‘There is More Freedom and Potential for Experimentation in Sound Than in Images’
In February, the ZIL Culture Centre hosted the ‘Music for the End of the World’ concert by students and teachers of two HSE Art and Design School disciplines: Sound Art and Sound Design and Design and Programming. The HSE News Service spoke to participants of the concert about the programme and their performances.
Evgeny Bylina, cultural theorist, curator of the HSE Art and Design School Master’s in Sound Art & Sound Studies
‘The idea of generative composition has existed in art throughout the history of culture. This is especially true of music—from the Aeolian harp and the Japanese suikinkutsu to composing plays by throwing dice in the 18th century and the aleatoric music of the 20th-century avant garde. The digital revolution has allowed us to take this principle to the next level. Computers let us create autonomous environments that exist under given rules without any further external input.
Our Master’s in Sound Art & Sound Studies devotes a huge amount of attention not only to the conceptual grounding of this approach, but also to developing original instruments—programming environments such as Max/MSP, Pure Data, and Supercollider make it possible to create various generative systems, sound installations and complex sound design. Our ‘Music for the End of the World’ concert is the result of almost two years of working with these kinds of instruments. We are very glad that we were able to join forces with the Bachelor’s in Design and Programming. We put together an audiovisual programme in which sound and sound and image not only complement each other, but evolve together under certain rules.
With ‘Music for the End of the World’, we not only wanted to present one of the most interesting fields in modern art, but also wanted to introduce listeners and viewers to one of the many aspects of our Master’s. Our programme—the only one of its kind in Eastern Europe—is dedicated to the comprehensive theory and practice of working with sound. We emphasise the learning of a very wide variety of methods of musical composition and sound design, from programming to field recordings and DIY electronics. We also dive deep into art history, sound studies and cultural studies. I believe our programme will be of interest to anyone who wants to learn non-standard methods of working with music and sound, as well as those who want to consider modern art from a critical perspective and become curators and all-round participants in cultural production.’
Violetta Postnova, teacher of Design and Programming
‘Among the many possible forms of VJing, live coding is interesting not just because of the graphics, but because the code behind the graphics appears on screen. This lets you see what the artist is thinking, how they perceive and interact with the digital graphical space.
Third-year students of our Design and Programming track take a module on live coding as part of the Art Practice subject. This gives them a sense of how code can be a tool for solving not only practical tasks, but creative ones.
The concert featured six performances by our students. Each visual set has its own concept and technical solution to convey its imagery. The concepts of the performances were agreed between students of the two disciplines, so we can consider the visual accompaniment and musical material to be a single work. To me, creating this event with students and curators from the Sound Art & Sound Studies programme was a very valuable opportunity. I believe that freedom can be found wherever there is interdisciplinarity, unity and experimentation.’
Ivan Kalashnik, student of the Master’s in Sound Art & Sound Studies
‘For me, the main factor was finding a programme where I could gradually leave behind the typical methods of working within the binary framework of modern digital audio workstations. The Sound Art & Sound Studies programme teaches us about audio programming environments such as Pure Data, Max/MSP, and others. I soon became engrossed in the theoretical concepts and experience of cultures associated with computer music (in the original sense of the term). The last course involved studying the SuperCollider text language, part of which featured the involvement of Renick Bell (a musician, programmer and teacher associated with the labels UIQ, Seagrave, Conditional and others). Later, the SC language went on to form the basis of my performance. The aim of my project was to search for sound structures that were potentially not under the total control of reproduction systems. I wanted to generate sound through endless autonomous and depersonalised genre mutations. It is important to note that events like this very rare in Russia. Thanks to the organisers, we were able to perform in a large and well-equipped space with a big screen showing the code in real time.’
Vladislav Generalov, student of the Master’s in Sound Art & Sound Studies
‘For me, the choice of the course in Sound Art & Sound Studies was a pretty logical continuation of my education, as I have a bachelor’s degree in engineering and I have been interested in electronic music ever since I was a child. My hopes of finding a way to combine these fields in this educational programme have been fully realised. I have learned about a wide variety of techniques for working with sounds, many of which I now use actively. What’s more, my horizons in the field of sound art have significantly expanded, which has given some of my current projects a chance to become substantial artistic works. During the ‘Music for the End of the World’ concert, I fulfilled my favourite role of technical director, and also closed the concert programme with an algorithmic live dance show using my DIY controllers.’
Maria Karpovich, student of the Master’s in Sound Art & Sound Studies
‘Two years ago, I had a work project where I needed to put together a soundtrack for film scenes. I spent about a month on the process, switching between visual and audio perceptions of the material. That’s when I realised how deep and limitless this field is.
For me personally, there is a lot more freedom and potential for experimentation in sound than in images. That’s why when I saw that the Sound Art master’s had opened and I looked at the range of subjects, I realised that it was an amazing opportunity to learn my way around this field.
The course has given me a better understanding of a variety of artistic practices, as well as an opportunity to get a better sense of instruments and the nature of my activities in the world of sound.
For the concert, Olga Zubova and I collaborated using granular synthesis techniques in the SuperCollider environment, using live instruments and performative practices. For us, the coolest thing was that we could take an idea we thought of at the very beginning and thread every possible technique through it in different amounts. It’s a very interesting process.’
Alexandra Barabanova, student of the Bachelor’s in Design and Programming
‘I was responsible for the visual side of the performance at the concert. I used the Hydra Editor live coding platform, which is conceptually built like a modular synthesiser, but works in a browser. We studied this programme during a module of the Art Practice track, and the event was the culmination of the learning process for this tool. The collaboration with Sound Art & Sound Design students was an opportunity to gain experience and meet new people, and the concert gave us experience of organising and giving a public performance in this format. It was my first practical experience in the role of design artist for an event. I have a lot of good memories of from my performance and those by other participants, and I am very satisfied with the organisation, process, and results of the event!
Vitaly Gachkovsky, student of the Bachelor’s in Design and Programming
‘I only applied to the programme in Design and Programming because I wanted to make websites. However, during the process, I realised that the most important thing when it comes to digital products is the people using them. And one of the things the programme teaches us it to be attentive to these people. In the second module of our third year, we learned more about Hydra and how to use it to make generative graphics. The concert was an opportunity to try this tool under real conditions in collaboration with musicians.’