- Dutch Electronic Art Festival 1995
Interfacing Realities
Music & Interfaces
Introduction
"I would love to have a box onto which I could offload choice
making. A thing that makes choices about its inputs, and says to itself
: - This is a good output, reinforce that, or replay it, or feed it back
in. I would love to have this machine stand for me. I could program this
box to be my particular taste and interest in things."
Brian
Eno interviewed by Kevin Kelly, May 1995.
In 1660 the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher describes a machine for composing music in his book 'Musurgia Universalis'. Obviously, Kircher was limited by the possibilities of his time in the way in which he could manipulate the musical material (notes, scales, bars and rhythm). With his machine, Kircher could repeatedly and manually manipulate icons representing the musical material until a satisfactory result could be interpreted by musicians. The imaginary box described by Eno in the quotation above is basically the same as Kircher's machine and would utilise very advanced technology, the results being made audible through the use of electronic amplification.
The development of machines for composing, performing and reproducing music has developed parallel to mechanisation and industrialisation. At the start of the 20th century this resulted mainly in pieces about machines, pieces with intriguing names like 'Gasoline', 'Sinfonia Technica', 'At the factory' and a ballet piece called 'The development of the aeroplane'. Initially, interfaces for composition, reproduction and storage of musical material (both in the form of musical raw material and as its end product) had begun to emerge with the manufacture of - acoustic - instruments and with the formulation of a normalized notation for reproduction. Mechanisation made it possible to store musical data in machines - everyday examples are music boxes, barrel organs, vorsetzer pianos and player pianos -, as well as to reproduce music using machines. With the exception of some very early experiments by Paul Hindemith, it wouldn't be until well into the Forties that the development of electronics reached the point where satisfactory new ways were found for composing and performing. The American composer Percy Grainger developed the first music machine in 1944, a machine without a keyboard (or rather: interface), in other words a completely autonomous machine that processed musical material and collated it into a composition. Around 1950, on the performing side, Jean Tinguely presented an electro-mechanic sculpture - an automated interface - that could draw and play 'concrete music'.
Electronic (re)production became possible with newly designed instruments like the Theremin Vox, the Ondes Martenot and RCA Victor's first true music synthesizer in 1955, the magnetic tape recorder and, later on, computer memory. The rather recent introduction of a standardised communication protocol between electronic musical instruments (MIDI) has played an important part in the development of today's interfaces. Obviously, changes did not take place in the 'formal' circuit exclusively. Following the growth of film into a true audience medium and the introduction of radio as the first mass medium, western composed music was, for the first time on a large scale, lifted from the elite surroundings of the concert hall and popularized. Popular music as we know it today developed thanks to the possibilities of technological innovation. The traditional, more or less strict distinction between composer, performer and listener were overcome increasingly by the development the interface.
This had a profound influence on the birth of new musical styles. The mutual influence of western and non-western styles took place especially in American popular music where the musical heritage of immigrants and slaves eventually gave birth to blues and jazz. The growth of mass media spurred the emergence of the genre that we now know as pop music. This genre has long had an important social function for the reflection of social change, and it has served as an outlet for minority groups and younger generations. Nowadays, the social function of popular music seems to have all but dissappeared. Recent developments, which were heralded by the introduction of house music in the late Eighties, paint a completely different picture. Roughly speaking, the electronic revolution has led to two important developments. A highly hedonistic dance culture, that seems closely connected to non-western ritual 'trance' music, came about (and is, of course, the next logical step following the futuristic, mechanical experiments from the beginning of the century). There is a clear shift from 'social change through music' to 'cultural escapism with musical accompaniment'. The proscenium seems to disappear, the performing musician hides behind electronics and leaves the show to others or doesn't even play any instrument at all but instead manipulates the record player, CD or DAT player. Current styles also extensively use - in the best postmodern tradition - all sorts of sounds and rhythms reproduced in the form of samples and stored in computer memory or triggered by sequencers.
The technological innovations of the electronic revolution have nullified the separation between composer, performer and listener. The development of new digital interfaces enables almost anyone to shape sound in a musical way. The Music And Interfaces program will pay special attention to this development. On the one hand by showing recently developed instruments and software aimed at composition and reproduction in presentations and performances which deploy newly developed technology. DEAF95 will highlight ongoing developments at conservatories and institutes like the Amsterdam based STEIM, and pieces by international musicians who have been invited to perform during the festival. On the other hand, through performances by individuals and groups responsible for innovations in style and presentation, light will be thrown on the recent developments of modern popular music which uses advanced technologies for composition and reproduction.
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