Gender and Computer Music
After some heated moments in an ICMA general meeting in '92 when the subject of commissions for women was brought up, and feeling my own annoyance with being one of a few women in the room at these events, I was asked to write something on gender and computer music for ARRAY by former editor Brad Garton. A number of women responded, and the discussion was interesting for all of us. This collection was reprinted or responded to in other journals and newsletters.
In 1998, where are we? Are women getting equal opportunities in computer music studios today? If men are "from Mars" and women "from Venus", do communication problems come up in teaching, or understanding each other's music? When even defining sexual harrassment is controversial, and gender issues are so sensitive that most of the time we avoid them in discussion, can we break the ice and learn to understand each other?
I very much appreciate the energy and care that went into writing the following essay by Bonnie Miksch and responses by Pauline Oliveros, Elizabeth Hoffman, Karen Kahn, Mary Roberts, Laurie Spiegel, Akemi Ishijima, Natasha Barrett and Titi Adam. Also I appreciate the input from people who contributed ideas on the subject in my programming and computer music classes, in particular Michael Barnhart. I chose the following women for diversity in geographical location and experience. There are others who should be asked. I often deliberately did not ask those who have written on gender before, in order to present new views. Rather than look at statistical studies, this forum is for individuals' views. For the initial discussion, to get away from categorizations on content based on perceptions of the writer's gender, I chose only women to participate. I would like this to be a starting point for more discussion in future issues or on the website, by both men and women.
Thoughts on interpreting the responses: First, I find it interesting, and encouraging, that younger women in general report fewer problems. Second, I caution readers against assuming that because a woman from a particular studio voices criticism, it necessarily means that the particular studio has more problems than another, for this reason - if one feels free enough to make criticisms, it can mean that the studio environment is healthier than places where a woman does not feel comfortable enough to make criticisms. There were women who refused to respond at all, some explicitly because of worries about consequences for their careers. Many problems will be left unconvered until those ny problems will be left unconvered until those who experienced them are in a position where they can speak freely.
The spirit in which these are presented is that we can all learn how to communicate and promote equality better, and it is in fact all of our responsibilities to ensure that women and men have equal opportunities in the field. There are universes of music never to be heard because of wasted lives in the past, and as Pauline Oliveros commented to me, "Most important now is the active participation of women in the field to make up for lost time and talent."
- Mara Helmuth - University of Cincinnati
Gender and Computer Music
The field of music composition does not treat men and women as equals, and as a result gender issues persist. Music by women has been under-represented, under-played, and under-funded. Women composers have lacked compositional Resources, female role models, and encouragement from male mentors and colleagues. As a group, we have sat through countless lectures on the music of the (male) musical canon, we have felt conspicuously female at conferences and seminars filled with men, we have been denied jobs and tenure, and we have faced sexual harassment from men in our field.
Nevertheless, in spite of these inequities, women continue to create music. For most of us, it is quite simply what we must do. I believe that our presence has the potential to greatly enrich the world of composition. But, sadly, this potential is limited due to the small number of us who choose to persevere. The problem seems cyclical: if more women become successful in composition, more women are likely to try, but, presently, relatively few women pursue composition. How can we break this self-perpetuating cycle which holds women back? These are some of the issues facing women in composition, and when we consider the field of computer music, other gender issues surface. The addition of technology creates a new set of factors that concern women. These factors include the learning process itself as well as the Resources required for computer music. Because most composers learn skills in computer music from direct contact with an instructor and facilities of a college or university, the environment encountered in academia is the most pertinent to my discussion. Learning the craft of computer music requires a more personal student to teacher relationship from the outset. The initial technical obstacles can be large, and most composers approaching the computer for the first time will require extra attention and encouragement from a readily approachable and accessible instructor. At times, the student may even assume the role of an apprentice. Thus, the professor can be more vital to a given student's development than composition teachers generally are. This may be an intimidating thing to realize as teay be an intimidating thing to realize as teachers, but we must accept what this opportunity entails. When our influence as teachers increases, we must become more aware of issues of diversity in our classes and personal interactions with students. How can we create an atmosphere which will counteract the imbalance between men and women in the studio? Often men and women approach learning differently. How can we allow these differences to coexist peacefully?
Fear of technology remains one of the largest gender obstacles to overcome in the studio. Some women enter the classroom with a disadvantage from years of discouragement in technical fields, sciences, and math. Female students are more likely to feel intimidated and often remain quiet in class while male students ask questions unapologetically. Also, female students frequently need to feel completely secure with equipment or software before beginning the creative process while men tend to be risk takers, more likely to experiment with programs or processes of which they lack a clear understanding. In the field of computer music where initial success usually depends more on doing than knowing the masculine approach may have its benefits.
The environment or studio where the learning takes place is of profound importance to the new student of computer music. Unlike a class in counterpoint or analysis in which the student brings work home, the study of computer music requires outside time spent in the studio itself. As a result, questions of equity in the work space are extremely important. How is time on the computers allocated? Is this space free of sexual harassment? Is the overall atmosphere (created by the users themselves) inviting or adversarial to women? In the past (and to a lesser extent in the present), women composers have been denied important Resources such as access to public performances and large ensembles, and as a result their music has been restricted to certain genres. We must be certain not to make this mistake with technology.
We cannot underestimate the need for female role models who hold influential academic positions in computer music. Not only will this encourage more participation from female students, it will also provide a much needed diversity among a relatively homogenous (white, male) faculty. Any institution that seeks diversity among its students and yet fails to hire or give tenure to women does not understand what a commitment to diversity entails. Without the voices of women and other minorities, academia will remain a stifling conformity, unprepared to tackle critical issues outside its incestuous walls.
On a more optimistic note, I would like to suggest that for some women the field of computer music has been kinder than composition at large. After all, the computer can be a completely objective partner, and freedom from dependency on others for performances can help women avoid prejudice. But perhaps more importantly, the nature of computer music is experimental, and in such a climate one meets many compatriots who are equally eager to concern themselves with social issues relevant to composition. Finally, please consider the importance of these issues in light of racial and class-related inequities. All those who lack representation lack a voice.
- Bonnie Miksch - University of Cincinnati
The issues and problems identified in Bonnie Miksch's essay are very real. Even though I have achieved some visibility and recognition in my life time as a composer I have experienced all of the difficulties Bonnie mentions during the course of my career. I am encouraged though to see such an essay that was unthinkable at the outset of my interest in composition which began at age 16. It is truly wonderful to find women breaking their silence - speaking out against such oppression in the field. There were no gender and music studies when I began to compose in 1951. The women's movement surfaced twenty years later in the 1970²s. Much progress has been made. Even so a great deal of work remains to be done to gain balance and equality between women and men in music. Music remains the most conservative of the arts with institutionalized sexism. The time is right now for women to vocally specify exactly what they need in order to gain access and the skills to use tools for composition within appropriate environments. Music is one of the most powerful forces and Resources on earth for change. Women need to participate in music and use their sensibilities creatively for the benefit of humanity.
- Pauline Oliveros
The problems Bonnie describes are real and perhaps encouraged by longstanding societal norms. But they no longer exist in every school environment. It is not reasonable to generalize about an entire group (men or women) based on particular personal incidents. The lacuna regarding scholarship on women composers is being addressed in academia. So long as we are still thinking about composers as "men" or "women" we all have these large issues to overcome.
- Elizabeth Hoffman - University of Minnesota
When reading Bonnie Miksch's article, I am impressed with the argument she makes for the role of women in computer music, and the social implications of the minority of women in the field. Bonnie makes some strong points in focusing on the academies, where the discrimination is most obvious.
What impressed me is that when the teacher-student and apprentice-instructor relationships are described, a big power issue leaps out and hits you. The whole fight for feminism and equality in general is against the white male in the business suit telling you what to do. To commit to music composition, especially computer music, you have to put aside prejudices in class and power and just be willing to learn. If you are a student in an unfriendly compositional environment, the chances of finding another minority in the same position is slim to none. Either you brave it or you drop out. Yes, as Bonnie says, the problem is cyclical, but it also works backward - the more women are seen dropping out of compositional fields, the more are going to drop out because of loss of hope of an equal environment. Too many colleges and universities do not understand how important it is to be learning in an equal power environment. The advantages to this are enormous - especially when you realize a female student is more likely to approach another female for help in a technological field. As Bonnie introduces in the beginning of her article, this applies to music theory as well. The minority of women in the field is frightening. We may rebel against the fact that women were excluded from music history up until the last half of this century, but we still are not going to go into the history books in complete seriousness for a while. At Columbia University, the school I attend, there is only one female professor in the music department. Even the math and computer science departments have better representation. When Bonnie asks for professors to "become more aware of issues of diversity in (their) classes," I see it as an idealist plea. If a department doesn't care enough to present itself as diverse, what does this say to the student body?
When Bonnie brings up the idea that the computer music studio needs to be examined for its safety and equality, I think an important point is missed. She is speaking in assumption that it is the department and professor's responsibility to maintain this safety. However, there are a couple other influences in this area, notably the attitudes and feelings of the other students to the female minority. Although the professor does have a role in initially setting up the situation, as women we can easily visualize the "in the studio at 12AM situation" where we are the only minority in the studio late at night surrounded by people we are uncomfortable with. Our peers, depending on the group, may or may not be silently thinking "Oh, that's the woman who always has to ask questionr peers, depending on the group, may or may not be silently thinking "Oh, that's the woman who always has to ask questions," or "Wow, I am here late at night alone with this woman." The situations sound funny out of context, but believe me, it happens. It makes things really uncomfortable for the female composer who just wants to get her work done, without being conscious 100% of the time that she is female and a minority and that some people are not comfortable with her presence.
Reading Bonnie's article made me realize an important fact: That we women composers often think that we are alone in our uneasiness, that no one else understands our fear of speaking in class, asking a peer for help, or hoping that someone understands our music. Although there are some great men teaching in the computer music world, we find that as we move into other circles the situation is unbearable. Not only do "all those who lack representation lack a voice," but they often lose faith in their silence, and add to the numbers of women discouraged enough to give up their art in the academic world.
- Karen Kahn - Columbia Unversity
My feelings about sexual harassment and the inequities that the Academy presents to marginalized composers mostly make me feel tired. I almost instantly think of what Mary Daly called beta: the tedious, time-consuming mind consuming foreground junk that wastes my energy because I have to think about it and expend my tired energy to fight it. Even though some folks find extra energy in fighting the fight I always become exhausted by the fight. I long for the transformative energy that I see women getting out of bucking the odds. And some times I can imagine feeling that way, most the time I just want to get my work done and have some energy left over to tend to my creative spirits. After all, my ultimate longing is to find myself absorbed in my work.
I have to say that I've been inspired lately by women who can manage to keep their spirits up amidst extreme odds. I'm inspired by the concentration I see women toting around this male-identified world. I theorize that because women are so good at multi-tasking that when they do get a chance to sit down (or leap up!) to do their creative work the energy available is a particularly transformative force. This force is often a type of quiet concentration, a quiet powerful voice, a voice that often goes unheard, but can really shake things up if anybody listens. With women who work with electroacoustic systems I see outstanding ideas coming about that are so unidentified with what can possibly be seen by the Academy as acceptable I often have to shout out with laughter and stand about scratching my head and saying to myself: how did that woman ever dream up anything so fantastic as:
- placing that mic at that spot to capture that bizzaro-beautiful sound, or
- making that specific combination of files so that unimaginable spectrum occurs, or
- making the most caring-brilliant observation about some sound so that I'll never listen to anything with the same ears ever again.
And I think: of course it's available for women to be excellent composers, it's just the Academy that tells me that I should be surprised by female-excellence. Because the Academy has a history of not supporting women composers I am still stuck in a-mazement mode when it comes to good female identified work. I wonder why I should be surprised - but I have to say that I like being surprised and astounded - I like seeing women do good work. I think that I'll make my surprises into celebrations from now on - just to carry on the positive feelings I get - just to transform this energy into a fight that hopefully won't take up too much of my energy.
- Mary Roberts - Moorhead State University
An Independent Composer's Mind Riffing:
1~~~
Over the years I have seen many writings about gender and music, particularly computer music, that focus on perceived problems of inequality. It is undeniable that there have existed and still exist biases against categories of individuals (women, ethnic groups, etc.) and that such biases affect the ability of individuals within such groups to realize creative works. But I've been going back and forth on how I regard this question over the years, and at present I am again leaning away from the premise that in such an extremely individuality- based field as music, much has been gained or can be by thinking in these categorical terms.
Such categories as gender obviously can be productive conceptual tools for increasing the justice, fairness and equality of opportunity for occupations in which individuality plays a considerably lesser role than in any creative art, occupations in which workers are relatively interchangeable and professional skills are highly standardized. But in a creative art, it is exactly in the ways that we differ from each other, do not fit existing situations comfortably, defy preconceptions, and cannot be dealt with in any standardized manner that we find our greatest strengths as individual artists. Such characteristics constitute our personal entropy or information content, our individual non-redundancy with others, and the content of such differences can reveal our greatest potential value to our art and to society.
These are usually qualities for which we can expect and must endure disapproval, rejection, or misunderstanding, sometime briefly, sometimes long-term. Part of learning an art is accepting and using the discomfort this kind of not fitting in often brings. (I don't mean being different or disruptive for the sake of newness or variety or to get attention, but the uncovering of differentness through honesty.)
Each composer is a special case, a unique phenomenon trying to persist and function in unique and changing circumstances. There simply is no consistent effective way to teach or to learn to compose well or to build a musical career - for individuals of either gender. And in music, as in other creative arts, standard methods do not exist and cannot be taught for achieving consistently high quality work output, attaining economic viability, or establishing a professional reputation. These must be individually figured out and custom contrived by each person, makeshift, for oneself.
2~~~
It is important to ask why, and in what kinds of situations, control of any kind of artistic or creative activity is held by someone other than the person doing the actual creative work. For example, much of Bonnie Miksch's essay pertains to academia, where departmental shared studios are still common. The shared studio model, like the orchestra before it, puts under centralized control the allocation of a single resource needed by a whole community. This provides a prime example of the kind of power center where favoritism and other misuse of control are possible, but where this potential for abuse can be countered by technological means.
Outside of academia, power structures topologically similar to the academic shared studio model have long been found around other centrally allocated scarce shared musical Resources used by composers. These include large performance ensembles, virtuosi, publishers, record companies, recording studios, concert series, grants, commissions, patrons, et cetera. Their potentials for unfairness may be based on systems of monopoly, centralization, bureaucracy, or elitisms of expertise, wealth or seniority. But many of these are now rapidly losing their power due to a technological revolution that provides composers with alternative means of both sonic realization and musical distribution.
We have just entered an era of very powerful inexpensive ubiquitous sound producing personal computers, affordable single-user systems capable of generating commercial quality audio in real time without additional hardware. This immensely increased (and still increasing) accessibility of sophisticated sonic technology provides freedom to take a musical idea all the way from mental impulse to sharable sounbility of sophisticated sonic technology provides freedom to take a musical idea all the way from mental impulse to sharable sound and even through mass distribution to the public's ears without requiring the participation, sponsorship or even the acceptance of any established power figure, social hierarchy, leadership, institution, backer or other authority figure. Composing is now (as only writing, of the arts, used to be) something an individual can do alone, in private, quite independently, without anyone else's involvement or approval.
This is a far cry from even a very few years ago, when an orchestra or a large expensive computer music studio (both extremely scarce Resources relative to composer demand for them, and almost invariably under institutional control) was necessary to turn any but the simplest musical idea into audible sound. And as communications technology also increasingly allows more egalitarian and direct individual access to means of sound distribution, audiences can select what they like without intermediation too. (Will they decide what to listen to by its creator's gender? I don't think so.)
Computer music exists as we now know it partly because technology is useful for building alternate routes around bottlenecks and improving the match of supply with demand. Any of us can try to develop further technological improvements to get around additional problems, and the set of addressable problems includes not just sound and its structures but power and its politics as well.
The availability to individuals of powerful music realization tools without the intermediary involvement of institutions may significantly alter the sociopolitics of music education as it has been doing in the non-academic musical world. Institutions of musical education will remain places of learning, study and research, but they may no longer hold power over individuals by controlling, monopolizing, or allocating access to scarce expensive tools of sonic exploration and realization. In that case, students and individual faculty could experience significantly more independence and freedom.
Today's computers are actively sabotaging exactly the kinds of power structures their predecessors were propping up only a few years ago.
3~~~
We should also ask whether the university model might in itself be counterproductive for individual musical education and expression, in part because it may foster a tendency to think in terms of just the kinds of general categories of people the "gender" concept typifies, rather than emphasizing the customized development of problem solving methods within unique individuals for specific situations, aptitudes, skill sets, and personal aesthetic tendencies.
Our present educational system (schools and classrooms et al) is based on an industrial era model designed to mass produce standardized educations for growing populations. Its present form developed over the past two hundred years in parallel with the factory system. Most schools are therefore designed to deal with students in groups, not as one-of-a-kinds, as were one-on-one tutorial methods, apprenticeships, or true independent study from books or by direct practise.
An expectable cultural bias of any such group-based social architecture would be to foster the conceptual use of grouping terms and categorization schemes (such as "gender") and to rely on them in decision-making.
4~~~
Bonnie Miksch's essay also invites us to ask why more women do not take greater advantage of the opportunity, power and freedom they do have. This is a very good question, although it can be asked about men as well.
5~~~
Bonnie hit on something important when she said that "the computer can be a completely objective partner". Yes. Machines are impartial. Computers free us to go the entire distance from imagination to actually playing a finished work for people without being vulnerable to the prejudices of other human beings. A computer's output is governed by its user's abilities, not by any aspect of that user's identity.
Computers also let us work on our music in private, so we can experiment more freely, make more mistakes, take more risks. One is freer to focus on musical problems such as aesthetic vision, compositional process, style, structure or form, on emotional ones like self-consciousness or lack of confidence, on cognitive skills such as memory and concentration, or on finding a way to do something technically that has never been done before.
These are all problems and learning processes that have to be handled individually, that are often dealt with alone, that are not exclusive to either gender, and that can be all too easily neglected if one's view is focussed away from sound and self, in a search for something external that could be preventing progress.
Gender is an attractive concept in part because it is a simplifying concept. It can also be an oversimplifying and even distracting concept.
6~~~
For much of the past two decades, since leaving Bell Labs and acquiring a prototype Apple II computer in the late 1970s, I've worked mostly with relatively inexpensive personal computers, hoping to help make computer musical tools more widely accessible, to increase individual creative-expressive power, to make musical opportunity and ability more equally available to all who want them regardless of traditional criteria for judging musical potential, and to make music easier to enjoy doing.
I see my own gender's problems as a subset of the broader concerns of traditional musical elitism and exclusivity. I believe that making music has always been more difficult than it needs to be, that many more of those who want to could make their own music, and that far too many people who love music give up.
For any who may wonder, yes I too have had at least my share of gender bias problems. However, I suspect that gender-based concepts can only deal with the tip of a far larger elitism iceberg. I do not contend that gender discussion is pointless. But after witnessing decades of dialogues devoted to equal treatment of categories of individuals differentiated by entirely non-musical criteria (e.g. gender), I am not convinced of any category- based model's usefulness for problems of overwhelmingly individualistic pursuits such as the arts.
I realize that this writing could be taken by some readers as my copping out on my fellow women composers, but I hope that most will see that I am just trying to turn over some very heavily trodden down stuff so that light can hit it in new places.
This is a field whose archetypal mindset used to be that of doing what was impossible, finding altogether new solutions to problems that had never even been formulated before, and defying or at least disregarding the status quo's prejudices against the most fundamental premises of what we undertook. As I read what others write about discrimination, difficulty and fear, I find myself looking for more of that old spirit of computer music.
- Laurie Spiegel
Note: See also my 1981 Ear Magazine article "Comments on Common Complaints", written during an earlier visit to this pole of my personal oscillation on the gender-and-music question. It can be found at: http://www.dorsai.org/~spiegel/
My background
I have always been interested in science as well as music, and ended up having experience of both. I studied applied chemistry at a Japanese university and music in several Swedish and British academic institutions. This combination of interests led me along a rather unusual path. Here I am, a Japanese composer working with computers and living thousands of miles from home. Though this puts me into a small minority, this does not disturb me. I just do what I have been wanting to do all along. When you are immersed in something worthwhile, you are content and do not look into how you may be disregarded by others. For that matter you only fight obstacles when you notice some kind of injustice, such as unfair discriminatiay be disregarded by others. For that matter you only fight obstacles when you notice some kind of injustice, such as unfair discrimination.
This may be dangerous as it may be too late to change the situation if you wait till it hits you. But I am not a warrior who goes out to search and destroy. I am a composer, - full stop. Nor is this necessarily a lonely pursuit. Not only are there kindred spirits but there are nowadays ways of communication such as the Web, which allows you to present yourself and your work without hindrance.
I turn now to some of the points raised in Bonnie's article.
Harassment
It may surprise you, but I have never experienced sexual harassment in the studio, neither in the UK nor in Sweden. In Japan there certainly used to be discrimination as well as sexual intimidation experienced by female students, particularly those studying technical subjects. In the male dominated climate, there would be unequal treatment of women in all kinds of ways, e.g., stricter criteria for admission, limitation in the choice of research subjects, restricted professional careers, etc., as well as a perception of women primarily as sex objects. All this tended to be carefully hidden in the male-dominated faculty. It may also be that people behaving in this way were not really aware of what they were doing. As far as I was concerned I chose to ignore such behaviour. I simply did not think it was worth spending my energy converting people. Time would take care of that in due course. But remember, this was ten years ago. I understand that the situation in Japan has been changing if only slowly.
As regards Europe, and I can only speak of northern Europe, there is generally a greater recognition that it is important to treat people equally. This may at times be a matter of political correctness. People in the UK, at any rate in academic circles, do not manifest obvious discrimination against women, whether in general conversation, staff appointments, or concert programming. This is not to say that such attitudes do not exist in the minds of people. But in their overt behaviour prejudices seem to be very much kept at bay. Be that as it may, I think there is a positive move towards sexual equality and awareness, at least in academia.
One other observation I would like to make in connection with Bonnie's article. The need for a successful female role model rather puzzles me. Firstly, what does success really mean? Success in terms of holding a post in an academic institution? Success in terms of money? Success in terms of research? Or, success in terms of composition? As far as I am concerned it is only the latter that counts. As to the necessity of having a role model I have my doubts too. Are we trying to produce "successful" female composers "en masse" through the glamour of the role model's "success," whatever that may mean? No! What we need are good teachers. Inspiring students may be one of their functions, but even more important is the way they respect and further the potential of each individual student in their care.
I much appreciated Bonnie's stimulating article and the opportunity it gave me to reflect on important issues.
- Akemi Ishijima - City University
Over the past year I have noticed many postings on email discussion groups concerning women in music and gender issues. Up until this time I made the decision to keep my own views silent. However, because Bonnie's essay raises so many issues I believe to be untrue, I feel it appropriate to elaborate.
In the past, society has minoritised the presence of not only women composers, but also their position in many other aspects of science and art. However, in the present time, to maintain this claim is on the whole untrue, in both instrumental music, computer music and combined art-forms. Women may be less active in these fields, and investigating the reasons for this may be of interest. Nevertheless, as a composer, I am interested in creating music, and the fact that I am a female creating music has never been an issue.
Concerning the subject of concert programming, I thoroughly believe that concert organisers should programme the ³best² music: in other words, works excelling in the qualities appropriate to the occasion, and not to feel politically correct by including a token work by a female composer, which may be unsuitable, and ultimately counter-productive. It has never been important to me whether I were listening to a work by a male or female composer - I simply listen to the music.
To resume specific relevance to Bonnie's essay, I do not agree, nor have experienced, that as a woman composer I have lacked compositional Resources or encouragement any different to my male colleagues, even though the studios where I have worked are under constant demand 365 days a year.
I have no female role-models, but this has never caused a problem, although I acknowledge a lack of role-model may cause confidence problems for some aspiring students. However, it is the quality of instruction that is important. I have also been in the position of feeling, as a female, conspicuous at conferences and in some studios, but have never been made to feel unwelcome, or treated in any way different as a person, or in relation to the quality of my work.
When driven by the urge to compose, both male and female composers work unusual studio hours and face the same security risks as in any other everyday situation. I have never experienced sexual harassment.
In Bonnie's essay, the idea that men and women approach technology in different ways may be true. This can cause problems in early stages of learning and can be approached in a way that is alienating to some composers - both male and female. Maintaining focus on the music and not on the computer application, may for many be an easier ³way in². In other words, a classic case of emphasising the ³Music² and not ³Computer² in the term in ³computer music². Furthermore, this allows each composer to explore their own voice, as opposed to feeling restrictions are imposed by the available technology in the studio where they work.
To summarise, gender issues are interesting when part of the compositional process, just has any other non-gender related compositional methodology. The issue of potentially minoritising women composers is a separate discussion, which in my experience is untrue and furtntially minoritising women composers is a separate discussion, which in my experience is untrue and furthermore, on the whole, unrelated to the act of composition and learning. Value judgements over quality and taste will always be present, and I have faith that there is very little prejudice against music by women composers in the current age of Western music. From personal experience, when driven by the need to compose, exerting energy into the fact that I am a female composer is irrelevant to both the compositional process, and number of performances my work will receive.
- Natasha Barrett
First of all, Chaos was created and afterwards Ghaia (Earth, female goddess) and Eros (love, male god) were born. The first divine couple of Greek Mythology was Uranus (heaven, the son of Ghaia) and Ghaia (Earth). Their union gave the first dynasty of Greek Gods. These twelve Gods, six males and six females, were representing the different qualities of the human nature.
One of these gods was Apollo, the god of Arts (music, poetry and dance). His mother was Lito (the personalization of the night). He was born on the island of Delos (Delos in greek means the limbid one). He won the snake Python (the symbol of the darkness) on a fight. Apollo's life represents the victory of light (live, joy, creation) against darkness (fear, pain, oblivion, lie, quarrel, death).
In antiquity Art and Religion were united in a ceremonial way. They were both trying to explain the mystery of our existence, they were both working together under the same mission that was to unite humans with their creator-god, the Nature.
At the end of the 20th century, Art is totally separated from religion or any kind of ideals. Concerts, theater performances etc. are isolated social events exclusively refered to a special audience. A piece of art is a product that the consumer can choose among all the other products.
Nowadays, Art is far away from the human needs and fullfils only its applicated role, which is to decorate our collapsed social system that has no respect even for our vivid environment, for our planet, for the Earth.
In a few years, in the field of arts and music composition (and computer music as well), men and women will be finally treated as equals but in my opinion both will be unable to create. Materialism will have made men and women completely equal, less creative, but more productive. And who knows, through human cloning, we will be able to create humans with predetermined quantities of male and female characteristics!!!!
Maybe human civilization will have to return back to its prime element, back to Chaos, and create through the birth of Ghaia (Earth, female goddess) and Eros (Love, male god) a new Big Bang.
P.S. A masterpiece is appreciated by everybody. A mediocre piece is appreciated in light of issues (social status, public relationships and genders) that are not related to the essence of the piece per se.
- Titi Adam - Athens, Greece
Systems of (de)composition 1998-02
Christophe Charles
With the development of computer and satellite, we have now to think over our vocabulary, especially this which qualifies artistic forms and categories, because the system of distinction hitherto has already lost its value. Music as other forms of art have to get out of their shackles. "Informel" or "Action Painting" appeared because of modern Man's doubt in front of the rigidity of stone architecture and the necessity to double-lock the doors. It is necessary to give back some life to the closed and immutable form by providing it possibilities of movement and opening out. The achieved form and the perfection of the art work causes it to loose its freshness.
This is the aim of kinetic/optical art, which refuses in principle to be seen and to show itself twice the same way. The moving work of art provides a plurality of aspects in a given time; it plays sometimes with the possibilities of diffusion and refraction of light, so that every of its morphological aspects contain a certain part of unpredictability. The sculptures which have a most undetermined form are those which are made of gas or liquid. In the tradition of the fountains and dancing waters of the European garden, or the cascades of the Japanese garden, some artists arm themselves with a stock of scientific knowledge in order to initiate procedures of transformation, where the unpredictability of form defines, rather than an object of contemplation, a contemplation without object.
Not only the work of art, but the artist himself has to earn his freedom by "forgetting his responsibility" toward the perfection of his work. He must free himself from the dependency on a restrictive designation, and has to keep the possibility to use anything, that is, to be a sculptor as well as a cook or a gardener. The freedom of the form of the art work produces then an other type of relation with its audience, who is no more forced to cling to his chair and listen passively without sneezing. In the music of John Cage and his emulators, we have to prick up our ear, to discover and to reconstruct the music work by and for ourself. To compose, to perform and to listen are three different actions, and the quality of indetermination defines for each of them a necessary and particular effort to accomplish.
From the 18th Century, the world of European music has applied itself to develop "authoritarian" system of composition which order to the orchestra to function like an army, under the conductor's baton. In the case of a Beethoven symphony, where some schemes are repeated tens of times in a few minutes, the listener feels that there is no possible devs are repeated tens of times in a few minutes, the listener feels that there is no possible deviation. Thanks to personalities like Cage, the situation changes: the American composer decides suddenly that all parameters which define the acoustic element: timber, pitch, intensity, duration-that is, the local time (the duration of a punctual sound event) and consequently the global time (the duration of the composition or the concert in its whole-can equally be subject to indetermination. These elements are sometimes left to the appreciation of the musicians, who have then to restore a freedom which frightens them. In fact, undetermined music prevents from fore-hearing or fore-seeing. But undetermined music has no pretension: because he cannot predict what is going to happen, the composer admits that he is a listener just like everybody else. This is not a resignation, this is a lesson of humility. But Cage has been often accused to sacrifice too much for the Orient.
The arts which are described here search not for the control of the viewer/ listener and of the performer, but for his/her freedom. The viewer/listener remains free to move and to create free associations, in both material and spiritual sense: no imposed directions. This freedom has been experimented in cinema or theater: in the works of poet and dramatist Terayama Shuji, indetermination characterizes not so much the images themselves-which are most of the time strange symbols used to criticize particular aspects of Japanese culture-but rather the author's ideas on theater and cinema as a social model.
They are in this sense not far from those of Cage, who also defined his works as social models: no government-conductor stands in the center of the orchestra, and no author imposes to the performers to play exactly what he has written.
Terayama's works are "machines which provoke imagination", and only 50% of their contents is shown. The 50% left are to imagine and reconstruct by the viewer. Video artist Nakajima Kou uses another word: "work in progress", which form extends in present and future. His work "My Life" is conceived to happen on a period of a hundred years-that is, of an undetermined length-without paying attention to the death of its author. Nakajima has already built his own "Video Sanctuary", where visitors will be able to look at his works even after his death-let's remember John Cage's word: "I don't worry about the future of music: there will still be sounds after I die". The other films of Nakajima are all parts of a big tree which grows constantly, the author should be present or not. One could understand them as metaphors of the fundamental, necessary and coexisting elements of the universe. Nakaya Fujiko, who is well- known for her fog sculptures and fog environments also pays much attention to natural phenomenon: she makes them happen, or observes them, but once the process has begun, she doesn't intervene anymore. The "thing" happens by itself and interactions between the works and the environment are a source of contemplation. The results are unforeseeable, as the weather is.
Such works realize the idea of "interpenetration without obstruction" ("Bougai naki sougo shintou", which Cage borrowed from Suzuki Daisetsu) between different techniques and the different expressive impulse. Instead of a reference to the ideal of the artwork as a closed totality, these works show a poly-artistic openness toward a perpetually destabilizing decentralization. There is no center anymore, but the orbiting of a plurality of mobile and multi-functional centrations, which accept without trouble the generalized digitalization: the condition is that the "achieved" work which remains always flexible and adapting to its context, is able to simulate the continuity of a network.
2- (De)compositions
The (de)compositions I have been creating since 1986 follow the principles described above. They are based on the listening of soundscapes and their recording on magnetic tapes, in order to be edited and mixed with music instruments sounds: piano ("Kalkutta Kreis", 1986) or bells ("Unter den Linden" or "Silo", 1987), flutes or synthesizers, in order to create analogies and counterpoint of timbers. In some cases, found materials (stones, pieces of wood, etc.) are used instead of music instruments, aeces of wood, etc.) are used instead of music instruments, and resonate in their environment; the recording intends then to reproduce their "shadow"-or echo-, that is, their spatial dimension ("Der Hirt auf dem Felsen", 1986).
In the case of "Kalkutta Kreis", the recordings of the different places have been edited according to the dynamic of their structure: each part thus features a special tension. The first unit features mainly urban sounds: English cabs, motorbikes, horns and crows. The second unit introduces "organic life": birds and human voices come from the gardens, the river and the markets . The trains horns of the South Eastern Railways in the fourth unit represent "speed". The wind of the fourth unit gives the feeling of "time", and the Indian Ocean of the fifth unit recalls "Eternity". The whole structure goes from "Urbanity" to "Eternity", but doesn't intend to order things or to determine any kind of hierarchy between them-it is possible to change the order of the parts. The sounds appear according to an arbitrary global rhythm, which is repeated as a long loop: as soon as it ends, it is ready to start again.
The edited soundscapes part of "Kalkutta Kreis" has been mixed together with a piano piece, named "Dialectic Chords", where the main idea is to play a (group of) sound(s), and to wait until it has disappeared. The next sound is determined by measuring the release of the preceding one. Once mixed together, the sounds of the piano appear as a counterpoint with some elements of the Indian soundscapes: the difference of timbre gives them another dimension, and lets them appear more clearly.
"Der Hirt auf dem Felsen" (1986) is divided in four sections corresponding to four different acoustic spaces. In the port of Hamburg, the sounds of pieces of wood and their echo on the surrounding walls were recorded one by one. The second part was taken on the Frioul Island of Marseille, where stones where hit in a large space providing a lot of echo. Hand claps were recorded in the Catacombs of Paris, and the last part features the reverberated sounds of the wooden chairs of five churches of the center of Hamburg. The counterpoint to these different spatial sounds is given by a drone of a flute and a bowed electric bass based on breath.
The interaction between the sound of bells slowed down four times and the sound of a grain silo transformed by the autumn wind is at the basis of composition "Silo" (1986). This piece has been "recycled" as a drone for many other recorded or live pieces. In this composition, the different sounds were mixed without any special effect, but it is difficult to tell when the bells turn to sound like a silo, or when the silo becomes a bell.
These three pieces described above have become models for the compositions which have been later developed. The form of "Kalkutta Kreis" gave birth to the "next point" form, while "Der Hirt auf dem Felsen" announce a more static form which doesn't intend to show a development through the composition: the four parts (which become six or eight according to the version) are autonomous and show different aspects of the phenomena of echo in different environments.
"Silo" is a drone which doesn't intend to expand or transform, and is thus even closer to the "undirected" compositions which have been produced since 1995.
3- "Next point"
Although "Kalkutta Kreis" follows a rigid construction based on an Indian Tal (3-3-3-4-3), the first three parts are not only the expression of three different "moods" (urbanity, organicity, technical speed): they are constructed so that some elements announce or recall other ones. In further developments, the processes of the appearance of sounds are gradually formalized. One of them consists in the following pattern: in a sound sequence, some elements are amplified little by little and are prolonged so that they give birth to a new sequence ("next point"), in which new elements appear and develop, completing or contrasting with the former elements, which go disappearing little by little. The composition is thus in constant recycling movement.
The name "Next point" was suggested by Danish composer Henning Christiansen in 1992 when he heard prototypes of the two compositions which have been later he heard prototypes of the two compositions which have been later published on the CD "let it hold itself up" (Gallery HAM, Nagoya, 1993). In his first works, Christiansen had conceived different composition methods, among them "Perspective Constructions" (1963), and "Next Point" (1964). "In Henning Christiansen's case, this meant to reduce sounds, and by way of repetition and small variations, produce simple structures that he analyzed anew by a method of symmetry, reversing the material back into itself in every conceivable combination. In doing this, he was not only interested in the auditory, but also in the visual elements of the music. The graphic aspects of the manuscript took on the same importance as the intonation of sound" (Niko Tenten, "Sound in Motion", in "Pick up on Henning Christiansen", 1992, p. 11).
Christiansen mentioned then the "next point principle" which seems to be inherent in the "let it hold itself up" pieces. Christiansen wrote about the pieces: "I want to name this art of construction: next point principle. This is a principle of form where you introduce a new sound in order to open on new possibilities. The length makes the whole a symphony, it becomes symphonic. One also gets "dragged" from beginning to end, when hearing it all, and following you through it" (1992-02-07).
The compositions featured in the "let it hold itself up" CD are originally quadraphonic (4 channel)-when performing them, the mixing panel in at the center of the concert-hall, surrounded by the audience, itself surrounded by at least four loudspeakers. The pieces are thus to be perceived in both time and space. On the CD, they have been reduced to a stereophonic (2 channel) version, which cannot reproduce the original conditions of the concert. The sounds of the first part (20 minutes) were sampled from voices of boiled eggs and coffee vendors of Calcutta-Howrah Station, of the monks of Todaiji (Nara, Japan) and of ice-cream vendors in Hangzhou (China). Some sounds have been borrowed from Henning Christiansen's compositions ("Kreuzmusik-Fluxid Behandlung" op. 189, "Klopfen" op. 20) with his authorization, and have been altered and filtered in order to be used in a new context. The last violin phrase comes from the very end of the first movement of Jean Sibelius' 4th Symphony. The second part (40 minutes) has been produced with an Akai S-1000 sampler, and has also been recorded directly from the mixing panel without overdub. Sound samples have been recorded in many different places, in particular in Japan for the flutes (nohkan, yokobue) and at the Jaganath Market of Puri (Bengal). The melodies which are heard at the end of the composition are popular songs of the indigenes of the Timor Islands, who were killed by the Indonesian Army in October 1991 (this composition was created live with musician Takeda Kenichi on New-Year's eve of 1992, in homage to the victims of 1991).
"Deposition Yokohama" (52 minutes), which mode of presentation ("undirected installation") will be described hereafter, is also based on a "next point"- like principle. The composition features about 11 main parts of different lengths, according to a dynamic of tension and release, crescendo and decrescendo. The first crescendo (0²00" -ca. 15²00"), from insects singing to urban sounds, opens on the voice of late Demetrio Stratos filtered by the space of Gallery HAM through the use of re-recording. The second long crescendo begins with flutes and dogs barking and leads to the amplified voices of crowded Tokyo. The third crescendo uses Christiansen's "Ror" (sound of the pipe used in "Klopfen") and some parts of "Der Hirt auf dem Felsen" before ending on the Sibelius violin. This composition has been released on a CD, which has been then divided by ID points in 23 parts of exactly 2 minutes, without direct relation to the content of the music. The ID points define nevertheless a new "ready-made" structure into the original structure of the music. The two minutes parts can be thus renamed after the fields which have been newly determined, and played in a random order-in the shuffle mode of a CD player.
Although one can feel a kind of development in which different parts follow one another, these compositions are not based on any kind of story board: they are conceived to be looped and heard continuously, and the order of appearance of the different parts can be changed, for example using the shuffle mode when playing a CD. They don't intend to "tell" anything to the listener, to impose him to listen to a particular ordered development. The audience remains free to listen to the sounds of the environment, and is sometimes led to pay more attention to the sounds which are not featured in the composition. The sounds of the environment happening in real time are in this sense "invited" to be heard simultaneously. The condition for such a phenomena to happen is that each sound of the composition stands for itself, and no one sound covers or eliminates another. The possibility to make "all sounds" audible is realized through the use of specific time structures.
4- "undirected"
At the beginning of the book "For the Birds", John Cage speaks about the idea of method, which is linked with the ideas of structure, form and material, as he had conceived them from the time he had studied with Arnold Schoenberg. He defines method as the procedure a composer uses to discover which sound should follow which other one in a particular sequence. About Schoenberg and Dodecaphony, Cage speaks about "walking with the right foot, then the left one, then the right one, then the left one" (p.28). A method supposes a selection, where one decides that one sound cannot follow any other oneposes a selection, where one decides that one sound cannot follow any other one, but can only follow a particular family of sounds, in some case only one sound. From the moment he began to use chance operations, Cage gradually abandoned the ideas of method, form and material, and kept only structure, that is, measure of time. Time measure also disappears with 0"00" (1962), the second silence piece after 4²33". In the Eighties, the "Number Pieces" which feature the technique of "time brackets" have soft, or mobile structures. There is no structure apriori, and thus no more method, because the succession of several sounds has no importance anymore: we enjoy a total harmony, a pantonality, where any sound can meet any other sound.
Compared to the "next point" music, the "undirected" works explore further on the limits of intention (desire) and non-intention (chance), as they make an extensive use of random programs of the computer which triggers music instruments, here a synthesizer-sampler. These works invite to perceive and become conscious of layers of reality that are often forgotten, for example those which appears during moments of silence, that is, when no sound is played in the music. They are conceived as living environments which establish particular relations between fundamental elements: the sounds, the spaces, the media technology and the audience, and realize the idea of "interpenetration without obstruction" more clearly than the "next point" works. On the level of time and space structure, sounds appear independently, apart from any global structure which should intentionally impose on them an arbitrary hierarchy. Sounds' autonomy in time is sustained by their spatiality: the specific display of the loudspeakers makes possible a spatial perception of sounds as architecture, environment, or soundscape.
The technical system consists in a sampler-synthesizer and a computer. All parameters of the synthesizer can be controlled numerically by the computer program, which number values subject to automatic and/or manual variations. The quantity of numbers which inter-modify themselves is high enough so that their combination provokes unattended phenomena. Each program's parameters are determined according to the characteristics of sound samples which are used in the program. Because of hardware limitation, the samples have to be repeated a certain amount of times, and the program has to be conceived so that the sound samples can be heard and repeated in the most adequate range of variations. For example, one sound will "sound" better according to a certain range of pitches, duration, or other parameters. The setting of the program will then take in consideration this particular range. During the performance of a work, the parameters modifying the characteristics of the sound are left under the control of the computer. What the computer cannot control is the general volume and balance, and the length of the parts and of the whole, because it is not (yet) able to "perceive" exactly enough its environment-it is able to a certain extent, but the human performer is still probably more capable to assume such a task.
The "environment" consists in several elements, which form a whole by being together and reacting to each other. One is the real space in which the music is heard, its architectural, climatic, etc., that is, physical characteristics . In this space are standing, walking or sitting the listeners, who react to the music in very different ways. These reactions confer to each sound a particular space, which is real as well as abstract, and the perception of each listener is also modified by this particular space. The "environment" is on another hand the conditions of creation of the composition, which is for instance a command from an institutional or private party. It has to fit conditions such as conceptual elements, for example in the case of a collaboration with other artists: choreographer, painter, architect, etc. It has sometimes to fit more general conditions such as the historical, political, social or economical situation.
According to such premises, I realized several installations and sound works. The installation "Deposition Yokohama" was presented at the Yokohama Museum in 1995, and used the CD described above. It had to fit not onl95, and used the CD described above. It had to fit not only the real space, but also-and mainly-the political and administrative conditions which are specific to a Japanese museum institution. Technically speaking, six loudspeakers were set with an infrared sensor sensible to the movements of visitors in a 200 square-meters space. The sound is electrically transmitted to the loudspeaker when the sensor is activated, that is, when someone or something moves around it. By walking in the space, the visitor can thus experiment different angles of hearing, different ways of superimposing the music, and different sound spaces. The global composition is thus closely linked to the presence and the movements of the listeners, and is thus realized as plural and "undirected".
The first "undirected" project was then presented as a development of "Deposition Yokohama" in Kyoto (Pig Nose Gallery, 1995). This installation used six speakers set on the floor and the ceiling, and six infrared sensors in order to control a K-2000 synthesizer-sampler through a Macintosh computer loaded with Max and a MIDI trigger. The sensors produce impulses which are transformed in MIDI signals. These signals are routed through the computer program and sent to the synthesizer, causing parameters of pitch, velocity, effects and various controllers to change. The audience reacts to the sounds and moves around. These movements produce variations in sound and light, and cause the sensors to produce new impulses. Moving in the space provokes thus a kind of entropy in the computer system: complex combinations of parameters of the K-2000 programs and combinations of the programs themselves are produced. Thanks to the panning possibilities of the K-2000, the sounds move from one speaker to the other, according to the position of the visitor who creates her /his own sound-space, resulting sometimes in phenomena of displacement of the perception.
Compositions which have been realized for "statics" (published by CCI Recordings/Ikeda Ryoji, 1995) and "In Memoriam Gilles Deleuze" (published by Mille Plateaux, 1996) are developments of the Kyoto installation: the computer chooses the parameters of 22 sounds ("statics") or 48 sounds ("Deleuze"), so that their combinations don't appear twice. The resulting music does not seem to progress. Sounds are displayed at random/by chance in time, and the freedom of the listener is thus realized: he can listen when he likes to, without being feared to have lost something. In such conditions, he/she should become conscious of his/her entire responsibility of enjoying the present time of his /her listening performance.
5-About "undirected 1986-1996" (Mille Plateaux MP33)
"undirected 1986-1996" is a 60 minutes CD-ROM which features compositions produced since 1986, like "Kalkutta Kreis". Two layers of these compositions are mixed together with the "undirected" programs of the Macintosh/K-2000 system. The ROM part consists in a Max patch which is used in the composition process, as well as audio (AIFF), visual (PICT) and text documents. An interview by Martin Conrads (Berlin) was made for a "contd" radio program on February 2, 1997, and is probably still available at:
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