sound art and electroacoustic composition
by Robin Parmar
These are the articles and papers I have published, at least those which have to do with sound and composition.
For further reading, visit the composition and audio sections of The Theatre of Noise. (Note that blog sections can be subscribed to individually.)
"The Garden of Adumbrations": Reimagining Environmental Composition
December 2012
Paper to be published in Organised Sound 17(3)
abstract
R. Murray Schafer's soundscape, predicated on a schizophonic engagement with sound, and Pierre Schaeffer's musique concrète, based on an acousmatic relationship, have for some time been the dominant approaches for those who wish to compose with sounds sourced from the environment. Following Brian Kane and Timothy Morton, this paper critiques the ideologies behind these systems, instead suggesting an approach that uses Deleuze and Guattari's rhizome as a generative metaphor. "The Garden of Adumbrations", a multichannel electroacoustic piece, is used to illustrate several compositional possibilities: the tracing of place through subjectivity, the machinic phylum as emergent intelligence, the interplay between Katharine Norman's self-intended and composer-intended listening and the encouragement of accidents of listening. Also discussed are Antonin Artaud's Body without Organs, conceptions of Nature and the garden, and Luc Ferrari's "Presque rien ou le lever du jour au bord de la mer". The goal is to develop an integrated and sustainable model of sonic practice that addresses the acousmatic while supporting an embedded and non-hierarchical relationship with our ecological milieu.
No Input Software: Cybernetics, Improvisation and The Machinic Phylum
10 August 2011
Paper delivered at the first convocation of the Irish Sound, Science and Technology Association, Limerick, Ireland.
abstract
As a general principle, feedback describes a circuit (electronic, social, biological or otherwise) in which the output or result influences the input or cause. Since Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics instantiated the study of regulatory systems, such circuits have been pursued in many contexts, not least of all the musical. Louis Barron, directly inspired by Wiener in 1948, built audio feedback circuits that literally burnt themselves up as they played. By 1972 David Tudor was utilising acoustic feedback between transducers in Untitled. More recently, performers such as Toshimaru Nakamura have pioneered the use of the "no source mixing desk", a simple sound mixer with outputs wired to inputs so that the self-noise of the circuits provides the only sonic material. In a similar manner, the author has developed the No Input Software Environment (NISE) in order to test our faith in the digital realm as a site of perfect representation and replication. The paper traces an arc of research into nonlinear dynamic systems, from von Foerster's second order cybernetics to Deleuze and Guattari's machinic phylum, Manuel De Landa's double articulation and Maturana & Varela's autopoiesis. NISE foregrounds these concepts and questions our place in the resulting ecosystem.
Forgetting Interactivity: Notes Towards A Typology
9 June 2010
Paper delivered at Interactivity and the Audio Arts, University of Kent, UK.
abstract
The term "interactive" has become a buzzword that artists use to describe just about anything, its history forgotten. This paper attempts to address this lacuna by developing from previous work (Kim and Seifert, Bongers, Stern, Drummond) a structural model and typology of interactivity, defined according to the roles played by various entities within the system. Along the way, the paper challenges the contemporary assumption of the necessity for a computer in the system, considers the problematic inherent in the oxymoron "virtual reality" and explores the mirror form in relationship to the interactive. Important insights are gleaned from Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, David Rokeby and Jean Baudrillard, among others. The three orders of interactivity that result — Spectator, Collaborator, Magician — allow for a nuanced critique of interactive systems. Finally, this model is questioned in terms of the sonic arts, allowing for a second forgetting of interactivity, this one not passive but active and aware.
"The Garden of Adumbrations": An Anecdotal Soundscape
September 2009
Masters Thesis published by Department of Computer Science & Information Systems, University of Limerick, Ireland.
abstract
This thesis examines two problematic modes of sound composition, each of which is based on a particular approach to drawing sounds from the objective world into the subjective of the composer. The first of these is Canadian composer and pedagogue R. Murray Schafer's conception of the "soundscape", predicated on a "schizophonic" engagement with sound. The second is French composer and broadcaster Pierre Schaeffer's concept of the objet sonore and an "acousmatic" relationship to sound. These contrasting approaches come together in the "anecdotal" works of iconoclastic composer Luc Ferrari. A thorough examination of the working methods and underlying philosophies of these schools provides the basis for the development of a compositional methodology, a practical result of which is "The Garden of Adumbrations", an electroacoustic piece designed for nine-channel playback. Overviews of musical time scales, sound ecology, spatial perspectives, reduced listening, the acousmatic and schizophonia are undertaken along the way.
"Complementarity: An Archipelago"
2009
Chapter published in the book Choreography as an Aesthetics of Change by Daghdha, Ireland.
abstract
The article uses as a launchpad Niels Bohr's complementarity, the requirement that, in order to appreciate reality, we must balance two contradictory concepts in our mind at the same time. A consideration of quantum foam, childhood nightmares, the measurement of sound, the pigeonhole principle, musical chairs, Alexander's pattern language, post-punk musicians Wire, the Observer Pattern and cybernetics forms a game system anyone can play. An archipelago is a sea containing scattered islands. This paper is a scattering of texts embedded in the particular context the reader provides, a context that is the axis about which the islands spin. The goal is the open-ended generation of new connections, unexpected by both the reader and this author.