From the Machines of War to the 

Body as Compiled Code

A review of the ICMC 2000 in Berlin as Published in Music Works

by William Osborne and Abbie Conant

The International Computer Music Association is an academic organization comprised of composers, performers, engineers and scientists working to apply digital media to music.  The membership is international and the conferences alternate between the Americas, Europe, and Asia.  The most recent was held in Berlin from August 27 to September 1, 2000, and included twelve concerts of new music (approximately 70 compositions) and over 130 paper presentations that were also published in the conference’s 563 page “Proceedings.”  The conference also produced a CD containing ten of the compositions that were programmed. There were often two to four events running simultaneously, starting at about 9:00 AM and with the last concert of the day ending around 11:00 PM.  There was also an Off-ICMC at Berlin’s Podeville that included many additional concerts and a series of workshops.

The opening concert was a rare performance of John Cage’s HPSCHD (one of the first major computer works) played back through about fifty speakers laboriously installed in the foyer of the Berliner Philharmonie.  There was a hushed silence as the music began emitting metallic baubles of defrocked baroque sound from everywhere, but after a few minutes most of the public, which was standing around in groups, began to talk and continued to do so through the hour-long performance.  It was a noble effort not fully appreciated by the public. Perhaps music coming from speakers in foyers has become too ubiquitous.   

The conference included many sessions devoted to “physical modeling.”  The goal is to create software that imitates not only an instrument’s sound, but also its acoustic principles and performance idiosyncrasies.  This allows the visceral quality of instruments to be playable on electric keyboards—synthetic clarinets that can imitate the squeaks of reeds gone awry or the straining air pressure of trumpets that half valve or crack.  Researches at IRCAM have made these models so accurate they are almost as hard to play as the acoustic instruments they replace.  The next step is to create models for how specific artists play (or played.) They might, for example, digitally recreate in a robotic sort of way, some of Coltrane’s mannerisms of playing the sax.

There were eighteen sessions demonstrating concrete results of new research.  Adrian Freed, who works at the Center for New Music and Audio Technology at the University of California, demonstrated a keyboard that provides continuous information throughout the entire depression or release of each key. The device connects to a notebook computer via an Ethernet connection and among its many uses allows for more expressive and authentic digital keyboards.  Perry Cook and Colby Leider of Princeton demonstrated two extensively modified accordions they call “squeezeVoxes” which control physical modeling software with the instrument’s bellows to synthesize the human voice.  Tomoko Yonezawa and Kenji Mase demonstrated a fountain that played piano music. The speed, range and volume of the music changed in accordance with the trickle and flow of water through funnels. 

Researchers at the University of Zurich and the University of Campinas, Brazil, demonstrated a robot with a capacity to learn, and then reflect its experiences in music.  It was programmed to search for spots of light within in a fenced-in area, and accompany its movement with music. By bumping around it could learn where the fence was, which made its music low and dissonant, and where bright spots were, which made its music go up an octave and become more sublime.  The robot, which was about eight centimeters tall, thus had a sort of ontological and epistemological nature.  It’s learning process created a musical structure that moved from the frustrated to the transcendent as it learned more about its world and gravitated toward the light.  Epics of human history passed before your eyes.

There were also displays presenting various projects. One of the most important was created by Kristine H. Burns, of Florida International University, who discussed her research concerning on-line teaching techniques and her “WOW’EM” website.  The beautiful and informative site encourages young people, and especially girls, to learn more about computer music.

Other areas of research presented included the design of virtual music environments, movement sensing installations, 3-D sound spatialization, audio encoding formats, sound processing and perception, transducers and speakers, intelligent composition tools, tempo tracking software, and sound synthesis methods.  Unfortunately, many of the presentations were almost incomprehensible, not because the material was complicated (as it often was,) but because they were poorly presented. 

One of the most promising areas of the ICMC were the sessions on the aesthetics of computer music, organized in part, by Leigh Landy (UK).  In its calls for participation, the ICMC said that, “Computer music is neither a style nor a genre.”   Two musicologists from Denmark, Ingeborg Okkels and Anders Conrad, suggested that the ICMC does have an aesthetic bias.  It leans toward “academic computer music” that focuses on abstract sound created by the latest engineering technologies.  Okkels and Anders feel these “engineer composers” are given preference over other groups, such as those following the American tradition of experimental music (e.g. John Osterwald and John Zorn) who often use low-tech instruments such as samplers to collage cultural artifacts.  They said that by focusing on tools used, the ICMC declares tacit aesthetic decisions. 

It was apparent that technology is sometimes given more status than musical quality, and that this occasionally causes composers to “hype” their works as more technological than they really are.  The technological focus also causes the ICMC to sometimes erase its own history, since musically valuable low-tech electro-acoustic works are seldom presented.  Karlheinz Stockhausen, for example, who has left an enormous legacy to electro-acoustic music, was not presented or present at this conference in Germany.  Okkels and Conrad suggested that the price to be paid for favoring “engineer composers” is “that the ‘engineer way’, is extending serial music’s compartmentalization as expert culture” into computer music. 

Frederich Kittler, one of the world’s most esteemed media historians who is a professor at Humbolt University in Berlin, discussed the relationship between technology and war.  He expressed his belief that computer music derives from the same cultural milieu as the “men in white coats” who work for the military-industrial complex.  He suggested that for our own well being we must learn more about the social meanings of technology and the “ontology of thinking machines.”

Natasha Barrett, a Brit living in Norway, illustrated her methods for basing compositional structures on mathematical models of natural phenomena such as of avalanches or the spatio-temporal distribution of animal vocalizations in tropical rainforests.  Barry Truax, by contrast, spoke of the computer’s ability to represent and create forms of internal drama.  Since computer music allows for such precise control of sound and requires no performers, it naturally leads to an internal world that is very real, only real, as opposed to the “hype” of virtual 3-D realities where we always remember there is a computer somewhere in the background. 

Even though five of the nine papers on aesthetics were by women, there were none on the final grand panel comprised of six sagely male professors.  Whatever the future of computer music might be, it appears women are being partially left out.  Only 40 of the ICMA’s 499 members are women—or 8 percent.  Interestingly, 17 percent of the compositions presented at the conference (which were selected by anonymous submission from over 600 applicants) were by women--over double their membership in the organization.

It is not possible to review all seventy compositions presented, so we can provide only a small representative cross-section.  There were two categories of works, those using only electro-acoustic sound, and those using electronics with soloists or small chamber groups.  It seemed that about two thirds of the works used “tapes,” and about one third used some form of live “interactive” electronics--usually involving the programs MAX or SuperCollider. 

The two concert spaces, the Matthäus church and the Akademie der Kunst, had excellent octophonic sound systems installed in them.  Due to the aesthetic focus of the programming, there were no presentations involving ensembles of electronic instruments, and very few works dealt even remotely with discrete pitch divisions and forms of metrical rhythm.  Timbreal manipulation of sound was the focus.  There were, in fact, a number of composers with scientific or engineering backgrounds who did not have extensive “formal” musical educations.

Todor Todoroff’s “Voices Part II” (Belgium) evoked his childhood memories of building and listening to small radios. Delicate sinusoidal glisses recalled old radios being tuned, while ghostly, staticy voices built to very powerful low square waves.  Marc Ainger’s “Shatter” (USA) impressed by emulating shattering glass and metal objects accompanied by the sounds of heavy machinery.  Cort Lippe’s “Music for Hi-Hat and Computer” (USA) was one of the most effective “interactive” works of the conference.  Due to the cymbal’s rich and extensive overtones it can be filtered to great effect. This allowed the cymbal to be sampled, time streched, and modulated timbreally and spatially in many variations by a program in MAX/MSP.  The work had an improvisatory character and was a bit repetitive toward the end.   Richard Karpen’s “Sotto/Sopra (USA) was an interactive work for violin and computer using similar technologies and was notable for its fine violin writing excellently performed by Iliana Göbel.

Christopher Dobrian’s “Entropy” (USA), written for Diskklavier and video projection, stood out because it was one of the few works to exclusively use a set of twelve pitches with no timbreal alterations.  MAX patches created fascinatingly inhuman gestures sweeping across the keyboard.  Gordon Monroe’s “The Voice of the Phoenix” (Australia) for tape and contrabass flute, which rises from a peg on the floor and stands over six feet tall before bending back to the performers mouth via a huge triangle, was interesting because the acoustic instrument was far more exotic than the electronic sounds surrounding it.  Monroe, a professor of mathematics, writes sophisticated music, even though he mentioned in conversation, perhaps with an excess of modesty, that he wouldn’t know how to resolve a diminished 7^th chord. 

Composer, Ludiger Brümmer, and video artist, Silke Brämer, (both from Germany) presented a well-received and highly compelling work for video projection and loudspeaker using software that correlates the creation of sound and video images.  Francis Duhmot (Canada) presented one of the best works of the conference.  Based on samples of various types of flutes, it stood out due to its extremely well crafted structure unifying an interesting variety of subtlety worked material, a fine sense of tension and release, excellently spatialized by the composer at the mixer. 

The ICMA made no error in offerings its conference commission to Elizabeth Hoffman (USA.)  Her stunning work in four continuous movements, entitled “Mannhattan Breakdown,” for clarinet, cello, percussion, tape and live electronics, explored improvisatory structures based on predetermined elements and used a free temporal interrelation between the live performance and tape. Her work demonstrated a wide-ranging command of compositional methods.

Toward the end of the conference, the music began to become rather predictable due to the aesthetic confines of the festival’s programming scheme. The homogeneity also existed because so many people were using relatively similar synthesis programs—especially MAX and SuperCollider.  These programs are very flexible, but composing with “patches” can create aesthetic and epistemological biases that incline music toward certain kinds of sounds and effects.  Washes of sonic material made by stuttering loops of granulated sound shaped by glissing modulated timbre were ubiquitous, as were improvised, real-time spatializations at the mixing board.

If there was a general weakness to the music, it was structure.  Timbreal studies are new to western music and so there are few models for structuring them.  After observing this problem in previous conferences, Ian Whalley (New Zealand) presented a paper suggesting that system dynamics modeling might be used to create narrative structures for computer music. He demonstrated the idea with computerized flow charts outlining the structures of works such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  (See diagram below.)  

      Diagram courtesy of Ian Whalley.

Problems remain though, because one still needs something semiological (signs and signifiers with metaphorical meanings) to place in the structures.  Timbre, which seems to be the focus of much computer music, might not have the same richness of semiological meanings associated with it as pitch and rhythm.  The reasons for this might not be only cultural, but also have something to do with the kinesthetic characteristics of music. 

If there was any single impression left by the conference, it is the extent to which the computer is disembodying music.  In his keynote address, Joel Chadabe, said, “We want a holistic instrument that stresses the intellect and isn’t dependant on the body. We can play the sounds of a cityscape.  Why do you need a body for that?”  Even though he is not against the body, he spoke of it as an unnecessary hindrance to music-making, a limitation to freedoms of the intellect. 

Some feel this approach might be based on false assumptions about what humans are.  In the last two decades, cognitive psychologists such as George Lakoff have argued that there is no Cartesian dualistic person with a mind separate and independent of the body.  Reason is not disembodied.  Its very structure comes from the details of our embodiment.  Philosophers such as John Dewey and Merleau-Ponty, also view the body as inseparable from reason, the primal basis that shapes everything we can mean, think, know, and communicate. 

We may find that there is no quick path to putting the body in music, and that without the long, existential process of making an instrument and the body-mind one, we weaken  cognitive structures that are essential to musical meaning.  Technical and aesthetic strategies for solving this problem formulate the future of computer music.