Out of all the contributions to the 2024 Ircam Forum Workshops that I have seen in Paris between the 19th and 22nd of March, one has kept me thinking not just for its content in terms of the (musical) arts, sciences and technology, but especially the philosophy behind it.
“Three States of Wax: The Nature of material in Live Electronic Improvisation”, brought to the conference by Juan Parra Cancino and Jonathan Impett framed composition as a critical technical practice through the lens of material as described by Descartes in his wax argument thought experiment and then taken further by Michel Serres in an investigation into the materials of physics.
In doing so, the Cartesian and scientific way of thinking about material were interpreted alongside a plane where in the present, the history of the material plays a role as the material becomes its own memory through every interaction with it – memory is approached as a reconstruction from a point of view as a similar process to imagination through improvisation in an electroacoustic performance that incorporates extended techniques on the trumpet, guitar and electronics while coming up with points of communication and interaction.
The presentation also implicitly posed the question of authorship, suggesting that material can be something that transforms how we think about it (also depending on how it is presented) and depending on how it was derived – in an odd way this made me think of “Steal like an Artist” by Austin Kleon (why that is I have to investigate further). As an example, the emergence of paper was mentioned as a clear material that changed how we think: With it, we become aware that we can note down things that might be helpful for later, essentially transforming how we navigate an ever-changing landscape of information and knowledge.
In a similar sense, it prompted reflection on how the reiteration of previous materials and merging of individual contexts transforms into an interconnected web of knowledge, simultaneously creating new input and contributing to a network structure that works as a combobulator, at least in my interpretation. In the context of improvisation in music, the notion that came across to me was that if composition were approached as a design process in terms of thinking about and considering the materials one works with, continuity could be found even where layers are added.
While I would not dare say that I fully grasped the whole idea during the 30-minute presentation without any further input, it provided me with food for thought and new ways to approach and interpret the interweaving of material with an awareness of how information, too, is subjected to change in how it is understood and presented during and also after the creative process, if it were to be fixed and thus became part of a larger network of memories and associations ascribed to it. This blog is by no means meant to explain the presentation itself, but more my interpretations, reflections, and thoughts that came up so far as a result of taking in the information.
Further resources:
Echo, a journal of music, thought and technology – https://echo.orpheusinstituut.be/#issues
Orpheus Institute (Advanced studies & research in music) – https://orpheusinstituut.be/en/music-thought-and-technology/three-states-of-wax
G. Agamben – The Man without Content
A. Negri – Art and Multitude
