Future Folks,
Some of us Future Folks have been talking behind the scenes about a Future Folk collaboration in the style of a telephone game. Aliza and I were talking about it and it reminded me of a similar collaboration I had with Joe (3SPDS) where we passed material back and forth, in a call and response style. The internet makes this type of collaboration much easier, as we all can be in different locations while working on it. Woody Leslie & Aliza Simons' new release "10 Pieces for Ukulele and Electronic Collage" is an excellent example of this type of long distance collaboration. (and is awesome on its own, you should check it out here!)
So what i'd like to propose is this: The Future Folk
community is full of awesome artists and musicians, and a collaboration in this style would doubtless yield sweet results. so lets plan it out. There are 2 basic models
of how this can work.
1. In a linear (traditional telephone game) fashion, one artist can make a piece, then send it to the next artist in the chain for processing/editing/recontextualization, which will then be passed to the next person in the chain. this continues in this way until all interested parties have had a go at the material, and then the results are presented as a sequence. there can be rules as to length of pieces, or more abstract rules, such as source material and the type of manipulations performed, but these will have to be hashed out in detail.
2. The second model is one where the message passing works more like a decentralized network. Artists
will create a short piece, and release it to the rest of the group for manipulation. The subsequent manipulations can be added and the new version is incorporated into the pool and becomes a source.
Obviously these schemes lend themselves to studio manipulation and editing more so than instrumentalism, at least at the later stages, but i'd like to encourage the Future Folk family to
respond to this post with any further ideas about this project. Its you all that make this thing work, so your input is essential!!! Lets talk about it!
Love,
Rod
mutewith
12 years ago
Posts
Hey Guys,
ReplyDeleteI think it's important to point out that while straight-up audio plundering is a really fun and rewarding exercise to practice amongst friends (do it!), there is plenty of room for non-signal-processing approaches to musical (re)appropriation. Personally, I'd like to do a few iterations of this game where one takes a piece, transcribes it into a notated form, and attempts to realize that notation in a manner of one's choosing. This is similar to the meta-composition "Download-Perform-Transcribe-Upload" which is taking place on Adam Overton's amazing wiki www.uploaddownloadperform.net (you should join). Also, Jonathan and Katie did something sort of like this for Notations21 if I'm not mistaken... And our very own Ron Kuivila was all about this in an interview a while back, which has been the inspiration for my thesis at NYU right now on notation. Granted, you could make the argument that to the extent that the map functions as the territory for a particular piece of music, that the recorded artifact is in fact a transcription of the event so there's no difference between the 'signal-processing' flavour of this and the 'non-signal-processing' flavour. But the beauty of a notated approach, at least to me, is that it allows us to transcend the technology that we're all so dependent on as a means of production, and drive at the core initial affinities which brought us to those realizations in the first place. Plus, it's hierarchical, in a way that a simpler game of 'telephone' or 'exquisite corpse' might not be. If you like thinking about notations, you should read my blog (or eventually my thesis), plus I've been really inspired by Richard Wood Massi's dissertation (UCSD), who talks about notation from a slightly different perspective, but in a very beautiful and rich way. Also, we should trade scores! Or, recordings! Wait, what's the difference again...?!!
kthxbai
JM