2007: Expression and Its Discontents: Toward an Ecology of Musical Creation

Abstract

We describe the prevailing model of musical expression, which assumes a binary formulation of “the text” and “the act,” along with its implied roles of composer and performer. We argue that this model not only excludes some contemporary aesthetic values but also limits the communicative ability of new music interfaces. As an alternative, an ecology of musical creation accounts for both a diversity of aesthetic goals and the complex interrelation of human and non-human agents. An ecological perspective on several approaches to musical creation with interactive technologies reveals an expanded, more inclusive view of artistic interaction that facilitates novel, compelling ways to use technology for music. This paper is fundamentally a call to consider the role of aesthetic values in the analysis of artistic processes and technologies.

Appendices

Author Commentary: Discontent in Retrospect

Michael Gurevich and Jeffrey Treviño

As is to be expected in a maturing field, a series of existential questions, largely centered on the theme of expression, were bubbling up from within the NIME community around the time this paper was written: What does it mean to be expressive? How do I know if my new interface is expressive? In the spirit of, but also in response to this type of soul-searching, “Expression and its Discontents” endeavored to illuminate a communicative or information-theoretic model of music that appeared to underlie much of the discourse around “musical expression.” In this regard, the paper continues to serve as a caveat that the uncritical assimilation of such a model and its contingent notions of musical expression may unintentionally limit NIME’s epistemological frame.

With hindsight, the paper reads as a call to reposition the evaluative apparatus of the NIME community in a nuanced, humanistic discourse rather than a (necessarily) reductive engineering discourse centered on both the signal-noise metaphors that seeped into musical and acoustical discourse at the turn of the twentieth century (Thompson 2002) and the directional, source-channel-destination, codec model of communication that arose immediately after WWII (Kline 2015). No matter how much we might want evaluation to become straightforward, we argue, it shouldn’t be, and something is wrong if it is.

It is interesting to note that an allied perspective appeared contemporaneously within the CHI community, where the gradual, tacit emergence of a new paradigm of HCI research had at times clashed with the assumptions embodied in the underlying metaphors of information theory and cybernetics. In drawing attention to the so-called “third paradigm,” Harrison, Tatar and Sengers argued that multiple discourses can fruitfully coexist but implored authors to audit (and even self-report) their “epistemological commitments” (Harrison et al. 2007). It is precisely this kind of self-critical auditing that our paper requires of future contributions.

But in a way, this argument falls short in the eyes of its own criticism by implying a single, correct mode of evaluation for NIME’s intellectual apparatus; that is, in the end, it advances its own form of relatively straightforward evaluation by centrally positioning interdisciplinary criticality. It assumes that NIME is or should be, primarily, an interdisciplinary intellectual community that fuses and places in discourse with one another a variety of evaluative frameworks from diverse academic perspectives. The argument asserts a single evaluative framework in which mutually elucidating perspectives may complicate evaluation, with the ultimate benefit of shedding light on the interrogated creative enterprise.

But this is just one possible framework for NIME’s intellectual apparatus. It’s also possible that the community might be regarded as fruitfully as a multidisciplinary rather than an interdisciplinary community, in which various complementary but nonetheless compartmentalized disciplinary skills and methods participate together without challenging one another. As Petrie discerns, “Interdisciplinary efforts... require more or less integration and even modification of the disciplinary subcontributions while the inquiry is proceeding” (Petrie 1976). The lurking, unanswerable question becomes: to what extent should the NIME community regard as valid the relatively verified, multidisciplinary construction, use, and analysis of new interfaces, and to what extent should it demand an inherently critical, interdisciplinary practice that constantly renegotiates and rebalances the impinging and relevant skills and methodologies at play in the analyzed work?

“Expression and its Discontents” reads also as a diagnostic tribute to the experimental aesthetic framework of some of our favorite music: our own interests in NIME come as much from augmented concert tubas as from Cage’s experiments with phonograph needles; the modernist aesthetics of the latter, upon reflection, seemed strangely unrepresented in the community’s discourse. Why? The text points out that these aesthetics were left unrepresented not because the community isn’t interested in them—as obvious from the projects and performances presented at NIME conferences then and now—but because we had committed our community’s discourse to models that can’t address these artistic practices.

Andrew Johnston has since suggested that the preposition “for” in the title of NIME presumes a causal relationship in which “musical expression” is a “stable construct” that constrains the design space of new interfaces by confining them to existing paradigms, thereby limiting the field’s ability to address new modes of music-making not grounded in nineteenth-century aesthetics (Johnston 2016). In resonance with our ecological conception of musical creation, replacing “for” with “and,” Johnston proposes, would situate aesthetic experimentation and novelty in interface design on equal footing. This is perhaps an indication that NIME still struggles to reconcile experimental and exploratory practices with a discourse anachronistically rooted in traditional paradigms and evaluative mechanisms.

Expert Commentary: Interfaces and Expression in Context: Tracing Relationships in a Complex Ecosystem

Andrew Johnston

What strikes me when I re-read Michael Gurevich and Jeffrey Treviño’s article is how well it articulates the need for NIME practitioners and researchers to embrace the richness, complexity and contradictions inherent in the relationships between humans and the various objects they use to make music.

Gurevich and Treviño argue that at the time of writing (2007) NIME had, tacitly, adopted a model of musical expression based on the western classical music tradition in which musical scores, created by composers, are interpreted by performers, who, through careful variations of the provided musical raw material, embed emotional codes in sound. In this model the score acts as a kind of carrier which is modulated by the performer who interprets the work. Those of us who learned traditional instruments at an early age may recollect our teachers applying this model, saying something along the lines of, “Ok, now we’ve learned the notes, let’s add the expression!”

Dobrian and Koppelman, in the preceding NIME (2006) had conceded that, “In the case of ‘programmable instruments’and live control of compositional computer music algorithms, the distinction between compositional expression and performative expression may be blurred somewhat” (Dobrian and Koppelman 2006). Gurevich and Treviño go further, showing that in much contemporary music the line is dissolved completely, and arguing that, while this may be inconvenient, to pretend otherwise is dangerous, even ‘reprehensible.’

They propose instead a more flexible and dynamic, ‘ecological,’model of musical creation which, “focuses on the relationships between composers, performers and listeners as a part of a system that includes external factors such as genre, historical reception, sonic context and performance scenario.” This ecological approach views music making as a complex, dynamic interplay between people, objects and the broader environment. This view easily accommodates the composer-score-performer-audience model but recognises the diversity of new music practices, which are particularly relevant when exploring new mediums of expression.

It is interesting to note that while the performances presented at NIME events would, generally speaking, be described as experimental and exploratory, the models of expression that provide the foundations for evaluation of new instruments/interfaces are often more traditional. NIME researchers, often working in universities where ‘scientific’approaches are equated with serious work, often feel compelled to produce unbiased evidence that shows the interfaces they have created are effective. The logic is unassailable: if you are proposing a new interface or instrument of some kind you need to demonstrate its value if your paper is to be convincing.

However, in order to make ‘unbiased,’‘objective’and convincing measurements of effectiveness, the complex, ephemeral and socially constructed elements that constitute music making are often drastically simplified. Researchers are tempted to lock down and quantify creative practice so that the performances on one instrument can be compared with another, or, at least, evaluated across consistent criteria. As Gurevich and Treviño make clear, while the motivations may be pure and the conduct of the research itself exemplary, it ignores a fundamental issue: instrument design shapes creative practice and creative practice shapes instrument design. While it might be tempting or temporarily convenient to pretend otherwise, it is hardly objective or scientific.

The ecological approach articulated in this paper implies, to me, that ‘evaluation,’in the narrow sense of the word, only makes sense in particular, limited circumstances. If we make interfaces which facilitate the playing of Prokofiev in the style of Martha Argerich, then evaluation is comparatively straightforward—we have a clear goal and measures of success. However, this is not usually what NIME practitioner-researchers do. Instead we tend to explore new instruments to see what new kinds of musical activities they might afford.

Eric F. Clarke observes that new musical artefacts, “...help both to sustain existing musical behaviors (i.e., they help to perpetuate the musical ecosystem) and to make new behaviors possible” (Clarke 2005). If we accept this, what are the implications for NIME practitioner-researchers? Embracing an ecological model of musical expression should lead us towards broad examinations of, and reflections on, creative practice and reduced emphasis on more simplistic ‘evaluations.’It encourages simultaneous consideration of instrument/interface characteristics, the creative practices of people who use them, the broader contexts of use and, importantly, the habits, mechanisms and visions which bind them together. In other words, it places new interfaces AND musical expression on equal footing as dynamic and important areas of practice-based research for NIME.

In articulating so neatly and forcefully the need to examine and document the full ecosystem of instruments, performers, composers, designers, audiences, etc., Gurevich and Treviño produced a well-timed call to arms. Following through on the implications of their argument is still very much work in progress.