Anamorphosis (20 June 2018).
A. The storm imminent in the clouds
The way that music unfolds temporally gives insight into some of its “meaning-producing” secrets. The temporal aspect of diatonic music allows for meaning to be generated in an open, but nevertheless, re-cognizable manner. No person claims to understand the absolute or final meaning of a piece of music. However in relation to a particular progression one can form verifiable opinions. Thus we “understand” that one chord follows on from the next, that a particular chord is consonant or that another seems dissonant. A dissonant chord might be “correct” in its place in the whole, or it might indicate a problematic juncture. Such a chord might even be jarring and “out of place”. These aspects of meaning can enter into the human discourse on music with confidence.
Whether a chord is “correct” or “incorrect” is perhaps understood even as one might not be willing to sanction such a judgement absolutely. One might come to an appreciation of a chord that was originally pronounced “problematic”, or even to change one’s mind completely and find it “sublime”.
For the sake of pushing further along this line let us allow that a chord can be “correct”. Assuming that a chord can be named in such a way other aspects appear in relation to it. The same chord can be both correct and incorrect according to its position within a progression. Here we encounter the temporal aspect of music. Meaning is generated through the step by step motion of the tones. Each musical “stop” is understood in relation to the progression itself. The march of the harmony makes sense of the individual points.
Such an argument includes a phenomenological aspect, namely the consciousness that apprehends the succession. Such a phenomenology would necessarily include a temporal component - the idea of a static meaning that resides in a work would not make sense without the necessity of succession as part of such a meaning.
Succession, in its form as meaning generator, can be modified and it can be destroyed. If we generate our chords using a programming environment such modifications can be easily achieved. The chords can, for example, be algorithmically broken up. Such an action will scatter the “meaning” of the diatonic aspect of the progression. Another algorithmic intervention might include a partial (incomplete) scattering of the chordal structure. This in turn would delay understanding (comprehension) of the meaning of our progression (our composition). Such a delay (in comprehension) is the concern of this chapter, and is taken to be a desirable effect. In what follows I will look at a work “Constellation Theory” that provides an example of this type of "delay", and various other aspects related to this too. The score to the work is found at this link: Score
The delayed comprehension strives to bring itself into alignment with the logic of a passage. This searching eye, of a listener or participant, roves hither and thither. The eye looks backwards along the path and forward to possible endpoints, all the while keeping itself in the moment and observing carefully the parade. The eye (ear) is confident that the work being observed has an encoded logic that is present, if momentarily unattainable.
The goal is certainly the play within the newly minted space, a space of uncertainty. Yet the uncertainty is governed distantly or (suddenly) more stridently and strictly, by a tangible form. The form that is making sense of chaos, and sending tendrils through the system. Taken together the summation of the various outliers and fragments seems to reference “something”, but perception may find it difficult to pinpoint exactly.
The presence of an anamorphic skull in Holbein’s “The Ambassadors” (1533) is instructive in this context. Refer to the figure below and its “anamorphic”. Somehow the work becomes “excited” through the presence of this device. The skill with which the skull is produced is significant, and the work itself takes on a different ambience with its presence. Its presence as a pointless (resonant) “smear” when observed from the front is offset by some kind of tingling of the senses. “Is everything anamorphic?”, something seems to whisper. What other obscure elements are encoded in human expression? From an aesthetic perspective, the encryption of information delays its resolution in the mind, or blocks it completely. More generally, the ultimate encryption of evolutionary life seems to make sense of the whole - though the final meaning is hidden.
With musical expression the smeared, or “blurred”, tones offer points of contact for the artist. Putting the parts together like a puzzle is itself not the end goal, at least not the only goal. Rather the dwelling upon the puzzling intuition (sensory intuition) as it refuses to fall one way or the other, is part of the game. The soloist can re-train her gestures in order that some type of clear (present) motion can become relevant to the incomplete logic. This is an ongoing activity of refinement.
Without a structural “main beam” a work can dissipate into a chaotic storm. This will be desirable in some cases. With a “main beam” providing a point around which objects might congeal and form the situation changes. The beam is present in the work “Constellation Theory” as a metronomic kick drum. The work has therefore two dissonant components - the chaos and the metronomic beam. The chaos produced by the algorithmic blurring is offset by the “metronome”. Aesthetically, shapes swirl and congeal around this garden-stake structure, climbing up further and higher.
In a composition “Constellation Theory” the process described above is put into practice. A chord progression is formed anew through the algorithmic blurring process. The most prominent effect of the process is that comprehension by a listener is delayed - the “logic” of the progression becomes attenuated and cannot be read off the work quickly. In the particular case of “Constellation Theory” the use of a traditional instrument is called for. This adds another challenge to the proceedings.
B. Traditional Instruments
The instrumentalist can augment the timbre and harmonic content of the sound of the instrument (1). The instrument can also be made to trigger other processes within a work or performance (2). Here we will describe another facet of interaction (3): the augmentation of the playing style in response to the re-structuring of form accomplished in “Constellation Theory”.
Training the body to accomodate the artificial whims of sequencers and programming clocks, one enters into new corridors. The body becomes a synchronous entity, its kinetic energy aligned with the digital forms. In the case described above the dwelling on the new complexities of rhythm require that the artist learn the instrument anew. The algorithms that act as the prism through which the musical content is passed, lead to unexpected harmonic and rhythmic components. To follow these new shapes with the improvisation is quite a difficult task, yet it can also be very interesting and rewarding.
The process described here is naturally one-sided, insofar as in actual practice the three different types of augmentation (identified above) are often used together. Furthermore, the changing of the harmonic content or spectrum of the instrument will in turn change the manner in which the artist approaches the gestural content (the playing style). In this particular case however the focus is mostly upon the augmentation of the gestural content and "style" that the piece demands.
