Abstract
Objects do not necessarily reach completion once they are designed, for their shapes do not freeze once designed and manufactured, but keep evolving and developing—they are put back at stake, taken over, and thereby relieved—through a number of practices. Just like with movement, whose notion had never truly been comprehended until it was put into practice via “chronophotography”, we slowly get a mental picture of them, and become increasingly familiar with them. Today, more than ever, there is a point in defending this argument—whose outcomes stem from traditional philosophical analyses, as well as from historical and anthropological data. This theory enables one to take to contemporary and technological means comprehensively, bearing in mind that these very means do not limit themselves to the mere trivial act of programming items, but that, on the contrary, they can open the above-mentioned items up to interpretation. This phenomenon—interpretation—contains musical undertones, among which is improvisation. “Users” are like or could be seen as musicians bringing to life a score that would not contain the whole range of components pertaining to its musicality. Writing is a proposal here. Not an organizing agent. What has yet to be shaped—and will be practice-induced—is the soon-to-come concert of objective proposals triggered by our argument. Relying on contemporary, music-related data, we hereby intend to back up the open forms and ways of orchestrating this concert.
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- 1.
Our argument bears some similarities with the concept of “objectile” coined by Gilles Deleuze (Deleuze 1998). According to him, “the goal [of the object understood as an “objectile”] is no longer defined by an essential form, but reaches a pure functionality, as if breaking down a family of curves, framed by parameters, inseparable from a series of possible declensions or from a surface of variable curvature that it itself is describing.”
- 2.
Used here in a metaphorical sense. This term originally describes the phenomenon whereby light rays produced by a non-permanent source of light are diverted from their initial straight trajectory when skimming the edges of an opaque obstacle.
- 3.
Différance is a French term coined by Jacques Derrida , deliberately homophonous with the word “différence.” “Différance” plays on the fact that the French word “différer” means both “to defer” and “to differ.”
- 4.
According to the etymological origin of the word (concerned with the apophysis), from the ancient Greek αποφυσις composed of apo, “out of”, and of phusis, “growth”; what grows and unfolds (or multiplies as is the case here) “out of the frame.”
- 5.
Stemming from the Latin words processus and procedere, “the act of venturing out of the entrenchment.”
- 6.
“Compossibility” is a philosophical concept made up by Gottfried Leibniz. Its logical scope is more restricted than that of logical possibility. To exist, a thing must not only be possible, it must also be compossible with other things that constitute the real world. In mathematics, two elements that can co-exist in the same space are said to be compossible.
- 7.
Derived from ancient Greek πρῶτος, proto, which means “first.” “Proto-object” here refers to the wide variety of objects (still being tried out) labeled “communicating objects”, (“networked objects” with a reference to the Internet of things, “neo-objects”, “hyperobjects” or “open objects”) of significant interest to a number of researchers and designers today.
- 8.
In a way, he asserts that there is no such thing as a “pure” instrument, and that each instrument refers to a “sounding object.” In other words, an instrument can only achieve self-fulfillment when it is able to make sound (“pouvoir-sonner”).
- 9.
Not pertaining to the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication/transmission model usually organized in “silos”, but to that of “intelligent” objects that are connected (“internetized”), and thereby open to various solicitations by the subject (or to impulsions by other objects) and context-aware. These objects turn into agents of sorts likely to synchronize themselves within a multi-object environment. Then, new inter-object communication protocols begin to develop.
- 10.
Concept addressed by Bernard Sève as part of his theoretical aesthetical reflection.
- 11.
The spectral school (György Ligeti , Gérard Grisey , Iannis Xenakis —to name but the most famous—and Philippe Hurel and Philipe Leroux —two rising stars) is labeled as such due to it being rooted in the spectral decomposition of the sound of music (this is a paradigmatic posture). Musicians who follow this trend aim to synthesize by way of an orchestra or an instrumental ensemble the evolution of sounds or sound effects over time. To do so, they resort to microtonal orchestration techniques based on an amalgamated perception: that of tone and timbre and that of the continuous transformation processes undergone by materials under the effect of time. The composers of this school of thought then upgrade the way they write for traditional instruments with electro-acoustic techniques such as frequency modulation, reinjection loops, spectrum compression or sound dilatation. Aesthetically speaking, this school opposes serial music, and more broadly, combinatory music in which complex sound is considered as a continuum, a microscopic parallel to the macroscopic formal continuity describing a piece of music. In a word, the aim is to process the “space-time raw material.” Therefore, intervals are a crucial element for composers to take into account (interval-based writing). Horatiu Radulescu , another figure of this movement, implemented a new type of spectral writing (based on “scordatura spectrale”), featuring irregular intervals that are very scarce in the low-pitched passages, but gradually increase as the music reaches the high notes. This is, no doubt, a gesture meant to inflect perception.
- 12.
Work recorded in February 1999 at the Air Wave studios in Chicago. This piece is the outcome of long-term musical research: “Otra Music”, improvisation in Buenos Aires between 1963 and 1970, AirWave (mastering), Chicago, July 2000.
- 13.
Reference to Arnold Schönberg’s harmonic or tonal music, one of the major voices of those who reflect upon and question the breaches in the linear and continuous flow of time.
- 14.
Structure pertains to a network of eventualities organized beforehand, whereas form organizes a journey, a course, it defines how to conduct possibilities (which prior to this became probabilities within the reality of the world).
References
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Baudrillard J (1996) The system of objects (trans: Benedict J). Verso, London
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Bihanic, D., Huyghe, PD. (2015). Form Follows Practice. In: Bihanic, D. (eds) Empowering Users through Design. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13018-7_1
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