Shaping Perception through Interplay

00:00:08:

00:00:14: Welcome to Blaues Rauschen, the podcast where we explore the intersections of art music and sound across analogue and digital worlds.

00:00:24: In Podcast Episode thirty-five, Annetta Moscheri talks with Merseblascoe & Farsane about two performances at Festival Blaues Rautchen twenty-six that expand our understanding Fauna and Life Human Computer Improvisation.

00:00:42: Masa Blascoe & Fasane are both multimedia

00:00:46: artists,

00:00:46: but they arrived there through different paths.

00:00:49: Masablasco's background in engineering and music has shaped her approach to sound as something physical and open-ended.

00:00:58: Fasame began with classical music and film before moving towards technology driven by a curiosity about how sound can continuously evolve.

00:01:09: What connects them is the shared interest in performance as a space where sounds, body and technology meet through improvisation.

00:01:20: Hi

00:01:20: Merse!

00:01:21: Let's dive straight into your project Faunaud – what's your approach to building your own instruments?

00:01:26: And what influences of sound & music shape you work?

00:01:32: I mean it was an evolution.

00:01:35: It started with

00:01:36: the frustration

00:01:39: of the instruments that I had when i started as an electronic music composer and performer.

00:01:45: Yeah, The Frustration With the Commercial Instruments made it like a laptop or a synthesizer.

00:01:49: And how all the interfaces Or even How the design Of any like Ableton or usual softwares that are used for electronic music, or electro-acoustic music impose you a certain ideas and ideologies on how the music should be composed

00:02:09: or performed.

00:02:10: And from that frustration emerged.

00:02:12: then need of creating my own instruments That could integrate more My body...that can welcome side specific qualities in space that would be unpredictable.

00:02:26: and then who will help me improvise or fight with, play with.

00:02:33: Establish more interesting relationships that could develop on stage for me than... where I was coming from as an electronic music composer.

00:02:41: So, i started building my own instruments for that.

00:02:43: and then Fauna because like the instrument kept changing depending on what I was interested at that time or a musical phenomenon... ...or material exploration.. ..or specific site to engage in it.

00:02:56: And I decided to call it Fauna Because to me they are like faunas A body of animals and creatures, because they are a little bit alive.

00:03:07: They all have their personalities.

00:03:10: And my relationship with them changed.

00:03:12: I decided to use fauna as this improvisation that i do With these creatures.

00:03:19: It sounds like your performance unfolds through a series Of feedback loops.

00:03:23: Is it what improvisations mean?

00:03:28: cybernetic system, but they're like feedback looks at different levels because in one hand there's the material feedback look.

00:03:36: Like what I'm trying to do on first part of their performance is have this feedback loop with materials from space where it starts vibrating depending how... The sounds that are produced and how i am interacting with instrument and the materiality of instruments playing at a specific moment.

00:03:55: And then Like, there are changes in light that you hear it like affecting the sound and that creates another kind of internal

00:04:05: loop.

00:04:07: And I feel how because it's an improvisation... ...I'm always reacting to them because their instruments are imprecise by nature….

00:04:16: …I'll have to listen.

00:04:18: There're feedback looks on multiple

00:04:19: levels.".

00:04:21: In your Blaues-Rauschen description You speak up a horizontal relationship with your instrument.

00:04:26: What does this mean?

00:04:28: So, keeping it within Fauna like they're different... Like the instruments that I design They are by nature imprecise.

00:04:37: The sensors or type of technology is very cheap and not precise.

00:04:42: It helps with improvisation which is more true for a type of music and performance than what i want to do.

00:04:47: so there's certain agency on risk in knowing whats going to happen but just having be really present in process how I have to react in real time.

00:04:59: This was part of my dissertation, like... How ideas of power and control get embedded into these

00:05:04: instruments.".

00:05:05: So on the one hand you reverse the usual relationship between artist an instrument but at the same time your work seems to resist the idea of control doesn't it?

00:05:16: No!

00:05:16: You know..I mean i put a lot of thought in how to present this pieces.

00:05:20: Like if im trying to work with vibrations ,like I try to ask for a good setup of subwoofers or... I don't know.

00:05:29: Like, think about the experience how to offer the best sensorial experience in a way like before.

00:05:38: i started building my own instruments and used to have visuals for example And decided take out the visual because everybody was looking at screen.

00:05:45: then you're missing other things.

00:05:47: so yeah it's not controlling but its kind-of shaping.

00:05:59: Thank You Mirsa!

00:06:00: We now turn to Farzana and her work, Life Human Computer Improvisation.

00:06:06: In your performance you create a dialogue between yourself and an AI system.

00:06:10: what are you hoping to discover through this interaction?

00:06:14: So when I started first working with machine learning... First i should say that when i started working in programming or generative environments expanding my existing ideas in a way.

00:06:35: So I would like write something or create something generative, but then it will take somewhere else that i wouldn't think of alone and then go somewhere else.

00:06:46: so... It was always this idea of having back-and-forth situation with the computer And that started to get really interesting for me, so I shifted my focus mainly on... So during my master's research My focus was creating an AI-driven agent That is able to improvise.

00:07:15: What are the goals of working with a machine?

00:07:20: A lot of people use machine learning for optimization or having very smooth, pleasing and optimized results.

00:07:31: But what I'm personally interested in is understanding that the computer has its affordances and limitations And me as an artist also have my affordances & limitations.

00:07:46: What i try to do kind of domesticate this distance or to

00:07:53: close it,

00:07:55: meaning that I don't want a computer.

00:07:58: Yeah when i'm developing an agent... ...I am not interested in developing an Agent That can imitate human behavior but I try to see It as very different entity than it is with its own perception and then trying to play with that.

00:08:17: And yeah, I don't really look for optimization but even sometimes look for maybe moments of what i call mutual destabilization where the algorithms are used in a way to kind of maybe refuse or push back.

00:08:38: My general goal is to find collaborative aesthetic discovery in working with the computer specifically through sound and improvisation.

00:08:51: Do you

00:08:52: see AI more as a collaborator?

00:08:53: or rather, is it tool?

00:08:56: I would say neither.

00:08:58: maybe yeah Neither kind of like satisfies me has an answer but because You know It's not really a tool for me Because they can have agency.

00:09:09: A tool is something that you pick up And then put down And you know, there's like this power hierarchy and a tool is again has its importance as does one thing.

00:09:25: That kind of static.

00:09:27: but at the same time I think it would be again reducing art if i say or being human If I said it's a collaborator.

00:09:39: because yeah that this kind of symmetry is also not really the picture that

00:09:45: I have in

00:09:45: my early understanding.

00:09:47: That it's a collaborator as, again... ...a system that can imitate my improvisation.

00:09:55: So yeah but what this to me?

00:09:58: It's some kind of an interlocutor so something i'm in dialogue with or at least thats' what I like it be.

00:10:06: Besides AI your work combines classical music technology and linguistics.

00:10:11: Is it a balance or does one area dominate?

00:10:31: What I do know is that sound is always the ground for me.

00:10:44: So even if i'm working with dancers, making an installation or doing a live performance... ...or when I am reading philosophy it sounds like the ground to me at least in my practice.

00:11:03: And yeah, I think the balance shifts for me.

00:11:07: and all these different things like motion capture technologies or machine learning models or linguistics as you mentioned.

00:11:19: They're all a way of articulating something

00:11:23: that exists in a sonic

00:11:27: intuition.

00:11:27: let's say

00:11:30: Are you aiming to achieve a kind of mutual Sonic development?

00:11:34: Yes, that's what I would say and me learning more about the model.

00:11:39: And then model Learning More About Me.

00:11:42: This is this again goes back to this collective aesthetic discovery That you know i'm interested in In What We Can Achieve Together That Me As An Artist Alone Could Not Have Achieved Or With something like a piano.

00:12:01: There's something that I can achieve with computers, but not with the piano.

00:12:06: and yeah as i said this dialogue conversation.

00:12:14: for me the emergence of it is really interesting.

00:12:19: How do you relate your work to this year's Blauers Rauschen theme between breath and algorithm?

00:12:25: I think it's really an interesting coincidence because these series of performances that i'm recently doing, and also do it under the title between Flesh & Inference which was like a magical match for theme.

00:12:45: For example in my case when working with dancers or myself with motion captures taking it very literally It's my body movement, it's kind of like my breath that is getting fed into the system as data.

00:13:01: And then there's an algorithm that kinda deals with it and makes a decision based on that... ...based on the analysis to generate something in return.

00:13:12: so its definitely the conversation between two and relates a lot to embodied knowledge for me.

00:13:21: And yeah, also again going back to the idea of not going for optimization.

00:13:31: Working with a body and a computer was having in mind that they are very different forms of intelligence... ...and kind making creative use of that gap is what interests me.

00:13:47: For example the machine can be quite sensitive.

00:13:51: If the sensors are said to be quite sensible, then if I'm doing a movement or a dancer is doing a moment there hesitation their tension that maybe they're not even aware of it's getting fed into the algorithm and the algorithm kind dancer into a different direction if I'm talking about an improvisational setting in general.

00:14:21: Thank you, Farsane and Merse for these insights!

00:14:24: We now look forward to experiencing these two performances live... ...and discovering how sound body & technology interact in real time.

00:14:34: You've been listening to Blauers Rauschen podcast.

00:14:37: Thanks to our guests and thanks to all listeners, please find more information & episodes on our website at blauesrauschen.de And feel free join us in the festival!