Gordon Monro 16 March

Gordon came across as a delightful Dilbert-esque Mathematician, who veered into composition and not surprisingly found "the computer was a natural medium". 1

Gordon's lecture began with a definition of generative. This seems to involve finding systems (outside of music's own weary lexicon) to act as scaffolding for the compositional process, allowing compositions to unfold with some autonomy from the tyranny of the composer.
I had a sense of deja vu as once again we were shown slides of the effects of playing different frequencies together.

Like Warren, I thought Gordon was blurring the boundary between process and product in composition. For Gordon the product is the process, his pieces were products of a compositional focus on how the music was made - process and not what the music actually sounded like as a result of the process - product. I know it's the 21st century and all, but I'm uneasy with this, and prefer the old fashioned approach where process is subservient to product.

The first piece Gordon presented was Evochord. This generative piece uses as its system a genetic algorithm that evolves a harmonious chord over a span of some time. Within this genetic paradigm, the piece incorporates generations, sexual recombination, fitness selection and mutation. Many chords live and die within the sonic environment. We witness their brief lives, as they strut and frett their hour upon the stage and then are heard no more, until at some time the most harmonious chord emerges victoriously from the post-tonal swamp. Guess what? It turns out that the chord with the least dissonance in terms of minimal beating (the parameter originally specified by Gordon) is comprised of unisons. This is music on the cutting edge.

The total piece is this musical evolutionary journey towards a simple, most harmonious chord. Interesting process and yet I didn't think the piece would stand on its own, without an explanation of the process: this evolutionary model. Maybe that doesn't matter. Oh and there were pretty pictures.

Gordon presented several other pieces. Amongst them Red Grains.

To create Red Grains, Gordon invested time, energy and obviously mighty brain power into devising his movable lego and box installation. The process was firstly designing and constructing this and then playing it - moving and recording the mechanical lego . This was all interesting and cool. The resulting music wasn't. But then maybe I am missing the point.

It seems that if composers use this generative approach, with a focus on process, then they are accountable only for using an interesting system for creation, and it's passe to judge them on the work they produce. It's as if the musical result (what the piece sounds like) is a mildly interesting but irrelevant by-product of the much more important process. And this, I just don't understand.

Hearing these two composers - Warren and Gordon - has left me wondering if I'm completely out of touch. "Concern for product is sooo last October. Didn't you know? You're not still dictating to your pieces how they should sound are you? How out of touch."

In a most informal, non rigorous way I've surveyed several people who in different ways, make their living from music. The consensus is that this approach to composition is a product of post modernism, has limited appeal, application and life expectancy. Although everyone surveyed finds something exotically appealing about the approach, and there is a shared sense that "it's good someone is doing this."

In talking about Red Grains, Gordon said he was inspired by how a waterfall has no intent - it doesn't try to manipulate people experiencing it. When did music become something without intent - without concern for the experience of the listener? In his razor sharp criticism of contemporary arts, Steven Pinker reminds us
Ultimately what draws us to a work of art is not just the sensory experience of the medium but its emotional content and insight into the human condition. 2

1. Gordon Monro. Generative Artwork Lecture presented at University of Adelaide, 16 March 2006.

2. Pinker, S. 2002 The Blank Slate London: Penguin