Singing the body electric
— Understanding the role of embodiment in performing and composing interactive music
ANNA EINARSSON
ANNA EINARSSON Singing th e b ody e le ct ric
Singing the body electric
— Understanding the role of embodiment in performing and composing interactive music
Royal College of Music Stockholm
in Music at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. The dissertation is presented at Lund University in the framework of the cooperation agreement between the Malmö Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts, Lund University, and the Royal College of Music regarding doctoral education in the subject Music in the context of Konstnärliga forskarskolan.
Graphic design: Transfer Studio | transferstudio.se Photography: As credited
Printed in Sweden by Media-Tryck, Lund 2017 ISBN 978-91-7753-260-6
Doctoral studies and research in fine and performing arts, 18 (ISSN 1653-8617)
© 2017 Anna Einarsson
Abstract
Almost since the birth of electronic music, composers have been fascinated by the prospect
of integrating the human voice, with its expressiveness and complexity, into electronic mu-
sical works. This thesis addresses how performing with responsive technologies in mixed
works, i.e. works that combine an acoustic sound source with a digital one, is experienced
by participating singers, adopting an approach of seamlessness, of zero – or invisible – inter-
face, between singer and computer technology. It demonstrates how the practice of composing
and the practice of singing both are embodied activities, where the many-layered situation in all
its complexity is of great importance for a deepened understanding. The overall perspec-
tive put forward in this thesis is that of music as a sounding body to resonate with, where the
resonance, a process of embodying of feeling and emotion, guides the decision-making. The
core of the investigation is the experience garnered through the process of composing and
performing three musical works. One result emerging from this process is the suggested
method of calibration, according to which a bodily rooted attention forms a kind of joint at-
tention towards the work in the making. Experiences from these three musical works arrive
in the formulation of an over-arching framework entailing a view of musical composition as
a process of construction – and embodied mental simulation – of situations, whose dynam-
ics unfold to engage musicians and audience through shifting fields of affordances, based on
a shared landscape of affordances.
Acknowledgements
As I signed on to this ship, sailing the seas of artistic research, I was full of anticipation, in love with the sea, yet at the same time aware of its treacherous nature and the hidden rocks not always clearly shown on the map.
Thank you Tom Ziemke, for your excellent know-how and sense of humour, always pro- viding maps for new discoveries. Thank you Per Mårtensson for your clear gaze and sharp intellect, helping me navigate this sea, reminding me to keeping a steady course. Thank you also the rest of the crew: Anders Friberg, Susan Kozel, Sten Ternström, Johan Sund- berg, Ylva Gislén, Henrik Frisk, Bill Brunson, for your input and efforts. Furthermore, all skilled fellow musicians and collaborators: Sofia Jernberg, Lina Nyberg, Sara Niklasson, Is- abel Sörling, Ulla Pirttijärvi, Marita Solberg, Maria Sundqvist and Malmö Operaverkstad, Jörgen Dahlqvist, Markus Råberg, George Kentros, Maurio Goina, Andre Bartetski, Valeria Hedman and many more, without whom this project would never have been set to sea at all.
I am deeply indebted to you.
My parents, thank you for your support, reminding me to eat and sleep as well as discussing the journey.
And to Magnus, my life companion, like Jum-Jum in the Astrid Lindgren story of Mio, min
mio, never leaving my side, urging me to be at my best and challenging me, while at the
same time providing unconditioned love and support. Let’s keep the music playing…
Preface
I will not begin this thesis by describing how I tweaked my tape recorder as a child or had my first set of gear to mold lead to make loudspeaker elements at the age of 7. Nor will I go into my early fascination for synthesizers, or how I found out about ring modulation just by accident: accounts similar to those given by many composers of electronic music. I won’t, simply because that wasn’t me. Instead, I stood in the garden outside my parents’ house with neighbors assembled, holding a skipping rope, singing at my loudest. I sang my way through my early childhood, my school years, and through the looking ”at clouds from both sides”, to quote one of my favourites, Joni Mitchell. My first formal training at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm was also as a jazz singer (although to be fair, by the end of my four years I had begun tip-toeing in the composition hallway taking counterpoint classes and consequently was the only jazz vocalist not doing a studio recording as one’s chosen final project, but a piece for saxophone quartet, voice and tape instead).
Music technology somehow snuck in the back door. When I was a child my mother trav- elled a lot to Japan and the US. In those days Sweden was still lagging a few years behind in technical development, at least in terms of making it readily available for the man on the street, and so she brought home a number of devices considered (at least partly) cutting edge. For example I remember a red microphone bought in Japan that I used for making endless recordings of mostly me singing and talking. We had one of the first portable CD Walkmans. And I was at an early age given a synthesizer producing lots of funny noises. But these tools were never at the center of my attention, they were means to an end, namely to engage in music.
It was not until studying composition, again at the Royal College of Music, when I tru- ly discovered the fascination for composing with sound and the aesthetics this entailed. I found out about the full spectrum of possibilities for sound manipulation and sound syn- thesis, not to mention assigning different behaviours to the sounding in various program- ming environments.
For a number of years I had been performing professionally and making records as a vocalist primarily in jazz and improvisation, but as my interest in electroacoustic music grew stronger, I also began performing live electronics, mostly using traditional interfac- es like knobs and sliders. Not unlike many other musicians making the transition towards live electronics, I missed the bodily aspect of performing, which denotes my experience of singing. So could I somehow embody the live electronics through singing? How was I to combine these two, in for me musically meaningful ways, when composing?
This thesis is my attempt to elaborate on this matter.
Bra musik. Vad är bra musik? Fönstren är öppna, dagen där ute lockar, men jag envisas. Försöker forma en musikalisk struktur som resonerar i mig på samma vis som texten finner sin resonans i mitt inre. Förtätningar och förtunningar, en öppning vid ordet
”sorg”. Det är allt vad det är att vara människa som står på spel, som vandrar upp mot ytan. Alla olika lager av medvetande, som griper genom tiden.
— June 2014.
Good music. What is good music? The windows are open, the day out there beckons, but I persist. Try to form a musical structu- re that resonates in me in the same way as the text finds reso- nance in me. Condensations and dispersions, an opening with the word “sorrow”. All that it means to be human is at stake, rising to the surface. All the different layers of consciousness, clai- ming us through time.
1 This is an extract from my process diary from the process of composing Metamorphoses (2015)
and an example of how bodily states and dynamics underlie and influence my composing.
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ett hem mot ett an nat- hem en blick
73
ett liv mot ett an nat- liv
mot en an nan- blick ils - ka mot en an nan-
78
ett hem mot ett an nat- hem
ett hem mot ett an nat- hem
ett
ils - ka en sorg
p
mot en 83
ils - ka mot en ann an- ils - - - - ka
en sorg mot en ann an- sorg
liv mot ett an nat- liv ett
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& ∑ ∑
& ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑
& ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑
&
&
& ∑ ∑
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& -
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bring out&
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˙
# œn™ ‰ Œ œ œb œn œ# wb ˙™ œJ ‰ ˙# œn™ ‰
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b ˙ œJ ‰ œ œ œb œ w
Œ œ œb œn œ# wb ˙™ œJ ‰ ˙#™ œn Œ œ œb œn œ#
˙™ Œ ˙ b ˙ œJ ‰ œ œ œb œ w ˙™ œj‰
Ó # ˙ ˙n œ œb œ œ# ˙b
Ó b ˙
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b ™ œ ˙™ œJ ‰ w# n w ˙ œ œb
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<b> œ Œ ˙# œn™ ‰ Œ œ œ œb œ œ ˙b ˙
˙ œJ ‰ œ œ œb œ ˙ ˙ ˙ œ œj‰ Ó b w
Image 1. An «opening» with the word sorrow.
Abstract
3Acknowledgements
4Preface
5Mapping the thesis by chapters:
An overview
10Papers and Works included
in the Thesis
131. Introduction
151.1. Mapping the thesis chronologically:
Vantage points, tours and detours
161.2. Aims and contributions
212. Towards Music as Embodied
Experience
232.1. Delineating the mixed work
232.2. Continuing with mixed works:
The increase of processing speed and the
research centre IRCAM
252.3. Or is she just checking her e-mail…?
262.4. Questions of mapping and feature
extraction
272.5. A prevailing dualistic view on the
mixed work
282.6. A note on genre identification:
improvisation, interpretation and notation 29 2.7. What is this thing called interactivity?
312.8. Singing and composing as acts
of embodying
323. Perspectives From Embodied
Cognitive Science
363.1. Embodied cognition “Second generation
cognitive science”
363.1.1. Cognition is situated
373.1.2. Cognition is time-pressured
383.1.3. We off-load cognitive work to the
environment
393.1.4. The environment is part of the
cognitive system
393.1.5. Cognition is for action
403.1.6. Off-line cognition is body based
403.2. Which embodiment? And which body? 41 3.3. Embodied cognition perspectives
on music
423.4. Gibson’s ecological theory of perception 43 3.5. Affordances 2.0 - Chemero’s radical
embodied cognitive science
453.6. Affordances and music: You should be
dancing, yeah
453.7. Fly on the wings of love: Feelings,
movement and metaphors
463.8. My focus of research
474. Methodology
494.1. The question on “What is?”
494.2. Conducting artistic research
494.3. An alternative view on subjectivity
504.4. Attentiveness as a way of knowing
514.5. Mixing of methods
534.6. Process diaries and reflection-in-action 53 4.7. Interpretative Phenomenological
Analysis
544.7.1. Participants
554.7.2. Interviews
564.7.3. Self-reflection
565. Summaries:
Artistic Works and Papers
575.1. Artistic Works
575.1.2. PS. I will be home soon! (2012)
57 5.1.2.1. Balancing the whole and its parts 61 5.1.2.2. Searching surfaces for interaction 635.1.3. Metamorphoses (2015)
665.1.4. One piece of a shared space (2015)
735.2. Papers
745.2.1. We can work it out – Calibration as
artistic method
745.2.1.1. On the work 75
5.2.1.2. Workshops 75
5.2.1.3. Results 75
5.2.2. Using singing voice vibrato as a control parameter in a chamber opera
785.2.2.1. Vibrato extraction 78
5.2.2.2. Method 79
5.2.2.3. Results 79
5.2.2.4.Conclusion 80
5.2.3. Experiencing responsive technology in a
mixed work
805.2.3.1. Aim & Method 80
5.2.3.2. Embodiment, data collection
& data analysis 81
5.2.3.3. Results & Discussion 82
5.2.4. Exploring the multi-layered affordances of composing and performing interactive music with responsive technologies
835.2.4.1. Aim 83
5.2.4.2. On affordances in general and cultural
affordances in particular. 83
5.2.4.3. Practical examples from artistic works 84
5.2.4.4. Conclusion 85