BY MARK BOSCH
We would like to welcome Mark in his first story as a CutCommon contributor.
I would like to think that the fuddy-duddy formula for sitting stock-stiff through live music, afraid to breathe or scratch an itch, is on the wrong side of history.
Live performance can and should be fun and involving. If we’re all afraid to have fun, what’s the point?
Julian Day, as you’ll read below, agrees.
This artist, composer, writer, broadcaster, and all-round inimitable human has something to say about this. We speak to him about the world premiere of his work Game On, a set of chamber pieces operating as games, featured in BackStage Music’s upcoming concert of the same name.
Without giving it all away, tell us a little bit about Game On. How will your piece pull game theory and sport into the performance space?
Game On is a set of new and recent chamber pieces that operate as games. Some are fun and theatrical, adapting existing games like snap or blind man’s buff with outsized cards and blindfolds. Others are more overtly musical, using sport concepts and game rules with traditional instruments like vibraphone and bass clarinet.
I act as the MC, and threaten audience interaction from time to time. I’ve been working with game rules since my undergrad years, particularly within my site-specific project Super Critical Mass, which studies how people coordinate themselves in relation to each other and their environments. I’m fascinated by how simple instructions can yield complex social situations through the principle of emergence.
I’m also keen to keep extending our concepts of the concert ritual, the stage, the ensemble, and the audience through such strategies as interactive rules and breaking the fourth wall.
Game theory is all about rules, right? Why do you think rules lend themselves to compelling music?
Games do involve rules, yes. But I’m drawn to game theory more because it highlights how we interact with other people. That, to me, is the central puzzle of how to live in the world.
I see music as a form of ‘social practice’ – it frames how we cooperate and interact with others, whether our musical peers or our listeners. Rules might be seen as limiting, but I view them as liberating devices that allow unexpected outcomes to occur, opening up structures to be less linear and more speculative.
If, as a listener, you know the rules, then you are invested in wanting to hear how things evolve, just as you might get caught up in whether a netball match will end in a draw or a crushing victory. And, of course, limitations help you focus.
From as far as John Zorn to Steve Reich, who are your influences and how have you felt the use (or abandon) of rules in their music?
Any conversation involving musical games tends to invoke John Zorn. His famous series of codified improvisation games in the 1970s and ‘80s are, as I experienced recently in New York, compelling and exciting theatre.
I resist the politics of these works, though, which highlight the advanced skills of specific individuals, Olympics style. I’m more interested in participatory games whose rules can be learnt by anyone as a way to empower individuals and strengthen social skills. As such, I’m very drawn to composers who specifically focus on interdependence, such as Pauline Oliveros or James Saunders, or who welcome amateurs, as does Christian Wolff.
Of course, game structures alone don’t imply specific material, and sonically I’m drawn to the taut geometries of artists like Steve Reich and William Basinski.
Some people dislike rules and restrictions, but you’re setting out to prove that in the right context they can be a lot of fun. What sort of social relations are you hoping your rules will build, or for that matter illuminate, in Game On?
I have a nihilistically optimistic expectation for a just universe, which is guaranteed to keep me miserable.
Nonetheless, I still try using my art to help generate more non-hierarchical ways to be with other people. Or, at least, allow us to observe how power imbalances emerge in social situations.
My project Super Critical Mass is one such utopian venture. It builds ensembles of people who act in equal relationship to one another by following identical instructions. Works like our recent 24-Hour Choir feature a kind of self-generated learning process that allows you to observe social relations unfold in real time. Others, like Common Ground, are presented explicitly as games that trigger an acoustic relationship to how you engage with buildings.
As with games, our works are built on either cooperation or competition, or a dynamic tension between the two, which characterises much social behaviour.
The BackStage Music series is billed as “a living space for living music”. So many of the works on show this year involve electronics, found objects, display technology, and audience participation. Do you think this turn towards multimedia is the way to keep classical or art music “alive”?
I think we get far too hung up on traditional music and venues. It’s the classical syndrome – we’re so tied to conserving the past that we blithely reinforce convention (although, I guess you could say that of many musics).
I recently created a work for all of the historic pianos in London’s Royal Academy of Music. What you notice is that for every perfectly realised Steinway Model D, there are dozens of oddball pianos that never quite spawned children, from double-manual French grand pianos to six-pedalled Viennese keyboards with proto-John Cage paper roll preparations.
You notice the same thing in London’s remarkable Horniman Museum, which overflows with quirky cousins of every conceivable instrument. So, music history is full of unusual experiments.
I’ve always been interested in responding to our immediate environment and the objects around us and have been doing so within Super Critical Mass. We started out creating immersive works for dozens of identical traditional instruments, such as 80 flutes flooding the concrete cathedral of Carriageworks, but in recent years have instead deployed polystyrene balls, sheets of paper, ceramic plates, gold coins and so forth. Most people can quickly learn the embedded virtuosity in these objects, and this radically widens the aperture for participation.
What do you think the Australian classical music community could borrow from gaming and sports culture to keep itself relevant? (Apart from the funding!)
I recently went to my first ever rugby match (I know! Took a while) and was dazzled by its immersive scale and the spectacle – fireworks, giant screens, booze and breathless violence; not unlike the glitz of opera on the harbour. I guess the concert ritual is already similar to a sporting match, in that we use it to find release through the ciphers of formalised, arms-length stage action.
I think music can learn from sport in giving the audience a lot more agency and, ideally, the opportunity to participate. This can be in the form of creatively loosening the spectator experience, be it as simple as non-fixed seating and an open bar, or as direct as offering a more non-hierarchical and participatory role; for instance, giving the listener some choice in the repertoire or the way the event unfolds.
A colleague of mine in New York prefers to label concerts as ‘events’ for this reason, to suggest a greater fluidity in how a concert might be structured and encountered. Personally, I detest the idea of paying a tonne of money to strap myself into a stiff chair next to immobile and silent strangers, afraid to breathe in case my neighbour shoots me with a frown, in order to withstand the pre-composed linear thoughts of a pre-determined ‘genius’. Not fun!
Julian, before we let you go, what’s your favourite game to play — sports or otherwise?
I was the quintessential fake-a-note-from-mum-to-avoid-sports-day kid. I once tried soccer and once tried basketball, and scored only two blood noses. I suck at sport! I can, however, destroy you at checkers.
Ensemble Offspring will perform Game On, featuring 2018 Hatched Academy Associate Artist clarinettist Georgina Oakes, as part of BackStage Music at 7pm July 19 in Woodburn Creatives, Redfern.
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Images supplied. Featured image by Felicity Jenkins.
