May 5

DAY XIII

An Emerging Paradigm

0. About Open Works again.

• open form - aleatory
• open interpretation
• intended audience; The Role of the Reader

Class of compositions and various performances of the same (strictly notated) work: a matter of degree.

• Presentations:
  1. G. M. Koenig - Segmente
  2. Lejaren Hiller - Algorithms IV

* * *

1. The new paradigm. A summary of the present trends and guesses about the future.

A. World view (WHAT).

• Increase in entropy
• Dissipative structures (Prigogine) - the emergence of life
• Randomness/Uncertainty as part of reality
• Non-causality at the atomic level
• Break down of "normal" logic at the particle level. Counter-intuitive happenings.
• Complexity and its role
• Complex dynamic systems
• Points of view: relativity, time, simultaneity as fiction
• The scale of things: 10^-19 for nucleus to 10^33 cm for cosmic distances.
• Amazingly, there seems to be logic underneath it all (group structure in quarks, elegance/simplicity of a formula)
• The anthropic principle

B. Tools/craft (HOW). The use of computers an answer to the complexity of the task. Mathematics - the language of the abstract. The computer as a collaborator to deal with:

• complexity
• sound synthesis
• randomness

C. The Composer (WHO). The Principal Investigator in a team. No longer a dominant personality injecting his/her subjectiveness. Attitude:

• speculative - Brun, Hamman, Koenig, Xenakis, etc. Composing the sounds in Sawdust; self-referencing
• experimental - Hiller, etc. Investigate using unfamiliar (new) tools.

D. The Work - Product (WHICH). Innovators and plagiators, they both are still creating objects. Challenging the idea of an art object.

• Manifold compositions
  • composition classes
  • idiomatic for computer use
  • open works
  • ephemeral
• Sonification of complex scientific data
  • what it is
  • mapping between the two domains
  • composers needed - a new role
  • where is the originality ?
  • is it music ?

E. Audience (TO WHOM). An intellectual elite appreciates both art music and sonification. New, emerging means to disseminate original works: the Internet.

• PostScript files = scores
• sound files = the music
• images

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