Plastic Extension of Music an introduction: coyote & unveiling the invisible

It would be irresponsible, as musicians, to think that musical performance as an artistic phenomenon is not suffering from a constant deterioration since the XIX century, with a final blow received in the recent sanitary crisis in 2020, by relying on the act of playing an instrument.

Technology, since the XX century and more closely in the XXI, opened a new and obscene interaction with music “In obscenity, the bodies, the sexual organs, the sexual act, are not only brutally “staged” but immediately given to be seen, to be devoured, all being absorbed and reabsorbed on one stroke.” (Baudrillard, 2004, p.33), at the tip of our fingers; we carry in our pockets the complete history, not only of music, but of our whole existence.

This deterioration has been acknowledged already in 1966:
“The only thing performers have left to do, in this day of super recording techniques and super recording artists and super recording engineers, I think that all the basic statements have been made for posterity, now, I think what we must do is try to find a way around these things, try to find a “raison d’être” that is still somehow different and still somehow right, that it makes sense.”
Glenn Gould. (2017, December 22)
Glenn Gould and Humphrey Burton on Beethoven - Part 2 (OFFICIAL) [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/3QIbMAWd6nA

In more recent years, the artistic research community has developed a diversity of projects that propose solutions to maintain this decadent profession, but, still relying on the “stage” and same old codes, to develop new methods and ideas to “generate an intricate network of aesthetico-epistemic cross-references” (Assis, 2018, p. 119), of the music being performed.

What is the artistic significance of being a music interpreter nowadays ?

None

Historically, live music was the only way to access music, musicians had a straight relationship and exchange of their service which was unique “When money appears, music makes part of goods; commodity will trap it, produce it, exchange it, circulate it, censor it. It ceases then to be an affirmation of existence in order to be valued.” (Attali, 1977, p. 73). Since, the economical exchange of this service has changed (concerts, recordings, internet), but music interpreters kept the same model of product (the musical performance); this led to the natural overproduction of an object that is obvious and easy to copy due to a repetitive perfected model, but, in a world where that old economical exchange cycle no longer exists, generating the actual overstock of the copies that in this crisis will have to be disposed.

Being a musician born in a family with a long tradition of music since the XVIII century and fully aware of this situation, became my existential problem when I finally decided to become a musician. I started by composing and performing my own music, then performing contemporary music, then recording and commissioning new music, to finally create and direct my own group of contemporary music and festival for ten years in Spain; to find myself against the walls of the oligarchic and political institutions that shape the contemporary music “art world”, which I did not had the political influence be part nor the will to confront.

During this journey, I had the chance and time to see and analyse that staged music proposals were failing to create or attract a public, but understood that music performance by itself, had more than enough information to create a new music interpretation, an extension of the score and performance, outside the historical canon of musical interpretation, that would be different and still somehow right, that it makes sense.

Music gives has the particularity and intervention of the performer. It is here that I decided to recreate the intervention by starting to unfold the word at its etymological roots:

performance (n.)

"accomplishment, completion" (of something), from perform + -ance. Meaning "that which is accomplished, a thing performed" is from 1590s; that of "action of performing a play, etc." is from 1610s; that of "a public entertainment" is from 1709.

perform (v.)

performen, "carry into effect, fulfill, discharge, carry out what is demanded or required," via Anglo-French performer, performir, altered (by influence of Old French forme "form") from Old French parfornir "to do, carry out, finish, accomplish," from par- "completely" + fornir "to provide". Church Latin had a compound performo "to form thoroughly, to form."

Theatrical/musical senses of "act or represent on or as on a stage; sing or render on a musical instrument" are from c. 1600. The verb was used with wider senses in Middle English than now, including "to make, construct; produce, bring about;" also "come true" (of dreams), and to performen muche time was "to live long."

I understood that if I was to perform music, this performance could happen with my instrument, as I did all my life. A performance which is generated and constantly updated by the physical work with the instrument, the musical interpretation and the study of the score, a source from which the performer embodies its information in order to “perform” (carry out) a series of objective and subjective codes that are written in it, putting the body in motion by trans-forming, de-forming and in-forming the musical text, the score.

Trans-forming the text to a particular body gesture or movement

de-forming a visual shape to a sound

in-forming the text in the open

These three forms are the basis to per-form a music score. Once the performer has created and extracted an embodied knowledge, finally dresses up in the designated musical text, putting in motion the body contracted/freed by the codes written on the score. This performance, the canonical performance of the embodied knowledge, is attached to a muscle memory that can be traced, at least in the guitar, which is my instrument, to the organicity of the plucked instruments and more importantly the creation of tablature.

So, do my musical interpretations really belong to me, or they are just a series of common positive events that build and construct a pragmatic environment in an assessed economical exchange of this service, which is/was of the music interpreter?

I wanted to use this information otherwise, and understood that music could have the possibility to take form, shaped in space and fixed in time. I then started to study several parameters for the harvesting of the material to be performed. These parameters were originated to create a new gleaning phase that would deconstruct the embodied knowledge inside the instrumental praxis, the musical gesture, the performer's body, the sound production and the impossibility of fixing music in time and space.

These parameters would extract an amount of information that would give a different life to the musical score outside the canonic music performance, using the information issued from the deconstruction of the instrumental practice, the performance, the music work, the composer’s language, the aesthetics and the period of the musical work. Differences and uniqueness of each and every musical work that would become potentialities to be explored and displayed outside the staged performance.

Plastic Extension of Music

Plastic Extension of Music is as a new form of interpretation beyond the canonical performance, translation, synesthesia or musical analysis. An artistic intervention in music performance, that is a physical or visual extension in space, taking the instrumental interpretation (praxis) of a musical work as a poietic process preceding a plasticity of the artistic object that emerges in space originated from the music and the interpreter.

This form of creative criticism: “…the critic is he who exhibits to us a work of art in a form different from that of the work itself, and the employment of a new material is a critical as well as a creative element.” (Wilde, 1891, p. 268), is made through the extension of the physical attributes, hidden potentialities and particularities of a musical text to be displayed in space, outside, but not against its staged canonical performance.

Plastic extension considers the musical performance as an incompleteness that creates a recollection and awareness of different materials to be extended in space, such as:

• Rhythm, dynamics, accents, counterpoint, attacks, ornamentation, phrases…
• Visual Impressions and perspectives generated from the performance, instrumental practise, repetition, technique
• Gestures generated by the score
• Interaction with the instrument and the repetition of the instrumental practise
• Information generated during the instrumental practise: notes on the performance, memos, home recordings, conversations, exchanges with the composer
• The exegetical study of the score, sources and influences outside the performance
• The music interpretation: intentions, ideas, images, phrases, words outside the music score
• Fingerings
• Muscle memory issued from instrumental practice, gestures, mimics, history and organicity of the instrument
• References: musical, technical, literal, visual, plastic
• Personal memories generated or associated with the score, the instrumental practise and the performance.
• Technical hacks on the musical construction, rhythmical, voice conducting, legato…
• Physical or technical limitations in the score, the instrumental practice, the performer, the performance
• Failure, errors, mistakes
• Common life associated with the score and its practise

Plastic Extension creates an awareness of these elements and codes issued from the score and the instrument, to be extended plastically or visually by transposing with the same hands, the ideas, practise and deconstructed embodied knowledge on different medias issued from other art worlds, as metaphorical vehicles to create new models of music interpretation and plastic-visual art creations.

This kind of intervention extends music beyond its ephemeral condition and the code of conduct of the score, creating new and unique methodologies to perform a music score through a creative criticism, giving the performer a new voice/hand; an extension of the thought that will go beyond a live performance creating an auratic splitting outside the reproducible material of the recording. A new metaphor of music emerging in the open, imprinting the codes and elements of music in the different media and technical abilities of the other art worlds to achieve and construct a degree zero of music performance methodology inside a new hermeneutic circle of creation, intervention and interpretation.

coyote

In 2017 I started working on Pièce pour guitare seule, by French composer Elisabeth Angot. During the study of this piece I became aware that the piece had 66 position changes on the left with a long transition of a harmonic field (between four and five minutes) from an E to a F#, these unique characteristics became instantly very appealing.

Budget and space limitations became the cornerstone of the extension when associating foldable maps and the practice of the Mudras (a Mudra is a symbolic or ritual gesture or pose in Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. While some mudras involve the entire body, most are performed with the hands and fingers) and the way we access them books.

I decided to isolate each position and assign to each finger of the left hand (1, 2, 3 and 4 - index, middle, ring, little) a visual identity, in this case it would be the different graphite grades. This association would create a first contradiction on the muscle memory when displayed on the visual output. I associated the graphite from harder to softer depending on the strength and independence of my fingers on the guitar: index would be my strongest and more independent so the graphite associated was an HB (hard), middle finger would follow 2B (medium), the ring with a 4B (soft) and the less strong finger, the little finger with a 6B (extra soft). The visual paradox and the muscle memory contradiction was that the softer the graphite was, the darker the print will be, so the traces of the weaker fingers would be darker and more intense.

I decided to transpose the 66 fixed positions, to a small format paper with a 120g density, not by drawing the hand, but by tracing the fingers on left hand position and rubbing the graphite an amount of time defined by the duration of the position on the score, to create a time sensation of the imprinted traces.

I then decided to create a handbook that could be also displayed in space as a topographic visual map or even a tutorial guide, made with the traces of my left hand going through the piece from beginning to the end, having a time parameter associated to the gesture imprinted on the paper.

coyote has a second plastic extension in video format, an audiovisual extension. The video is made by a series of videos of train rails in motion, a metaphor of the strings of the guitar in motion with a sound synthesis from E to F#.

Unveiling the invisible

Inside the Plastic Extension research I’ve dedicated an important part to the understanding and learning from the special needs communities and their relationship with sound and music. I decided to collaborate with the visually impaired community to develop a new project of Plastic Extension with the music of Spanish blind renaissance composer, Antonio de Cabezón (1510-1566).

Besides the many studies made on cross-modal association (Blasi, D. E., Wichmann, S., Hammarström, H., Stadler, P. F., & Christiansen, M. H., Eitan, Z., & Granot, R. Y.) and Temporal Semiotic Units (F. Delalande). The research in this project approaches an alternative way to understand sound and music avoiding the “positivism” of cross-modal association or the Temporal Semiotic Units approach on precise musical objects/figures.

Unveiling the invisible is a project to create a new catalogue of sounds in physical forms and visual outputs, learning from participants of the visually impaired and blind community in Skåne, Sweden, to build

In 2022 I created a workshop for the visually impaired and the blind that associates sounds (isolated musical notes, intervals, instruments, musical gestures and music) with shapes, textures, resiliency, form, weight, scent, taste, verbal association, elasticity.

Associated with the tests and as a completion of the new catalogue of physical and visual sounds, a series of clay expression workshops will be held to create a new iconographic history of sound, unveiling its form through the hands of the visually impaired in a complete and new dimension of the absent physical form of sound.

This new knowledge will be used to design a series of workshops and Plastic Extensions made new methodologies of music transcription, for the deaf and hearing impaired community, creating a new direction of the research and establishing between both communities a new dialog and information from which we will learn new forms and sensations of music and art.