The Hand in the Web: An Interview with Michel Waisvisz Volker Krefeld; Michel Waisvisz Computer Music Journal, Vol. 14, No. 2, New Performance Interfaces 2. (Summer, 1990), pp. 28-33. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0148-9267%28199022%2914%3A2%3C28%3ATHITWA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7 Computer Music Journal is currently published by The MIT Press. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/mitpress.html. 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For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Fri Sep 21 19:15:11 2007 Vdker Krefeld Stichting Elektro Instrumentale Muziek (STEIM) The Hand in The Web: ~ c h t e r ~ i a c19h t NL-1017 WL Amsterdam An Interview with The Netherlands Michel Waisvisz The following interview was conducted in Mar- as being part of the compositional process due to the seille, France after Michel Waisvisz's first presenta- high modular flexible setup of MIDI instruments- tion of the Web was given there in December, 1989. and especially the possibility of assembling MIDI Waisvisz is well known as the developer and virtu- controllers out of a toolbox, as developed at STEIM. oso of several live systems, including The Hands, a The way a sound is created and controlled has such novel performance interface based on hand-mounted an influence on its musical character that one can sensors. He is the Director of STEIM and composer say that the method of translating the performer's of the recent works Touch Monkeys and The Ar- gesture into sound is part of the compositional chaic Symphony. Two examples of The Hands in method. Composing a piece implies building spe- performance are recorded on New Computer Music cial instruments to perform it as well. The inventor (Wergo CD 2010-50). role is thus an integral part of composing. Your Krefeld: What do you consider yourself in the first question suggests divisions that don't exist for me; place: an inventor of musical instruments, a com- I cannot see a personal involvement in the techni- poser, or a performer? cal functionality of the instruments and perfor- Waisvisz: A composer-a composer of timbres. mance as separate from the work of composing, so Due to the state of technological developments in simply consider me a composer. the current era, I'm a composer using electronic Krefeld: The instruments you have developed over means because of their differentiated and refined the years-the Tape-puller, the Crackle synthe- control over timbre. "The current era" has lasted 36 sizer, The Hands, the MIDI-conductor and your cur- years. I was four when I started playing with my rent work on the Web-all work in real-time and all father's shortwave receivers. In my view, the term create a direct and continuously sensed contact "electronic music composer" implies being a per- with the electronic circuits. Don't you think that former as well; you cannot sit behind a desk and computers are more precise and reliable music per- write electronic timbral music without hearing it. formers than humans; some say one can even add Aside from this, serialism has taken many of us the human touch to their programs? away from composing by ear. I think that a com- Waisvisz: I see the hand as a part of the brain, not poser has to be able to make immediate composi- as a lower instrument of the brain. Of course, you tional decisions based on actual perception of sound can see a hand as a transmitter and sensor, but in rather than making decisions derived from a formal the consciousness of the performance, the hand is structure that-as happened in serialism-tends to the brain. You can't say that its precision is sur- drift away from our pure musical needs. Composers passed or even equaled by computers because we must go back on the stage and listen and think; simply don't know what we control in detail when they must work and perform where the music actu- we play an instrument. Every instrumentalist can ally reigns. tell you that in the instrumental learning process, With respect to the inventor role, I consider the there are hours of meticulous motoric memoriza- creation of a specific electronic music instrument tion of timing and intonation, but the thing called music finally comes out as something on top of that. I don't think this notion is something meta- physical or a romantic vagueness. I think that the Computer Music journal, Vol. 14, No. 2, Summer 1990, slight aberrations from the score-sometimes con- 0 1990 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. sidered errors-contain crucial micro-information 28 Computer Music Journal that gives music its life. I cannot tell you exactly tures into the occurrence of this wise and vibrating how that information needs to be categorized,- ghost that we call real live music. some Africans and Indians can-but I know it's Krefeld: So you advocate a more physical approach there, and I also know that when you build an in- of the up-to-now highly intellectualized field of strument, it must be sensitive enough to capture electronic music, especially computer music? and transfer these aberrations. I remember a radio Waisvisz: I don't think I made my point. I say "physi- broadcast of a Crackle synthesizer concert some 15 cal," and you mean "more physical." I'm talking years ago, at the time when live electronic music about establishing a balance between formal struc- was almost unknown in Holland. Later, a woman ture and the physicality of the person performing. came up to speak to me after a concert. She had Once one takes formal structure as a synonym heard the radio program and told me she had thought for the beauty of patterns, cold reasoning, a law- it was performed on acoustical objects; now that abiding mind, and dogmatic thinking, and one in- she had seen it, she believed it was electronics. I terprets physicality as wild emotion, instinct, sen- think that the fact that so much of my motoric in- suality, eroticism, and feelable matter, then a historic formation had reached the instrument through the intellectual conflict is perpetuated! The balance Crackle fingerpads was responsible for making between structure and physicality is the most in- the electronics sound acoustical-at a time when triguing one I can imagine because one attempts to the notion of electronic music was still connected weigh out two highly contradictory but crucial en- with the sterile sound of automation and the eerie tities. The composer who can handle these extremi- reverberant sonic beep-aura of early, space-age mov- ties is bound to create a lively piece of music. ies. So I don't know what human touch is. I think YOUm entioned "computer music." I'd rather use that it's an expression used by musicologists to es- the more generic term "electronic music." The cape from their own formalist trap. term "computer" creates so many expectations. Instead of musing on whether a computer is pre- Just consider the notorious question of whether or cise, reliable, or capable of invoking the human not a computer can compose-can be creative. The touch in music, you should focus on the notion of point is that so many humans-and unfortunately effort. Effort is something abstract in a computer also composers-behave like robots all the time. So but a human performer radiates the psychological why this critical question aimed only at comput- and physical effort through every move. The cre- ers! As long as people ask this question they prove ation of an electronic music instrument shouldn't they have a basic misconception about the nature just be the quest for ergonomic efficiency. You can of creativity. As long as there are bad composers go on making things technically easier, faster, and you may say that computers can be highly creative. more logical, but over the years I have come to the Krefeld: But you seem to use computers all the conclusion that this doesn't improve the musical time. quality of the instrument. I'm afraid it's true one Waisvisz: Yes, for translating hand and finger move- has to suffer a bit while playing; the physical effort ments into controller information, and-most im- you make is what is perceived by listeners as the portantly-to route this information through a pat- cause and manifestation of the musical tension of tern of conditions to various sound synthesizers the work. One cannot compose the musical tension and to store sounds, short motifs, all sorts of pat- structure uniquely by formal rules; you can only terns, names, addresses, letters, etc.