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CeReNeM Journal Performing Stuff Human-Entity Interactions in Contemporary Artistic Practice No. 7 Journal of the Centre for Research in New Music, in New for Research of the Centre Journal of Huddersfield University 2020 CONTENTS Editorial . 8 Practice Entangled Colin Frank Considering the Fixed Naming of Entities . 16 Towards a Transdisciplinary Approach to Free Improvisation D Henry McPherson Collaboration as Contingent on Material Encounters in Making Imitate Elegance Expertly . 42 (Re)Thinking Violin Virtuosity Dejana Sekulic, Irine Røsnes, Linda Jankowska, Colin Frank The Tuning Fork in My Life . 64 Hakan Ulus Devising Interaction and Improvisation in Motion Studies project . 82 Cristina Fuentes Antoniazzi, Ilona Krawczyk, Solomiya Moroz, Colin Frank Giving new life to ordinary and non-ordinary sound devices . 104 The Museo del paesaggio sonoro in Riva presso Chieri and the Sinfonia del mondo by Domenico Torta Cristina Ghirardini The Tender Listener . 146 Collaboration and Friendship as Compositional Methodology in boundarymind Linda Jankowska & Katherine Young Subverting by Not Subverting . 168 Free Improvisation Dreams of Counter-Logic Activisms Maria Sappho Donohue Composition, Technology, and the Posthuman . 172 Andrew A. Watts in discussions with Stefano Corazza, Constantin Basica, Julie Herndon, Andrew Blanton, and Caroline Louise Miller A Post-Percussive Approach to Performer-Controlled Electronics . 194 Noam Bierstone Virtual Reality as Musical Environment . 216 Przemysław Danowski Contributors . 228 CeReNeM Journal issue 7 · Performing Stuff 6 7 Editorial Editorial a shoe brush, a cymbal, and more. Even the idea of an object is broken with and unbounded Practice Entangled to reconsider disciplinary divisions, to incorporate under-represented histories, to hear marginalized voices, to consider the importance of the body, and, as Maria Sappho Donohue Colin Frank succinctly suggests in her article, to ‘give a fuck.’ Admittedly, my request for articles was a dash greedy on my behalf, as my current When I created the call for proposals for this edition of the journal, I had no idea the research is attempting to understand my own multidisciplinary and percussive practice extent to which a non-human force would tear through the world. Before the coronavirus as arising partially from the physical objects and agentic others I encounter. However, SARS-CoV-2 came to have consequences for humans globally, I had asked artistic-researchers considering that there has been little discourse about the agency of objects from contemporary to observe their interdependence with and reliance on things, that is to say, I wanted them music practitioners, I was keen to hear their opinions on the subject. There has been much to consider how the materials of their practice shape their artistry and how non-human stuff discourse on non-human agency from within sociological disciplines—perhaps closest to can feedback in the making process. I wanted to collect perspectives on material agency home being the Contemporary Music Review’s issue on Music, Mediation Theories and Actor- 4 within contemporary artistic practice, and to concretise and reflect on these experiences by Network Theory, which provides variegated analyses of music practices as entangled with presenting examples and theories. From ecologic, posthuman, and assemblage theories the other acting agents —as well as within performance scholarship broadly, including the 5 interconnectedness between humans, non-humans, and other forces has become increasingly Performance Research journal’s issue On Objects and, surveying from within the theatrical 6 apparent. Applying this sensibility to artistic practice, I wanted to ask: how are we entangled arts, the book Performing Objects and Theatrical Things. These volumes undoubtedly have within assemblages of actants? What are practitioners’ responses to the agencies of others, referenced influential humanities scholarship outside artistic and performance disciplines, and how does one transform their practice when they are observant and accepting of these resultantly allowing for a rethinking of the material world that artists are forever immersed forces? This idea of ‘actants’ is borrowed from actor network theory to designate entities in. Ideas such as actor-network theory, assemblage theory, posthumanism, object-oriented that are sources of action, be they human, non-human, or non-individual.1 There may not philosophy, and new materialism, to name but a few, provide rich ways of thinking about be any particular motivation on an actant’s behalf, and it “is neither an object nor a subject humans as entangled with non-humans. Within music performance scholarship these but an ‘intervener.’”2 Once come together with other entities, often in indeterminate ways, ways of thinking are beginning to appear. For instance, Joe Cantrell, in his article Sounding an actant can shape and alter events. The coronavirus provides an impressive example of New Materialism, considers how an effect pedal’s manufacturing, a process entwined with a non-human actant influencing—it being not quite alive nor dead captures the vibrancy environmentally destructive methods and human exploitation, imprints itself onto further 7 of matter.3 In its coming together with immune systems, air particles, long distance levels of making-with the machine; Andrea Neumann co-constructs with her self-developed transportation networks, governments, communities, healthcare systems, and many more, it ‘Inside-Out’ piano, generating a performance practice contingent on the unpredictable 8 has appeared as a massively impactful force. Out of the things that have transformed artistic properties of the found materials she uses; and Beavan Flanagan, by looking to object practice in recent memory, the coronavirus could be counted as a significant one, although oriented ontology and transcendental materialism, speculates on music performances that do it is but one factor amidst many that influence artistic practitioners. Within this edition, the not rely on humans necessarily present at all, thus considering a music for objects that operate 9 coronavirus’ impact is not discussed extensively. Many of the practitioners presented herein on their own accord. This journal hopes to contribute to these discussions. talk of works performed pre-pandemic, when it was acceptable to have multiple persons in Practitioners are, wittingly or not, caught up in a give-and-take between their own the same room, in some cases even touching. Resultantly, the things discussed are highly wants and the wishes of the materials they work with. In this sense, rather than believe varied, as people could easily meet one another, rehearse legally in enclosed spaces, or travel that a performer can completely control their instrument —an illusion which the concept internationally without quarantining. Perhaps because there were many possibilities to do of virtuosity manifests—there is instead a dialogue between human and instrument. The things, throughout this journal each author has a completely different concept of what is an influencing agent on the practice they are discussing. The diversity of things presented 4 Georgina Born and Andrew Barry, ‘Music, Mediation Theories and Actor-Network Theory’, Contemporary Music Review 37, no. 5–6 (2 November 2018): 443–87, https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2018.1578107. encompasses tuning forks, violins, items from childhood homes, new electronic instruments, 5 Laurie Beth Clarke, Richard Gough, and Daniel Watt, eds., On Objects, 4th ed., vol. 12, Performance Research (Routledge, 3D virtual reality objects, traditional instruments from a rural Italian village, recording 2007). devices, flower pots, digital effects pedals, the space between performers, a flute, a drum with 6 Marlis Schweitzer and Joanne Zerdy, Performing Objects and Theatrical Things (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 7 Joe Cantrell, ‘Sounding New Materialism: Enchantment and Audio Technology’, Seismograf Fokus: Silent Agencies (26 June 2020), https://seismograf.org/node/19360. 8 Matthias Haenisch, ‘Materiality and Agency in Improvisation: Andrea Neumann’s “Inside Piano”’, in Noise in and as 1 Bruno Latour, ‘On Actor-Network Theory: A Few Clarifications’, Soziale Welt 47, no. 4 (1996): 369–81. Music, ed. Aaron Cassidy and Aaron Einbond, trans. Carter Williams (Huddersfield: University of Huddersfield Press, 2 Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 9. 2013), 147–70. 3 Vibrant, lively energy as existing within inert matter is wonderfully discussed by Jane Bennett. Not only does she discuss 9 Beavan Flanagan, ‘Intersections Between Subjects and Objects in My Compositions from 2013 to 2016’ (Doctoral thesis, materials as agentic but also their effects on the socio-political. See Bennett, Vibrant Matter. Huddersfield, University of Huddersfield, 2017),http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/34417/ . 8 9 CeReNeM Journal issue 7 · Performing Stuff Editorial idea that an instrument extends a performer’s intentions seems out of place when objects and there is no straightforward or certain pathway. However, by gradually building are viewed as agential. Rather, a system of exchange occurs, whereby the performer and awareness through discussion and by critically observing one’s own activities, it may be materials configure one another in a “mutually constitutive process through which users, possible to formulate positive, morally sound action. technologies, and environments are