220C/Alexander

PROJECT PARAMETERS

This is mostly a humanities reading-based project on computer music, and most of it is just me getting a grip on the literature (and on ChuCK and music coding), rather than directed towards producing an application for any of the reflections on the topic. The goal of the practice-based computer music component is to provide some scholarly infrastructure for future music collaborations with manuscript scholars.

• 1) Reading books about sound studies and computer music in humanities theory
• 2) A tool that helps scholars use noise as a form of theoretical scholarship on visual images
• 3) a 3 to 5-page paper discussing the work’s theoretical implications

Learning objectives:

• To go from no experience at all with computer music to being competent in its discourses.
• To read widely in sound studies, music theory, computer music history, sound poetics, etc
• To learn to approach sound and music from a number of interdisciplinary angles.
• To build/solidify proficiency in ChuCK, P5.js, and Live/Max
• To think about music production as a form of practice for a scholar-practitioner

UPDATES

[updates to come -- they are cursory at the moment, as I am looking through my records to see what I read]

Week 8

I decide to focus on images of architecture, spatial constructions (such as maps), and other kinds of figurations of entanglements -- they are perhaps the optimal object of the tool. I spent this week building out the interface, making it possible for users to customize. I ran into problems while trying to "chromatize": i.e. it was difficult to allow people to choose base colors for parametrizations. The next step is to allow people to save "journeys" in the images.

Week 7

• Wang, G., P. R. Cook, S. Salazar. 2015. "ChucK: A Strongly-timed Computer Music Language." Computer Music Journal. 39(4):10-29.
• Tobias Wilke, Sound Writing: Experimental Modernism and the Poetics of Articulation (University of Chicago Press, 2022)

After meeting with Kevin, I ported the code to P5.js, which took a lot more time than I had anticipated.

Week 6

• Parker VanValkenburgh, Alluvium and Empire: The Archaeology of Colonial Resettlement and Indigenous Persistence on Peru's North Coast (The University of Arizona Press, 2021)
• Edmund Husserl, The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, Fourth Printing edition (Indiana University Press, 1964);
• Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, Routledge Classics (London ; New York: Routledge, 2012).

I build out the interface I have in mind in Processing. I consider the idea of a "reduction" (reducción) in entangled histories of sound and space. I experiment with a trove of images from forthcoming article from ILAC professor to see what kinds of arguments can be mounted from the noise.

Week 5

• Jacob Gaboury, Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics (MIT Press, 2021)
• Christoph Cox, Sonic Flux: Sound, Art, and Metaphysics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2018), https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo27886631.html.

I finally have a project defined! I begin to consult with ILAC scholars. Selected project parameters, began to build Processing code -- built out lightboxes, etc. I work through tutorials on Processing, OSC, and try to hook it up to ChuCK.

Weeks 3 & 4

Readings

• Carolyn Kane, Chromatic Algorithms: Synthetic Color, Computer Art, and Aesthetics after Code (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014).
• Brian Kane, Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice, Reprint edition (Oxford University Press, 2016)
• Douglas Kahn, Earth Sound Earth Signal: Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts (University of California Press, 2013)
• Kim-Cohen, Seth. In the Blink of an Ear: Toward a Non-Cochlear Sonic Art. Illustrated edition. New York: Continuum, 2009.

I experiment with the idea of chroma, of color as a metaphor for sound. I spend the weekend at the studio experimenting with throwing colors onto sounds.

Week 2

Readings

• V. J. Manzo and Will Kuhn, Interactive Composition: Strategies Using Ableton Live and Max for Live, 1st edition (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015).
• Jan Schnupp, Israel Nelken, and Andrew J. King, Auditory Neuroscience: Making Sense of Sound (The MIT Press, 2012)
• Veit Erlmann, Reason and Resonance: A History of Modern Aurality, First paperback edition (New York: Zone Books, 2014).

I participated in a studio orientation with Matthew on Wednesday and spent Saturday afternoon and evening working through how to get a DAW up and running up to the point where I can make basic ambient music through Ableton Live.

Week 1

Readings

• Ajay Kapur et al., Programming for Musicians and Digital Artists: Creating Music with ChucK, 1st edition (Shelter Island: Manning, 2015).
• Andrew J. Nelson, The Sound of Innovation: Stanford and the Computer Music Revolution, Illustrated edition (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2015).
• Ge Wang, Artful Design: Technology in Search of the Sublime, A MusiComic Manifesto (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018).

I have been giving myself a bootcamp education in ChuCK – I worked through a textbook and am now able to complete work up to MUSIC 220A and half of MUSIC 220B. I am also exploring other software ecologies (Max/MSP, PureData etc). I have also been reading up on the relationship between the sonic avant-gardes of mid-twentieth century America and contemporary discourse on poetics, sound studies, and art history to see what theoretical interventions made in music look like.