
necessity of the art world.

>
>> It is also supposed that someone not educated would be more able to 
>> find poetic in anything, because for him anything would be different 
>> from anything he knows.
>
> People don't enter university as blank slates.
I agree.
>
>> That is why we commonly despise the creations of early students, 
>> forgetting that in history teachers stole several times the concepts 
>> of students that "weren´t clever enough to realize the jewel they had 
>> in hands".
>
> Students are at a disadvantage here. They are not knowledgeable in the 
> research-wise artistic discourse of profs, that is what profs are 
> bathing in constantly, and so they don't know what is valuable to the 
> profs. What is valuable to the profs doesn't make much sense to an 
> outsider. It's probably more whim-oriented than most any other 
> discipline (?).
>
> it was an interesting read.
Thankyou for reading.
>
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> | Mathieu Bouchard, Montréal, Québec. téléphone: +1.514.383.3801