Lewis Voyager

7/25/2019 Lewis Voyager

1/9 2000 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 10, pp. 3339, 2000 33

Voyager[1,2] is a nonhierarchical, interactive mu-sical environment that privileges improvisation. In Voyager,improvisors engage in dialogue with a computer-driven, inter-active virtual improvising orchestra. A computer programanalyzes aspects of a human improvisors performance in realtime, using that analysis to guide an automatic composition(or, if you will, improvisation) program that generates bothcomplex responses to the musicians playing and indepen-

dent behavior that arises from its own internal processes.This work, which is one of my most widely performed com-

positions, deals with the nature of music and, in particular,the processes by which improvising musicians produce it.These questions can encompass not only technological ormusic-theoretical interests but philosophical, political, cul-tural and social concerns as well. This is consistent with theinstrumental dimension or tendency in African musical orga-nization, or what Robert Farris Thompson [3] identifies assongs and dances of social allusion, one of several ancient

African organizing principles of song and dance that crossedthe seas from the Old World to the New.

Voyagers unusual amalgamation of improvisation, indeter-minacy, empathy and the logical, utterly systematic structure

of the computer program is described throughout this articlenot only as an environment, but as a program, a systemand a composition, in the musical sense of that term. Infact, the work can take on aspects of all of these terms simul-taneouslyconsidering the conceptual level, the process ofcreating the software and the real-time, real-world encounter

with the work as performer or listener. Flowing across theseseemingly rigid conceptual boundaries encourages both im-provisors and listeners to recognize the inherent instability ofsuch taxonomies.

Musical computer programs, like any texts, are not objec-tive or universal, but instead represent the particular ideasof their creators. As notions about the nature and function ofmusic become embedded into the structure of software-based

musical systems and compositions, interactions with these sys-tems tend to reveal characteristics of the community of thoughtand culture that produced them. Thus, it would be useful hereto examine the implications of the experience of programmingand performing with Voyageras a kind of computer music-mak-ing embodying African-American cultural practice.

Among the fair number of studies by artists/theorists whohave written cogently on issues of race, gender and class innew technological media (such as Loretta Todd [4] andCameron Bailey [5]), the ethnographic study of Institut Re-cherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) bythe anthropologist and improvisor Georgina Born [6] ap-

pears to stand practically alone inthe trenchancy and thoroughnessof its analysis of these issues withrespect to computer music. This

viewpoint contra sts markedlywith Catherine M. Camerons [7]rather celebratory ethnography-at-a-distance of what she terms

American experimentalism, inwhich the word race never ap-pears, and in which her notion ofa musical class structure isframed largely in terms of a now-moribund debate about relativeprivilege between Europe and America.

In contrast, Borns explicit identification of the nearly all-male, all-white musical and cultural canon articulated notonly by the French institute, but by its American equivalents,traces the outlines of the development of a post-1950s aes-thetic of trans-European experimentalism. Given her so farunrefuted thesis that the overwhelming majority of computermusic research and compositional activity locates itself (how-

ever unsteadily at times) within the belief systems and cul-tural practices of European concert music, one can easilyimagine a work that, like Voyager, exemplifies an area of musi-cal discourse using computers that is not viewed culturallyand historically as a branch of trans-European contemporaryconcert music and, moreover, is not necessarily modeled as anarrative about composition.

THEAESTHETICSOFMULTIDOMINANCEIn an influential 1990s essay, the artist and critic Robert L.Douglas [8] sought to formalize an African-American aes-thetic, synthesizing visual and musical elements of what thepainter Jeff Donaldson, founder of the Africobra art move-

ment [9], has called Trans-African culture. The aspect ofDouglass theory that I wish to highlight here is the notion ofmultidominant elements, which I will henceforth c allmultidominance. According to Douglas, the aesthetics ofmultidominance, involving the multiple use of colors in in-tense degrees, or the multiple use of textures, design pat-terns, or shapes [10] are found quite routinely in musical

W A Y S & M E A N S

Too Many Notes: Computers,Complexity and Culture in Voyager

George E. Lewis

George E. Lewis (trombonist, composer, computer/installation artist), Department ofMusic, Critical Studies/Experimental Practices Area, University of California, San Di-ego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0326, U.S.A. E-mail: .Website: .

A B S T R A C T

The author discusses hiscomputer music composition,

Voyager,which employs a com-puter-driven, interactive virtual

improvising orchestra that ana-

lyzes an improvisors performance

in real time, generating both com-

plex responses to the musicians

playing and independent behavior

arising from the programs own in-

ternal processes. The author con-

tends that notions about the na-

ture and function of music are

embedded in the structure of soft-

ware-based music systems and

that interactions with these sys-

tems tend to reveal characteris-

tics of the community of thought

and culture that produced them.

Thus, Voyageris considered as akind of computer music-making

embodying African-American aes-

thetics and musical practices.


2/934 Lewis, Too Many Notes

WAYS

&

MEANS

and visual works of Africa and itsdiaspora.

By way of introduction to his theory,Douglas recalls from his art-student daysthat interviews with most African-Ameri-can artists with Eurocentric art training

will reveal that they received similar in-structions, such as tone down your col-ors, too many colors [11]. Apparently,these helpful pedagogical interven-tions were presented as somehow univer-sal and transcendent, rather than as ema-nating from a particular culturally orhistorically situated worldview, or asbased in networks of political or socialpower. Douglas, in observing that suchculturally narrow aesthetic views wouldhave separated us altogether from ourrich African heritage if we had acceptedthem without question, goes on to com-pare this aspect of Eurocentric art train-ing to Eurocentric music training, whichin his view does not equip its students to

hear music with multidominant rhythmicand melodic elements as anything butnoise, frenzy or perhaps chaos [12].

In fact, virtually every extant form ofblack music has been characterized asnoise. As historian Jon Cruz notes, thehistory of this trope in the United Statesdates back at least as far as the slaveryperiod: Prior to the mid-19th Centuryblack music appears to have been heardby captors and overseers primarily asnoisethat is, as strange, unfathomable,and incomprehensible [13]. However,as Cruz points out, for slaveowners to

hear only noise is tantamount to beingoblivious to the structures of meaningthat anchored sounding to the herme-neutic world of the s laves. To hear onlynoise is to remain removed from howslave soundings probed their circum-stances and cultivated histories andmemories [14].

The notion identified by Cruz thatthe production of music and other cul-tural forms enabled slaves to collectivelyexercise symbolic control [15] ad-dresses directly the issue of how a formalaesthetic can articulate political and so-cial meaning. Such modern-day (soon tobe old-school) hip-hop groups as PublicEnemy, in full recognition of the disap-probation of their music by powerfulsectors of the dominant culture of theirown day, even appropriated andironicized this trope, challenging them-selves, their listeners and their detrac-tors with their explicit intention and ex-hortation to bring the noise [16].

Douglass call for a formalist analysisdoes not exclude the realization that the

border between form and content is dif-ficult to police. Moreover, these formalabstractions are not universals;multidominance is not present in alltrans-African music and art and cer-tainly must not be applied as a sonic lit-mus test. In the particular case of Voy-ager, however, the compositions

African-American cultural provenancelends particular credence to an identifi-cation of multidominance at the levelsof both the logical structure of the soft-

ware and i ts performative articulation.Moreover, whether or not thesemultidominant forms have been con-sciously conceptualized, exploited andextended by artists with full awareness oftheir implications, they must be viewedas culturally contingent, historicallyemergent and linked to situated struc-tures of power and dialogue.

The African-American composer OllyWilson [17] has identif ied a set of ten-

dencies and principles characteristic ofAfrican and Afro-American music -mak-ing, while quite similar principles areidentified by Robert Farris Thompson inexamining African visual forms [18]. Inparticular, Douglas, Wilson and Thomp-son all identify rhythm as a critically im-portant structural element in African-derived music. Wilson notices in

Afr ican-derived music a pr inciple ofrhythmic and implied metrical contrast[19]. Thompson sees the black Atlantic

visual tradition [20] as displaying a pro-pensity for multiple meter [21], and his

references to Mande cloth work as incor-porating a conception of rhythmizedtextiles makes a direct connection withboth African and African-American mu-sic [22]. Similarly, Douglas connects the

visual with the sonic: the predispositionto use multiple types of rhythm in musi-cal construction speaks equally to a dis-tinct aesthetic as does the multiple useof visual elements [23].

COMPUTERMUSICANDTRANS-AFRICANFORMALISMI conceived and programmed the first

ver sion of Voyagerbetween 1986 and1988. The work was created in

Amsterdam at the Studio for Elektro-Instrumentale Muziek (STEIM); I addedlater ameliorations wherever I hap-pened to be in the ensuing years. Sincethen, Voyager has been performedaround the world, with improvisors suchas myself (trombone), saxophonistsRoscoe Mitchell, J.D. Parran, DouglasEwart and Evan Parker, pianist Haruna

Miyake, and extended cellist Jon Rose.The work has been performed in venuesas diverse as the IRCAM Summer Acad-emy, the Groningen Jazz Marathon, In-ternational Computer Music Confer-ences in 1988 and 1994, Xebec Hall(Kobe, Japan) and the Velvet Lounge inChicago [24].

The various versions of Voyagerhaveall been written in dialects of Forth, thecuriously hybrid compiled/interpretedenvironment created by Charles Moorearound 1970 [25,26]. Seemingly anti-au-thoritarian in nature, during the early1980s Forth appealed to a community ofcomposers who wanted an environmentin which a momentary inspiration couldquickly lead to its sonic realizationadialogic creative process, emblematic ofan improvisors way of working. As theForth culture developed, languagessuch as Hierarchical Music SpecificationLanguage (HMSL) [27] and, later, FOR-

MULA (FORth MUsic LAnguage)[28,29], created by artists working in thefield, made Forth and its dialects per-haps the most widely used languagegroup for interactive music before theadvent of Max, a language that similarlycenters the dialogic as part of the soft-

ware construction process.My analysis of Voyageras an interactive

computer music system uses RobertRowes taxonomy of player and instru-ment paradigms [30], although thesetwo models of role construction in inter-active systems should be viewed as on a

continuum along which a particularsystems model of computer-human inter-action can be located. In Rowes terms,

Voyagerfunctions as an extreme exampleof a player program, where the com-puter system does not function as an in-strument to be controlled by a performer.

I conceive a performance of Voyagerasmultiple parallel streams of music gen-eration, emanating from both the com-puters and the humansa nonhier-archical, improvisational, subject-subjectmodel of discourse, rather than a stimu-lus/response setup.

Both the sonic behavior and the pro-gram structure of Voyager exhibitmultidominance in a number of re-spects. First, the Voyagerprogram is con-ceived as a set of 64 asynchronously op-erating single-voice MIDI-controlledplayers, all generating music in realtime. Several different (and to some,clashing) sonic behavior groupings, orensembles, may be active simulta-neously, moving in and out of metricsynchronicity, with no necessary arith-


3/9Lewis, Too Many Notes 35

metic correlation between the stronglydiscursive layers of multirhythm. Whilethis is happening, a lower-level routineparses incoming MIDI data into sepa-rate streams for up to two human impro-

visors , who are either per forming onMIDI-equipped keyboards or playingacoustic instruments through pitch fol-lowers, devices that try to parse thesounds of acoustic instruments intoMIDI data streams.

The aperiodic, asynchronously recur-ring global behavior specification sub-routine setphrasebehavior, which runs atintervals of between 5 and 7 seconds,continually recombines the MIDI play-ers into new ensemble combinations

with def ined behaviors (Fig. 1). Thissubroutine (or word in Forth par-lance) first makes determinations as tohow many players will be part of thenext ensemble. Additional options in-

clude turning off all players in all en-sembles and starting afresh with thisnew group, turning off just the most re-cently instantiated ensemble, or allow-ing the new ensemble to enter the fray

with the groups that are already playing.The setphrasebehaviorword also in-

cludes constituent subroutines thatspecify for the new ensemble choices oftimbre, the choice of one of 15 melody

algorithms, the choice of approximately150 microtonally specified pitchsets (seeFig. 2), and choices of volume range,microtonal transposition, tactus (orbeat), tempo, probability of playing anote, spacing between notes, interval-

width range and MIDI-related ornamen-tation such as chorusing, reverb andportamento, and how such parametersas tessitura and tempo can change overtime. Moreover, each new ensemblechooses not only a distinct group sonor-

ity, but a unique response to input, de-ciding which improvisorsone, both ornonewill influence its output behav-ior. Further options include imitating,directly opposing or ignoring the infor-mation coming from the improvisors.

The response task word setresponse(Fig. 3), which runs asynchronously tothe phrase behavior task, processes datafrom both the low-level MIDI parser that

collects and manages the raw data and amid-level smoothing routine that usesthis raw data to construct averages ofpitch, velocity, probability of note activ-ity and spacing between notes. This in-formation is used by setresponseto decidein greater detail how each ensemble willrespond to elements of the input, suchas tempo (speed), probability of playinga note, the spacing between notes, me-lodic interval width, choice of primarypitch material (including a pitchset

:ap setphrasebehavior ( -- )

::ap" general phrasing " ( task recurs at intervals of 5000-7000 ms )

5000 time-advance 11 irnd 200 * 5000 + to cycle

begin

::ev

bodymusic 0= \ in this version this red light is always zero

if calcork \ set up new group of players, including number and position in space

else allplayersoff \ turn off all groups and start over with a new group.

then

\ set up how system will follow input; set MIDI timbres

setfollowbehavior setreplies setvoxbehavior

\ set melody algorithms, pitchsets, reverb and chorus type

setwavebehavior setscalebehavior setreverbbehavior setchorusbehavior

computer-solo? \ if no one is playing, I have a solo

\ set volume and velocity, microtonal tonic transposition

if setvelbehavior setvolbehavior settonicbehavior

\ set octave, interval range, duration range

setoctbehavior setintbehavio setwidbehavior setlegatobehavior

\ set length of notes


if setrestbehavior \ set up average degree of silence

then

\ set portamento, whether or not to follow tempo, and tempo ranges

setportabehavior settempofollow setspdbehavior

then

;;ev

cycle time-advance

again

;;ap

;ap

Fig. 1. Voyagers top-level phrase behavior word, written as a FORMULA active process.



WAYS

&

MEANS

based on the last several notes received)octave range, microtonal transpositionand volume.

Of particular note here is the fact thatin the absence of outside input, thecomplete specification of the systemsmusical behavior is internally generatedby setphrasebehavior. In practical terms,

this means that Voyagerdoes not need tohave real-time human input to generatemusic. In turn, since the program exhib-its generative behavior independently ofthe improvisor, decisions taken by thecomputer have consequences for themusic that must be taken into accountby the improvisor. With no built-in hier-archy of human l eader/computer fol-lowerno veto buttons, footpedals orphysical cuesall communication be-tween the system and the improvisortakes place sonically.

The simultaneous multiplicities of

available t imbres, microtonal pitchsets,rhythms, transposition levels and otherelements in Voyagerall emblematic ofan aesthetic of multidominancereflectmy inheritance from the Association forthe Advancement of Creative Musiciansnotion of multi-instrumentalism,

where a number of AACM improvisors,including Wadada Leo Smith, HenryThreadgill, Douglas Ewart, Joseph

Jarman, Roscoe Mit chel l, AnthonyBraxton and others moved to developmultiple voices on a wide variety of in-struments [31]. In AACM performances,the extreme multiplicity of voices, em-bedded within an already highly collec-tive ensemble orientation, permitted thetimbral diversity of a given situation toexceed the sum of its instrumental parts,affording a wider palette of potential or-chestrations to explore.

The attempt to thoroughly map, parseand develop the input data is based onthe notion that, through the accumula-tion and articulation of many small de-tails, an interactive, adaptive input struc-ture that generates a sufficiently

detailed representation of its input canthen produce a musical output percep-tible by an improvisor as analogous to

various states that were experienced dur-ing improvisation. This notion of bi-directional transfer of intentionalitythrough soundor emotional trans-ductionconstructs performance as an

intentional act embodying meaning andannouncing emotional and mental in-tention. In this way, I believe, the emo-tional state of the improvisor may bemirrored in the computer partner, evenif the actual material played by the com-puter does not necessarily preserve thepitch, duration or morphological struc-tures found in the input.

In improvised music, improvisors of-ten assert both personal narrative anddifference as critical aspects of their

work. For me, what Jerry Garcia cal ledthe anti-authoritarian impulse in im-

provisation led me to pursue the projectof de-instrumentalizing the computer. Ifthe computer is not treated as a musicalinstrument, but as an independent im-provisor, difference is partly groundedin the form of program responses thatare not necessarily predictable on thebasis of outside input. As we have notedearlier, Voyagersresponse to input hasseveral modes, from complete commun-ion to utter indifference. This seeminglack of uniformity is not necessarily cor-related with lack of structure, as is sooften expressed in the vernacular dis-course of randomness. Rather, whiletendencies over a long period of timeexhibit consistency, moment-to-momentchoices can shift unpredictably.

It is a fact, however, that the system isdesigned to avoid the kind of uniformity

where the same kind of input routinelyleads to the same result. Voyagersaes-thetic of variation and difference is at

variance wi th the information retrievaland control paradigm that late capital-ism has found useful in framing its pre-ferred approach to the encounter with

computer technology. As I have observedelsewhere, interactivity has gradually be-come a metonym for information re-trieval rather than dialogue, posing thedanger of commodifying and ultimatelyreifying the encounter with technology:

Indeed, the rapid development of stan-dardized modes for the relationshipsbetween humans and computers is un-fortunate for such a young and pre-sumably quickly changing technology.The evolution of the language used toreflect the multimedia revolution is acompelling testament to the power ofcorporate media. Corporate power as-sumes an important, even dominatingrole in conditioning our thinkingabout computers, art, image, andsound. Much of the descriptive lan-guage surrounding multimedia (andrelated areas, such as cyberspace)serves to hide the power exercised bycorporations [32].

Finally, Wilson notices in African-de-

rived music a tendency toward a highdensity of events in a relatively shorttime frame [33]. It is to be noted thatthe work of many important African-

American improvisorsin particu larCecil Taylor, John Coltrane and Albert

Aylerexhibit a notion of ext endedform that involves the sustained use, of-ten for very long periods, of extremelyrapid, many-noted intensity structures.Donaldsons 1988 visual workJam Packedand Jelly Tight[34] exemplifies the ap-proach of the Africobra artists, who, ac-cording to Douglas,

used the jampack and jelly-tight con-cept as a means of filling up the void,to add as much as possible to the act ofcreation. Africobra members acceptthese concepts as an African axiom:that to add to life is to ensure thatthere is more to share [35].

The Voyagerprogram often combinesdense, rapid accretions of sonic informa-tion with sudden changes of mood,tempo and orchestration, eschewing theslowly moving timbral narratives charac-teristic of much institutionally based com-

create partch43 43 i,

0 s, 21 s, 53 s, 84 s, 112 s, 151 s, 165 s, 182 s,

204 s, 231 s, 267 s, 294 s, 316 s, 347 s, 386 s, 417 s,

435 s, 471 s, 498 s, 519 s, 551 s, 582 s, 617 s, 649 s,

680 s, 702 s, 729 s, 765 s, 782 s, 814 s, 853 s, 884 s,

906 s, 933 s, 969 s, 996 s, 1018 s, 1035 s, 1049 s, 1088 s,

1115 s, 1147 s, 1178 s,

Fig. 2. Voyagerpitchset construction, written as a For th table representing the well-known 43-tone scale of Harry Partch, with approximate

values given in cents (a method of specifying musical inter vals in which 100 cents equals a musical semitone). The word s transla tes val-ues in cents to MIDI note numbers with 8-bit microtonal pitchbend offsets, and then compiles the 16-bit result into the next available bytepair in the table. The word I creates a transposi tion factor that allows the programs melody generators to perform a rough mapping ofthe microtonal data in a given pitchset to 12-space data received via MIDI. This permits the program to use these scales with effective in-terval widths analogous to those in 12-space, if desired.



puter music. Thus, Voyageris in clear vio-lation of the dictum that Douglas identi-fies here as Eurocentric: Dont over-crowd your composition with too many

elements [36]. These real di stinctionsfrom much institutionally producedtrans-European computer music led onepuzzled Italian listener to ask me why somany things are happening at the sametime. Or, to quote the king from themovie Amadeus, speaking of Mozarts

work, There are too many notes [37].

EMOTIONALTRANSDUCTION: SOUND,PERSONALITY, DIFFERENCEIn the context of improvised musics that

exhibit strong influences from African-American ways of music-making, musicalsoundor rather, ones own soundbecomes a carrier for history and cul-tural identity. As Yusef Lateef maintains,The sound of the improvisation seemsto tell us what kind of person is impro-

vising. We feel that we can hear charac-ter or personality in the way the musi-cian improvises [38]. Essentially thesame notion was advanced in the 1940sby Charlie Parker, who declared thatMusic is your own experience, yourthoughts, your wisdom. If you dont liveit, it wont come out of your horn [39].

The incorporation and welcoming ofagency, social necessity, personality anddifference as aspects of sound distin-guish such music from work that incor-porates or uses improvisation, or thatfeatures indeterminacy or aleatoricpractices. Sound becomes identifiable,not with timbre alone, but with the ex-pression of personality, the assertion ofagency, the assumption of responsibilityand an encounter with history, memoryand identity.

Part of the task of constructing Voyagerconsisted of providing the program withits own sound. In Voyager,this notion ofsound appears in tandem with a kind of

technology-mediated animism, ex-pressed as an interactive aesthetic of ne-gotiation and independent computeragency. This recalls the frequent refer-ences by Malachi Favors Maghostut,contrabassist and co-founder of the ArtEnsemble of Chicago, to someone hemet on his travels as this African brother

who had instruments that played them-selves. Further, the trope of musical per-formance on an ins trument as communi-cation between two subject intelligencesis exemplified by Francis Bebeys descrip-tion of an incident wherein an accom-

plished African musician, after trying aninstrument briefly, handed it back to itsowner with the remark that he had no

way of communicating with someonewho did not speak the same language ashe did. Bebey, in general discussion of

African music, further maintains that in anumber of African musical traditions amusical instrument is often regarded asa human being. As evidence he offersthe story of another African musician,

who described his refusal to sell his drum(despite his near-destitution) by sayingthat he did not want to deliver a slaveinto bondage [40].

The other important notion that ani-mates Voyager is that of the improvisingorchestra. While Voyagercan be seen asappropriating or even playing the doz-ens with the notion of the nineteenth-century European orchestra, my modelin this regard is the Javanese gamelanensemble, where a large number of play-ers playing a relatively fixed composi-tion nonetheless have considerable lati-tude in interpretation, even at primarylevels such as pitch, duration and

rhythm. Control of musical process isshared among players; inter-player com-munication takes place without neces-sarily involving a central authority. Local

decisions taken by individual playerspercolate up to the global level, at whichthe overall form is maintained.

The Javanese musician Hardja Susilocharacterizes improvisation in courttradition according to its interactive, so-cial or intentional role, acknowledginghow intentionality of process affects themusical result. For example, the

Javanese term kembangan(literally, flow-ering) refers to an improvisation thatadds beauty. Isen-isen(filling) is an im-provisation that pleasantly fills a

vacuum. On the other hand, ngambang

(floating) refers to musicians who areimprovising without clear knowledge ofwhere the musi c i s going, and ngawur(blunder) denotes an out-of-style or ir-relevant improvisation [41]. Thus, thesuccess of this heterarchically orientedapproach to large-group musical interac-tion can be seen to depend not only onthe performative skills of the players, butupon their real-time analytic capabilities.

Finally, it is striking to note how an Af-rican-American perspective on improvi-sation reflects a similarity with recentthinking in the game of basketball, anarea in which African-American playershave continually presented revolutionarypossibilities. The situation with improvi-sation, conventional classical music wis-dom notwithstanding, is remarkablysimilar to basketball coach Phil Jacksonsdescription of the triangle offense, in

which there are no set plays, and thedefense cant predict whats going tohappen next. As with improvisation, theideal of the triangle system is for eachplayer to be acutely aware, at any givenmoment, of whats happening on the

setresponse ( -- )

setinputbasedur \ set tempo ranges based on input note durations


if setinputplayprob \ probability of note or rest, based on input

then

\ set duration range and length of notes, interval range

setinputlegato setinputwid setinputint

\ use pitchset based on last few input notes; set octave and microtonal tonic transposition

setinputscale setinputoct setinputtonic

\ set MIDI volume and velocity

setinputvol setinputvel

;

Fig. 3. Voyagers input response word, written in Forth, sets parameters based on analysis of MIDI input.



WAYS

&

MEANS

floor [42]. While in both areas, triangleoffense author Tex Winters dictum thatthe offense must utilize the players in-dividual skills has major relevance, it isabsolutely crucial that both basketballersand experienced improvisors developan intuitive feel for how their move-ments and those of everyone else on thefloor are interconnected [43].

Thus, continuous awareness is themeans through which these possibilitiesare articulated in performance. Part ofthe analytic task facing any improvisor(whether or not that improvisor is acomputer) involves discovering or evenpositing ways in which seemingly unre-lated material can become part of eitheran existing or a new structure within theemergent music. Depending on context,the responses of the computer to theimprovisors input can potentially beseen as either related or unrelated, ei-ther during the improvisation itself or

upon further reflection. Moreover, theexplicit possibility of encountering com-pletely unrelated material encouragesthe possibility of changes in the musicinitiated by the computer as well as bythe humans.

Thus, with both computers and hu-mans, the data gathered must be viewedin a variety of contexts and from diverseperspectives in order to decide how thematerial to be presented next mightfunction in terms of what has alreadybeen presented. The relatedness of par-ticular materials need not be, and quite

often cannot be, objectively demon-strable. Rather, the framing, by all par-ties to the music-making, of the relation-ship that the new material has to theoverall piece at that moment is a crucialfactor in structure formation. This pro-cess may be subsumed under the gen-eral heading of creativity.

AFTERWORD: STRUCTUREANDFREEDOMStructure, as we understand it in musicpedagogy, is highly desirable. On theother hand, at the same time that moststudents learn fairly early on that jazz(whatever that might be) is improvised,the dominant culture informs them, inmyriad ways that are continuallyreinscribed across the breadth of dailyexperience, that improvised is a syn-onym for unstructured. In apparently

welcome contrast, we are provided withthe role of the composer, which can beusefully summarized as bringer of struc-ture. The structure inevitably arrives in

the form of a written text, a coded set ofsymbols, intended for realization in per-formance by a performer.

This metonymic dialectic betweencomposed and improvised ways ofproducing musical texts serves to ob-scure a more fundamental constructedbinary comprising the two most influen-tial musical cultures of the twentiethcentury, the trans-European and trans-

African. Proponents of each form-com-plex tend to construct an Other fromproponents of the complementaryformparticularly in creating compet-ing notions of art musicbut theasymmetrical dist ribution of cul turalpower clearly rests, for the moment,

with the bringers of structure. In Euro-American art-music culture this binary isroutinely and simplistical ly framed as in-

volving the effortless spontaneity ofimprovisation, versus the careful delib-eration of compositionthe composer

as ant, the improvisor as grasshopper.To move beyond this tendentiously

posed opposition, a meaningful distinc-tion between these different ways ofknowingthe improvisational and thecompositionalmust inevitably turnupon the axis of interaction. Improvisa-tion must be openthat is, open to in-put, open to contingencya real-timeand (often enough) a real-world mode ofproduction. In machine terms, what wemay have in Voyageris a composing ma-chine that allows outside intervention. If

we do not need to def ine improvi sed

ways of producing knowledge as a subsetof composition, then we can simply speakof an improvising machine as one thatincorporates a dialogic imagination.

Thus, if there is to be serious talkabout our identity as humans, thoseidentities are continually conditionedand reinscribed through processes ofinteractivity, where negotiation, differ-ence, partial perspectiveand in thecase of music, sonic signalingenter thepicture. Voyagerasks questions concern-ing ways in which historically contingentmeanings are exchanged throughsound. Even given my emphasis on thepersonal conception of sound, Voyageris not asking whether machines exhibitpersonality or identity, but how person-alities and identities become articulatedthrough sonic behavior. Instead of ask-ing about the value placed (by whom?)on artworks made by computers, Voyagercontinually refers to human expression.Rather than asking if computers can becreative and intelligentthose qualities,again, that we seek in our mates, or at

least in a good blind dateVoyagerasksus where our own creativity and intelli-gence might lienot How do we createintelligence? but How do we find it?Ultimately, the subject of Voyageris nottechnology or computers at all, but musi-cality itself.

References and Notes1. George Lewis, Voyager, Disk Union-Avan CD 014(1992).

2. George Lewis, Endless Shout, Tzadik TZ CD 7054(2000).

3. Robert Farris Thompson,Flash o f the Spirit: Afri-can and Afro-American Art and Philosophy(New York:Vintage, 1983).

4. Loretta Todd, Aboriginal Narratives inCyberspace, in Mary Anne Moser and DouglasMacLeod, eds., Immersed in Technology: Art and Vir-tual Environments(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,1996) pp. 179194.

5. Cameron Bailey, Virtual Skin: Articulating Racein Cyberspace, in Moser and MacLeod [4] pp. 2949.

6. Georgina Born, Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM,Boulez and the Institutionalization of t he Avant-Garde(Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press, 1995).

7. Catherine M. Cameron, Dialectics in the Ar ts: TheRise of Experimentalism in American Music (Westport,CT: Praeger, 1996).

8. Robert L. Douglas, Formalizing an African-American Aesthetic, New Art Examiner(June/Sum-mer 1991) pp. 1824.

9. Jeff Donaldson, AfricobraAfrican Communeof Bad Relevant Artists: 10 in Search of a Nation,Black World(October 1970) pp. 8189; Ann Gibson,The African American Aesthetic and Post-modernism, in David C. Driskell, ed., African Ameri-can Visual Aesthetics: A Postmodernist View(Washing-ton, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995).

10. See Douglas [8] p. 18.11. See Douglas [8] p. 18.

12. See Douglas [8] p. 18.

13. Jon Cruz, Culture on the Margins: The BlackDiaspora and the Rise of American Cultural Interpreta-tion(Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1999) p.43.

14. See Cruz [13] p. 47.

15. See Cruz [13] p. 47.

16. Bring the Noise is the second track on PublicEnemys second album, It Takes a Nation of Millionsto Hold Us Back (1988).

17. Olly Wilson, Black Music as an Art Form, inRobert G. OMeally, ed., The Jazz Cadence of AmericanCulture (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1998) pp.

82101.

18. See Thompson [3] p. xiii.

19. See Wilson [17] p. 84.

20. Paul Gilroy describes the black Atlantic as anintercultural and transnational formation thatencompasses Africa and its diasporas, on both sidesof the Atlantic Ocean, including Europe (especiallyBritain), the United States, the Caribbean andSouth America. In particular, he argues that theliterary and philosophical modernisms of the blackAtlantic have their origins in a well-developed senseof the complicity of racialized reason and white su-premacist terror. See Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlan-



tic: Modernity and Double Consciousness(Cambridge,MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1993) pp. ixx.

21. See Thompson [3] p. xiii.

22. See Thompson [3] p. 207.


24. Recent citations and reviews of this work in-clude the following: Joel Chadabe, Electr ic S ound:The Past and Promise of Electronic Music(UpperSaddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997) pp. 299301;

Ben Ratliff, Improvisers Meet the Machines, NewYork Times (14 October 1997); Zane East, GeorgeE. Lewis: Voyager, Computer Music Journal 19, No. 1(Spring 1995).

25. Leo Brodie, Starting FORTH(Englewood Cliffs,NJ: Prentice Hall, 1981).

26. FORTH was spelled in upper case until the late1970s because of the prevalence of upper-case-onlyI/O devices. The usage Forth was generallyadopted when lower case became widely available,because the word was not an acronym. E.D. Ratner,D. Colburn and C.H. Moore, The Evolution ofForth, ACM SIGPLAN Notices28, No. 3 (March1993); .

27 . Phil Burk, Larry Polansky and DavidRosenboom, HMSL: A Theoretical Overview, Per-

spectives of New Music28, No. 2, 136178 (Summer1990).

28. D.P. Anderson and R. Kuivila, Continuous Ab-stractions for Discrete Event Languages, ComputerMusic Journal 3, No. 13, 1123 (1989).

29. D.P. Anderson and R. Kuivila, Formula: A Pro-gramming Language for Expressive Computer Mu-sic, Computer IEEE 24, No. 7, 1221 (July 1991).

30. Robert Rowe, Interactive Music Systems(Cam-bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992) p. 8.

31. References to the AACM, one of the most cre-atively diverse organizations of the last 30 years, arepresent in international abundance, so I presenthere just three citations that detail theorganizations structural and cultural strategies:George E. Lewis, Singing Omars Song: A(Re)construction of Great Black Music, Lenox Av-

enue 4 (1998) pp. 6992; Ronald M. Radano,Jazzin the Classics: The AA CMs Challenge to

Mainstream Aesthetics, Black Music Research Journal12, No. 1, 7995 (1992); Ekkehard Jost , The Chica-goans, in Jost,Free Jazz(New York: Da Capo Press,1994; originally published 1974).

32 . George E. Lewis, Singing the AlternativeInteractivity Blues, Front7, No. 2, 1822 (Novem-ber/December 1995).

33. See Wilson [17] p. 84.

34. Jeff Donaldson,Jam Packed and Jelly Tight, art-work, mixed media on canvas, 36 50 in (1988).

The work is reproduced in Driskell [9] plate 10.



37. Amadeus,Milos Forman, director (1984).

38. Yusef A. Lateef, The Pleasures of Voice in Im-provised Music, in Roberta Thelwell, ed., Views onBlack American Music: Selected Proceedings from the

Fourteenth, Fif teenth, Sixteenth and Seven teenth AnnualBlack Musicians Conferences, University of Massachu-setts at Amherst,No. 3 (19851988) pp. 4346.

39. Michael Levin and John S. Wilson, No Bop Rootsin Jazz: Parker,Down Beat61, No. 2, 2425 (February1994; originally published 9 September 1949).

40 . Francis Bebey, African Music: A Peoples Art(Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill, 1975) pp. 119120.

41. H. Susilo, Toward an Appreciation of JavaneseGamelan, (unpublished, 1992).

42. Phil Jackson, who during the 1990s won six Na-tional Basketball Association championships ashead coach of the Chicago Bulls, as well as the 2000NBA championship with the Los Angeles Lakers,adopted as part of his winning scheme coach FredTex Winters unusual sy stem of basketball of-fense, variously known as the triple-post (Wintersterm) or the triangle offense. Jackson often de-scribes the offense in terms of its spiritual and cul-tural implications, as well as its efficacy in basket-ball. See Phil Jackson and Hugh Delehanty, SacredHoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior (NewYork: Hyperion, 1995) p. 87. Al so see Fred Winter,The Triple-Post Offense (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Prentice-Hall, 1962) for the original documenta-tion of Winters conception.

43. Jackson and Delehanty [42] p. 91. See also Win-ter [42].

Selected Discography

George Lewis, Endl ess Shou t, Tadik TZ CD 7054(2000).

George Lewis, Homage to Charles Parker,Black SaintBSR 0029 (1980).

George Lewis, Voyager, Disk Union-Avan CD 014(1992).

George Lewis and Douglas Ewart, George Lewis/Dou-glas Ewart, Black Saint SR 0026 (1979).

Richard Teitelbaum, Concerto Grosso,hat ART CD6004 (1988).

Manuscript received 30 March 2000.

The work of George Lewis has explored impro-vised music, electronic and computer music,

computer-based multimedia installations, text-

sound works and notated forms, and is docu-

mented on more than 90 recordings. A member

of the Association for the Advancement of Cre-

ative Musicians (AACM) since 1971, Lewishas worked closely with other genre-busting con-

temporary musicians, such as Anthony

Braxton, Anthony Davis, Bertram Turetzky,

David Behrman, Derek Bailey, Douglas Ewart,

Evan Parker, Frederic Rzewski, Gil Evans,

Irene Schweizer, James Newton, Joelle Leandre,John Zorn, Leroy Jenkins, Misha Mengelberg,

Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell, Steve

Lacy and Wadada Leo Smith. Lewis has re-

ceived numerous fellowships from the National

Endowment for the Arts, and is the 1999 recipi-

ent of the Cal Arts/Alpert Award in the Arts.Lewis now teaches in the Critical Studies/Ex-

perimental Practices area at the University ofCalifornia, San Diego.


8/9


9/9

Copyright of Leonardo Music Journal is the property of MIT Press and its content may not be copied or emailed

to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However,

users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

Lewis Voyager

Documents

Transcript of Lewis Voyager