Marc Couroux - Carpenters et al.,
Downey musical holdings, a real-time social system as of
March 29, 2007
This work sought, through non-technological means, to better
understand the mediation that technology operates on
materials, the concept of delay being an excellent example.
In this work, two performers receive through headphones a
series of randomly-generated fragments which they then
proceed to learn and string together, all the while
performing a kind of flattening-out, a “spinning” of the
material into a coherent harmonic/melodic construct.
This construct is then passed on to two other performers who
attempt to learn the already-distorted materials in order to
project their weaving on to a third group of four musicians,
each of whom receive the original fragmented materials
through headphones and must perform a synthesis of these
jagged-edged fragments with the performer distortions
underway. What begins as a standard “teacher-disciple”
relationship quickly develops into a system of rhizomic
encounters that is similar to the way in which language
develops in a vacuum or within a fixed frame, severed and
transplanted from its native terrain and inflected with each
performer’s idiosyncratic approach to listening and learning
musical materials.
This process performs an X-Ray of the individual musician’s
comfort / projection level, which is gradually reinstated as
the piece progresses. Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni’s
idea that musical notation is already a transcription, a
translation of the original idea, is operative here; indeed
the limits of notation systems are metaphorically illustrated
by the first group’s destructive operations: evidencing an
inability to represent irrational fluctuations of time, the
performers move towards the imposition of a unitary
temporality that unwittingly connects back to a performance
tradition, where the symbols and signs of notation, though
efficient in communicating basic ideas, also slough off and
truncate perceptual, temporal and energic instrumental
idiosyncrasies in the process. On the whole, the work
metaphorically illustrates the manner in which popular
culture rapidly absorbs marginal and subtle elements while
deemphasizing the complexities of a given situation which
cannot be reduced to a “spun” soundbyte.
1
- Carpenters et al.
(2007)
40'00"
Group
#1: Marc Couroux, Juliana Pivato
Group #2: Eric Chenaux, eldritch Priest
Group #3: Dave Chokroun, Eric KM Clark, Josh Thorpe, Doug
Tielli
Recorded live at the neither/nor festival of experimental
music, Toronto, March 29, 2007.
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