Sound in genuine interdisciplinary collaborations: a cybernetic solution.

In my research and sound art practice in interdisciplinary projects, with visual and

performing arts, I explore the interaction between artists from a wide range of art

disciplines.

My experience from productions in dance, performance, and theater shows me that

functional hierarchy prevents us from being genuinely interdisciplinary. Responsible

choreographers and directors want finished compositions that should correspond to

their ideas. I, on the other hand, am looking for equal, hierarchy-free, interdisciplinary

 

collaborations. In contrast to cooperation as a division of labor for a fixed goal,

collaboration is a joint creative process towards a common goal. According to the

cultural and media scientist Johannes Binotto (2017), a creative process must be

understood serially, in which feedback plays a decisive role. The complexity of this

interaction is shown by the founder of systems theory (Luhmann), sociologist Niklas

Luhmann (2017), in his reflections on society.

Cybernetics, as an abstraction method of complex control systems, helps to

understand complex technical and non-technical systems. In the cybernetic view of

Georg Klaus (1962), „Zur Soziologie der ‚ Mensch-Maschine-Symbiose, ‚“ I associated

myself in symbiosis with my modular system. A modular system inspired by Serge,

Buchla, and Doepfer is my preferred instrument for complex patches in sound

synthesis. Since my modular system is also a complex control system, the idea of

mapping the process of interdisciplinary collaboration in this system as an algorithm

was obvious.

As the main components of an interdisciplinary interaction, I represent the sound, the

human, and the space within my algorithm (see Figure 1).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The participating artists and the recipients act together as sound generators and feed

the algorithm via an envelope follower. The sound artist just monitors the algorithm

shown.

The envelope follower analyzes the sound, routes the audio signal to the following

algorithm process, and simultaneously generates control signals that control and

regulate various parameters of all subsequent processes. Modal synthesis is used to

map the human within this process. Modal synthesis is „physical modeling“ within

sound synthesis based on the physical properties of musical instruments (The Body).

Granular synthesis represents the acoustic space of collaboration. Granular synthesis

is a synthetic sound generation in which a continuous sound is recomposed from many

small individual sound grains. It can be thought of as a movie that uses frames to

simulate a fluid flow.

The modal and granular synthesis parameters are dynamically influenced by the

control voltages generated by the envelope follower, thus creating an organic sound

structure. The cybernetic parameter „feedback“ is realized by feeding back the audio

signals from the modal and granular synthesis into the envelope follower, thus mapping

the logic of serial, according to Binotto.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The algorithm explained here allows all participants to participate in the sound design

within the interdisciplinary collaboration and th

us offers the chance for a joint creative

process for a common goal.

References

Binotto, J., 2017. Feedback. Zur Theorie der Serie. In: ETH Graphische Sammlung. On

Series, Scenes and Sequences. Zürich: Edition Fink, pp. 535-547.

Luhmann, N., 2017. Systemtheorie der Gesellschaft. Edited by Schmidt J. and

Kieserling A. Berlin: Suhrkamp.

Klaus, G., 1962. Zur Soziologie der „Mensch-Maschine-Symbiose“. Eine kybernetische

Betrachtung. Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 10(7), pp. 885-902.