Holly Herndon Mills College Masters Thesis [PDF]

Zitiervorschau

Embodiment in Electronic Music Performance Thesis Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Composition Mils College, 2010 by Holly Herndon

Approved by:

__________________ James Fei Director of Thesis

__________________ Fred Frith Head, Music Department

_____________________ Sandra C. Greer Provost and Dean of the Faculty

1

Reading Committee:

_______________________ Maggi Payne

_______________________ Les Stuck

2

3

Contents

Introduction

5

The Definition and Philosophical Ideas Surrounding Embodiment

7

and Performance The Voice as Illustration of Embodied Performance

17

My Work as Embodied Performance

21

Conclusion

28

Appendix

29

Bibliography

30

4

Introduction This thesis explores how the electronically processed voice in music performance may illustrate an understanding of electronic music performance as an embodied experience. For the purposes of this thesis it is important to explain the difference between the body and embodiment, and to make clear that by embodiment, I am not simply referring to corporeality. Inspired by the definition of embodiment taken from Katherine Hayles’ book, How We Became Post Human, I will attempt to discover what is at the heart of an embodied performance. She states that “embodiment may be defined through two polarities; one is a polarity that unfolds an interplay between the body as cultural construct and the experiences of embodiment that individual people within a culture feel and articulate and the other polarity can be understood as a dance between inscribing and incorporating practices.”1 This definition offers embodiment as situated experience dependent on history and environment, unique to individuals within a collective which is carried out through symbolic incorporation and recorded through inscription. I would like to expand upon her definition by stating that an individual’s understanding of embodiment is dependent on the time and space in which he or she is situated, time meaning place in history and personal journey, and space meaning environment, culture, and situation. My expansion of the definition of embodiment coincides with Hayles’ ideal, which imagines a "version of the posthuman that embraces the possibilities of information technologies without being seduced by fantasies of Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman (University of Chicago Press, 1999) 193. 1

5

unlimited power and disembodied immortality, that recognizes and celebrates finitude as a condition of human being, and that understands human life is embedded in a material world of great complexity, one on which we depend for our continued survival.”2 Through accepting the “finitude” of the current human condition, Hayles allows room for a continuum of generations and individuals to evolve with their own ideas of embodiment, specific to their own situations. In my work, technology in music is not about replacing my human body; it is about incorporating my body and understanding where my unique physical body fits in the complex technical world in which it is situated. In order to elucidate my idea of embodiment in electronic music performance, I will use the processed voice illustratively. I will argue that the voice, the original instrument and the first instrument to be widely mediated through technology, illustrates a continuum between the external and the internal of the body as a clear example of a gestalt unity of mind and body. I will make a distinction between the live and recorded voice in terms of embodiment through the comparison of inscription and incorporation. I will also argue that the processed voice is an extension of the natural voice. Regardless of how masked the original instrument may be, the intent of the singer is recognized. Although the sound may be heard as an autonomous instrument, it remains an embodied extension from its origins. I will express my belief that all live electronic music performance is embodied, and that ideas of embodiment are always evolving.

2

Ibid. 6

The Definition and Philosophical Ideas Surrounding Embodiment and Performance There are two main parts to Hayles’ definition of embodiment. I would like to look at each part. The first part deals with “cultural constructs” and “individual experiences” within a culture. Immediately she formulates embodiment as something that varies for each individual and their specific reality, which is always changing depending on the situation and moment. I will mention later, in respect to the work of Donna Haraway, why it is important that these constructs and experiences are allowed to evolve, or in other words, that the definition of embodiment be allowed to evolve. This part of the definition stresses the difference between the corporeal body and embodiment, the latter being an abstract cultural and social construct varying with each individual. This is an elastic understanding of embodiment, which has the flexibility to change with its environment. The second part of her definition, and the most relevant to my discussion of performance, deals with the movement between inscribing and incorporating practices. The “dance,” as Hayles calls it, between inscribing and incorporating practices, inscription being less embodied than incorporation, is what I perceive creates a difference between recording and live performance. There is by no means any hierarchy between the two practices, they are simply different ways in which embodiment is codified into a culture. “An incorporating practice (is) an action that is encoded into bodily memory by

7

repeated performances until it becomes habitual.”3 A symbolic movement such as the wave of a hand versus a symbol drawn on paper to represent a waving hand are examples given for the two forms. This highlights again the difference between stasis and flux in time and space, in that the inscribed practice may not be altered after it is inscribed without becoming something entirely new. If it is assumed that mind and body are one, as will be explored in this essay, and all music produced by human thought or intent is embodied, then why the distinction between live and recorded music? The distinction lies in the performers being situated in the same time and space as the audience (whether virtual space or actual space). With audio being a physical medium this idea is a little less clear, because the audio waves are traveling in real time from a recording to reach the listener. However, the act of music being made is no longer reacting to its surroundings and is therefore inscribed and not incorporated. With regard to live performance, Hayles writes: Because incorporating practices are always performative and instantiated they necessarily contain improvisational elements that are context specific... In contrast to inscription, which can be transported from context to context once it has been performed, incorporation can never be cut entirely free from its context.4 It is the “context” of a performance, or its placement in time and environment, that makes it embodied, or incorporated.

3

Ibid, 199.

4

Ibid. 200. 8

It is not uncommon to come across an article or conversation in which electronic music performance is portrayed as a disembodied experience for both the performer and listener. In some circles it is considered common knowledge that acoustic musical performances, with direct mechanical energy translated into sound, are experienced as embodied performance, while electronic performances, with often minimal physical gesturing, manifesting in foreign or alien sounds, are widely considered disembodied. In Human Bodies, Computer Music, Bob Ostertag writes about issues of the human body in computer music: I think most musicians working with electronics are probably not very satisfied with the state of electronic music today, and the crucial missing element is the body. Many of us have been trying to solve this problem for years but we have been notoriously unsuccessful at it. How to get one’s body into art that is as technologically mediated as electronic music, with so much technology between your physical body and the final outcome, is a thorny problem.5 There are two parts of this statement that I would like to dissect. First of all, there is the issue of defining technology. It appears that he is referring to digital or electronic technology, and not the technology of concert hall architecture or language, which would perhaps be considered less “problematic.” Yet at their inception these were profound transitory technologies in their own right. Technology by definition is the systematic approach to an art,6 which has been evolving since cognition. However, for the purposes Bob Ostertag, “Human Bodies, Computer Music,” Leonardo Music Journal Vol. 12 (2002): 11-14. 5

6

Miriam Webster Online, 6 May 2010, . 9

of this essay, when referring to technology, it will be within the context of the challenges posed by new technologies today, such as electronic and digital technology from the past fifty years. This is an important distinction when discussing the evolution of embodied understanding, as what one generation may consider disruptive or unnatural levels of technological mediation, the next may consider an incorporated given. Secondly this statement recognizes a mind/body duality which I do not acknowledge, and will clarify later in this paper. For Ostertag, a successful performance relies on the “identifiable bodily movement of the performer.”7 I do not believe that this element is essential for embodied performance. In the same essay, Ostertag writes that a generation younger than his enjoys the machine-like qualities of technologically crafted music in a way that his generation never will. Perhaps as ideas of embodiment evolve, younger generations experience embodiment in different ways than Ostertag. Katherine Hayles discusses the multitude of thinkers who see technology as disembodying on a wider philosophical scale. “It is not difficult to find pronouncements supporting an ideology of disembodiment in cultural theory, no less than in cybernetics.” She continues to reference Baudrillard who writes, “The human body, our body, seems superfluous in its proper expanse, in the complexity and the multiplicity of its organs, of its tissue and functions, because today everything is concentrated in the brains and the genetic code, which alone sum up the operational definition of being.”8 It is almost as if the body is considered to no longer be sufficient, or there is a fear that it will become so.

7

Ostertag, 11.

8

Hayles, 192. 10

With artists such as Stelarc, a performance artist concerned with augmenting the capability of the human body, announcing “THE BODY IS OBSOLETE,”9 it is no wonder that people are concerned with the future of human/machine interaction. Stelarc’s concerns are that the body is not modular enough, or well enough equipped to handle extreme flows of information. Allison Muri disagrees in a colorful essay that questions, “what kind of logic has given rise to this equation of technology with disembodied consciousness and superfluous bodies?”10 In this essay she traces the impact of human excrement on the globe as a means of establishing the unavoidable reality that we all still inhabit bodies. In doing so, Muri establishes that there are theoretical misconceptions about technology, and counters them with thoughts on a physical reality which has not been superseded by technological advancements and theory run amok. Instead of being concerned with the obsolescence of the body with a desire to preserve an existing idea of embodiment, I am interested in understanding how society may progress with a new understanding in a life mediated by technology. This understanding would be tied to its situational context, and is allowed to evolve as that context evolves. To continue with the mind body unity, I look to Merleau-Ponty’s writing on phenomenology. He writes, the psycho-physical event can no longer be conceived after the model of cartesian physiology and as the juxtaposition of a process itself and a cogitatio. The union

Stelarc, Stelarc Home Page, 5 April 2010, . 9

Allison Muri, “Of Shit and the Soul: Tropes of Cybernetic Disembodiment in Contemporary Culture,” Body & Society 9.3 (2003): 75. 10

11

of soul and body is not an amalgamation between two mutually external terms, subject and object, brought about by arbitrary decree. It is enacted at every instant in the movement of existence.11 Therefore any thought that is manifested in a physical gesture, is embodied. This idea is by no means new, and has been theorized by the likes of Heidegger over one hundred years ago. Heidegger considered a workman’s tools, and concluded that in the mind of the worker, the intent was to create with the tools, and thus was not concerned with the distinction between tool and hand. At that moment the tool became part of the body. To take it to the root, the very thought itself is embodied. In a recent experiment published in the Public Library of Science, cognitive scientist Anthony Chemero at Franklin & Marshall College writes, “The person and the various parts of their brain and the mouse and the monitor are so tightly intertwined that they’re just one thing. The tool isn’t separate from you. It’s part of you.”12 If this has been accepted by cognitive scientists, then why is it still “problematic” to experience a performance where there is little movement, if that movement is so highly mediated the audience cannot conceive of any direct correlation? Surely the problem is not in whether the performance or sound created is embodied, but rather how much theater is involved in musical performance. If there is no longer a mind/body duality, then any musical performance created live, even if only through cognition, carries with it an embodied sound. The mental processes involved in

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962) 102. 11

Brandon Keim, “Your Computer Really Is a Part of You” WIRED, 9 March 2010, (20 April 2010). 12

12

deciding how and why to produce sound situated in a specific space and time should be enough to justify embodiment. An obvious example of this idea would be Alvin Lucier’s piece, Music For Solo Performer. This piece solely uses brainwave activity to instigate speaker-coupled percussive instruments. Brandon LaBelle writes of this piece, Lucier’s work, in its obsession with physical phenomena, winds its way inevitably toward a heightened consideration of individual presence...What these works and many others, offer is the opportunity for anyone to experience, through a process that could be referred to as “musical,” auditory events as immediate and ever present. And further, to explore one’s own presence as situated within various spaces or environments and their conditions: in this regard the aural is used to investigate and discover how one occupies space and in turn, how one is implicated within auditory space and events...In this way, Lucier’s work may point toward a bridging of the external world with states of awareness on the part of the listener or participant as an internal experience, and further, a staging of subjectivity and its position within the world.13 Although there is very little physical body movement involved in this piece, and the sounds created are mediated by technological processes, this piece is a wonderful example of embodied musical performance. Granted that the actual sound sources are acoustic and the process is made clear for the audience, this piece clearly illustrates that all activity within the body, including that of the brain, is embodied. The “heightened consideration of individual presence” of which Labelle writes, draws attention to the Brandon LaBelle, Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (The Continuum International Publishing Group Int., 2006) 127-128. 13

13

performance as situated in time and space as a highly individualized perceptual experience. It amplifies the processes occurring in each individual in the performance event, making the performance paradoxically both unique and universal. It isn’t the human mechanical motion that connects with the audience, it is that the audience shares time and space with the body of the performer. Merleau-Ponty continues to discuss ideas of spatiality, or bodies within environments, which he refers to as body schema. “Psychologists often say that body schema is dynamic...indeed its spatiality is not, like that of external objects, or like that of ‘spacial sensations,’ a spatiality of position, but a spatiality of situation.”14 With this statement Merleau-Ponty makes the distinction between position and situation; situation is conditional to time and space (environment) and position is simply placement. “The body schema is finally a way of stating that my body is in-the-world.”15 This is an important distinction that recalls Hayles’ emphasis on the finitude of the human body. It is a dynamic understanding of the body which is always changing in accordance with the environment in which it is situated. It is also important to understand technology as being dynamic in time and space. Hayles writes, “Technology is not merely a medium to represent thoughts that already exist but is itself capable of dynamic interactions producing the thoughts it describes.”16 Why is the issue of embodiment in electronic music performance so important? For me it represents an opportunity for a progression of thought and understanding, 14

Merleau-Ponty, 114-115.

15

Ibid. 114.

16

Hayles, 217. 14

casting away nostalgic approaches toward technology and human integration and instead attempting to understand this relationship as already integrated. Francis Dyson draws on Mark Hansen’s work to argue a shift from the conception of the posthuman as an entity to a “field of relations.”17 Hansen predicts the extinction of inscription as we embrace technologies as inherently integrated, stating that “[in this context cognition is] not the operation of disembodied logical operations but of massively distributed nervous systems.”18 Expanding on Hansen’s argument that human nervous systems will adapt to learn in an emergent way, Dyson insists on shifting from “mind/body” dualism into Hansen’s concept of an integrative “mindbody.” Dyson includes all cognitive energy under the umbrella of embodiment, and also discusses the potential for a symbiotic evolution both of technology and of humans through technology. This optimistic vision of the possibilities unleashed by accepting technologies as integrated and embodied has important implications for electronic performance, which is currently challenged by stereotypes of disembodiment that burden, rather than advance, the medium. To quote Sartre, “ The intellectual is someone who...claims to question both received truths and the accepted behavior inspired by them.”19 I strongly believe in generating an intellectual climate fertile for such possibilities and am skeptical of barriers to progression. Donna Haraway sees the dichotomy between mind and body, man and machine as blurred, and celebrates their integration in the form of the cyborg. This cyborg offers to

17

Dyson, 159.

Mark Hansen, Embodying Technesis: Technology Beyond Writing (University of Michigan Press, 2000) 73. 18

19

Franco Berardi, The Soul at Work (MIT Press, 2009) 33. 15

her the opportunity to challenge social and cultural structures, bringing me back to the first part of Hayles’ definition of embodiment. Haraway writes of her Cyborg, “So my cyborg myth is about transgressed boundaries, potent fusions, and dangerous possibilities which progressive people might explore as one part of needed political work.”20 I see Haraway’s cyborg as liberating, allowing race, gender, and class to exist on a continuum where people may formulate and find new paradigms within which to exist. Haraway writes: The machine is us, our processes, an aspect of our embodiment. We can be responsible for machines; they do not dominate or threaten us. We are responsible for boundaries; we are they. Up till now (once upon a time), female embodiment seemed to be given, organic, necessary; and female embodiment seemed to mean skill in mothering and its metaphoric extensions. Only by being out of place could we take intense pleasure in machines, and then with excuses that this was organic activity after all, appropriate to females. Cyborgs might consider more seriously the partial, fluid, sometimes aspect of sex and sexual embodiment. Gender might not be global identity after all, even if it has profound historical breadth and depth.21 From this text I cannot help relating constrictive gender roles regarding embodiment with constrictive ideas of what an embodied performance might be. Once one is able to disregard said constructed “boundaries,” such as the idea that acoustic performance using Donna Haraway, Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century (Routledge, 1991) 20

21

Ibid. 16

physical movement is more embodied than laptop performance using a finger, or that female embodiment means skill in mothering, can there be enough space created for new configurations of thought. It is critically important that certain assumptions or stereotypes are questioned, addressing core elements and affording the flexibility to encourage, not foreclose, alternate configurations of thought and experience. Much work has been done to add gestural and performative movements to electronic music, whether it be with sensors or MIDI controllers, and many developers are still focusing on physical movement to “bring the body back” into electronics. As we saw with the Lucier piece, one does not necessarily need movement to create a sense of embodied performance. One needs to simply address the issue of creating an experience where the audience realizes that the performer is sharing that moment with them, that they are inhabiting the same time and space, and that the environment in which they are situated has some effect on the music performed. Irrespective of the steps necessary to satisfy individual concerns about this issue, I would hope that a consensus can be reached on the grave importance of addressing perceived truths and their consequent histories and behaviorisms.

The Voice as Illustration of Embodied Performance In order to illustrate clearly my idea of embodiment in technologically enhanced or created sounds, I chose the processed voice. The voice has been at the forefront of technological mediation, and is also the first instrument that humans learn to use. Its

17

continuum of internal to external negates the mind body divide, and is also an instrument that most people can relate to in some way. David Toop says of the voice: Voice is the sonic instrument with which we begin as humans—beginning as an intricate folding of inner and outer, ear, lungs, throat, skull, and mouth, abstract thought and physical projection, biology and consciousness, breath and listening and which develops as the articulation of impulsion, feeling, word, speech, paraliguistic noise, even musicality, resonating in time, mind and the air of open space. Throughout the 20th century, the voice was a prime site for the redefinition of the body in relation to the machine age, particularly during a rapidly developing era of disembodying technologies such as wireless telegraphy, radio, telephone, cinema, television, the tape recorder, electronic amplification and the microphone. Temporal shift, spatial displacement and the physical absence of the vocalizing agent, both implicit and explicit in such communicative extensions of the body, suggest a disintegration of the image of the body as a symbol of unity.22 The voice has been a guinea pig for a variety of technologies. Growing up in a time of telephones, I was able to place body with voice and connect with loved ones around the world. Having grown up with the technology, there was no “disintegration of the image of the body as a symbol of unity” as Toop suggests, I understood the voice to represent the body as a whole. Francis Dyson writes,

David Toop, “Sound Body: The Ghost of a Program,” Leonardo Music Journal Vol. 15, (2005): 29. 22

18

As the first attribute to become disembodied through the electronic transmission, the voice has anchored all other transmissions...The importance of the voice in this respect cannot be underestimated. Why was it, for instance, that even though telephony radically disassociated the voice from the body and the speaker from their geographic presence, somehow, culturally, a person’s denuded telephonic voice came to speak for their whole being?23 The telephone is a wonderful example of a technology first used on the voice, which over time developed from disembodied voice in the classical sense, to embodied incorporation with the power to give the listener the experience of actually being with the person on the end of the line. Although it has taken decades for the telephone to assimilate into a familiar bodily experience, it has transitioned successfully. I remember long pubescent telephone marathons, pressing the receiver as close to my cheek as possible, as if to become closer to the person on the other end. The voice already evinces an abstract understanding of self and embodiment, and is therefore illustrative to my point. I do however believe that the voice may be used as a metaphor for all musical performance, whether acoustic or electronic. One of the main arguments of posthumanism is that there is no longer a divide between mind and body, or the internal and external. The voice clearly illustrates the continuum between the internal and external as air travels from within the lungs and passes through the larynx and lips to become sound. There is internal and external activity in all music making, whether it is an internal muscle flexing to push a controller

23

Dyson, 8-9. 19

or string or air passing through a trumpet. With the voice however, one does not need to understand another level of mechanics to understand how muscle activity is manifesting into a sound, making it fertile territory as an illustration of embodiment. The voice is also useful for the discussion of intent in performance. Studies have shown that when a subject understands the intent of an action, they are much more responsive to that action. “It is likely that part of the musical experience is the embodied perception of the performer’s intentions.”24 When a vocalist stands on a stage and creates input for the microphone, and something, regardless of how removed from the original sound, is released from another location in the concert setting, research suggests that the audience is still aware of some degree of intent on behalf of the vocalist, as I will now clarify by citing this quote from Greg Corness. Recent research in psychology has begun to explore the function of a class of neurons referred to as mirror neurons. Classical mirror neurons are a set of neurons in the pre-motor region of the brain that fire both when performing a goal-oriented action and when observing the same action performed by another. These findings imply that there is a pre-cognitive physical reaction to the sight of an action that provides the viewer with an understanding of the performer’s action. A key to the functioning of these neurons is that the action must be perceived as goal oriented, although it is not necessary to observe the goal.25

Greg Corness, “The Musical Experience through the Lens of Embodiment,” Leonardo Music Journal Vol. 18 (2008): 23. 24

25

Ibid. 20

I believe that, in this instance, the fact that it is unnecessary to observe the goal is parallel to not understanding how a certain sound manifests from a perceived input. One may not understand the electro-mechanical process involved, but an empathy is established. Personally when I see a finger moving on a laptop, I also understand an intent and empathize. For illustrative purposes, however, I prefer to look at the use of the voice as a clear physical gesture that most people understand. This research would suggest that witnessing a voice interact with electronics, whether distorted beyond recognition or simply rounded out by, say, a reverb effect in a concert hall, allows the audience to understand the act of incorporation through a gesture they may relate to their own bodies. Perhaps using the human voice, as I will explain I did in my own piece 195, amplifies this empathy and allows the audience an easy access point.

My Work as Embodied Performance In approaching my work, 195, my initial goal was to create a piece, which referenced early vocal music, for its purity of vocal style and tonal harmonies, and more abrasive electronic noise. The piece involved six female vocalists in total: two altos, two mezzo-sopranos, and two sopranos, holding microphones whose inputs were all being processed and spatialized through my computer. It was written in eight short sections. The first section was a conversation between soft feedback and subtle light vocal harmonies, each dynamically and timbrally mirroring the other. Section two introduced early vocal choral styles with minimal FM synthesis highlights. The third section used rhythmic panning of electronics to bath the audience in sound, while the vocals

21

percussively punched through the texture with a combination of chords and extended vocal techniques. Section four consecutively introduced each soprano’s soft whispers spatialized to appear from behind the audience. The fifth section began without amplification, with the singers holding their microphones to their sides. As the section developed, the singers would alternate between amplified and unamplified. While they were amplified, I would move their voices between the front and the back pairs of speakers, creating movement and contrast. At the end of section five the vocalists used extended techniques, including guttural breaths and vocal fry, while being processed to create a rhythmic and electronic effect in surround. Section six was similar to section three with slight variation. Section seven reintroduced the early vocal music elements, and included a descant soprano part. Section eight was similar to section one, yet in reverse, ending the piece with a soft soprano exchange with light feedback. As a performer in an early vocal music ensemble, I reveled in the tonal quality created when our voices, devoid of vibrato, were able to meld together as one voice. The connection that this vocal timbre created with the other performers was an incredibly immersive experience for me as a performer. I empathize with the vocalists when listening to early music because I understand the experience of blending among the performers. This is a similar immersive feeling I have when listening to enveloping electronics which through panning and multi-channel spatialization can create a tangible physical affect. That both musical palettes resonate with me in such a physical way led me to further explore similarities and differences in the performative material. It was clear to me from the beginning that the human voice, both processed and unprocessed,

22

with respect to expression, weight, and physicality, is equal to electronically produced music. I didn’t see the voice as a way to bring in the audience to engage with my electronics; I saw them as having a symbiotic relationship, each pushing and pulling at the audience. The voice creates a certain empathy with the audience, showing intent of purpose and revealing a personal physical instrument. The acoustic component of the piece exposes the personal voices of the singers, which is then expanded as the voices begin to travel around the four speakers spread throughout the concert hall. Through the use of spatialization and light reverberation effects I was able to allow the voices to travel around the room and touch the audience in an intimate manner. At one point the audience hears whispers coming from the back of the auditorium, with the singers intensely occupying the space. The transition between acoustic, dynamically amplified and immersive surround created a linear portrayal of how the voice may be extended through technology. It was my intention to first present something familiar, and then incrementally extend to a more abstracted, yet inherently connected combination. This illustrated that some technologies, which theoretically are just as disembodying as others, may be perceived as less so through familiarity. Being amplified from the front of the house, and seeing a singer perform, draws a direct connection between those two sound sources. As soon as the voice is placed behind the audience, although the same electronic and mechanical process occurs, the connection is abstracted one degree further. Although perhaps less obviously intimate, the electronics were used in a similar way. The rushing sweeps of the panned FM synthesis washed over the audience and enveloped them in

23

their texture. The steady beat of a low frequency oscillator pulsated through the collective body. In the time leading up to my preparation for 195, I was developing an as yet unrealized piece using two sub-woofers that was intended to create a sexual experience for the audience. The idea was to completely remove my body as performer, only focusing on electronics, and to program the sound in such a way as to incite a physical reaction from the listeners. Although this piece was never realized and was much less effective in the mock-up stage than expected, I still believe that after much development it would be possible to incite a physical reaction. Whether that reaction would be perceived as sexual is hard to predict. However, I did realize that this approach was too abstract to effectively express my intent, and instead of completely removing the performers body from my process, I needed to include the performers body to further explore my ideas. This led me to choose to write for a group of vocalists, whose bodies, along with my own would be situated in the moment of the performance. This brings me back to Merleau-Ponty’s body schema, drawing attention to how bodies exist in a specific time and place, or situation. The temperature of the room, the lighting, stage fright, and audience are examples of elements that immediately affect the vocalists as bodies performing in a shared environment. Through having bodies on stage, I hoped to create an empathetic connection with the audience. As I began to delve further into ideas of embodiment in performance I began to write exploratory elements into the piece. I used spatialization as a way to draw attention to what is understood as embodied sound in vocal performance. In the middle section the

24

singers start out singing without amplification. Together, they raise the microphones and suddenly the sound is both localized and removed. The audience sees their mouths open yet hears a sound coming from behind. This is then repeated with the sound appearing from the front. This was not meant to disorient the audience; it was simply meant to explore the effects of spatialization and amplification on perception. This section concludes with harsh metallic processing accompanied by synthesized electronics. The timbre of the processed voices was similar to that of the synthesized electronic FM stabs, in effect presenting the voices on par with the electronics. The heavily processed vocals only appear for a moment, strategically placed at the end of the partially amplified spatialized section to show fluidity between the unprocessed acoustic voice and processed amplified voice. By using sparse, yet rhythmic writing, the audience was well aware that the sounds were coming from the singers mouths, and that they had been transformed from their natural state. The audience could see the singer breath into the microphone and hear an electronically altered version come out in surround, as an extension of the original sound. I would like to briefly compare my role as laptop performer and the roles of the singers in terms of embodiment. The electronics were set up in a way that I could launch a scene in Ableton, which would send a MIDI note to each clip, triggering a patternstorage Max/MSP preset for spatialization. This simple set up afforded me the freedom to conduct and play at the same time. The score was tightly written, and there was little room for improvisation, although there were a few moments when the possibility to improvise was coded into the system. Even though I was merely pressing a button on my

25

laptop, I believe that the audience felt that I was engaged in the same time and space as they were, amplified through my gestural conducting. There was room for error, and all triggers occurred live. My right hand, the hand performing the electronics, was following my left hand, the conducting hand, with the same urgency as the vocalists. We were all working together as one cohesive unit. My conducting arm benefitted my laptop performance arm, and visa versa. This brings me to my first argument: reconsidering the mind/body duality. My position as conductor meant that my cognitive process was translated into a motion that did not directly create sounds mechanically, however I believe the audience understood this motion as a mental and physical process which kept the pace of the ensemble and to which the laptop was also tied. I was seen as an integral aspect of the performance itself. Even though the parameters had been pre-determined in the Ableton system, some sound generation and all triggering mechanisms were performed live. FM synthesis was generating most of the audio live, and there was very little sampled material. Although both material sources melded seamlessly and I had no objection to using just one or the other, I liked the idea of mixing both together. A sample played live in comparison with a trigger of live FM synthesis may sound identical, and the process of playing it may even be identical, suggesting that each scenario is a live performance in the fact that it requires my trigger to launch the sound. If something happens within the time space that I am situated, the triggering will be altered and the performance consequently changed. The performance is an act of incorporation, in that it is reacting to that environment. The samples, although inscribed, become incorporated into practice as

26

soon as they are used as a performative tool. I recently began inscribing this piece for fixed media, and the process is extremely different. I am able to pick and choose each second and mix and match the best takes. Once this process is completed it is unchangeable. I can re-mix it, however this would be a separate work from the original, and a new work would emerge as a new variation. The inscribed action is static and fixed, whereas with each performance of the piece, there is inevitable flux. I am also recording each vocalist separately, which is an entirely different performance experience for both the vocalist and the conductor. There is also the idea of intention behind a performance. From the perspective of the audience I can only speculate that they understood intent from the singers’ vocal energy, my movements as conductor, and the laptop interaction; all synchronized, focused energy moving toward a common goal. Had there been a way for me to conduct without using my hand, I would have done so. Would that have taken away from the performative aspect of the piece? Perhaps. The piece would have been no less embodied however, with all the performers reacting and beating together in synthesis. This brings me to realize that in my future performative work, I will concentrate on giving the audience the sensation that I am sharing the same time and space with them, and that my work is goal oriented. I will not be concerned with what my body is doing, as it could range from full body expression to minute gesture. When possible I hope to build in a reaction to my environment in a natural way, taking into consideration environmental aspects such as the acoustics, unpredictable mood, or audience.

27

Conclusion In this thesis I have discussed issues of embodiment in electronic music performance. In doing so, I used the definition of embodiment put forward by Katherine Hayles in her groundbreaking book, How We Became Posthuman. In my work, I applied this definition to electronic music performance using the voice as an illustrative instrument. The voice highlights a mind body continuum, which I used as an argument against disembodiment in electronic music. I also discussed the difference between inscription and incorporation, as parallel to recording and performance. Embodiment was further discussed through reference to scientific studies showing that witnessing intent, even without knowledge of outcome, can be enough for an audience to empathize with a performer. This was all tied together by my desire to fully understand what makes a performance embodied, in order to address the issue in my personal work. In conclusion, I believe that to effectively address this issue further, one must challenge perceived constructs to clear pathways for alternate configurations of thought and experience.

28

Appendix

Accompanying DVD: Video Documentation of 195 by Holly Herndon Filmed by Svetlana Voronina Audio Documentation of 195 by Holly Herndon Room Recording by Mathew Hettich Score Documentation of 195 by Holly Herndon

29

Bibliography: Corness, Greg. The Musical Eperience through the Lens of Embodiment. Leonardo Music Journal 2008: 21-24. Print. Dyson, Frances. Sounding New Media: Immersion and Embodiment in the Arts and Culture. Berkeley: University of California, 2009. Print. Eshun, Kodwo. More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction. London: Quartet, 1998. Print. Haraway, Donna. Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. Routledge, 1991. Web. 5 Apr. 2010. . Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago, 1999. Print. Keim, Brandon. “Your Computer Really Is a Part of You." Wired. 9 Mar. 2010. Web. 5 Apr. 2010. . LaBelle, Brandon. Background Noise Perspectives on Sound Art. New York [u.a.]: Continuum, 2007. Print. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media; the Extensions of Man. New York: McGrawHill, 1964. Print. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. New York: Humanities, 1962. Print. Muri, Allison. "Of Shit and the Soul: Tropes of Cybernetic Disembodiment in 30

Contemporary Culture." Body & Society 9.3 September, 2003: 73-92. Print. Ostertag, Bob. "Human Bodies, Computer Music." Leonardo Music Journal 2002: 11-14. Print. Stelarc. "OBSOLETE BODY." S T E L A R C. Web. 05 Apr. 2010. . Toop, David. "Sound Body: The Ghost of a Program." Leonardo Music Journal Vol. 15, 2005: 28-35. Print.

31