Articles
PROSTHETIC MUSIC, Michel van der Aa’s Case
By Jelena Novak
If you haven't seen scientist Steven Hawking give a talk, let me give
you a quick background. Hawking has amyotorphic lateral sclerosis, which makes
it virtually impossible for him to move anything more than his fingers, or
to speak. A friendly computer engineer put together a nice little system for
him, a program that displays a meny of words, a storage buffer and a Votrax
allophone generator – i.e. an artificial speech device. He selects words
and phrases, the word processor stores them until he forms a paragraph, and
the Votrax says it. Or he calls up a prepared file, and the Votrax says that.(...)
And there is Hawking, Sitting, as he always does, in his wheelchair, utterly
motionless, except for his fingers on the joystick of the laptop (...)
Exactly, where, I say to myself, is Hawking?... Who is it doing the talking
up there on stage?
In an important sense, Hawking doesn't stop being Hawking at the edge of his
visible body. There is the obvious physical Hawking, vividly outlined by the
way our social conditioning teaches us to see a person as a person. But a serious
part of Hawking extends into the box on his lap. In mirror image, a serious
part of that silicon and plastic assemblage in his lap extends into him as
well (...) No box, no discourse; in the absence of the prosthetic, Hawking's
intellect becomes a tree falling in the forrest with nobody around to hear
it. On the other hand, with the box his voice is auditory and simultaneously
electric, in a radically different way from that of a person speaking into
a microphone.
Where does he stop? Where are his edges? The issues his person and his communication
prosthesis raise are boundary debates, borderland/frontera questions».
I had a similar dilemma listening/watching some of the latest works by Steve
Reich or Michel Van der Aa. Watching/listening, for example, violoncellist
Maya Beiser in Reich’s Cello Counterpoint, or singer Barbara Hannigan
performing in van der Aa’s opera One, I was wondering: Where does the
performer's body stop? Where are the performer's edges?
Although any relation between performer and music instrument could be considered
as prosthetic, it seems that exactly the relation between the human body and
its artificial extension was strongly problematized in mentioned works. Through
the history the relation between the performer and the instrument became ‘default’,
almost organic relation. If the function performer-instrument is considered
as the organism itself, now that organism was put in the prosthetic relation
with the electronic sound system.
Barbara Hannigan in One
So, Performer as a cyborg?
Cyborgs - persons, systems - whose functioning is aided by, or dependent upon
a mechanical or electronic device, are used as powerful metaphors, symbols
or interlaced functioning relations in some music languages of contemporary
composers. Performers human bodies became insufficient, and have been upgraded
with devices that substitutes for, or supplements a part of the body, or moreover,
the part of perception. Composers opened a network of prosthetic tasks for
performers. Relation between the body of performer and the body of the instrument
is placed in the relation with the pre-recorded sound. Demands for performer’s
perception, listening and act of performance have been changed. They are transformed
into the sound cyborgs.
“Gradually leaving the usage of our natural receptive organs, our sensuality,
we are guided as a handicapped persons with some kind of cosmic overreacting,
phantom chasing of the different worlds and shapes, where the ‘old animal
body’ doesn’t have its place anymore, where the complete symbiosis
between the human and technology is taking place”, claims Paul Virilio,
and continues to remember different prosthetic relations: “Conglomerate
of the scanner, nose-spasms, wondering tongues, cyber ears, sexes without secretion
and the other organs without body... it is just a cheating which tries to escape
the death...”
Composer Michel van der Aa strongly problematizes prosthetic relations in his
piece Here (In Circles) (2002) and opera One (2003). Singer Barbara Hannigan
is one and only diva of this opera/performance relation. Opera starts in complete
dark. There are two white sheets on the stage. Behind one of them is Barbara
Hannigan who rhythmically repeats one tone. First she sings 'alone', and when
electronics starts, it takes exactly the same tone from the soloist and continues
to reproduce it in its superior technical durability. There is the author's
first reference on the notions of one, only, unique. In today's world of explosion
of the information which is cloning and replicating its own realities, the
notion of one, only, unique is obsolete. Van der Aa counts exactly with that
problem. «The soprano has an alter ego in the video that she does duets
with. They interact and complete each other's music and movements», describes
him.
Composition by the same author Here (In the Circles) could be considered as
a study for the examined opera. Moved by the rhythm of living in media and
information society, he is founding the dramaturgy of the piece in the constant
aceleration of the music flow. There is the playing with the fast forward rewinding
sound, and also counterpointing the live performance to fragments recorded
at the very same concert and broadcasted during live playing.
With all above mentioned 'techniques' van der Aa also plays in context of the
opera. He is a triple auhor of One – he composed music, directed video
and wrote a libretto. One become multiple in many ways: Barbara Hannigan meets
her own reproduced video image on the stage. They are both dressed in the same
way, they are both of the same size, and they both have the same voice - which
is the most important thing for the whole opera. Multiplying of her own representation
was a great virtuoso task for Hannigan, both visually and auditively. Opera
ends with meeting of real Barbara Hannigan and her representation who is simulated
to be around fifty years older. Two flows of time ended up together. Schizo-listening
is one of the consequences in this case also. Virtuous usage of technology
in this work, and also mechanical, almost hysterical, virtuosity which is demanded,
are deeply integrated in the opera tissue. That 'natural' integration is the
strongest actuality of this piece.
We are put into the position to listen the opera One as a schizo-construction.
Or even further, we are not listening the work any more, we are listening just
the relation between the performer and a sound machine. And the performer supposedly
is not listening to the whole piece, he/she is mainly seeking the right position
to take in front of the ‘network condition’ of the work. Work is
not important, relation is.
But, what happened to the composer in that process? He became a network of
interfaces?
According to Lyotard, “grounded in electronics and informatics, the new
technologies must be considered, always in the same light, as material extensions
of our capacity to remember... “ The institution of composer in van der
Aa’s case is prosthetic in terms in which philosopher David Wills uses
this notion. He uses the term of amputation inseparable with the term of prosthesis. “It
is not possible to amputate anything if we don’t know that we are able
to produce the replacement for what we amputated. In that sense, the very prosthesis
is also amputation”, claims Villis. Composers of the music we call prosthetic
are not composing the narrative, mimetic music. Their music is functioning
as a Deleuzian desiring machine. It produces a need to be heard in relation
to other music, which is its own particularity.
(Written for Musicology Symphosium Music and Networking and broadcasted on Radio Belgrade III Program, July 2004)