Lab Days #2 – Khimaira
We have a number of Lab Days lined up for our research where we invite guests to work with us for one or two days, perform different experiments, and give input from their own unique perspective. Our first visitor was director and musician Johan Petri, who’s just about to present his doctoral dissertation “The Rhythm of Thinking” at the University of Gothenburg.
Johan was eager to have us play as soon as possible and had prepared a method where we individually composed five pieces of music using paper, colored pencils and crayons, scissors etc. We then each picked five pieces from the others, decided in what order our own “suite” should be played, for what duration and if there was to be any pauses between movements. Then we simultaneously played our individual scores using iPhone timers and without further instructions. We repeated the picking-ordering-playing process and in this way completed three versions.
A discussion followed that brought up…
…different attitudes and methods when reading/playing graphic scores.
…whether density of information (graphics/timers/multilayers etc) possibly lead to an easier set-back to habitual playing/licks when improvising.
…interesting phenomena such as very diverse dynamic layering, and collective transformations arising even at points where we demonstrably were not shifting material at the same time.
We then went on to discuss core values of our research. Johan proposed we keep attaching our models and work methods to what we do and experience, focusing on whether possible results can be used for practical reasons.
We were very happy with Johan’s visit and found it valuable and well-timed in our process. Upcoming Lab Days (September 19-21) are without external guests but will include presentations by Katt and Ricard.
