Thesis Proposal Abstracts
The DANM program requires that within two weeks after the thesis proposal review, each graduate student (with advisor’s assistance) will prepare a 500-1000 word abstract of the proposal, reflecting the thesis project or topic and design as agreed upon at the review. The following are the successfully submited abstracts.
2007 Cohort
- Tyler Freeman: Doodler
- James Khazar: Reliquaries
- Synthia Payne: Cyberjammer
- no.e Parker
- Alan Tollefson: Dedokoro
Doodler
By Tyler Freeman
Doodler provides a space on which to put all the elements of the web: text, pictures, multimedia like sounds and videos, and windows into other pages. It also provides a simple drawing mechanism, so anyone can instantly doodle, sketch, or render drawings on any page at any time. The goal is for users to be able to quickly and easily contribute to existing pieces that they find by browsing the social network, with little or no previous knowledge of HTML or web design. It is this spontaneous and unhindered editing capability that will encourage users to collaborate, appropriate and communicate with each other in the private time of their own browsing or in real-time, with multiple users drawing concurrently in the same space.
To encourage this user-created web content, Doodler will offer features common in other social networks like user profiles, mass-messaging, and advanced search capabilities. It will also introduce new features such as page templates (collections of layers and metadata fields which users can copy and modify to their needs, thus giving a unified look-and-feel across pages like profiles, games, blogs, etc.).
Since Doodler basically emulates an infinite piece of paper on which to draw, place text and images, or add hyperlinks, it lends itself naturally to playing Surrealist games of spontaneous collaborative creation, such as Exquisite Corpse. In traditional Exquisite Corpse, each player draws a continuation of the last drawing and then folds the paper down to cover most of his drawing. By hiding the drawing before the next person continues it, the Surrealists believed this would encourage autonomous creativity: a tapping of the subconscious’s tendencies of symbols and flow.
In a Doodler-based Exquisite Corpse, the folding of the paper interface to cover a drawing is replaced by a scrollable window which reveals only a small portion of the overall drawing at a time. Each player would continue the drawing within this frame, and then scroll his drawing mostly out of view, where the next player will have to repeat the process. Already we see many differences from the paper version: instead of just one directional area of the paper being covered by a fold, there are four directional areas in which to hide previous drawings. Thus the flow of drawings could proceed in any direction, or converge all onto a single frame. We see here a loss of structure of a finite piece of paper to an opening expanse of endless possibility.
In addition, the number of players is unlimited, and often more than one player could be drawing in the same space at the same time (with or without awareness of the other player’s creative presence). If the players are not aware of each other, then the game suddenly branches into two possibilities of continuation: the game can continue from either entry (or both), creating a rhizomatic, exponential exploration of multiple streams of consciousness. If the players are aware of each other, in essence drawing together, then each stroke plays off the other to produce a combinational subconscious creation: a multiplicative automatism which characterizes, in part, the next generation of Surrealism: what I call Hypersurrealism.
The digital world gives Hypersurrealism much larger creative, social and psychological spaces to explore. It could be argued that the trance the original Surrealists entered to create autonomous drawings is replaced by the trance of the disembodiment into cyberspace in Hypersurrealism, but it remains to be seen if this cyber-trance affords the same amount of creative automatism as the Surrealists intended. It then becomes obvious that for this cyber-trance to be truly immersive, the interface of the system must be as unobtrusive as possible. There must be little or no distractions from the locus of creativity in forms of ads, logos, flashy buttons, etc. Even the clunkyness of a mouse (or especially a laptop touchpad) could break the spell of automatism.
Thus, to preserve automatism in the user, the interface must be automatic itself. Drawing functions should be instantly available without any waiting or fussing with options. Creation of new layers, or appropriation of old works to create new, must be automatic and unobtrusive. Metadata must be easily viewable and editable but without detracting from the visual elements of the page. This is the purpose of Doodler and when it is completed, it will open a new chapter in user-created and controlled web content, allowing for a global consciousness to emerge through advanced and unhindered systems of collaborative communication.
Reliquaries
By James Khazar
“Reliquaries” is a combined physical and interactive digital media installation based on the tropes of early Christian Reliquaries – objects taken from the physical corpus or personal effects of holy persons and used as ritual fetish objects – and Medieval illuminated manuscripts. The installation will be the physical manifestation of a process of searching for and finding reliquary-fetish objects that correspond to objects from a lifetime of personal dream gathering and analysis by and of myself. The process of discovering these dream-reliquary-fetish objects will be diarized and illuminated through documentary video. The sum of this process of investigation and documentation will be collated, commented on and turned into the interactive digital media manuscript installation.
The dream relics will be installed inside gilded vitrines and presented at the Thesis Exhibition. The interactive manuscript will also be presented at the exhibit and be available online.
Reliquary objects provide a literal and figurative structure to contain a process of discovery when searching for an oneiric object. The traditional relic was a form of sympathetic magic which J.G. Fraiser defined as a mechanism used by many religions, both monotheistic and polytheistic, that imbues the special qualities of an important or “holy” individual into an object that has come in physical contact with that individual or was an actual part of that individual, such as a bone or clippings of hair. By recontextualizing dream objects in the relic format, those objects take on the “magical” qualities of a traditional relic while also challenging the concept of holiness as something only available to an individual who is sanctioned by organized religion. The use of dream related objects also connects the symbolism of what Carl Jung called the “collective unconscious” to this challenge, proposing that while we each have a personal set of dream symbols these symbols are connected to a universal symbolic system which when viewed through a Gnostic approach undermines orthodoxy’s prescriptive symbolic system.
Medieval illuminated manuscripts also provide a literal and figurative structure to present the process of discovery. The manuscripts used glossa – literally a form of writing between the lines – and marginalia to enforce a dogmatic, or exegetical, interpretation of scripture. By re-appropriating this format and conflating it with contemporary interactive techniques to explore the process of discovering oneiric relics I will be injecting a personal, or eisegetical, process into the interpretation of the documented process.
Research for this project will consist of investigations into Lacan’s notion of the Real, Freud’s notion of the uncanny, and Jung’s collective unconscious. Of particular interest will be works which associate Gnosticism and Deconstructionism, specifically the works of Harold Bloom, with his Theory of Revisionism, and Ihan Hassan with his theory of the New Gnosticism. Bloom called Gnosticism the “most powerful of Deconstructions because it undid all genealogies, scrambled all hierarchies, allegorized every microcosm/macrocosm relation, and rejected every representation of divinity as non-referential. ” Research in the area of early Christian theology and Gnosticism are also required, as is research on the history of reliquaries.
CYBERJAMMER
experiments in telepresent music improvisation
By Synthia Payne
updated: tues.04.17.07.1:30.p.m.
Telepresent music improvisations are real-time musical compositions that result from people who collaborate simultaneously while at some distance from one another using the Internet. The Cyberjammer project and thesis encompass both a studied practice and a critical engagement with telepresent music improvisations.
The Cyberjammer project is a tool constructed for collaborative simultaneous music improvisation, and structured for multi-location online music improvisations, to facilitate new experimentation in the practice. The Cyberjammer thesis situates the musical outcome of telepresent improvisation both within the context of existing musical improvisation practices popularized in the 1950's by Chicago's AACM, the New York school and John Cage; and as a discipline dinstinct from other improvisation forms by means of interviews with practitioners Pauline Oliveros, Chris Chafe, and Scot Gresham-Lancaster in the analysis of a telepresent music session.
The Cyberjammer Project
In tandem with purely musical and improvisation discourses, network latency issues are inherent in network telecommunications and must be considered in musical telepresence activities as well. In addition, specific equipment requirements such as a computer with high-speed Internet capabilities and some knowledge of setup and troubleshooting are crucial to the success of a simultaneous mutli-location online music session. A basic online studio will also require some kind of software application for sending audio and/or MIDI signals through the computer's network connection and out to the Internet. If the session is between University campuses or government agencies, the connection will most likely be routed to Internet2, and the computer and networking apparatus will need to comply with specific routing protocols and faster data transfer speeds than consumer Internet.
In order to conduct this research on campus, it was necessary to establish networked music studios specifically for this purpose. Frequent experimental research sessions are in process both on consumer Internet using public servers and randomly distributed participants, and on Internet2 with other university campuses, specifically as part of a class taught by Pauline Oliveros at RPI in New York using software created by Chris Chafe at Stanford-CCRMA. There will be a performance and installation at the DANM MFA Exhibition in June.
The Cyberjammer Thesis
Research for the thesis consists of experimentation with telematic improvisation, including at least one audio documentation of a session, and analysis of the outcomes; scholarly research into musical improvisation as a practice; and, primary research into the experience of telematic improvisation via interviews and a blog for posting of samples from sessions and uploading comments.
Methodological approaches for all of the sessions are an extension of existing offline musical improvisation practices for generating musical content including free improvisation, guided improvisation, playing in a specific style, playing from memory, and playing from a common score. Circumstances unique to telepresence include addressing a variety of social relationships required in order to have people to play with, and identity choices such as using one's given name versus making up a new name or choosing to play anonymously. As mentioned earlier, it is also necessary to consider telecommunications network latency issues in simultaneous music collaboration. Logistical details are considered as well: the condensation of space and time, and logistics questions concerning the choice of when and where to engage in a given session.
Participation in online musical improvisations instantly transforms the solitary player into a member of a spontaneous musical ensemble. The social aspects of a telepresent music improvisation are compelling: telemusicians must engage socially otherwise there will be "no one there" (Gresham-Lancaster). While it is true that telemusicians tend not to meet in person the lack of familiarity may be a way to preserve the elements of unknown conditions which fuel experimental practice. Still, it is apparent that there is a desire among participants of telepresent music sessions to become more acquainted.
Strategies for producing and analyzing outcomes are to try different approaches to musical improvisation with varying levels of direction in order to observe the way in which offline and online practices overlap. This research will compare similarities and differences between the more informal public NINJAM sessions with sessions that were highly structured and planned with respect to participants and instrumentation. Both approaches are considered relevant as to how they can influence each other to lessen their respective social barriers and improve accessibility.
What makes online music improvisation practice attractive to participants and audiences? In considering this question reference is made to Fluxus approaches that blur the lines between performer and audience, and offer agency to the passive observer, both of which demonstrate the synthesis between art and everyday life. This includes Alan Kaprow's Happenings, Pauline Oliveros' Deep Listening practice, and various directed large ensemble improvisations. Early free jazz innovators of the late 1950's and 1960's such as Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and others from Chicago's AACM provide compelling evidence of their strong influence on the practice and widespread popularity of musical improvisation.
Future work will include a visual component to the CYBERJAMMER project, intended to encourage the crossing of cultures through playfulness and fostering a collaborative spirit to effect positive changes across disparate groups.
Gamelan Plesetan
By no.e Parker
A reality that looks toward the future of globalized society as an open system waiting to be experienced and developed by all peoples living in it is the antithesis of one that is monologically driven by global mass-media. Such a reality, one that includes methods of knowledge sharing, open collaboration, and shared subjectivity is exemplified in Brazil's Paulo Freire in his "The Pedagogy of the Oppressed." Russia's Mikael Bakhtin's conception of the plurality of voices, or the musical term polyphony, also fits quite well with Freire's view of the importance of members of a society taking part in the formation of their reality. Polyphony, in Bakhtin's terms, refers to the multiplicity of voices that are not dialectical, the heterogeny of voices to speaking for themselves, unmediated by a central narrator. The above mentioned ideas of these two prominent social theorists will be referenced as a basis of the research paper I will write inspired by the Gamelan Plesetan project.
The Gamelan Plesetan project was initiated in 2004 during my studies at Indonesia's National Art Academy in Yogyakarta, Java. Both experimentally and traditionally trained musicians join together in live, non-idiomatic improvisational electro-acoustic gamelan performances(1). The concept of this performance event is rooted in my 14 years experience of organizing and playing live improvised electronic music at multimedia dance/art/music events that can be best described as modern day "Happenings" (in the spirit of Allan Kaprow) as part of the Bay Area Semi Permanent? Autonomous Zone (SPAZ) collective. The Gamelan Plesetan events are an expansion of my above mentioned work done with the SPAZ collective to include musical forms and traditions outside of the electronic music genre, specifically, contemporary gamelan. Here, musicians trained in both electronic instruments and traditional gamelan instruments join together in a non-linear cross-cultural musical dialog that ventures into uncharted musical territory. In the research paper, I will investigate the idea of "authenticity" in World Music as a genre, touching upon how much of the music produced in cross-cultural collaboration today demands its non-western participants remain premodern and "authentic" to their traditional musical roots--denying the ever increasing presence of a postindustrial, late capitalist, postmodern culture, global in its scope, where these artists have access manifold forms of inspiration via radio, television, cinema, and the internet. I will use this point as a springboard to then show how the musics of Indonesian composer Sapto Raharjo, and the group Kua Etnika contrast established ideas regarding "World Music" as a genre and broadens our perception of what is considered "authentic" in today's global view.
I will then expand that idea of a new form of "authenticity" to look at how the electronic music techniques of sampling and audio collage-- "rhythm science" in the words of Paul Miller (aka Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid) in his book entitled Rhythm Science --"builds on the early successes of file sharing to create a milieu where people can exchange culture and information at will and create new forms, new styles, and? new ways of thinking" (2), adding yet another layer of meaning to the term "World Music"; and lastly, I will attempt to explain how the Gamelan Plesetan project attempts a dialogic performance of a collaboratively based "World Music", in essence, " a music of permutation that tries to convey a sense of how conceptual art, contemporary technology, and timeless idealism might function together today" (3).
Additional research for this project will consist of interviews with members of Gamelan Plesetan Professor Rene TA Lysloff (ethnomusicologist and lecturer of World Music at UC Riverside) and Sapto Raharjo regarding their observations and experiences of world music and electronic music today, the topic of subjectivity in intercultural musical collaboration, and opinions about the music created during a Gamelan Plesetan happening. 1) Non-idiomatic music can be defined as music that is free from the constraints of musical syntax and the requirements of musical style. Le Baron?, Anne, "Reflections of Surrealism in Postmodern Musics",Postmodern Music/Postmodern Thought, ed. Lochhead, J, Routledge, New York, 2002, p.37. 2) Miller, Paul D., Rhythm Science, MIT Press, Boston, 2004, p 6. 3) Ibid, p 20.
Installation
"Gamelan Plesetan" is an open musical dialog between musicians playing in two seemingly opposite musical genres: Indonesian contemporary gamelan music and experimental electronic music. Tradition versus technology turns into a meeting of minds, a sonic exchange of ideas in musical language and form. The DANM MFA show will be the final incarnation of the Gamelan Plesetan Project at UCSC, in a formal gallery installation setting at the Digital Media Factory on June 7th, 2007. This project is the three-dimensional stand-alone installation and live musical performance aspect to my DANM MFA thesis work. I will create a 360 degree semi-transparent cylindrical projection screen that will encircle a ten foot wide performance area during the opening night of the DANM MFA Thesis Show. Electronic and gamelan musicians will join together in a non-idiomatic improvisation-- a musical "Happening" inside the transparent walls of the projection area. The audience will sit comfortably on cushions placed around the cylinder's perimeter enjoying the music as it is being made, watching a three point video projection. These different groupings of visuals create three contexts of meaning for the audience: one, raw images of the environment in Yogyakarta, Central Java, where the idea of Gamelan Plesetan first germinated--the "environment" as interpreted by a non-native resident; the second, more artistically based visuals that attempt a synthesis of that reality as ethnography and my artistic interpretation/reinterpretation of it; and lastly, a projection of a live improvisation between humanity and the digital--live motion capture and gamelan instrument controlled video programmed in Jitter software, allowing the "reality" of the actual performance to be "interpreted" by digital technologies; the interplay of these different layers of visuals attempt to illustrate how the act of one person's portrayal of an environment constitutes a single sided interpretation of it . The light bleed of three video projectors during the performance will also cast the performer's silhouettes onto the inner surfaces of the screen, causing the added dimension of live human "shadow play" into the visual mix. Following the opening night's event, the performance area will be maintained as a stand-alone audio visual installation-- where footage of the live performance in turn will be transformed into another ethnographic aspect of the video installation, another attempt at portraying the "real" yet nevertheless only portraying an externalized manifestation of it.
Music and Documentation:: Gamelan Plesetan?
Dedokoro
By Alan Tollefson
Thesis Paper:
The research paper is an in depth study of the internment period that results in an analysis of language between its use in haiku written in the camps with the political rhetoric of the time. The purpose of such a comparison is to deconstruct the the technique of framing in rhetoric that keeps reality frozen in paradox by linking concepts that shape perception into categories. Haiku is antithetical to framing because it is a snapshot of perceived conditions happening in the present and its formal construction relies on the effect of suggestion rather than categorization. Haiku is the subjective document that authoritatively communicated the conditions of the individual in a moment of present awareness. Rhetoric's controlling purpose is to inform the people of the reasons for the state of exception, as a fact of necessity. The official facts are at odds with the subjective state of the individual because rhetoric needs to freeze further analysis and critical thinking through an effect of the paradox it unleashes.
Project Description:
My thesis project is the creation and staging of a performance with computer controlled media. The performance conveys its message through the performer’s stylized gestures anchored loosely by the text. Gestures can be hand positions, bodily postures, facial expressions or the interpositionality of the performers. I wish to exploit gesture/text, as an effect of visual communication to nurture an audience/performer relationship of witness. The haiku text is the little that is left behind, and the iteration of the idea behind a gesture exists by virtue of its recognition. The reaction of the audience to the performers announces recognition, empathetic engagement and within this complex social arrangement the intersubjectivity of the audience/performer dynamic becomes evident. The text of this piece will come from poetry, epigrams and anecdotes. Not composed to tell an over all story but to accompany the action/dance like verbal music; each element playing a part in a larger poem of the overall text. These textual utterances have the import of a meaning of presence as the performer who is present embodies through gesture, these texts as an iteration of individual historical units. A part of the poetry of the text is the haiku that was authored by American internees of the Second World War. This ”concentration camp haiku” is performative because it reflects a moment of time coalesced by the present awareness in the author, not by the device of the metaphor, abstracting reality through figurative language. This moment of time captured by haiku is not a static picture but a unit of process. We must engage in haiku in order to feel this process. It is not a mysterious process, merely a short narrative the audience unfolds. Because haiku uses the minimum amount of words necessary, the recipient of the haiku has to make connections between each element of the poem in order to see the attitude of the haiku poet’s, place, and time. Haiku is like an aesthetic telegram, or a snapshot of history in three lines.
The appearance of the performers
There are men and women in costumes that include: The red vestments of the inquisition with the red broad brimmed hat and the red cape; the orange jump suit of the prisoner; the garb of the 40’s, khakis and white shirts, fedoras and suspenders, women in dresses short sleeves trimmed with lace, sleeves puffy around the shoulders; the peg legged black suit and thin black tie of the 1960’s civil rights era; and an embedded war correspondence photographer with his vest and camera and the additions of military gear: helmet, jacket and boots. These costumes communicate simply another set of gestures.
Examples of the text spoken during the performance:
Haiku by Itaru Ina written during the internment: • Wild geese fly away/ the tower guards/ are on a break. • A long day/ I make up an errand and/ call the guard. • Damselflies/ already born/ at the prison window. • The guard’s gaze/ softens at the train window/ brisk moon. • Solar eclipse/ willow seed-heads drift/ in the gloomy light. • A cricket chirps/ the Dakota summer/ is past its prime
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