Dedicated to Jill Geiger

The art of risk taking: Experimentation, between invention to discovery.

This talk is divided to 2 parts. In the first part I will read a paper which tries to
figure out the connection between experimentation to invention and to
discovery. It looks at different types of risk taking as agents leading towards
invention on the one hand or discovery on the other, and tries to figure out
how the various modalities of risk and experimentation merge or diverge. In
the second part I will walk you through some example of my own work which
will present some avenues on my path demonstrating these terms. I would
like to be able to listen to a whole piece at the end : my most recent piece
Zohar Iver, a piece where both modalities are present.
Experimentalism as a basic approach to art or even life, wider then any
historical reference.
Is creativity at its base experimental? it does not have to be. One creates
variations on existing things. One creates improvement of existing things
which one likes so that they will work even better. When we talk about
experimental art or music we talk about art that is the result of a particular
kind of creative activity. For me it is the most potent type of creativity.
Why?
because the experimentalist path is guided by a process of continuous
searching rather then refining the points of finding; it prefers questioning
over answering; the experimental approach is ready to risk a result which is
not assured, not completely resolved and not completely mastered. therefore
its success in the public arena is not a given. All these are parameters pointing
to creativitys agency in the pursuit of freedom and independence. Freedom-
the freedom to think about what matters NOW and not only respond to the
commitments of the past (tradition) and of the future (coming up with the
next ISM) , and independence- Independence from the general pressure to
succeed and from the pressure to define to finish and sell.

Lets imagine a continuum ranging from invention and discovery all the way
to Mastery. Experimentalism will have to hinge strongly towards invention
and discovery rather then toward mastery. It deals with the origination of an
idea and not with the mastering and making it better it deals with
attempting something which is not yet familiar so the conventions of this
unfamiliar area are not yet entirely spelled out. Of course we need to mention
that never the less, the conventions of our perception, of our creative behavior
ARE there. But in terms of the unfamiliar territory, it is not yet so readily
couched in terms of its own criteria for its own success or failure, as the terms
are not yet completely set. It is couched more in terms of its unfamiliarity and
freshness separating it from the familiar.
There is an over bearing difficulty in writing a protocol or a list of conditions
defining experimentalism because in its base, the definition and the how to
protocol or even the what is and what is not manifestos work against the
grain of experimentalism as a basic approach. Every protocol or prescription
deals with a finished and figured out system, a CLOSED system whereas the
experimental approach promotes an open-endedness, and the multi faceted
thinking which resists closure and closed definition, and wants to keep things
refreshed alive and debatable. The idea of a text which is a set of clear sacred
directives is an anathema to this spirit. The Zen Koan would be by far more
suitable here.

Since I would like to focus my attention NOT on the treatment of
experimentalism as an historical category or phenomenon but to rather look
at it from the inside out, the next paragraphs are dedicated to an inquiry
of an essential component of any form of experimental art: Risk taking. I will
attempt to examine 2 contrary and complementary modalities of risk
taking. The first modality will be marked as risk leading to invention and the
second one will be marked as risk taking leading to discovery. Actually the
alternating path between these 2 modalities typifies the work of many
inventive experimental artists.

Experimental modality out word: Taking the risk of stepping out side and
working AGAINST . It is a work of resistance against the given, against what
is already set. Framing a new/ newish field : Risk taking towards invention.

One is moved to invent a new field of action in 2 ways. One is within the
discipline (like Schoenbergs 12 tone technique, or Ivan Alexandrovich
Wyschnegradsky music in the beginning of the 20 th century or Feldmans
duration notation or his patterned compositions or Gesualdos harmonic
language- or Beethovens latest sonatas or quartets the list is endless) and the
other is opening the field outwards (like Schnebels musical/theatrical work or
Robert Ashelys operas for example or the interdisciplinary work done today
by many young composers such as Marianthi Papalexandri Alexandri Hanes
Seidel or Stefan Prins or steen Anderson and many others I neglect to
mention). In general one is moved towards this modality of invention because
the current field is not large enough to house their concerns. The field might
be is too narrow, or too stale, too over used, or too restricting for their
imagination. There is then a necessity to enlarge the field. This is done by
pushing the boundaries of the field outwards touching on other areas which
might be other media other artistic fields or any other field of activity.
Invention might be also achieved by RE- FRAMING the field from the inside
and focusing on one of its parameters ignoring other parameters to create a
new universe focused on one element. Steve Reichs phase shift works can
serve as a good example for this as can some of Peter Ablingers work. This
type of risk taking works against constraints of the present situation. It looks
to the imagination to push ones view from what is familiar to what is
unfamiliar. This push of the imagination is indeed a risk. Let me read here a
paragraph from a speech if a 16 years old speech written as a school
assignment. Ko Takasugi Czernowin, my son, is dealing with the belief in the
belief of flying saucers This a composition which deals not with art per-se,
but it does address notions of pushing the imagination.
i found on ufo evidence.org, there are a lot of theories and much
speculation as to what this string of strange occurrences means. Some believe
that the objects concerned were secret weapons of mass destruction. Other
enthusiasts adhere to the common belief that alien life is visiting Earth..
running experiments probes.. on innocent human beings and
unsuspecting bovid mammals. Still, in these sad times, the vast majority of
people are skeptics who would consider every single flying saucer sighting to
be
nothing more than misinterpretation of natural phenomena or even
delusion!
A few years ago, back when my confusion was a slightly less prevalent,
this theory would have made my stomach acids boil with disgust at the fowl-
tasting oatmeal that was skepticism. Turning something so beautiful as flying
saucers into something so
mundane. But now, as I am more confused than ever in this agitated state
of change, I have grown to love this delusion theory. Further, I now quote:
flying saucers are manifestations of a new dimension, a dimension that
possibly includes the
human mind and the imagination. Ufoligist Jaques Vallee..
So, it can be suggested that instances of delusion may be attributed
to inter-dimensional manifestations of the human imagination.
When your deranged neighbor swears that a spinning China Bowl abducted
him for two days and two nights. He is not lying. He had been lucky enough to
experience the threshold his imagination, and thereby touched a dimension of
reality yet unknown to man and certainly not to the neighbor.
Of course I am bringing this citation with a smile, but I do think it encapsulate
something pertinent to our discussion. The perimeter of the imagination,
where the experimental lives, is not necessary a cozy comfortable place to
inhabit, especially In terms of its reception. At times it is not respectable, it
might be easily mocked (in the 80ies, I remember hearing about this crazy
British guy who write crazy nonsense- this was Brian ferneyhough) and it is
fragile because it contains elements which are outside of the norm. Thus its
acceptance might linger behind. This is a part of its charm and its heroic
quality: its rarity. I am sure everyone here remembers the days in which the
most unknown band one discovered was the most admirable. So the quality of
rarity which comes with sharing the new band with the initiated creates a sub
culture which always has an element of resistance to the mainstream. There is
a heroic notion connected to possibly taking the risk of isolation and ridicule
on the one hand and of taking the risk of not being understood on the
other. When one had to wonder all the way to the Antarctica of the mind as it
were in order to find a place with eternal snow where the land is not marked
already by endless used routes, one is taking a risk which works AGAINST.

Experimental modality inward: the risk taking of working within/ discovering
the way things unfold when they move purely on their own terms
bringing their inherent potentials into realization, and not in accordance to
conventions OR against conventions or style. The risk of learning to leave
material alone to find its way.
Feldman words about not pushing sounds around but watching them find
their idiosyncratic way to move in time as if they were autonomous, are a good
direction call for this approach. It is very tricky to articulate this. So I am
getting some help here: Next I will present 2 short videos, as I believe that
they will create a point of reference which we can lean on in this part of the
discussion. The first is a short segment related to the work of Theo Janssen
and his moving creatures, as he calls them.
THEO JANSSEN VIDEO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSKyHmjyrkA
(one need not to see the whole 3 min video- watch till you get the idea)
There are a few interesting things I would like to point out about this work.
1-Its area is not clearly defined. Is it a moving sculpture? Is it indeed
sculptural? Or is it choreography? Or perhaps it is a research of the mobility of
our bone structure and its movement? 2- Whatever it is, it is not hierarchical.
Each small particle of these creatures is as essential as the next. If one of the
small half circles, the feet, is broken, then the whole thing will collapse in no
time. Just like in a good improvisation, every small particle is essential to the
understanding and to the existence of the whole. SCALE has a new meaning
here. This is not a micro-macro structure in which the micro and the macro
are clarified and fixated, where at times the details are secondary to the MAIN
structure and are simply adding texture to it. Here, the micro and the macro,
the overall trajectory and the detail, the form and the material are very
mingled, and they have a high degree of inter-dependability. They are all of
the same flesh as it were. The prospective of their placement in the
background or foreground is not set yet. Its kept afloat because its fixating is
already a move which assumes a clarified and categorized picture. 3-The idea
of letting something to do its thing without willed and direct interference is
very important here. The movement, the ability to move by itself is at stake
here, and the artist has to learn what he can do and what he cannot do in
order to enable this movement, he has to create the right conditions so that
the movement happens. He is taking the risk of giving his or her own habitual
expression away in order to come closer to discover the way in which
something else is enabled to move.
Next I would like to present a short video, called 10 myths about the
Alexander Technique. The Alexander Technique is a kind of an experimental
body work, invented by Fredrich Matthias Alexander in the 20 th century. It
is a technique which promotes body awareness and teaches one how to
constantly work toward allowing the body to move in a way where we do not
intervene in the movement with our personalities, our expression and our
habits.
Lets watch Bruce Furmans video 10 myths about the Alexander Technique.
(only first few minutes or so)
VIDEO 10 MYTHS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UA1uGnUqb0&feature=related
(4 or so first myths are fine)
Why is this video pertinent to our subject? Because while talking about a
discipline it evokes rather than prescribes. Because it deals with a
communication within an experimental arena and it provokes continuous
discovery within that area. Discovery applies to something which has been
there all along and needs to be discovered. But is it indeed EVER discovered?
When we talk about music I would like to believe that the experimental works
contain in them seeds of evocation which allows or provokes or evokes the
continuous search for deeper and deeper discovery. After one performance of
Cage song book the possibilities are not exhausted, the opposite more
interesting possibilities start to appear. The search for the discovery is written
or projected ONTO THE TEXT and it remains vital also after many
performances or in other cases, the search can continue after a few pieces have
been addressing a similar question, or working to discover something in one
vein. This can happen since the DISCOVERY is not a certain specific result,
but a net of possible interactions, changing with every change of conditions.
The composer then, do not work on a new discovery in every piece but works
on a body of inquiry. This work has the aim of teaching the composer to avoid
automatic tendencies towards fixating posturing naming and preserving.
These tendencies which answer the need to have a grasp internally and to be
branded externally risk the way of working. And the WAY OF WORKING is
what is being studied here through the piece of music.
We are all people. We we are built a certain way and our perception functions
in specific ways. However when one attempts to act out of the motivation to
strip habits strip intervention, strip stylistic dresses and try to allow the
materials to discover their own way of being in time, it is so hard to avoid what
one knows HOW TO DO. It is almost as if the neuron passes are there, the rail
roads are laid , and a new neuron path necessitates cleaning so much dust=
dust of habitual behavior which takes one away, shifts ones attention away
from the mode necessary for allowing a discovery.

Invention and discovery as 2 modalities which complement each other.
Reflecting about innovation and discovery in this way one could pose the next
vision: If an artist INVENTS a field of activity which is to a certain extent
unfamiliar then, next or at the same time, within that area the artist or the
composer needs to discover how the materials, elements, particles of this
unfamiliar area move. She does not have to INVENT this but she needs to look
at her or his invention and DISCOVER how the invented area/ material
unfolds in time.
The danger of being only an inventor is that one is easily given to posturing
and a kind of a militant attitude as if the specific experiment is what matters,
and nothing is holier then non linearity and non narrativity for example.
This becomes a fixation, a flag, and the experimentation dies. The artist
becomes a victim of her own undertaking the once taken risk has become a
product which is constantly defended. The element of being AGAINST
becomes the full content of the risk.
The danger of being only a discoverer is a slow fall into religiosity and self
mystification. Not having any point of reference to work with self referentiality
sets in and the elusive chase after discovery which does not end, can easily
become a closed cycle which has its own way of generating itself again and
again rather than teach one to maintain open to something else to come in on
its own volition.
Between posturing and self mystification:
Walking between the drop only to avoid them would not be a perfect solution.
Every solution which is motivated by negation only is not ideal. There must be
a positive force introduced here and not only that of negation, avoidance so
that both kind of risk taking can work together . From my point of view this
force is the speculative.
It uses being an inventor and a discoverer and the advantage one has from
having both modalities/ sensibilities active, and takes experimentalism
toward another ground which is basically poetic in its nature.
THE SPECULATIVE.