I skipped a day of writing my blog. After the first day I spent many hours sleeping. I didn't feel tired after leaving the room the first eve at around 22.00. Nor yesterday. However, exhaustion found me and I realized now is the time to consciously try to intersect the body-experience with the mind-experience. somehow.
The first day, I experienced that in the evening my output would be much more mellow and sombre in the evening. Also, usually I make a lot of noise but for some reason I didn't feel like doing that on the first day. Almost as if the release of the noise has to wait. Some low roaring noise came in to play yesterday (day two) but it's almost like the space and the sentiment doesn't call for that "aggression" that the noise often is intertwined with. Also I am conscious of being to loud; The door is not sound proof. This is an example of an "evening loop":
One of the things I have questioned a lot myself in terms of doing experimental improvisation is what I would like to call "saturation points". It's the point where you feel like you have given the context of time-space as much sound as it can possibly bear - or rather: what YOU can bear. Yet, the question of the potentially present spectator (via youtube) probably plays a role here. In the process of performing it is also an evaluation of aesthetics and taste; So far I don't seem to leave the room with a "bad" loop on. I leave when I feel "fulfilled", and when feel like I am being fair to the recipient and honing the idea that I had set out to construct when I began the loop. By this I mean when the intertwining motifs are playing well together. I tend to go for "soothing" or slow, arythmical soundscapes before leaving the room for a break.
When doing this I tend to create intertwinements/layers that are fluent in their own respect, yet correspond to the other layers. I seems really important to me that they do not follow any specific logic of composition. There is no apparent progressions or framework other than what the chosen scale allows me to do. At a certain point the individual loops (from each pedal chain; percussion, synth, vocal and guitar) are "full" individually, and together they are saturating the sonic space.
Now, this is not necessarily a matter of "sonic matter" and technological bandwith, I think.
Yesterday I wrote down, first thing before starting the day's work:
"The amount of information will build up. What is my creative bandwidth?
I think asked this because I had some technological challenges with the streaming and with the recording the firste; the streaming seemed to have some bandwidth issues and the computer crashed after 3 hours. It got me thinking how much technology matters.
It can make or break the creative process. And it really is in opposition to the relative infinity of time time produce that I have with this process.
Technology anchors me to historical time and requires a presence of me that breaks the process. Especially when it doesn't work. It's like breaking the creative fourth wall; that construction of narrative of your self as a producing entity with open potential. It makes me think about the problems with conversion of your product from material to any kind of final recipient. Is there such a thing as a lossless creative process?
Conversion and process:
The necessary conversion at the end of process (as well as during process) must take place on different levels. 1) The technical conversion is one thing and then there is 2) the idea-process-action conversion, which probably works more like a circuit.
Then there must be the cognitive action of understanding these two conversions as simultaneous and connected actions that are, still, separate. Let's call this relation: The In Vitro Sound Action Process. (technology + creativity understood and performed* as a one process inside the process, with relatively open semantic potential). *for lack of better word- maybe "interfaced"?
And, then there is the (attempt to) understanding of the purpose of this relation, done by defining the concept: The Value of Process.
This concept is in itself a question. Is seeks to understand the value of process and by which measurement this valuation should be performed.
To even try to perceive this extremely abstract aforementioned process and relations, I found myself just condensing everything that i am doing into this concept:
- Circular motions over time. The circularity is not to be taken solely literal. Although there are definitely circular motions going on inside the space that I am working in, it's more a cognitive-creative-semantic circular motion that I am performing through out the process, at micro and macro level. On a macro scale I come in and repeat my behaviour as a resident. on a microlevel I repeat my way of creating output. Even if the output is different, the approach and methods are defined by my creative potential, my experiences and of course what the technology and sound sources permit (or what I believe they do). The creative potential is, technically indefinite, the outcome can have indefinite compositions, but I am still engaging with this potential through a series of circular motions. (I think I should mention Retrograde and Prograde processual understanding in a later blog, perhaps).
What I am getting at is that although I may, in process, believe I am doing something new, I may just be assembling things differently each day, semantically and actually, and thereby each experience appears "new", and the expression still feels personal.
(this is why I refer to my work as poetic actualism; The result is not a singular conversion of socio-psychological experiences and sentiments, but also a cognitive-semantic LEGO-build that is taking place each day, each second and each microsecond, in the process of composition).
Back to the question of purpose and the question of value of process:
The next model I drew after the circular motions model was an attempt to unite the circular motions with process in time and space. And to ask if doing over time-space logical is how we value process. And that the valuation represents thinking.
On top of the divider is the circular motions (here outside any time-space logic, but represented as an idea) and on the bottom is process as a spatio-temporal phenomenon.
At the right side of the equation symbol the dollar sign simply is used to represent a measurement unit (value).... and the rest is entirely mathematical and unscientific!
What I wanted to illustrate is that doing needs thinking. And thinking also needs a system. What I suggest here is that thinking about process belongs to a natural desire to harvest from process; that human action must be understood economically. Could this be because the human who acts with no purpose is a form threat to the survival of the flock? Is the lack of purpose in opposition to the very idea of life? Is process in itself an antisocial concept?
In such case I probably chose wisely to stream my process on social media! The directed action (and performance) could curb this problem. Maybe all artists in the future should be monitored to make sure that their processes are not posing a threat to society. Process then can be validated and legitimized as entertainment(!?).