Fielding workshop

An important part of my residency at iii was the offering of a public [[proposals/2017_FieldingWorkshop|workshop]] on Fielding in which I intended to introduce my ideas around inter-species music making to interested participants. The workshop took place last Saturday and I was able to lure in nine curious human beings, mostly having a background in computer music and studying Sonology at the Royal Conservatoire den Haag.¹

My workspace at the iii residency

As it is common with these kind of workshops, I prepared too much and too little at the same time. While I was confident during my preparations that I can sufficiently motivate my approach to inter-species music-making, I realised that explaining it to outsiders is anything but simple and a seemingly simple question such as “How does the term music translate to bees?” is surprisingly difficult to answer/discuss about.

Potential playing partner. Fruit cycle as an offering?

Instead of diving into the technical details of Fielding, we therefore had a sound walk outside of the post-industrial area around Willem Dreespark in Moerwijk, partly to listen and observe non-human beings in their habitat, partly to find patterns and behaviour of them that might be starting points for a musical intervention.

Lump/bump on the pavement. Is it alive? How could we interact with it?

Human participants of the workshop enjoying the autumn sun at iii studios.

{% comment %} Biological niche for moss: microclimate of the slits at a garbage place.

Plants as individuals: which of these will still be there in a year or ten? Does it make a difference?{% endcomment %}

In the second half of the time, we looked at Steno as important element of Fielding, which allows for on-the-fly structural recombinations of predefined synthesis elements.

Sensor ponderings Link to heading

Fielding sensor box based on Arduino.

Plans for the workshop included to provide a simple sensor module to the participants so that they could test out Fielding on their own. I thought that an Arduino-based system would have been good for that matter, possibly equipped with several light sensitive elements. However, I realised that the expenditure of purchasing and building those for ten people was not justified by its usefulness.

Screenshot of light2osc

Instead, I (re)wrote a simple Processing script that turns a connected camera (most computers have a built-in camera) into a simple light sensor array.

Trying the script with a local fielding instance turned out to be very inspiring so I will stick to it for future work(shops).

Interestingly, the use of the script together with Steno exemplifies the dichotomous idea of control I intended for Fielding: While one agent obtains structural control by (re)combining predefined synthesis elements of a given vocabulary (realised with Steno, a technique closely related to livecoding), the other agent influences the system more immediately via quantitatively measurable (and measured) activity such as movement, temperature changes, or casting shadows.

I force this separation of controls because I want to guarantee a certain minimal expressive space for each of the playing partners, a save space that cannot be overrun by the other. I hope that this artificially induced technical hurdle increases the likelihood that the playing partners listen to each other and become aware of their co-players.

light2osc with fielding

Jon (human participant of the workshop) pondering on how to make music with vines on trees near Moerwijk.