Practice as research summary
Practice as research (PaR) values exploration and discovery through doing and is a term establishing
arts practice as a valid research methodology within academic environments. In a PaR process,
creative work is no longer either a static object to be investigated or a simple and literal example of
thinking done previously. Practice becomes a way to think and process information and operates in a
much more democratised and complimentary fashion with the (traditionally more highly valued)
written word. Kim Vincs, an Australian dance artist-researcher expresses this beautifully when she
states,
“I want to develop the idea that dancing and making dance forms a space or a substrate within which
to think about dance. Rather than dances being the outcomes of thinking done previously, dances are
the actual process of thinking, and this process is the core methodology of studio-based dance
research.”
Vincs, K., 2012. Rhizome/myzone : a case study in studio-based dance research. Practice as research :
approaches to creative arts enquiry, p.99–112.
For more details on PaR please follow the links included in my initial email.
A (very) brief overview of Systems/Control Theory
A brief introductory paragraph;
System theory is the transdisciplinary study of the abstract organization of phenomena,
independent of their substance, type, or spatial or temporal scale of existence. It investigates
both the principles common to all complex entities, and the models which can be used to
describe them. (taken from Principia Cybernetica)
Christian has also drawn up a basic level diagramme and applied it to music/sound which we can
open out here. The examples presented here are by no means comprehensive and should only serve
to give and introduction to basic terms, concepts and ideas etc.
I'll base a brief overview on the following excerpt from the book Feedback Control Theory,
(reference Doyle, J.C., 2009. Feedback control theory, Mineola, N.Y: Dover.)
(taken from page 2)
“A very interesting engineering system is the Keck astronomical telescope, currently under
construction on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. When completed it will be the world’s largest. The
basic objective of the telescope is to collect and focus starlight using a large concave mirror.
The shape of the mirror determines the quality of the observed image. The larger the mirror,
the more light that can be collected, and hence the dimmer the star that can be observed.
The diameter of the mirror on the Keck telescope will be 10 m. To make such a large, highprecision mirror out of a single piece of glass would be very difficult and costly. Instead, the
mirror on the Keck telescope will be a mosaic of 36 hexagonal small mirrors. These 36
segments must then be aligned so that the composite mirror has the desired shape.
The control system to do this is illustrated in Figure 1.1. As shown, the mirror segments are
subject to two types of forces: disturbance forces (described below) and forces from
actuators. Behind each segment are three piston-type actuators, applying forces at three
points on the segment to effect its orientation. In controlling the mirror’s shape, it suffices to
control the misalignment between adjacent mirror segments. In the gap between every two
adjacent segments are (capacitor- type) sensors measuring local displacements between the
two segments. These local displacements are stacked into the vector labelled y; this is what
is to be controlled. For the mirror to have the ideal shape, these displacements should have
certain ideal values that can be pre-computed; these are the components of the vector r. The
controller must be designed so that in the closed-loop system y is held close to r despite the
disturbance forces. Notice that the signals are vector valued. Such a system is multivariable.
Our uncertainty about the plant arises from disturbance sources:
• As the telescope turns to track a star, the direction of the force of gravity on the mirror
changes.
• During the night, when astronomical observations are made, the ambient temperature
changes.
• The telescope is susceptible to wind gusts. and from uncertain plant dynamics:
• The dynamic behavior of the components—mirror segments, actuators, sensors—cannot
be modeled with infinite precision.”
If we now bring this model back to a sound/music example, instead of a telescope we can imagine a
musical ensemble playing the melody from Frère Jacques with one person playing piano. Using a
slightly different diagramme we can now model as follows:
In the musical example, the desired shape of a mirror becomes the desired melody from a piece of
music. The actuators that control mirror segment become fingers, hands and arms which press a key.
The piano keys equal the mirror segments.
Some examples of our new disturbance forces would include;
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Some people in the ensemble playing at different speeds.
A false press of an incorrect key by the pianist.
Out of tune instruments in the ensemble creating ambiguity as to the correct pitches.
Players accenting incorrect notes in the melody which might interrupt the tune’s meter and
destabilise the melodic and harmonic form.
And lastly, most certainly we can say that human operators cannot be modelled with
anything close to infinite precision and so error and a reasonably high level of uncertainty is
common to most if not all activity.
Numerous musicians have been influenced by Information Theory, Systems Theory etc and as a initial
example we can look at the work Gesang der Jünglinge by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen
(written in 1955-56). Stockhausen was a student of theorist Werner Meyer-Eppler (Meyer-Eppler
coined the term Information Theory) and was profoundly influenced by his ideas. Some other
examples from Stockhausen’s work in the period are Studie I and II.
At this time the concept of Stunde null (zero hour or ‘starting from scratch’) was important to
creatives as they attempted to work in a devastated post WWII and post Third Reich Germany. How
were people supposed to express emotion in music and art in the wake of how this had been
exploited or twisted by the Nazis (and would they even want to)?
How could composers open up new sounds free from the structures of music, which were so limited
(and previously so thoroughly exploited) and whose legacy had been so profoundly ‘soiled’? How can
we discover new material and how can we arrange and organise that material? Lastly, the post war
period brought about dramatic changes in technology such as electronic recording and production of
sound, areas that composers such as Pierre Schaeffer (France) and Stockhausen (Germany) were
instrumental in opening out.
Why might this be useful to me?
Here are a few of my current thoughts going into the project… (Rees)
PS these are ‘thoughts of the moment’ so will probably change but here they are!
--------------------------------------------------I think bringing together practice based testing with theoretical modelling is a powerful (and fun!)
approach which can give us (as with Stockhausen and Christian Jendreiko’s own work), extremely
valuable new perspectives on ‘the known’.
Personally for me (Rees) a combination of both performance (in my case music) and the systems
and control systems theories offer me the possibility to ‘discover the un-thinkable’. By this I mean
that in terms of my specialism (music) and the objects and structures that make it up (e.g. an
instrument, players/composers, and pieces of sound/music), I already know these so well and
have been trained in thinking of them in a certain way to such a degree, that it is often hard or
even impossible, to discover ‘the new’. Christian and I have previously talked about this issue and
used the term “loving something to death”.
John Cage used chance operations such as tossing coins to attempt “to make a musical
composition[s] the continuity of which is free from individual taste and memory (psychology)”
(Cage, 1986, p. 59). In using systems theory and practice as research I think we have a really
interesting mix of both ‘transcending psychology’ in the moment of performance, and in
remaining clearly within a rational and theoretical position in terms of devising our systems and
control models prior to this. Additionally, the use of these models, as in Christian’s work I
mentioned in the initial email, can let us find new approaches by modeling previously neglected
elements of a system which can lead to transformation in terms of how we conceive of that
which we previously apparently knew so well.
I hope that in presenting a brief overview here I have left it open enough for you to be able to
place your own specialism and your own research focus and interests into the mix and Christian
and I look forward to working together with you.